Dorothy Eden (7 page)

The situation was almost humorous. There was the redheaded Dove and the blonde Lily. One needed now only a brunette. Then Paul could be really triumphant over his conquests. Funny shy Paul who had scarcely known even how to kiss her three years ago.

“Where have you been, Lily?” she asked.

“In Timaru.” The girl, it was clear, was not going to be over-friendly. Probably, at this moment, she was composing another note, a more strongly-worded one that would do what the previous ones had failed to accomplish.

“Just Timaru?”

The girl gave her a sidelong glance.

“I’ve been with my mother. She’s sick. It wasn’t a holiday.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t,” said Kate placatingly. “But I hope you’re feeling fit because we’re going to have an awfully busy time. The whole house has to be done from top to bottom.”

Lily looked at her suspiciously.

“What’s going to happen to old Mrs. Blaine?”

“Oh, well tuck her away somewhere comfortable. Poor little soul, she won’t notice a thing.”

Lily muttered something. Kate said in her clear sharp voice,

“What did you say, Lily?”

“I said she notices more than you think, ma’am.”

“Oh, I don’t think so, Lily. She lives entirely in a make-believe world. Take her the hot chocolate now. That’s all she wants for happiness, food and warmth. So simple, isn’t it? One almost envies her.”

It was later that Julia heard Paul’s welcome to Lily.

“Ah, the lily of the field is back. She toils not, neither does she spin.”

“Come off it,” Lily retorted tartly, but with an undertone of pleasure.

He had them eating out of his hand, Julia thought with mingled admiration and wryness. That made things easy for him, but how did she handle the situation? Well, it might just be amusing. At least, one hoped it would be amusing.

The third woman arrived that night.

It was a confused day, mostly taken up with Kate exclaiming rapturously over the contents of Julia’s bags, and threatening with every other breath to call Paul up and show him a nightgown or a negligée or the kind of underwear that the most expensive Parisian shops thought a bride should wear. Yet behind Kate’s enthusiasm and her greedy love of pretty clothes Julia thought she could detect uneasiness. Her small bright eyes darted so quickly here and there. Was she thinking about other women and wondering if Julia should be seriously warned about Dove and Lily? Julia contemplated telling her about the letters, then decided to keep her own counsel in the meantime. There was no point in making trouble about a childish prank.

Julia’s head began to ache and she longed for fresh air. The faint musty smell of the house, as if it had been shut up for years, combined with Kate’s rather overpowering perfume was becoming too much for her. She planned to take a short walk before the clouds, that threatened an early darkness, came down, and the countryside became too sombre and frightening. She wanted to think before she finished the letter to Uncle Jonathan. She was not so sure now about that sentence, “I am so excited and so happy.” She wanted to be honest.

She was delayed in leaving the house, however. She could not decide at first whose was the voice that called her, or where it came from. Then she recognised it. Georgina’s. The white rabbit with the twittering voice like a sleepy bird’s. It came from a room at the end of the passage upstairs. It was surprisingly strong and clear.

“Julia! Is that you? Come here. I want to talk to you.”

She had been put back to bed, and now she sat bolt upright in the middle of an enormous four-poster. A bed-jacket of fluffy white wool enhanced her white-rabbit appearance. She looked like a child’s toy. But what surprised Julia was that the vague look had gone from her face and it was sharp and alert. Obviously, she was having one of her occasional intelligent periods. She patted the edge of the bed and said,

“Sit down, my dear. On the bed. I’m afraid you won’t find an empty chair. I can do nothing myself, and now Mrs. Bates has gone there is no one I can ask to do things. Kate hasn’t learned to manage a house this size yet, and that girl in the kitchen can do nothing but flirt.”

She smiled as Julia sat down, and her face took on a kind of spectral warmth so that for a moment she was more like a human being.

“Now tell me, how do you like Heriot Hills?”

Julia looked round the gloomy room and hesitated.

“I—I’ve scarcely decided.”

“Of course not. It’s all too strange. I remember when I came here. There were no trees at all, only bare hills with those horrid thorny bushes, and patches of snow. I used to hang my crinolines over the gooseberry bushes to save them from the frost. I was very unhappy. I longed to go home.” Then she said, “How’s Jonathan?”

“He’s very frail. He always talks about you.”

Again the ghostly smile crept over the tiny old face, there was a flirtatious coyness in the faded eyes.

“Ah! Sentimental Jonathan. I imagine he always hoped I would find I had made a mistake and go back to him. It doesn’t pay to be sentimental.” Her voice became sharp and querulous. “He ought to have known better. I hope that you will know better. Don’t let Harry make you unhappy. He’s a bad boy.”

Julia leaned forward.

“Mrs. Blaine, it’s Paul I am marrying.”

The awareness flickered and vanished in the old lady’s eyes. They were a cloudy sky without light.

“Why does everyone say Harry isn’t here? He is. He came in here last night and talked to me. He said you were the prettiest of them all.”

“Of them all?”

“Girls,” the old lady twittered. “Harry likes girls.”

“So does Paul, I think,” Julia murmured.

“But he’s slower than Harry. Much slower.”

Julia thought of Dove, and sly-eyed Lily. Her bewilderment grew. This Harry must have been some character.

“Paul takes after his father,” the old lady said. “Harry takes after me.” She chuckled. “The way I twisted poor Jonathan round my little finger. But he was sweet. Tell him I was asking after him.”

“Mrs. Blaine,” Julia said earnestly, “Harry isn’t here. You know he isn’t here.”

A gleam, like the sun through clouds, shone in Georgina’s eyes. Then it vanished. She spoke in her high silly bird’s voice.

“You all think I’m crazy. But I’m not. You’ll meet Harry before long. You won’t be able to escape, a pretty girl like you.”

Julia gazed pityingly at the vacant face. The image in Uncle Jonathan’s mind was the real Georgina. This was just a sad little shadow.

Nevertheless the odd conversation was disturbing. Julia went across the overgrown garden following a track that led beneath the drooping birches and the firs on to the open hillside. Then the mountain wind came pure and cold in her face, and the evening held only the sound of lambs crying and the stirring of the snowgrass in the wind. She climbed to the top of a low hill, and stood looking across the lonely landscape that spread in a shadowy line of hills broken by the smoky blue of a lake, and isolated clumps of trees, to the towering mountains. Looking at the mountains the same intense loneliness that she had felt last night with Davey overcame her. It wasn’t so much loneliness as premonition. Those great giants with their snowcaps were waiting, watching, holding their breath over something. Overwhelmingly she thought of her wedding dress hanging in the dark wardrobe, a snow thing like the mountain tops. In it she would feel as cold as snow. As cold as Georgina would be when for the last time she wore the dress she was afraid the moths would ruin.…

“Paul!” she whispered pleadingly.

Then the queer dark feeling passed and she was laughing at her fancies. Paul, growing more and more irritable with his helplessness, was in the house waiting for her. She would ask for a fire to be lit in the library, and some comfortable chairs to be taken in. She and Paul could spend their evening there, cosy and undisturbed. The snow mountains could be shut out.

She turned eagerly back to the house.

Paul was in the library with its rows of books that looked as if they hadn’t been touched for half a century. He was not alone. Kate was there, too, and Julia had the instant impression that she had interrupted them in a serious conversation. Just for one moment they stared at her wordlessly. Then Kate sprang up.

“Ah, my dear, you’ve been out in the cold wind. Come and get warm. Paul and I have just been discussing things.”

“What things?” Julia enquired politely.

“Oh, the farm. Re-stocking it, it’s terribly neglected, as Davey tells us every day. What to do with the house—”

“You,” said Paul, his mouth tilted in his silent laughter.

“Me?” The gentle emphasis in Paul’s voice made her flush with pleasure.

“And why not, indeed?” said Kate. “You are the most important person at the moment. You have those lovely lovely clothes and they must be shown off. Besides, we have to bring Heriot Hills back to the way it used to be. The Blaines were quite the most important people in this part of the country. But my poor husband died, and I got so lonely here I couldn’t stand it. Besides, the boys had to go to school, and then there was the war. And Granny was getting too old to see that the place was managed properly. She had those dreadful Bates people here, as I told you. But now it’s all going to be quite different. Paul will have the sweetest little bride, and of course she must have the right setting.”

It was clear that Kate was suddenly tremendously enthusiastic and excited about the prospect of restoring Heriot Hills to its correct standing in the country. But why hadn’t she been excited yesterday or a week ago, or three months ago when Paul had decided to marry?

“It looks as if I have been on trial,” she said lightly.

Kate looked momentarily confused. Then she laughed, her little plump mouth opening vertically.

“I admit I was a nervous mother-in-law. Paul tried to describe you—”

“Mother, stop talking,” Paul said lazily. “I’ll convince Julia about this.”

Kate sprang to her feet playfully. “Ah, I can see you want to get rid of me. Very well, I can take a hint. But don’t forget to fix your wedding date, because there’s the minister to see and the invitations to get out—oh, all right, I’m going.”

She pattered out, her little plump feet very light in her high-heeled shoes. Paul beckoned to Julia and held out his arms.

“Do you want to talk, my sweet? Or just kiss me?”

His eyes had the bright reckless look that both puzzled and pleased her.

“I was a gamble,” she said intuitively.

“Stop talking nonsense.” He drew her down to him. She felt the softness of his little golden moustache brush her cheek. “When will you marry me?”

She persisted. “But if I was a gamble why did you want to marry me in Wellington the moment I came off the ship?”

“You were only a gamble as far as this place was concerned. We thought you might hate it here. Are you going to hate it?”

His lips pressed on hers. She could only vaguely shake her head, forgetting the wind from the high lonely mountains, the shivering desolation that had filled her.

“Then I’ll go to town in a day or two as soon as I can get about on this infernal ankle, and arrange about stock, and then we’ll be married. There’s a little church overlooking the lake, you stand at the altar and think you’re on the lakeside.”

“But, Paul!” Something still nagged at her. “If I hadn’t liked it here, weren’t you going to stay either?”

“Naturally not. Stupid! Do you think you’ll like standing at the altar on the edge of a lake?”

Julia nodded happily, thinking that at last everything fell into place. Until now she had not been able to imagine herself really wearing the snowy dress and laving her hand trustingly in Paul’s. But now it was going to be true.

“Oh, darling!” she said breathlessly, and at the same moment the doorbell rang with a rusty clangour.

Paul started up impatiently.

“Bother! Who’s this?”

“I’ll go,” said Julia. “You rest that foot, or you won’t be able to go and buy Davey’s sheep.”

“Why Davey’s sheep, I’d like to know?”

She turned at the door, laughing. “Poor Davey wants them. How can he be a successful shepherd without them?”

“Then tell him to complain to me!” Paul’s voice followed her.

But she laughed again, confidently, thinking it would be fun to tell Davey that it was true, the neglected state of Heriot Hills was going to be remedied very quickly, as she had said it would be.

She pulled open the heavy creaking hall door, and in the gloom on the verandah stood the thin dark-haired girl with the baby in her arms.

Julia drew back a step. The stranger was the first to speak.

“This is Heriot Hills, isn’t it? The bus driver told me to come up this road.”

“Yes, this is Heriot Hills.” (The brunette, Julia was thinking wildly. She had thought about a brunette, and here she stood! It was a dream.)

“Oh, that’s all right, then. Lord, it was a hump up that road with my bag and a baby, too. Is”—she hesitated the slightest fraction—“Paul in?”

Julia said uncertainly, “Yes, indeed. Come in. Paul has a bad ankle. I’ll call him. But I don’t know who you—”

Her sentence was finished by Paul’s low exclamation at the end of the hall. “Nita!”

The girl laughed, a slow, amused and yet excited laugh. As she came into the lamplit hall (Kate had discovered an oil lamp and hung it that day) Julia saw that she was good-looking in a thin tense way. She was also well dressed. She must have had quite a time walking up the rough road in those delicate shoes.

“Hullo, Paul,” she said. “You see, I came after all. I brought Timmy, too.”

Paul limped forward. Whatever he had felt at the evidently unexpected appearance of this girl he played the part of a surprised and genial host very well.

“Why on earth didn’t you send a telegram? Davey would at least have met the bus. Walking up that road with a heavy baby! Put him down and come and meet Julia. Julia, this is Nita. Harry’s wife.”

T
HAT NIGHT, AFTER JULIA
had gone to bed and put out the light, Paul came into the room and lay on the bed beside her. She could feel the hard ridge on his body through the blankets.