"Leave the door open, Beach," said Lady Constance.
"Very good, your ladyship."
"I think the smell of the wet earth and the flowers is so refreshing,
don't you?"
The butler did not. He was not one of your fresh-air men. Rightly
conjecturing, however, that the question had been addressed not to him
but to the girl in the beige suit who had accompanied the speaker up
the steps, he forbore to reply. He cast an appraising, bulging-eyed
look at this girl and decided that she met with his approval. Smaller
and slighter than the type of woman he usually admired, he found
her, nevertheless, even by his own exacting standards of criticism,
noticeably attractive. He liked her face and he liked the way she was
dressed. Her frock was right, her shoes were right, her stockings were
right, and her hat was right. As far as Beach was concerned Sue had
passed the Censor.
Her demeanour pleased him, too. From the flush on her face and the
sparkle in her eyes, she seemed to be taking her first entry into
Blandings Castle in quite the proper spirit of reverential excitement.
To be at Blandings plainly meant something to her, was an event in her
life; and Beach, who after many years of residence within its walls
had come to look on the Castle as a piece of personal property, felt
flattered and gratified.
"I don't think this shower will last long," said Lady Constance.
"No," said Sue, smiling brightly.
"And now you must be wanting some tea after your journey."
"Yes," said Sue, smiling brightly.
It seemed to her that she had been smiling brightly for centuries. The
moment she had alighted from the train and found her formidable hostess
and this strangely sinister Mr. Baxter waiting to meet her on the
platform, she had begun to smile brightly and had been doing it ever
since.
"Usually we have tea on the lawn. It is so nice there."
"It must be."
"When the rain is over, Mr. Baxter, you must show Miss Schoonmaker the
rose garden."
"I shall be delighted," said the Efficient Baxter.
He flashed gleaming spectacles in her direction, and a momentary panic
gripped Sue. She feared that already this man had probed her secret. In
his glance, it seemed to her, there shone suspicion.
Such, however, was not the case. It was only the combination of large
spectacles and heavy eyebrows that had created the illusion. Although
Rupert Baxter was a man who generally suspected everybody on principle,
it so happened that he had accepted Sue without question. The glance
was an admiring, almost a loving glance. It would be too much to say
that Baxter had already fallen a victim to Sue's charms, but the good
looks which he saw and the wealth which he had been told about were
undeniably beginning to fan the hidden fire.
"My brother is a great rose grower."
"Yes, isn't he? I mean, I think roses are so lovely." The spectacles
were beginning to sap Sue's morale. They seemed to be eating into her
soul like some sort of corrosive acid. "How nice and old everything
is here," she went on hurriedly. "What is that funny-looking gargoyle
thing over there?"
What she actually referred to was a Japanese mask which hung from the
wall, and it was unfortunate that the Hon. Galahad should have chosen
this moment to come out of the smoking room. It made the question seem
personal.
"My brother Galahad," said Lady Constance. Her voice lost some of the
kindly warmth of the hostess putting the guest at her ease and took
on the cold disapproval which the author of the Reminiscences always
induced in her. "Galahad, this is Miss Schoonmaker."
"Really?" The Hon. Galahad trotted briskly up. "Is it? Bless my soul!
Well, well, well!"
"How do you do?" said Sue, smiling brightly.
"How are you, my dear? I know your father intimately."
The bright smile faded. Sue had tried to plan this venture of hers
carefully, looking ahead for all possible pitfalls, but that she would
encounter people who knew Mr. Schoonmaker intimately she had not
foreseen.
"Haven't seen him lately, of course. Let me see--must be twenty-five
years since we met. Yes, quite twenty-five years."
A warm and lasting friendship was destined to spring up between Sue and
the Hon. Galahad Threepwood, but never in the whole course of it did
she experience again quite the gush of whole-hearted affection which
surged over her at these words.
"I wasn't born then," she said.
The Hon. Galahad was babbling on happily.
"A great fellow, old Johnny. You'll find some stories about him in
my book. I'm writing my Reminiscences, you know. Fine sportsman, old
Johnny. Great grief to him, I remember, when he broke his leg and had
to go into a nursing home in the middle of the racing season. However,
he made the best of it. Got the nurses interested in current form and
used to make a book with them in fruit and cigarettes and things. I
recollect coming to see him one day and finding him quite worried. He
was a most conscientious man, with a horror of not settling up when he
lost, and apparently one of the girls had had a suet dumpling on the
winner of the three o'clock race at fifteen to eight, and he couldn't
figure out what he had got to pay her."
Sue, laughing gratefully, was aware of a drooping presence at her side.
"My niece, Millicent," said Lady Constance. "Millicent, my dear, this
is Miss Schoonmaker."
"How do you do?" said Sue, smiling brightly.
"How do you do?" said Millicent, like the silent tomb breaking its
silence.
Sue regarded her with interest. So this was Hugo's Millicent. The sight
of her caused Sue to wonder at the ardent nature of that young man's
devotion. Millicent was pretty, but she would have thought that one of
Hugo's exuberant disposition would have preferred something a little
livelier.
She was startled to observe in the girl's eyes a look of surprise. In a
situation as delicate as hers was, Sue had no wish to occasion surprise
to anyone.
"Ronnie's friend?" asked Millicent. "The Miss Schoonmaker Ronnie met at
Biarritz?"
"Yes," said Sue faintly.
"But I had the impression that you were very tall. I'm sure Ronnie told
me so."
"I suppose almost anyone seems tall to that boy," said the Hon. Galahad.
Sue breathed again. She had had a return of the unpleasant feeling of
being boneless which had come upon her when the Hon. Galahad had spoken
of knowing Mr. Schoonmaker intimately. But though she breathed she
was still shaken. Life at Blandings Castle was plainly going to be a
series of shocks. She sat back with a sensation of dizziness. Baxter's
spectacles seemed to her to be glittering more suspiciously than ever.
"Have you seen Ronald anywhere, Millicent?" asked Lady Constance.
"Not since lunch. I suppose he's out in the grounds somewhere."
"I saw him half an hour ago," said the Hon. Galahad. "He came mooning
along under my window while I was polishing up some stuff I wrote this
afternoon. I called to him, but he just grunted and wandered off."
"He will be surprised to find you here," said Lady Constance, turning
to Sue. "Your telegram did not arrive till after lunch, so he does
not know that you were planning to come to-day. Unless you told him,
Galahad."
"I didn't tell him. Never occurred to me that he knew Miss Schoonmaker.
Forgot you'd met him at Biarritz. What was he like then? Reasonably
cheerful?"
"Yes, I think so."
"Didn't scowl and jump and gasp and quiver all over the place?"
"No."
"Then something must have happened when he went up to London. It was
after he came back that I remember noticing that he seemed upset about
something. Ah, the rain's stopped."
Lady Constance looked over her shoulder.
"The sky still looks very threatening," she said, "but you might be
able to get out for a few minutes. Mr. Baxter," she explained, "is
going to show Miss Schoonmaker the rose garden."
"No, he isn't," said the Hon. Galahad, who had been scrutinizing Sue
through his monocle with growing appreciation. "I am. Old Johnny
Schoonmaker's little girl--why, there are a hundred things I want to
discuss."
The last thing Sue desired was to be left alone with the intimidating
Baxter. She rose quickly.
"I should love to come," she said.
The prospect of discussing the intimate affairs of the Schoonmaker
family was not an agreeable one, but anything was better than the
society of the spectacles.
"Perhaps," said the Hon. Galahad, as he led her to the door, "you'll
be able to put me right about that business of old Johnny and the
mysterious woman at the New Year's Eve party. As I got the story,
Johnny suddenly found this female--a perfect stranger, mind you--with
her arms round his neck, telling him in a confidential undertone that
she had made up her mind to go straight back to Des Moines, Iowa, and
stick a knife into Fred. What he had done to win her confidence and who
Fred was and whether she ever did stick a knife into him, your father
hadn't found out by the time I left for home."
His voice died away, and a moment later the Efficient Baxter, starting
as if a sudden thought had entered his powerful brain, rose abruptly
and made quickly for the stairs.