Choose the One You'll Marry (5 page)

Aunt Henrietta looked slightly taken aback.

“I do, as a matter of fact. Do you know her? I suppose I shouldn’t have spoken so indiscreetly and personally,” she added regretfully. “I’m sorry, Ruth, if she’s a friend of yours.”

“No, no, she isn’t any friend of mine. I just happened to meet her at the studio,” Ruth explained. “And I heard her coupled with—well, with someone quite different from Mr. Harling. It’s nothing to do with me personally. I just thought it was a coincidence, hearing of her twice in one evening, when I’d never heard of her at all before.”

“I believe she’s quite well known in her way,” Aunt Henrietta said, reluctantly conceding Charmian Deal a certain degree of fame. “And
very
ambitious, I would say.” Then Michael and Susannah returned, with an air of having become bosom buddies over the conquest of the problems. And after good-nights, brutally curtailed by her parents, Susannah finally retreated to bed, leaving the grown-ups to their own conversation.

“So you’re here to look over the Excelsior? Very well run place,” observed Mr.
Tadcaster
to their visitor. “Just suits Castlemore, though it might not be right for London.”

“So I gathered, in a first quick survey,” Michael agreed. “I—made a few miscalculations at first—” he turned and gave Ruth such an unexpectedly brilliant smile that she found herself revising her early opinion of his being “real and earnest” “—but I’m beginning to get the measure of it now. Your daughter is certainly one of the assets of the place.”

“Well—” Mr.
Tadcaster
smiled, with the air of a man who couldn’t quite praise his daughter to her face but was not going to discourage anyone else from doing so “—well, Ruth’s a good child and takes a pride in her work. That’s not so common now as it used to be.”

“I was just telling Ruth that I’d like to have her with me in London for a week,” Aunt Henrietta cut in. “Or a long weekend, at any rate. Don’t you think it’s a good idea?”

“Excellent,” said Michael politely, though he could hardly say anything else, Ruth supposed. “Have you ever been to London?”

“No.” She shook her head.

“Then we must certainly arrange it,” he declared, and there was in his smile a slight touch of the indulgence he had displayed toward Susannah over the arithmetic problems.

Soon after that, Aunt Henrietta and he took their leave, though both of them showed great friendliness and a general willingness to see more of the Tadcasters during their stay in Castlemore.

“Well, mother?” Ruth came back from the hall into the drawing room. “Do you still think the same?”

“I’m almost sure.”

“Almost sure of what?” inquired Mr. Tadcaster, taking off his shoes and putting on comfortable, if disreputable, slippers.

“Mother doesn’t think Aunt Henrietta
is
Aunt Henrietta, after all,” Ruth explained somewhat confusingly.

“Who does she think she is, then?” inquired Mr. Tadcaster mildly. “We’ve been accepting her as Aunt Henrietta throughout the evening.”

“We couldn’t do anything else,” his wife replied. “You can’t tell someone to her face that you don’t think she’s the person she’s pretending to be.”

“You mean you think they’re a couple of impostors?” Mr. Tadcaster looked incredulous. “Nonsense, my dear. You’re dreaming.”

The ugly word “impostor” did seem impossible, applied to either of the friendly people who had just left, and even Mrs. Tadcaster looked shaken for a moment.

“It isn’t as though they would have anything to gain by it, mother,” Ruth pointed out. “We’re just an ordinary, middle-class family, with nothing special to offer them.”

“Except background,” her mother retorted shrewdly. “If I accept them—her, I mean—as my long-lost Aunt Henrietta, she already has an identity, vouched for by a disinterested person. That could be quite useful, in certain cir
c
umstances.”

“If she were a crook, you mean?” Her husband looked amused. “Is that the idea? You really mustn’t let your imagination run away with you like that. She’s bound to seem a bit unfamiliar after all these years. And she’s been living in some remote part of Australia, don’t forget. That changes people, I imagine.”

“But it’s changed her in such an odd way,” Mrs. Tadcaster protested suddenly. “I know now what it is. That woman tonight could deal with any situation and handle any person. Aunt Henrietta couldn’t, you know. She—put her foot in it and alienated people. That was why my father didn’t like her. I remember now.”

“Well, well, she’s learned better with the years,” said Ruth’s father comfortably. “We all do. That’s a nice sensible fellow, her nephew. Sized up your worth at once, Ruth.” And he patted his elder daughter approvingly on the shoulder.

“Not quite at once, father,” Ruth remarked demurely. “More on second thought I’d say.”

And then Leonard came in, and as it was now too late to start reexamining the mystery of Aunt Henrietta, no one said more to him than that it had been a very pleasant evening and that their guests appeared to have enjoyed themselves.

The next morning
at breakfast, Susannah enlarged on this a good deal.

“Aunt Henrietta’s wonderful,” she told her brother. “She’s been everywhere and done everything, and he’s a
lovely
man. He did my arithmetic homework for me.”

“I hope Miss Jenkins gives him ten out of ten, then,” grinned Leonard. “You’ll look funny if he got it all wrong.”

“It can’t be wrong,” stated Susannah with dignity. “It came out.”

“Sometimes that’s a bad sign,” her brother teased her. “What’s this about your going on television, Ruth? There’s a bit in the gossip column of the
Journal
, all about the receptionist at the Excelsior saving the day. You’re in good company, too. Right beside a very glamorous photograph of Charmian
Deal, who seems to be in town.”

“Let me see!” His sisters both leaned over the paper, Susannah breathing loudly in her excitement, and Ruth feeling oddly disconcerted by the way Charmian Deal seemed to smile coldly right out of the photograph at her.

“Very nice. And more or less true,” Ruth said with a laugh, when she had read the paragraph about herself. But she left Susannah to tell the tale in detail, for she was determined to be in very good time at the hotel that morning. Though whether this was in order to make sure of seeing Angus Everton or of making a good impression on Michael Harling, she could not have said.

At the hotel she was greeted with a certain amount of good-humored chaffing on her adventure of the previous evening. But she was popular with the rest of the staff and she came in for plenty of friendly congratulation, too.

It was halfway through the morning before Angus himself came to the desk, and then it was only to settle his account and say goodbye until the following Tuesday.

“Thank you again, Ruth, for everything,” he said. Obviously she was never again to be Miss
Tadcaster
. “I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

“Found someone else just as suitable, I expect,” replied Ruth practically, but with a smile.

“Don’t you believe it! The unselfconscious nonprofessional is a rare bird,” he assured her. “And sometimes that is just what I need in my type of program. Can I call on you again sometime, if
I
need you?”

“Why—of course!” She was flattered and a little excited to think' that her services rated sufficiently highly for a possible repetition.

“I’ll see they send on your check for last night, of course.”

“My check? Do I get anything for what I did?”

“Well, most certainly!” He looked amused. “It won’t be more than a few pounds, you know. But it’s always useful.”

“It is indeed!” agreed Ruth. For, like most of us, she had no reason to suppose she would be at a loss to know what to do with an unexpected few pounds.

“Goodbye, then, until next week.” Angus held out his hand to her, and she was just clasping it in a warm and friendly way when Michael Harling and Charmian Deal came into the hotel from the street. They crossed the foyer without apparently noticing the two at the desk and disappeared into the coffee lounge together.

“Who is that?” Angus withdrew his hand sharply and spoke in an abrupt voice. “The fellow with Charmian.”

“That’s Mr. Harling.” Ruth made her voice sound as matter-of-fact as possible.

“Does he belong here?”

“Not really, no. He belongs to the office of the combine that owns this hotel, but he lives in London. He’s just here on a sort of visit of inspection, I think.”

“I see.”

Whatever Angus saw gave him no pleasure, she could tell, from the way he set his mouth. Then, without enlarging further on Michael Harling, he gave Ruth a rather disappointingly absentminded nod and took himself off to the station, and thence presumably to London and whatever program awaited him there.

Ruth was sorry when he had gone. She always was, for he took with him the touch of glamour and interest with which his visits invested the middle of the week. There were other pleasant and likable clients at the Excelsior, of course, and Ruth was on excellent terms with most of them. But none of them had quite that quality of novelty and charm that surrounded Angus Everton and his work.

During the next few days life went on without any unusual incident. Charmian Deal stayed only one day longer—presumably to complete whatever her work might be at the studio—but during that time Ruth noticed, from her admirable vantage point at the reception desk, that she dined once with Michael Harling (though not with Aunt Henrietta) and went out with him on another occasion.

When she took her departure on the Friday, she showed no sign whatever of having met Ruth before. Her manner was cool and courteous, but Ruth was unquestionably the clerk in the reception desk, and not the girl who had been introduced as a television success by Angus Everton.

Aunt Henrietta and Michael Harling stayed on over the weekend, and she spent a good deal of Sunday with the Tadcasters. In addition to deepening the good impression she had already made on both Susannah and her father, Aunt Henrietta made something of a conquest of Leonard, who afterward described her as the most interesting example he had met of the not-so-young-as-she-was type of woman.

Mrs. Tadcaster said nothing in reply to this. But, though she had been both kind and hospitable to Aunt Henrietta, Ruth felt sure that her earlier doubts were by no means dispelled.

I can’t help liking her,
thought Ruth.
And the slight element of mystery almost adds to her charm. But just in case mother is right, and there is something phony about her, I suppose I’d better make some sort of polite excuse if
she
repeats the invitation for me to stay with her in London.

That might be difficult, of course, but Ruth refused to worry about it in advance. For she knew that many invitations are given in all good faith, but somehow never implemented afterward. And she thought it unlikely that she would ever be put to the necessity of rejecting anything more specific than the very general suggestion that had been made on the occasion of Aunt Henrietta’s first visit.

In this, however, she was mistaken. Though the principal driving force on this second occasion turned out to be not so much Aunt Henrietta as Angus Everton.

By Monday Ruth found that she was already looking forward to the next day with considerably sharpened interest and pleasure. For the coming of Angus Everton now constituted not only a highlight in the week’s work, it was also something like the return of a friend. And a ra
t
her special friend, at that.

Consequently he was already very much in her mind. So that when she was called to the telephone in the middle of the afternoon, she had no difficulty this time in recognizing the pleasantly pitched voice that said, “Ruth, my dear, is that you?’

Ruth said it was, with a pleasant little flutter of interest, and where was Mr. Everton speaking from?

“Mr. Everton!” He repeated the name on a note of good-humored derision. “The name’s Angus. And I’m speaking from London. Listen, Ruth—I’m not coming to Castlemore this week—”

“Oh, aren’t you?” Her spirits dropped at least ten degrees, and she simply could not keep the disappointment out of her voice.

“No. Terry Melvin is taking over the program for a couple of weeks, as I’m busy on something bigger at this end.”

“Then—I won’t see you.”

Her tone must had been a great deal more forlorn than she had intended, for he said immediately, “Cheer up, my sweet. I’m hoping that you will. That’s just what I’m phoning about now. I want you to come down here instead, and do something on my new program.”

“To—London, you mean?” Ruth was breathless and incredulous. “But—I don’t think I can possibly leave my job.”

“You were able to before.”

“But that was only for a few hours. And now you’d want me for—well, for how long
would
you want me?”