There Will Come A Stranger (5 page)

CHAPTER FOUR

Valerie
was dressing for the dance. She and Vivian had come in tired, although less tired than yesterday; probably their muscles were becoming accustomed to the unfamiliar efforts being demanded of them. But after resting on her bed while Vivian bathed and changed and went away so that she might have the bedroom to herself, and lying relaxed in a hot bath with pads of cold witch hazel on her closed eyes, she felt as fresh as ever.

Which frock should it be? The one of white lace, with a stiffened petticoat beneath its full skirt, or the grey chiffon? Looking at
them on their hangers, she decided on the grey. She had been surprised at first when Vivian had pounced upon it in the shop—grey for an evening dress had seemed so elderly
.
But as soon as she had tried it on it had been obvious that Vivian was right. It was of chiffon, pale as pewter, warmed by a hint of softest rose that shimmered through its accompanying slip. With every movement sequins sparkled in its drifting folds as dewdrops sparkle in a cobweb. With it went a stole that lay as light as gossamer about her pearly arms and shoulders. Her hair was pale sunlight on a misty day.

Vivian returned as she was putting on her silver shoes.

“
Valerie!
Oh, you
do
look nice!”

“I feel like Cinderella going to the ball—and midnight
’
s still a lovely long way off. Twenty-six whole days.”

“Midnight may never come—so let
’
s forget it till it does!”

The four of them—Rory and Valerie, Susan
and Harry Prescott—were going to have dinner at the Schweizerhof before the dance. Rory had been out all day on a long expedition with John Ainslie, and as his pension was close beside the Schweizerhof it had been arranged that Valerie should go there with the Prescotts. Snug in fur
-
lined overboots and gloves,
and
Vivian
’
s fur-lined coat, she met them in the hall at the appointed time, and presently was tucked between them in a sleigh, with rugs drawn up about their chins, and a kind of pram hood sheltering them above. Extraordinary, she thought, that those same stars that hung so huge and glittering against the fathomless indigo of the sky were at this very moment looking down on Darlingford and Hawthorn Lodge, though there they would look smaller, dimmer, inferior altogether, if indeed they could be seen at all. Most probably they were hidden by cloud.

With gaily jingling bells they set off through
the frostbound night.

Vivian had not seen John Ainslie since last night; he must have made an early start this morning. All day she had had it on her mind that she had been ungracious in the manner of her refusal to go with him to the dance. She was impatient to put matters right, and looked about as soon as Valerie had gone, to see if he were in the lounge. But there was no sign of him. She sat for a few minutes, helping Mr. Cunningham with his crossword puzzle, then went in to dinner.

She had hoped John Ainslie might be in the dining-room, but he was not there. Every time the door opened she looked up, hoping he would come in; even to smile at him in friendly fashion would somehow salve her smarting conscience. The room filled up, but still there was no sign of him and she began to be afraid he might have gone for dinner to friends staying elsewhere. She liked him
far too well to be willing to postpone her explanation and apology for another day. It was one thing to avoid the risk of being a nuisance to him, quite another to appear discourteous! She decided that if he were out she would stay reading in the lounge till he returned. Probably by that time people would be going up to bed, and it should be an easy matter to have a quiet word with him.

Then, as she was beginning to eat a frail meringue piled high with whipped cream delicately flavoured with some liqueur, the door opened once again and he came in. The way to his seat lay past her table, but instead of passing her he crossed the room to have a word with someone on the other side, and finally, without a glance in her direction, went to his place and while he waited for his soup began to read a paper he had brought in. Surely he would have looked her way, smiled a good evening, if he had not been annoyed or hurt by her ungraciousness last night? Yet she would not have expected him to take offence without good reason
...
Had her manner been more brusque even that she remembered, looking back? Telling herself that she was making mountains out of mole hills, yet none the less uneasy, she finished her meringue and told Elise that she would have coffee in the lounge, she waited there, sipping her coffee, making a pretence of reading so that no well-meaning individual, thinking she felt lonely in her sister
’
s absence, should come to occupy the vacant chair beside her.

It seemed a long time before John Ainslie finished dinner, but he came at last. As he glanced round the room to find somewhere to sit, inevitably his eyes fell on Vivian, sitting by herself. Although the other voices drowned her words he saw the movement of her lips as she said, “Mr.
Ainslie
—
?”—saw, too, the summons in her
eyes, and came to her at once, his own eyes questioning.

Vivian said, “There
’
s something I would like to say to you—won
’
t you have your coffee here?” He smiled at her, and in his steady eyes she was relieved to see no coolness, no withdrawal, only friendliness and liking. Close on his heels Elise came with his coffee. When she had gone Vivian, in her usual direct fashion, same straight to the point.

“I am afraid you must have thought me horribly ungrateful and ungracious for refusing to go with you to the Schweizerhof this evening—or rather, in the way I did it. Valerie said I was abrupt—and if she thought so, so must you! I
’
m sorry—you
’
ve been so kind to us! What
can
you have thought of me?”

“Certainly not that you were abrupt! You didn
’
t want to come, and said so. That was all there was to it!”

Anxious that he should understand, she said impulsively, “Last time I danced was with my husband. He was killed two years ago in a plane crash. So, you see
...
”

There was a moment
’
s pause before
he said, “I see
...
I didn
’
t know. It must be very hard to pick up all the broken threads again.” He took care that his face should give no clue to his surprise that Vivian was a widow. That, of course, explained the sadness in her eyes.

“It isn
’
t easy.” Suddenly she felt it would be best, now that she had this opening, to clear up the whole situation. “I had another reason for refusing to go out with you!” she told him. “I
’
m reluctant to impose on you. Afraid that you may feel—responsible is perhaps too strong a word, but something of that sort—because we came here on your recommendation, given with no idea that I would act on it. Yesterday you spoilt your day on our account—delaying going off, so that you might book an instructor for us, and then coming back to tell us that you
’
d done so! I
’
d hate to feel that you regarded me as—as a sort of clinging vine type, needing help at every turn
...
Or that you thought Valerie and I wanted to
‘
tag on
’
to your party!”

The laughter creases deepened at the
corner
s of his eyes as he replied,
‘
So that
’
s why you were so determined to display your independence! I must say a
‘
clinging vine
’
is quite the last description I
’
d apply to you. Nor did it occur to me that you might want to
‘
tag on
’
! Quite the reverse! And as for yesterday—I helped for the same reason that I asked you to go with me to the dance: because I liked you. And now we
’
ve got that straightened out, let
’
s celebrate by having a liqueur!”

Perhaps both felt that they had found a short cut into friendship, for they wasted no time in small-talk of trivialities, but at once slid into pleasant discussion of mutual interests, agreeing with enthusiasm over some points, joining in friendly argument over others. John drew Vivian on to tell of life as she had known it in America. Vivian discovered that he did not care for games; ski-ing and mountaineering were his passions. “And I enjoy fishing more than most things,” he told her. “In that I
’
m lucky—there
’
s a small river running by the bottom of my garden, so I can take a rod out any time when I have half an hour to spare instead of making a day
’
s business of it.”

Each learned something of the other
’
s life. Vivian discovered that John
’
s mother had died when he was only ten, his father when he had barely left his teens, leaving him at twenty to carry on the family business, a small tweed mill in the Borders, and bring up Susan, who was then only thirteen, and another sister two years younger. Helped by the loyalty of older men whose fathers had been in the business before them, and at home by a wise, kindly housekeeper who had been with the Ainslies since John was a baby, he had won through. It was that premature responsibility, she thought, which accounted for a certain gravity on his face when it was in, repose, a warmth of sympathy, a tolerant understanding in his attitude to life and people that his talk unconsciously revealed, not always yet developed in so young a man.

Although she did not say much of her own affairs, a man of John
’
s perception could not fail to sense the desolation of her loss and loneliness for the husband to whom she made no more than an occasional brief reference. And reading between the lines, he guessed more than she knew about the situation she had found on her return to Hawthorn Lodge. He realized, too, the strength of her protective tenderness for Valerie, and that her younger sister
’
s plight fulfilled a longing deep in her own warm, generous nature for somebody to live for, somebody who needed her. But almost certainly, he thought, the day would come, perhaps quite soon, when Valerie would start to build a new life for herself: a life founded and filled by love and marriage, husband and children. And when that happened, what of Vivian
—
?

Absorbed in talk, neither noticed how the time was flying by until Vivian, glancing up, discovered that they were alone, since everybody else had left the lounge and gone upstairs.

“Heavens! I
’
d no idea it was so late! High time for bed!” she said, and rose.

John was so well proportioned that she had not realized how tall he was till now, when they were standing close to one another as they said good night: though she herself was well above the average height, she was surprised to find her head no more than level with his shoulder.

His eyes were laughing, though his mouth was grave, as he said, “Well? Have we cured your complex in regard to clinging vines and so forth?”

Feigning indignation, Vivian said, “
I
never had one—it was on your account that I was anxious!”

“I never had one either—though maybe for a moment I had my doubts regarding prickly pears!”

“Well, really
—
!”

“But I
’
ve split the difference and decided on a rose.”

“A climbing briar, I suppose
?
” Vivian retorted. So they said good night upon a note of laughter.

As she went up to bed, Vivian felt as though they had been friends for years. Yet she had seldom felt more lonely than when she had closed the bedroom door behind her. Taking Pete
’
s photograph from where it stood, as always, by her bed, she looked for a long time into the merry eyes that smiled back into hers so confidently. As vividly as ever she remembered laughter they had shared, fun they had had together: felt again the ardent pressure of his lips against her own, the strength of his young arms, holding her close.

Again she knew the horror of imagining Pete
’
s body, so familiar, so dear, shattered beyond recognition, and longed for Valerie
’
s return, so that she need no longer be alone with thought.

For so small a place as Varlet-sur-Montagne the Schweizerhof was so large, so glittering with gilt and chandeliers, so sumptuously upholstered and carpeted, as to seem somewhat out of place. It had a cocktail bar that gleamed with chromium, and an orchestra that played during meals as well as for the dances, and its prices were accordingly astronomical. English people seldom stayed there nowadays, limited by currency restrictions, though they drifted in from the smaller hotels and pensions when funds permitted. At night, with double windows shut against the cold, and curtains drawn, and German, French, Italian, Dutch, American and other tongues turning the lounge into a
modern
Tower of Babel, it might have been a luxury hotel anywhere in Europe.