Mistress of Brown Furrows (3 page)

When she found her way to the lift the lift-man eyed her with a mixture of approval and something slightly more paternal in his regard, and then whisked her straight away to the ground floor, where her guardian was conducting a conversation with the young lady behind the reception desk.

Carol approached him rather shyly, and he turned as she drew near to his elbow.

“Hullo,” he said. “You look as if you’d slept well.”

He drew her over to a corner of the lounge and, seating her in an arm-chair facing him, asked her what she would like to do with herself that day.

“I don’t mind,” she confessed, conveying the impression that anything new was an adventure. “But first of all I would like to apologize for sleeping so terribly late this morning. I can’ t ever remember doing such a thing before. I don’t know what you must think of me.... And having my breakfast brought up to me! Miss Hardcastle would be horrified.”

“If I were you,” he advised, “I would begin to forget all about Miss Hardcastle, and I certainly wouldn’ t worry my head over what she would think about anything you do, or are likely to do. Miss Hardcastle belongs to a section of your life which is behind you now, and she is certainly not concerned with your future. The present is something which concerns yourself.”

“That sounds just a little bit—thrilling,” Carol murmured with a subdued sparkle in her eyes.

“Well, it’ s true, don’ t forget and as for your former Headmistress, I have been through to her on the telephone this morning, and have explained yesterday afternoon’ s somewhat abrupt departure, and she is quite satisfied that you are in safe hands now. She sends you her very best wishes, and regrets missing an opportunity to make my acquaintance. But if she will take her baths at irregular hours what else can she expect? After all, you can’ t have everything in this world!”

Carol laughed suddenly—a low, bubbling, girlish laugh.

“I only said that I
thought
she might be taking a bath, but I couldn’ t be quite certain. But it must have struck you as rather funny.... A Headmistress in a bath!—”

“Instead of the more usual study! ”

His face reflected the amusement on hers.

“And Miss Hardcastle is so prim and correct she would simply hate you to think that she—that she really was—” She broke off, giggling afresh.

“Well, we won’ t embarrass Miss Hardcastle any further, for the time being at any rate,” he remarked, dismissing that lady with a wave of his hand. “And now let us get back to the subject of    today?”

“There is one thing I really would like to do,” she confessed, after a moment, shyly.

“Pay a visit to the Zoo?” he suggested, returning her regard with a smile in his eyes.

“Oh,
no!”

“Visit the National Gallery? Madame Tussaud’ s, the Houses of Parliament—?”

She shook her head.

“Not searching after intellectual satisfaction of that sort?” he teased her. “Well, what is it that you do want to do?”

“Visit the shops,” she said almost breathlessly. “I’ve never seen the London shops, although I’ve heard a lot about them. The girls used to rave about all the lovely things you can see, and buy if you’ve got the money, in the West-End stores, when they used to come back to Selbourne after a holiday in London with their parents. Some of them actually stayed in hotels like this, and went to theatres, and cinemas, and mannequin parades—”

“And unsettled the rest of you when they got back to school! ” Timothy Carrington shook his head deprecatingly. “I know the sort of thing that goes on in young ladies’ boarding establishments—seminaries, as they used to be called! I suppose it’s what is known as the ‘eternal Eve’ finding its way to the surface, determined to force a way out. But if that is what you want, my dear, then to the shops we will go! ”

“Oh, that
is
kind of you,” she told him, and there was no doubt about the gratitude in her voice.

“Not at all, my child. And since we’re going to the shops we’d better make up our minds to spend some money. Not much sense in looking at things and not buying them—at least, some of them. And while we’re on the subject of shopping, I do feel that we ought to do something about that hat of yours, the one you were wearing yesterday.”

“Why, didn’t you like it?” she asked, in surprise. “It’s a new hat.

Miss Mackintosh thought it was quite a good felt, and although it doesn’t seem to fit awfully well, it’s a good, serviceable color. At least, Miss Mackintosh said so.”

“Then Miss Mackintosh ought to be made to wear it. And I, personally, would like to see her wearing it! ” He stood up, smiling down at her bewildered face. “At a guess I should say that your Miss Mackintosh is short, fat, and forty, and that she always carries a waterproof and is never seen without her umbrella. Am I, or am I not, right?”

Carol sounded quite awed as she admitted:

“You are perfectly right.”

“And you, my dear,” he reminded her, stretching forth a hand to persuade her to her feet, “are only eighteen, not nearly as fat as you ought to be, and I don’t think I like you in grey. So shall we get started on our shopping expedition?”

“If—if you won’ t be bored—?” a little uncertainly.

“I am never bored, my dear—at least, not often. And in addition to the hat I think we must definitely look for something thinner for you to wear than that heavy suit. It doesn’ t suggest a warm July day to me at all. ”

“But I haven’ t got a great deal of money, I’ m afraid,” Carol confessed to him in anxiety. “I never had very much pocket-money, you know, and it cost me quite a lot to buy this costume. Clothes are so dreadfully expensive, aren’ t they?”

“They certainly are,” he agreed. “But as I am to be your banker you needn’t worry about that side of the picture.” He turned to the hall porter, who was standing near. “Call me a taxi, will you please,” he ordered.

CHAPTER FOUR

CAROL never forgot that day. She never forgot the days which followed, and which amounted to close upon a week before a termination to their visit to London was discussed, and her first real taste of an existence apart from the ordered routine of school life brought to an end, but given a new angle.

They went everywhere—or it seemed to Carol that they went everywhere in those few days. All the places she had read about, and wondered about, and listened to secondhand accounts of. Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s, the parks, Chelsea Embankment, Tower Bridge, Richmond Park. And of course the shops. Carol was completely charmed by the shops, but the various new articles of clothing she acquired were not obtained in the great West-End stores—although their windows delighted and bewildered her—but in tucked-away little shops in Bond Street, and salubrious thoroughfares of that sort.

Timothy Carrington said his sister, when she came to London, always dealt at these apparently modest little establishments, but Carol was frequently amazed when she saw the inside of them, and found herself walking on luxurious carpets and inhaling the perfume of exotic hothouse flowers. And the assistants were always so attentive—especially when they saw her escort—and they always had exactly the right thing that would suit her, or they took her measurements and she was assured of its being delivered within as short a time as possible.

The first evening frock she had ever possessed in her life came home on the night she was to be taken to her first theatre. Secretly Carol was a little appalled by the amount of money her guardian was expending on this new outfit of hers; she had no idea he was going to make their shopping expedition such a wholesale one. When she remonstrated with him in her shy fashion he was inclined to treat her remonstrance with amusement, and more than once he remarked that if a man, having acquired a ward, could not feel proud of the way she looked, then it would be much better for him if he had not acquired one! And he could never have felt proud of her in that grey pudding-basin she was wearing when he first caught sight of her!

Carol felt sure he was partly teasing, but she realized he had a critical eye for female clothes, and he was not slow to let her know when a thing did not suit her. When a thing did suit her he merely nodded his head approvingly and his eyes twinkled a little.

“Yes; I think you look less like a fourth-former in that! We’d better have it,” he would instruct the saleswoman.

The evening frock was supplied by a woman who called herself Delphine, and whose little salon was done out in mauve and grey. She had had it on her hands for a few weeks, for it had been created for the young daughter of a customer, and then the order had been cancelled. It was a full-skirted creation in stiff ivory taffeta with tiny, ruched sleeves and an off-the-shoulder neckline, and a knot of narrow black velvet ribbons at the base of the brief corsage. There was nothing in the least sophisticated about it; on the contrary it had an enchanting air of rather prim picturesqueness, and a Romney-like touch of romantic simplicity.

Carol, with her spun-gold curls, her slender column of a throat, and her serene grey eyes with their brown, silky eyelashes, looked as if the dress had been made for her and never intended for anyone else.

When she wore it that night for the visit to the theatre her guardian looked at her for the first time with something like astonishment. Delphine had discreetly suggested a visit to a hairdresser, and a few hints on more skilful makeup, and Carol had certainly profited by this visit, without being in any way transformed or too noticeably improved in appearance.

To begin with, her hair was not the same, although it curled just as softly, and was still the same pale primrose gold. It was shorter, if anything, and there was a fascinating suggestion of a curling fringe lying like the ends of an ostrich feather on her wide, white forehead. It was quite obvious that her heart-shaped face, with its dimpled chin, was very skilfully made up, the feathery brown eyebrows darkened ever so slightly, although the eyelashes were untouched, and the full, not-so-childish-looking mouth glowed like a scarlet hibiscus. When her lips parted and she smiled up at her guardian her little teeth gleamed like the most perfect set of pearls, and there was a shy look in her eyes which invited his admiration.

But he said nothing, and she looked for a moment almost disappointed.

“Do I look—How—how do I look?” she inquired at last, as if it was of the utmost importance to her to learn his views on what she believed to be her considerably altered appearance.

He put his head on one side and regarded her, and there was that faint quizzical gleam in his eyes with which she was now becoming fairly familiar.

“Well, my dear,” he admitted, “I am more than a little dazzled, but it will take quite a while to grow used to you. Do you mind if I leave it at that for the present?”

Her face instantly fell.

“Then you don’ t—approve?”

“Silly child,” he said, and put out a hand and lightly tweaked one of her curls. “It would be impossible not to approve, but you mustn’t be affected by my opinions.”

And she had to content herself with that.

During the interval, at the theatre, he took her to obtain refreshments at the buffet, and while she sipped an iced orangeade she looked about her at the other men and women present. Lovely frocks, elegant frocks were on all sides of her, and so were some very choice hair styles—they made hers seem very simple and unsophisticated. And she had never before seen so many smart-looking men in dinner-jackets. To Timothy Carrington, however, she secretly awarded the palm for appearing much more at his ease in his, and he had much more of a distinguished air than any of the other men who pressed forward to repeat the order for their drinks. And the bronzed line of his jaw was very noticeable against the white of his shirt front.

Other women glanced at him, too, as they passed by, and they were definitely approving glances. One woman—in a cloudy black evening-dress scattered with sequins, with extraordinary large and brilliant dark eyes, a coronet of gleaming black plaits, and a milk-white skin—actually turned and seized him by the arm, while she stared at him in astonishment.

“Why,
Timothy!”
she exclaimed unbelievingly. “I had no idea you were even in England! ”

Her escort stood a little behind her, and looked ever so slightly uncomfortable while he waited to be introduced.

“Viola! ” exclaimed Carrington, not looking particularly surprised.