Who Pays the Piper? (2 page)

He still held the long string in his hand. He turned away with it now to Susan Lenox, who was standing behind Cathy.

“Will you put them on for a minute? I'd like to see what they look like. Mrs. Hammond is too dark for them really—pearls are for fair women. I'd like very much to see them on you, if you would be so good.” Words and voice were formal.

Susan had no excuse for refusing. She had a feeling that the whole scene had been contrived for just this very end—to make her try on the pearls. And Lydia had made it impossible for her to refuse. A glow of anger stained her cheeks and brightened there as the thought went through her mind, “He'll think I'm blushing—they'll all think so.” But her voice was cool and detached as she said,

“Oh, certainly, if you want me to. But I'm one of the people whom Sir John won't believe in—I don't really care for pearls.” She held them up against her for a moment without fastening the clasp.

She became aware that they were all watching her—Mrs. Mickleham nervously, Lady Vere with her shallow stare, Sir John prodigiously amused, the Vicar kindly and unaware, Lydia's eyes dancing with mischief, Cathy with something scared about her, and Lucas Dale with the smouldering look which made her come near to hating him. They could all see how pale she turned.

She dropped her hands from her neck and gave him back the pearls.

“And I must say goodnight, Mr. Dale. Aunt Milly will be wanting me.”

Lydia jumped up from where she had been kneeling by the tray.

“I'll walk down the hill with you, darling, and the parents can pick me up when they go. Daddy hasn't nearly finished drinking sherry yet, and it's so much cheaper for him not to drink his own these stony-broke days. Goodbye, Mr. Dale. I simply daren't stay near those pearls any longer, but I call you to witness they're all there, even the loose ones which would be so frightfully easy to pinch. Here, you'd better count them. If you go and lose them, I'm not going to have you say it's me. Freddy wouldn't like it—his family are all fearfully respectable. Come on—count them!”

Mrs. Mickleham said, “Lydia—
dear!”
Lucas Dale said, “It's all right, Mrs. Hammond, they're all there. You can leave the room without a stain on your character. And now, Cathy, I think you might put them away again. They don't come out more than once in a blue moon anyhow.”

CHAPTER II

The proper way to reach the Little House was down half a mile of drive and along the road into Netherbourne village, but it was less than a quarter of a mile as the crow flies, and no more even without wings, if you went straight down past the three terraces and the tennis courts, through the vegetable garden, to the orchard which ran right down to Mrs. O'Hara's fence.

Mrs. O'Hara had been Millicent Bourne—one of the beautiful Bourne twins. She and her sister Laura were the talk of their first season. And then the war came. Millicent married a penniless Irishman who was killed in 1917, leaving her with a delicate baby and no income. Laura married John Lenox. He was killed in 1916, and Laura died the following year. Millicent O'Hara came back to her brother at King's Bourne. Everyone said that she would marry again, but she did not. She kept house very inefficiently for James, who was twenty years older than his young sister, and by degrees she lost her looks and her health and became a rather tiresome invalid. James Bourne was a confirmed bachelor. He was very glad to have poor Milly there, and to have her little girl and poor Laura's little girl. He became, in fact, extremely fond of the children, but being a most amiable, indolent and inconsequent-minded man, it never occurred to him to make any provision for them. When he died there was really nothing left. The estate had paid death-duties twice during the war, and everything that could be mortgaged was mortgaged. For the last couple of years things had been kept going with borrowed money. Lucas Dale stepped in and bought the place lock, stock and barrel. He was English, though he had made his great fortune in America, and he meant to settle in England and marry an English wife. He meant to marry Susan Lenox.

Mrs. O'Hara moved into the Little House with Susan and Cathy. She supposed they would get along somehow. There was about two hundred and fifty pounds a year. They couldn't afford a servant. One of the girls could look after her and the house, and the other could be earning something. Susan would have been the one to go out and earn, but it was no use wasting a training on her if she was going to marry Bill Carrick, so it was Cathy who went to stay with old Cousin Emma in London and took a three months secretarial course, the enterprise being financed by the sale of Mrs. O'Hara's Brussels flounce. She wept over the sacrifice at the time, and would probably never stop talking about it, because of course Cathy ought to have the lace for her wedding dress, but on the other hand they really couldn't live on two hundred and fifty a year, and how fortunate that Cathy should step straight into such an unexceptionable post. Mrs. O'Hara quite brightened when she talked it over with Mrs. Mickleham—“He treats her perfectly, like the nicest uncle. And she comes back to all her meals.”

“But I thought—surely the Vicar was told—that Mr. Dale had a secretary already. He has been superintending all the alterations. A Mr. Phipson—yes, that's it—Mr. Montague Phipson. Quite a pleasant little man.”

“Oh, yes, but he's the business secretary. Mr. Dale has a great many business interests. He doesn't want Cathy for that sort of thing. She is to do the flowers and—well, all the sort of things she and Susan used to do for my brother—only of course there will be far more entertaining now. He came to see me about it and was quite charming.”

This was three months ago. Tonight Susan and Lydia took the garden way to the Little House. They came out on to the first of the terraces and saw the whole slope of the hill under a waning moon and a dappled sky, and the lights in the village far below.

Susan stood for a moment and looked. She felt Lydia's hand on her arm.

“I don't know how you can bear it. It isn't his—it's yours. It will always be yours.”

“But I don't want it, Lydia—I never did. I've seen too much of trying to keep up a big place on a small income—” her soft laugh broke in—“or no income at all.”

“I didn't mean that,” said Lydia—“I didn't mean that at all. What about having the income to match the place? Wouldn't you like that?”

Susan laughed again.

“Bill wouldn't. He wants to build everything we live in. He says what's the good of being an architect if you don't. So we shall start in a three-roomed cottage and work up.”

Lydia's eyes sparkled in the moonlight. She said crisply,

“And
when
do you start?”

They had been standing still, but Susan moved now. It was not until they reached the next terrace that she answered Lydia's question.

“It is so dreadfully hard for an architect to get a start. They mustn't advertise, and it's uphill work getting known. The Maynards were awfully pleased with the house he did for them. He proposed to me on the strength of that. But he's only had small jobs since then. People say they're going to build, and then building costs go up, or something like that, and they don't do it. If we had any capital, it would be different, because then he could build to sell or let without waiting for orders, and get known that way.”

“It sounds like waiting a long time,” said Lydia. She paused and added, with the effect of flinging a dart,
“Are you going to wait?”

Susan stopped at the top of the steps to the last terrace. The moonlight stole all her colour, but it wasn't the moonlight which made her look so stern.

“What do you mean? Of course I'm going to wait.”

“Are you?” said Lydia. “Are you?
Are you, Susan?
I wouldn't if I were you. Do you remember how Lolly Smith got engaged to a boy who had just gone into the army, and he went out to India, and they went on being engaged for years and years and years till she'd completely gone down the drain, and then he married a girl of eighteen whom he'd known for a month?”

“Lydia!”

“Well, suppose you both go on waiting. What a look-out! You'll begin to lose your looks, and either he'll get plodding and dull and won't care, or else he'll get worked up and nervy and feel that he's spoiling your life. You can take your pick of which you'd rather have on your hands, but you can bet your life, whichever it is, it'll be hell for you.”

“Lydia!”

“Oh, you don't think so now. Look at me. I was crazy to marry Freddy—we were crazy about each other. And what's the good of it? I'm sitting at home with the parents, and he's in China. I can't go out, and he can't come home. What's the good of it?”

Susan laughed.

“You'd do it again tomorrow.”

Lydia stamped her foot.

“Because I'm a fool! And now you're angry with me—Susan——”

Susan put out a hand and touched her.

“I'm not really. But you mustn't say things about Bill.”

They went down the steps together and across the last terrace. As they began to skirt the tennis courts, Lydia said in something just above a whisper,

“It was seeing you at King's Bourne again, and—and—the pearls. I
wanted
you to have them.”

Susan was so secure that she could let a laugh come into her voice.

“It's no good, Lyddy.”

“You
might
——” Lydia was breathless with her own daring.

“No.”

“What's the good of saying no? He's in love with you—he'd give you anything in the world. He only had those pearls out because he wanted to see them on you.” She broke into sudden laughter. “And I ran off with them! You bet he hated me quite a lot for that. But you can't say he hasn't got good manners. I piled it on on purpose just to see how he'd react, and he bore up nobly. Oh, Susan,
think
of lifting about half an eyelash and having King's Bourne, and a millionaire, and those divine pearls all put down at your feet just waiting for you to pick them up.”

“I should find them too heavy. And I'd much rather not think about it, if you don't mind. And, Lyddy, if you don't want to make me angry, you'll stop. Up to now I've laughed, but I'm not going to go on laughing.”

“Well, I wouldn't like to make you really angry, darling. You know, the only time I did you nearly scared me dead. I believe if you were really roused you might do something rather frightful.”

They passed the tennis courts and took the orchard path.

“You do talk a lot of nonsense, Lyddy,” said Susan.

CHAPTER III

Lydia came in and prattled to Mrs. O'Hara about Freddy, about the climate of China and how dreadful the war was, about Lucas Dale and the drawing-room curtains at King's Bourne, and about the pearls.

“Rows and rows and rows of them—pink ones, and black ones, and white ones—enough to undermine any woman. Wouldn't it be too marvellous if he put them into a lucky bag and let us all have a dip?”

“I had quite a nice little string when I was a girl,” said Mrs. O'Hara in her plaintive voice.

She lay propped up with cushions on the comfortable deep sofa which she had brought from her own room at King's Bourne. When Lucas Dale bought the whole place as it stood he had begged Mrs. O'Hara to take with her to the Little House whatever she needed in the way of furniture. She had protested gracefully and then interpreted her needs with the utmost liberality. The room was full, and overfull. The sofa was too large for it. There were too many chairs, too many knick-knacks, and far too much china. It was obvious that the furnishings of a much larger room or rooms had been crammed into the small space. The walls were crowded too. A dark portrait over the mantelpiece was jostled by sketches which grandmamma had brought from Venice. A reproduction in red of Titian's Assumption hung side by side with The Soul's Awakening in sepia. On another wall an enlargement of her own wedding group was surrounded by some really lovely Chinese paintings of butterflies, birds and flowers.

Mrs. O'Hara herself resembled a faded watercolour. Her hair had not turned grey. It had become dull like her skin, her lips, her eyes. She was not at all unhappy, because she loved Cathy and Susan, and derived a great deal of pleasure from the precarious condition of her health. Her drops, her tonics, her pills, her little bottle of tablets, the sympathetic visits of Dr. Matthews who had been an early admirer—all these stood between her and the actual drabness of her life. She played with them as a girl plays with her dolls. She had seen herself as the admired young girl, the lovely bride, the pathetic widow. Now she was the brave invalid, pale, fragile, interesting. And of course if you are an invalid you do escape life's duller duties—taking the dog for a walk when you would rather sit by the fire, visiting the—sometimes—ungrateful poor, and going to church in the rain.

“Quite a nice little string,” said Mrs. O'Hara. “And Susan's mother had one too. They were a coming-out present from our father. Laura sold hers for the Red Cross—after her husband was killed, you know—but I kept mine until the other day, and it only fetched twenty pounds, though I am sure it cost a great deal more than that. Does Freddy
like
being in China, my dear? And I hope you have good news of Roger. Are they together? Because that would be so nice. I do think it is so delightful that you should have married someone who was such a friend of your brother's. But of course that is how you came to meet Freddy—isn't it? I remember your bringing them both up to King's Bourne, and I thought then what friends they were. Of course, you know, my dear, I always have thought your brother Roger one of the handsomest young men I ever met. And you were all such friends, you, and Roger, and Susan, and Cathy—oh, yes—thank you, my dear—I am always dropping my handkerchief, I can't think why.”