Tangled Autumn. Бетти Нилс

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      Sappha padded downstairs and presently, with the milk in her hand, went back again through the quiet old house, to stop in the bedroom doorway at the sight of Rolf, still dressed, lounging over the end of his mother’s bed. He said nothing at all, but his gaze swept Sappha from head to foot. It was the Baroness who said in her soft voice:

      ‘Sappha, Rolf heard us talking and came to see if anything was the matter.’ She smiled at them in turn, giving her son a bright glance which dared him to imagine otherwise. He stared back at her, his eyes snapping with laughter. ‘And now that I see you are in such excellent hands, I’ll leave you to settle, dear Mother.’

      He bent and kissed her, said a brief goodnight to Sappha without apparently seeing her, and went back to his room.

      The Baroness accepted her milk with the blameless air of a good child.

      ‘You poor girl,’ she said contritely, ‘I’ve kept you from your bed, but I’m sure that I shall sleep very well now.’ She finished the milk, allowed Sappha to settle her once more, said goodnight in a grateful voice and closed her eyes, leaving Sappha to go back to bed, but not at once to sleep. It was a pity that her patient had asked her those questions—answering them had made Andrew very clear in her mind once more, and she wanted so much to forget him.

      CHAPTER THREE

      THERE was no sign of the Baron the next morning. Sappha busied herself with her patient, helped and sometimes hindered by the well-meaning efforts of Antonia, who, after lunch, declared her intention of sitting with her parent while Sappha went for a walk.

      Sappha, who was feeling moody and restless, felt more inclined to sit and brood in her room, but she had some letters to post; she would go down to the post office and take a look at the sea at the same time, so she put on her raincoat and tied a scarf over her hair and went out into the rather wild afternoon. It was raining; not very hard, but the wind was boisterous and the mountains behind the little town stood head and shoulders in dark cloud. She walked around the harbour, shivering a little because the wind was keen as well as strong, eyeing the angry waves beyond the harbour’s mouth, they were battering the causeway too. A solitary fishing boat was battling its way in and she stopped to watch it, thankful that she wasn’t called upon to leave dry land.

      It was after she had been to the post office and was on her way back to the Manse that she came face to face with Andrew. She stopped short, her eyes like saucers, her mouth, bulging with a wedge of the toffee she had purchased along with the stamps, slightly open. Andrew however didn’t look in the least surprised, nor for that matter did he look awkward or ashamed of himself, but then, some small detached part of her mind reminded her, Andrew never did. But this thought was swamped by the rush of excitement inside her, emotion caught her by the throat so that, what with her heart in her mouth as well as the lump of toffee, she was quite unable to speak.

      Andrew, unhindered by either the one or the other of these encumbrances, stopped in front of her and said with all his well-remembered charm, ‘Sappha—darling, how marvellous to see you again! I had a couple of free days—it seemed a good chance to come and look you up.’

      Sappha, once more in control of both her breath and the toffee, gave him what she hoped was a cool, unflustered look. She said:

      ‘Oh, indeed. How did you know that I was here?’

      ‘I wormed it out of old Mother Martin.’ Mother Martin was Home Sister at Greggs’ and a notorious passer-on of gossip. Andrew’s good-looking face broke into a smile as he caught one of Sappha’s hands in his. ‘I thought you would be glad to see me—you are, aren’t you, Sappha?’

      She caught her breath. Of course she was glad, she was on the point of saying so when she felt the weight of a great arm on her shoulders and heard the Baron’s voice, mildly, amused, say: ‘Hullo, Sappha, taking an hour or two off?’ She felt the arm tighten. ‘Andrew Glover, isn’t it? Thought you’d show up—the landlord of the pub at Torridon mentioned on the telephone that you were heading this way. My name’s van Duyren, by the way.’

      Sappha watched Andrew’s face as he tried to make up his mind how to treat the Baron, who, she noted, was looking ruffianly enough in a thick sweater and terrible old trousers stuffed into rubber boots—he was swinging a string of fish in one hand too. She choked down a sudden desire to laugh because Andrew had no idea who the Baron was and the Baron had equally no intention of telling him. She looked sideways up into his dark face, changing the toffee lump from one cheek to the other as she did so, a childish action which caused him to blink rapidly while the nostrils of his commanding nose quivered ever so slightly. He said carelessly: ‘Why not take the afternoon off, Sappha—or for that matter, the rest of the day? Antonia and Mrs MacFee will cope.’

      Sappha frowned. For one thing Andrew had said nothing about taking her out—he’d had no time—and for another, it made her sound too eager. She was eager, she told herself, but Andrew mustn’t know that. She said icily: ‘How kind of you, Doctor, but I’ve had my off-duty for today and I see no reason for giving myself any more.’ And went pink under his mocking gaze. It was maddening that he should spoil this unexpected meeting with Andrew—it could have been something exciting and even more than that, though Andrew, at the moment, didn’t appear to be exactly carried away… He said now: ‘Are you a doctor—I had no idea…’

      The Baron waved the fish and said mildly: ‘Oh, I’ve a practice—a small country town in Friesland.’

      Andrew smiled with a hint of patronage. ‘Oh, a GP.’ He was contemptuous and faintly pitying. ‘I’ve rooms in Wimpole Street—consultant you know—a nice little private practice.’

      ‘You are to be congratulated upon your success.’ The Baron’s voice was silky, and Sapphia stirred uneasily under his confining arm, remembering dimly that the Baroness or someone had mentioned that he lectured in Groningen and hadn’t she said something about examining? With feminine unfairness she was instantly up in arms against him—he was taking the mickey out of Andrew. She said positively: ‘I really must go—there are things to do.’

      If she had hoped to get rid of the Baron she was sadly mistaken, for he remarked immediately: ‘We’ll all go. Come up to the Manse for tea, my dear fellow—Mrs MacFee will love to see a new face and you and Sappha can sort out her time off.’

      He turned up the lane leading to the Manse, and Sappha perforce turned with him. Andrew fell into step beside her. ‘A pity you can’t manage today,’ he remarked smoothly. ‘What about tomorrow—afternoon or evening perhaps, old girl?’

      Sappha quivered with temper; not only had she been called old girl, her free time was being discussed and arranged for her without so much as a by your leave. She opened her mouth to say so, but the Baron spoke first.

      ‘Of course, tomorrow, why not? And I must insist that you take both the afternoon and evening, Sappha. It’s not quite the weather for a drive, but there are some splendid walks—I can lend you a pair of boots—’ he flung a friendly aside to Andrew. ‘I suppose you’re at the pub here. They make you very comfortable and Mrs MacGregor is a good cook—she’ll turn out an excellent dinner for the pair of you.’

      ‘I’m not sure—’ began Sappha looking at the Baron with frustrated rage, to be met with a look of such limpid friendliness that she was struck dumb; if she hadn’t been prepared to think the worst of him, she could have supposed that he was trying to make things as easy as possible for her and Andrew.

      They turned in at the Manse gate and walked slowly up the short drive to the front door, and any idea СКАЧАТЬ