The Unknown Mr. Brown (2 page)

The bus dropped her within minutes of her destination and as she mounted the dark staircase to the first floor, the same musty smell of ancient archives greeted her and in the outer office the elderly clerk regarded her over his spectacles with the same air of faint disapproval.

“I don’t suppose you remember me?” she said gaily, hoping to astonish with her newly acquired emancipation, but he replied with a discouraging lack of surprise as he rose from his desk:

“Certainly I remember you, Miss Hayes. Please be seated. Mr. Ponsonby will see you in a few minutes.”

She had not met Mr. Ponsonby and for a moment forgot that he was a partner in the firm.

“Is that his real name?” she asked eagerly, and felt reproved once more by the chilly glance the old man bestowed on her.

“It is not the custom of this firm to shelter behind false identities when receiving clients,” he replied coldly, and she gave a small, nervous giggle.

“I thought you meant Mr. Brown,” she said, feeling both foolish and disappointed.

“Indeed?” he countered with raised eyebrows, then a buzzer sounded with peremptory impatience and he rose to his feet.

“Mr. Ponsonby will see you now, miss,” he murmured, and ushered her over to one of the closed doors which separated the office from the partners’ private rooms.

True to his previous resolution, Mr. Chappie had delegated this interview to his junior partner, and Mr. Ponsonby rose to receive his client with only a faint flicker of curiosity in the gaze which he allowed to dwell on her with momentary appraisal.

“Well now, Miss Hayes, come and sit down and let’s hear your objections to our arrangements for you,” he said, indicating a chair by the desk. “An opportunity to round off your education abroad isn’t given to many these hard times, I may say.”

“For that very reason—” she began, then her eyes came to rest on a door at the far end of the room. “Is he in there?” she asked.

“Mr. Chappie is in Occupation, naturally, but he is busy with a client. Did you wish to see him particularly?” Mr. Ponsonby replied.

“Not Mr. Chappie. Mr. Brown,” said Victoria impatiently, and the little lawyer’s rather sparse eyebrows climbed up his forehead.

“Mr.—er—Brown is not on the premises as far as I am aware,” he said with some surprise. “Had you expected to see him?”

“Yes—yes, I had. He was obviously the person to discuss my future with and—from the way your letter was worded, I thought—”

“In that case, there must have been some slight error in the drafting,” Mr. Ponsonby interrupted with a thin smile. “Mr. Brown had no appointment with us, and merely gave instructions to deal with any queries as we saw fit. Now—” he glanced at his watch yet again “—if you would state your reasons for requesting this interview we can clear up any little misunderstanding and set your mind at rest.”

“You can set my mind at rest best by letting me talk to Mr. Brown,” she answered stubbornly. “Why do I never meet him?”

“Mr. Brown is a very busy person. He has many commitments.”

“Such as?”

“Oh, this and that. His interests cover a wide field.”

“Who is he, Mr. Ponsonby? Surely you can tell me that much?”

“I am not in a position to say,” the lawyer replied stiffly and, as it happened, with perfect truth.

Victoria sighed, feeling not only disappointed, but cheated into the bargain. She had been so sure that this summons to the solicitors’ office was in the nature of a rendezvous, but it looked very much as if the elusive Mr. Brown was determined to remain a myth.

On being pressed again to state her objections to their arrangements, she did so, but her old assurance had deserted her, knowing the battle to be lost already. Mr. Ponsonby swept aside her ill-expressed opinions with tolerant amusement, read her a short homily on the need to accept good fortune with grace, and pointed out somewhat acidly that most young women in her position would jump at the chance for betterment and not confuse the issue with foolish fancies.

“In other words, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,” said Victoria, remembering Scottie’s crisp retort to her protests.

“Exactly,” Mr. Ponsonby observed with satisfaction, and rose hastily to his feet after another and more pointed look at his watch. “Now, everything is quite clear in your mind, I trust. Arrangements have already been made with the Paris end and the excellent Miss Scott has her instructions regarding travel and any personal requirements, so you have nothing to worry about. One day, my dear young lady, you will be grateful for these advantages.”

“Perhaps,” she agreed politely but without conviction. “I can only hope that if I ever do get around to meeting Mr. Brown, he will feel he’s had his money’s worth.”

So Victoria had completed the educational programme laid down for her and the faceless image of Mr. Brown receded once more into the background. She dutifully resumed the obligatory correspondence, reporting progress, and trying to convey her impressions of this new life in more colourful terms than the stilted accounts of her schooldays in England, but it was difficult to maintain contact with a person one had never met, and who never replied, and her letters became briefer and duller as time went on.

And so the year had slipped away with so much to offer that was new and delightful that the days seemed scarcely long enough. Victoria made few intimate friends among her fellow pupils who seemed to be always newly arrived, or finished and leaving, transformed at great expense into polished young ladies ready to reward their parents’ efforts by attracting suitable husbands. Sometimes she wondered whether the unknown Mr. Brown was conducting some cranky experiment and had some such plans for her, but it seemed unlikely unless he was proposing to take her into his home and launch her upon society, which was more unlikely still.

All too soon the time had approached when she, like the other girls, would be packing up to go home, and her thoughts turned once more to the question of earning a living. She could not feel that the social accomplishments insisted upon by Madame would stand her in much stead with prospective employers when set against a lack of more rudimentary abilities. Deportment and a sense of chic were all very well for those destined to grace society, but for her, a course at a training college might have been more useful. Still, she was emancipated enough now to be grateful for that year of leisurely transition from child to adult. Her French was very passable, she could discuss the Arts intelligently, and she had learnt discrimination in the choice of food and wine. If she did not rate herself very highly in the matter of chic, having only a passing interest in fashion, she had learnt to make the best of her appearance.

Altogether, thought Victoria, having completed an assessment of her possible assets with modest satisfaction, she had not done too badly by Mr. Brown, though it seemed a pity to have acquired the superficial trappings of a finished young lady when there seemed little chance of profiting by them.

She would, she supposed, be returning to the bungalow and Scottie’s chaperonage until such time when Mr. Brown should consider her competent to earn a living but it was Scottie herself who determined the immediate future. She was, she wrote, shortly to go into hospital for an operation, and since convalescence was likely to be lengthy, and it was not considered suitable for Victoria to live alone, the bungalow was to be let furnished temporarily. The lawyers were making arrangements with a small hostel in the Swiss Alps which took in a few advanced students for a limited period during the winter sports season, and Victoria must consider herself fortunate that such an opportunity should come her way.

The first weeks in that small, unfashionable winter resort high up in the Alps were a revelation, for after the discreet supervision of Madame’s select establishment, the freedom provided by the little hostel was both unexpected and stimulating. Victoria proved herself an apt pupil in the arts of skiing and skating and although, as in Paris, she made few intimate friends of her own age, she became pleasurably acquainted with a young widow who was stopping at the nearby hotel with her small rather delicate son in hopes that he would benefit by the invigorating mountain air.

The boy, who was slightly lame, had taken an immediate fancy to Victoria who he seemed to regard as not very much older than his own five years, and an attachment sprang up between all three.

“You should be flattered. Timmy isn’t given to crushes,” Kate Allen had said at one of their early meetings, but did not add that she herself had felt drawn to this solitary girl with the enquiring eyes and delicately angled face, looking so impossibly slender in her tight black ski suit.

Victoria had been not only flattered but ready to return the compliment in full measure. Timmy, flaxen-haired and smoothly pink, had engaging ways. She thought his mother fussed a little unduly, but upon learning later something of Kate’s history she supposed it was only natural. Jim Allen had been tragically killed in a motor accident before his son was born and Kate who had been with him blamed herself bitterly, not only for insisting on accompanying him against his better judgment, but for the child’s slight infirmity which she believed to be a direct result. Kate, who had taken to inviting the girl over to the hotel for tea or aperitifs, was never very forthcoming about her own affairs, but Victoria understood that she had been left rather badly off and now lived in an old Sussex farmhouse and wrote books for children to augment her income. It seemed a little sad to Victoria that Kate with her gift for home-making and regrets for the denial of other children should resign herself to widowhood at the early age of thirty, but although she was too sensitive to another’s reserve to elicit confidences that were not freely offered, she hoped very much there was some man in Kate’s life who was waiting to fill the gap.

Kate, on the other hand, soon knew all about her Mr. Brown, and his strange beneficence. She remembered the Hayes scandal, but the case had made little impression on her at the time, coinciding as it had with her own personal tragedy, and had only been brought to mind by a casual reference before she left England, suggesting that she might get acquainted should she happen to run across the girl.

Christmas had come and gone and with it many of the tourists and soon Victoria realised with a pang, the Allens would be leaving, too. The boy had certainly benefited from the mountain air but, said Kate a shade wryly, it was time she got down to work again and replenished her dwindling coffers.

They were sitting on the terrace of the small hotel watching the beginners on the nursery slopes staggering about and falling down, Victoria with amused recollection of her own first efforts. She had progressed quickly to better things, being light and supple with an excellent sense of balance, thanks, no doubt, to Madame’s tedious insistence on deportment, but for her, too, the interlude was coming to an end and only that morning she had received disturbing news from, Scottie. Although the operation had been over and done with months ago, convalescence had been retarded with several small setbacks, and now Scottie wrote from the nursing home to which she had once more returned, explaining with her usual calm acceptance that as it was considered likely that she would remain a semi-invalid for the rest of her life, it would seem wise in the circumstances to accept her sister’s offer of a permanent home in Wales. She had already informed the solicitors who would be making fresh arrangements for Victoria, and although she much regretted being unable to complete her undertaking with Mr. Brown, doubtless it was all for the best.

“Well,” said Kate when she had digested the news, “so your Mr. Brown will have to think again, won’t he? Perhaps at long last, he will decide to reap the benefits of his unsolicited philanthropy and invite you to share his hearth and home and be a comfort to his old age.”

“Oh, do you really think so? It would, of course, be the natural way to repay himself for all his expense and trouble.”

“No, I don’t,” Kate answered rather sharply. “If his thoughts were running in those channels he would have made his intentions clear long ago. You should have grown out of romantic fantasies of father-figures and star-crossed lovers awaiting rewards. For all you know, your Mr. Brown may be no one person, but a hard-headed syndicate of old cronies of your father’s with a debt to pay. Have you thought of that?”

“Often. It’s the most likely explanation, isn’t it? Still, when one is growing up, it’s important to have something or someone to fix one’s sights on, and it was much more satisfying to invent images for Mr. Brown than to think of him just as a Trust,” Victoria answered, and there was a touch of apology in Kate’s smile.

“Yes, it must have been. Well, what are your own ideas in view of this latest development?”

“To find a job, obviously, and since poor Scottie’s no longer available to make a home for me, Mr. Brown may have to revise his antediluvian ideas.”

“Antediluvian?”

“Well, stuffy, anyway, considering the times and my situation. So far, any suggestions to become self-supporting haven’t met with much success.”

“And what would you like to do?”

Victoria twined one long, black-clad leg around the other and gazed out across the snowy slopes with that enquiring consideration which always intrigued Kate.

“Oh, impossible things, of course. Becoming a great ballerina, discovering a lost land, riding the winner of the National to victory — fantasies with the ignoble end in view of cocking snooks at Mr. Brown,” she answered.

“In point of fact, I suppose my qualifications can’t have a very high rating commercially, but there must be someone somewhere willing to employ me after such an expensive education.”

Kate smiled without making any immediate comment, and sat turning over a half-formed project in her mind, then she said casually:

“Would you care to give the Allens a trial if it could be arranged?”

The girl’s thin face became instantly so alive with naive delight that for a moment Kate regretted having made an offer which might well be vetoed in other quarters.