CHAPTER ELEVEN
Ruth had never been
one of those for whom time drags. She liked her work and she enjoyed her leisure. She had no reason to watch any clock and yawn, nor had she ever described anything in that most dreary of all expressions—“It passes the time.” But during the few days after she returned from her London visit, she found herself longing impatiently for the weekend.
It was not that her work irked her more than usual, nor that she sighed for the somewhat luxurious life that had been hers for a short while. It was just that she simply could not wa
it
for the moment when Michael would walk into the hotel once more and smile at her across the reception desk.
He had said he would try to arrive by the weekend, and so certain was she that Michael always succeeded in doing the things he tried to do that she counted entirely on his arriving either on Friday evening or on Saturday morning.
Indeed, on Friday she obligingly offered to stay on duty for an extra hour or two, ostensibly to give some free time to the girl who had done so much of her duty while she was away.
“You must have had a hectic time,” Ruth explained kindly. “Let me stand in for you now. I’m sure you could do with some time off.”
The offer was accepted with alacrity. But, alas, virtue had to be its own reward, for no Michael appeared either by the evening train or at any hour by which the drive from London was likely to deposit him there.
Ruth’s hopes were pretty low by the time she went home on Friday evening. But they rocketed up again on Saturday morning. Saturday was, after all, the real beginning of the weekend. He was much more likely to arrive on Saturday.
She discharged her morning duties willingly. She stayed on cheerfully throughout the afternoon, although this was not strictly necessary. But no Michael appeared. She was forced to the stratagem of pretending that she was willing to take on Sunday duty, in return for all the free time she had had for the London visit.
But Mr. Naylor said very tiresomely, “No, no, Miss Tadcaster. We arranged to give you that time off. Our Sunday staff expect to work their usual hours. Very nice of you, I’m sure, but there isn’t any need for you to be quite so conscientious.”
One could not go on insisting after that. So Ruth had to spend her Sunday at home, in not quite such a sweet
-
tempered and sunny mood as she should have displayed, considering what a lucky girl she had been lately.
Punctuality was one of her minor virtues, so that there was no need for anyone to remark on the fact that she was on the hotel steps at least ten minutes before she need have been on Monday morning, and it was, of course, quite natural for her to examine the hotel register carefully before she started her other duties.
Ruth went through the list twice. But the only name she wanted to see was not there. There was no escaping the fact—Michael had not made it for the weekend, as he had hoped.
It was no reflection on him. There was no need to suppose that his eagerness to do so was in any doubt, Ruth assured herself. But the disappointment was so sharp that she could have cried with vexation, and it was all she could do not to snap at tiresome old Miss Figgins who chose this moment to present herself with a complaint about a dripping tap in her room.
Summoning all her professional calm and courtesy, Ruth promised to see that the matter was attended to. And after that she tried to tell herself that Michael was just as likely to arrive on Monday as on any other day.
But this was not true, of course. She knew just as well as the rest of us that, somehow, Monday is not a day on which the nicest things tend to happen. Particularly if it is a wet Monday, which this Monday was. Besides, presumably, since Michael had not come north on the weekend, he had work that he had not been able to clear off on Friday. He would have to do that now, and could hardly be expected to set out before Tuesday morning, at the earliest.
Obviously Tuesday evening was now the first moment at which he could be expected. Monday, therefore, became a day without charm to Ruth. It was superfluous. She disliked it. And she guiltily counted the hours until it should be over.
Tuesday brought renewed hope, and being of an optimistic turn of mind, Ruth was cheerfully anticipating Michael’s immediate arrival. Around four o’clock in the afternoon she at last became aware of that indefinable stir near the door that always heralded the arrival of someone whom the hotel staff rated as “special.”
Immense relief and happiness flooded her whole being. Her eyes were bright and her lips slightly parted as she left her desk in the rear of the office and came to the reception counter. As she did so, the revolving door swung around and into the pleasant foyer of the Excelsior came Angus Everton, followed as usual by a group of his satellites.
So completely had Ruth forgotten his very existence that surprise for a moment held her expression of radiant welcome unchanged. Then he said, “Hello, darling! How nice of you to give me this shining welcome. I think you must love me a little after all.”
“Oh—” Ruth gave something between a gasp and a gulp, as she swallowed a lump in her throat “—I didn’t expect you—today.”
“Didn’t you? But it’s the usual day for us all to arrive,” he pointed out.
“Yes—I know. But—I forgot it was Tuesday,” said Ruth, which was as thumping a lie as she was ever likely to tell, for of course she had known it was Tuesday, every minute of the day. Only it had been Michael’s Tuesday, not Angus’s.
And as though all this were not enough to make a girl run into a corner and cry, who should come trailing in elegantly, at the tail end of the television group, but Charmian.
“Hello.” She smiled quite agreeably at Ruth. “How’s the hotel business?”
Ruth managed to indicate that it was in quite a good way, and during all this time she was allotting rooms to people and attending to a variety of minor requests, she somehow contrived to give the impression that she was enjoying herself, and that the arrival of her studio friends was all that had been needed to make her day.
They dispersed at last to their various quarters, and Ruth sat down to her desk once more. She began to add up some columns of figures in her account books, but the tears kept on gathering on her lashes, so that the figures all blurred and ran together in an indistinguishable mass.
With a great effort she did contrive not to let them actually spill over down her cheeks, but this was only achieved by sitting very still and pretending to be so completely absorbed in her work that she could not even raise her head.
She could not have said just how long this sad pretense had continued, because she was not very clearly aware of what was going on around her, when suddenly a voice from the other side of the reception counter said amusedly, “Isn’t anyone on duty here?”
“Michael!” She swung around and stared at him through her tears. “I’m sorry—I didn’t know—”
“Come here,” he said gently, and he held out his hand to her across the counter.
She came, too fascinated to do anything but obey, and put her hand into his.
“Now tell me what’s the matter.”
“N-nothing’s the matter—now,” Ruth explained, before she could choose her words more carefully.
“But you’ve been crying. Has someone been unkind or rude to you?”
“Oh, no! No, really not.” Her fingers tightened instinctively on his. “Everything’s quite all right now.”
“Why now?” He gave her a half puzzled, half concerned smile.
“Well, it’s—nice to see you.” She smiled, too, and tried to make that sound light and casual. But it didn’t sound anything of the kind. It sounded happy and relieved beyond measure.
“Do you mean that everything’s all right just because I walked into the hotel?” He laughed and actually colored slightly.
She wanted to tell him that this was the literal truth. But she had to manage a little better than that, of course. So at last she did achieve an almost gay-sounding laugh as she said, “I’m not going to flatter you as far as that. But it’s fine to see you, Michael. How is Aunt Henrietta?”
He hesitated just a moment, as though he found it a trifle difficult to switch his thoughts onto Aunt Henrietta. Then he recovered himself and said, “Aunt Henrietta’s well. She sent her love to you, and she expects to be up here herself in the next few days.”
“D-does she?” Ruth trembled between alarm at the thought of Aunt Henrietta and Charmian under the same roof, and joy at the implication that Michael must be staying for some little while.
“She had some shopping she wanted to do,” he went on, in careless explanation, “and as she wasn’t quite sure how long it was all going to take, I decided not to wait any longer.”
“I suppose—” a faint smile touched Ruth’s lips “—your work here was getting rather urgent?”
“It could have waited a day or two longer without any harm being done, but
I
didn’t want to wait.”
It was not that she actually forgot all about Charmian at this point. More that she just abandoned the idea of taking her into consideration. At all events, she leaned a little toward Michael across the reception desk and asked, with a touch of eagerness she could not disguise, “Why didn’t you want to wait, Michael?”
“Because I wanted to see you.”
“About—anything special?”
“Quite special,” he told her, with that smile of his that always carried a hint of tenderness for her with it. “But not exactly to be discussed across the reception desk. What are your plans for this evening?”
Although he never called her “my sweet” or “my love,”
o
r any of the picturesque expressions that dropped from Angus like autumn leaves from a tree, he somehow had the knack of conveying the idea that she was dear and important.
“
I
—I haven’t any special plans for this evening,” she said, unable suddenly to take her glance away from that strong, good-looking, humorous face of his.
“
Then may I make some?”
“Why—of course.” Charmian had now become of less than no importance.
“I’ll pick you up at your home just before seven. I have the car here. We’ll drive down to the coast and have dinner at someone else’s hotel—and talk.”
“That,” Ruth said, with shining eyes, “would be marvelous.”
“It sounds pretty good to me, too,” he agreed. And leaning farther across the desk, he kissed her lightly on her lips.
There was no one else in the office, of course. But even so, Ruth guessed it was an extremely unusual thing for Michael to do. A casual kiss might be permitted between so-called cousins in the privacy of Aunt Henrietta’s apartment. But Michael was the last man to put any of the hotel staff in the position of being talked about. Only an overwhelming impulse could have prompted him to kiss her at this moment.
And only an overwhelming impulse, Ruth supposed, could have prompted her to kiss him so eagerly in return.
He gave her what could only be described as a very special smile then, and left her, going up the main staircase two steps at a time, with the air of a man who was pretty pleased with the world as he found it.
For a radiant moment or two Ruth looked after him, her lips slightly parted and her eyes bright. Then she caught her breath on a little sigh half of rapture and half of disquiet, returned to earth again—and found that Charmian was standing in the doorway Of the lounge, regarding her without friendliness.
It was impossible to say how long she had been there. Ruth had been in no mood to notice anyone but Michael during the past five minutes. But her expression suggested that she had at least seen Michael’s unconventional leave
-
taking.
She came slowly across the hall, and Ruth was aware of an unreasonable degree of thankfulness that there was the reception desk between her and the other girl. But appearances had to be maintained. And one had to hope, up to the last quarter second, that Charmian had
not
seen anything and act accordingly.
“Can
I
do anything for you?” To her surprise, Ruth spoke with an almost normal degree of courteous helpfulness.
Charmian didn’t answer immediately. Then she leaned almost negligently against the other side of the desk and said, “Yes. You can tell me just what you and Michael were doing, kissing each other.”
Dismayed though she was, Ruth rallied her forces.
“That, I’m afraid, is entirely my own business,” she replied pleasantly. “I’m not answerable to you for my personal behavior toward anyone.”
“Oh, yes, you are—where Michael is concerned. Don’t you remember our—private pact?”
Ruth wanted at this point.to say that she was done with all private pacts, that the whole situation was ridiculous and out-of-hand, and that she loved Michael and considered Charmian of no importance whatever.
But if she did that, there could be only one result so far as Aunt Henrietta was concerned.
For a rebellious moment Ruth thought that Aunt Henrietta must take her chance, like other people. She was, if one were brutally accurate, really no one to Ruth or her family. She was even no one to Michael. She was, in
fact, no one to—anybody.
And even as she realized afresh that this was Aunt Henrietta’s tragedy, Ruth knew that she could not abandon her happiness to this cold-eyed girl. To temporize afresh with Charmian might be no better than yielding to a sort of emotional blackmail—something for which Ruth could only despise herself—but the alternative of flinging Aunt Henrietta to the wolves was simply not to be thought of.
She drew herself up a little and tried to draw a few shreds of dignity around her as she said, “Pact or no, I resent having to explain my actions to you. But—if you must know—he kissed me before I could stop him.”
Charmian laughed. Not at all an amused or reassuring sort of laugh.
“Isn’t that just too bad?” she drawled. “Because if you’re not going to be able to stop that sort of thing happening, you’re not going to be able to keep your side of our little bargain, are you? And if you don’t keep your side, there isn’t any reason why I should keep mine.”
Ruth clenched her hands, but whether with nervousness or fury she was not quite sure.
“This situation is becoming ridiculous,” she said coldly. “If you really think—”
“Is Michael expecting his Aunt Henrietta to come up here during the next few days?” Charmian interrupted, with apparent irrelevance, but with a thoughtful glance, which made Ruth blench.
“I—why do you want to know that?” Ruth asked sharply.
“Because if she is coming, then I think I’ll wait until she arrives before I stage the actual exposure,” Charmian explained carelessly. “It would be more effective to do it with her standing by.”
“You couldn’t do such a thing!”
“Indeed I could. Your trouble is that you perpetually underestimate what I can do,” Charmian told Ruth contemptuously. “You think I’m soft, don’t you?”
It was the very last thing Ruth would have thought of the other girl, and she was dumb with astonishment.
“Well, I’m not.” Charmian asserted almost complacently. “I’m as hard as nails, and that’s the way I’ve got on in this world. And it’s my invariable rule not to let anyone do me an injury without my repaying it.”
“I—haven’t done you an injury,” Ruth said, in a stifled voice.
“Oh, yes, you have. Or at least you’re in process of doing so, unless I look after myself. You’re trying to take Michael away from me.”