Lonesome Road (5 page)

Gale Brandon drove a fast car very fast indeed. He said he had come to live at Whincliff because it offered the best selection of roads without any speed limit which he had so far been able to discover. Yet on this particular morning he showed a disposition to dally.

“How many presents do you want to get, and what sort of people are they for? Have you really got an Uncle Jacob and an Aunt Hephzibah?”

He turned his head to smile at her. A big, goodlooking man in the early forties, with a ruddy tan on his skin and a bright dancing something in his eye—zest and humor always, anger sometimes. He said,

“I certainly have, and they’ve got to have presents. Uncle Jacob likes a good crime story, so he’s easy—but Aunt Hephzibah has me beat. She doesn’t read, she doesn’t drink, and she doesn’t smoke. I once gave her a bottle of scent, and it was a near thing whether she cut me out of her will. It’s just a relaxation for her altering her will, so I have to be very careful. Now, Miss Treherne, what makes you look like that?”

She had thought his eye was on the road.

“I think I hate talking about wills,” she said.

“Then we won’t talk about them. Would you say it would be safe to send Aunt Hephzibah a handbag?”

“She’ll have to pay duty on it, won’t she?”

Mr. Brandon looked a good deal cast down.

“Well—if I hadn’t forgot all about the duty! And would she be mad! Didn’t I say I needed guidance? Look what you’ve saved me from already.”

Rachel laughed.

“That’s my horrid practical mind. I’ve had to learn to be practical, you know—it didn’t come naturally. But if you can’t get your presents, why are we going on?”

“Oh, I’ve got friends this side the Atlantic too. I’ll have to let a cousin of mine see about the old folks at home, but there’ll be plenty we can be getting along with this morning. To start off with, there’ll be chocolates and toys for about a dozen children…”

They did the toys and chocolates very successfully, and then sat down and took stock of their purchases over a cup of coffee. Mr. Brandon produced a list.

Gloves for Peggy and Moira. 6½.

Silk stockings for Jane. Half a dozen pairs. 9½.

Handkerchiefs for Irene. Sheer linen. One dozen.

Handbag for Hermione. Dark blue. Initials.

He handed the list over. It continued to the bottom of the page, where there was a large question-mark on a line by itself.

“Now that,” said Mr. Brandon, “is what I wanted to ask you about. All these other things, they’re for the wives and daughters of very good friends of mine over here. I’ve known most of them a long time, and I know just what sort of things they’ll like, and just what sort of things it would be all right for me to give them. But there’s another present I want to give that I’m not so sure about. It’s for a woman, and it’s for a woman I’ve known all her life. I’d like to give her something that’s really worthwhile— something she can wear. But I don’t want to offend her or have her think I’m presuming.”

Rachel Treherne felt a sort of cold shock which she could not account for. She said at once,

“You’ve known her all her life?”

“Something like that.”

“And how well do you know her?”

His eyes danced.

“Pretty well. Better than she knows me.”

“But—are you friends? You see, I can’t say what you can give her unless I know just how friendly you are.” She felt as if she were excusing herself, and changed color. “Do you know, you are making me sound inquisitive. I don’t really think I can advise you at all.”

He leaned to her across the little table.

“Now look here, Miss Treherne, you couldn’t sound inquisitive to me whatever you said. But this is rather a delicate matter.”

Rachel felt her cheeks burn.

“After all, we’re almost strangers,” she said.

If she had expected Gale Brandon to be rebuffed, she was disappointed. He said in an earnest voice,

“Oh, I don’t feel that way at all, and I’d appreciate your advice. You see, I have a very great affection and respect for this lady—in fact I love her.”

Rachel said, “Does she love you?”

“I don’t think so. I’ve never asked her.”

“Are you going to ask her?”

“Oh, yes, when the right time comes.”

She smiled, and wondered why her lips felt stiff.

“Well, Mr. Brandon, if you want my advice, I should say wait till you have told her how you feel. Then you will know whether you can give her this present.”

He took some time to think about that. Then he said,

“Well, I had a kind of idea that I would like the present to tell her. Do you get what I mean? I thought I’d make it something she wouldn’t take unless she meant to take me with it. Then if she did take it, I’d know.”

Rachel laughed a little.

“That might be very dangerous, Mr. Brandon. I’m afraid there are women who would take your present and think no more about it.”

He shook his head.

“She wouldn’t do that.”

They bought the friends-of-the-family presents first. Rachel could not help a quick surface amusement over the very definite likes and dislikes which Mr. Brandon exhibited. So far from needing her help he knew exactly what he wanted, and made it quite plain that he must have it. But when they crossed the Market Place to Mr. Enderby’s old dark shop his manner changed, lost its certainty. He dropped back a good twenty years and showed her the anxious, eager boy he must have been then.

The Market Square is the center of Ledlington, and in the center of the Market Square stands the statue of Sir Albert Dawnish of which the townsfolk are so justly proud. They have a well-founded belief that it can give points and a beating to any other statue in any other market town in England, both for its own size and for that of the cheque which paid for it. From a highly ornate pedestal Sir Albert in rigid marble trousers gazes down upon the cradle of his enormous fortune—or, shall we say, upon the spot where once that cradle stood. The first of the long line of Quick Cash Stores which have made the name of Dawnish a household word was pulled down some years ago, but the statue of Sir Albert is good to last as long as the Market Square.

Mr. Enderby’s old shop is behind Sir Albert’s back. He would not in any case think it worth looking at. It has, indeed, a somewhat rickety air, as if its four hundred years had at last begun to tell upon its constitution, but the oak beams are still staunch, and the brickwork holds. About a hundred and fifty years ago Josiah Enderby the third threw out a bow window the better to exhibit his goods; nothing else has emerged from the fifteenth century. The shop is still very nearly as dark, stuffy, and inconvenient as it must have been when Elizabeth was on the throne. The old oak boards are bare to the customer’s foot. There is no electric light and no counter. A long trestle table black with age serves Mr. Thomas Enderby as it served his forebears. In spite of these drawbacks, or perhaps because of them, the shop is a famous one. The Enderby’s have always had two assets, absolute probity and a most astonishing flair for stones. Thirty years ago Tobias Enderby was considered the finest judge of pearls in Europe. His son Thomas runs him close. People with great names and deep purses have sat at that trestle table and watched an Enderby—Josiah, Tobias, Thomas—bring out his treasures for their inspection. Not always easy to buy from, the Enderbys. A few years before the war a Personage who has since lost the throne which he then adorned wished to buy the Gonzalez ruby, once the property of Philip II of Spain, and come by devious ways to the Market Place in Ledlington. The Personage offered a fabulous price. He also offered some discourtesy. Nobody seems to know quite what it was, but old Tobias gazed past him with an abstracted air and murmured, “No, sir, it is not for sale.”

Rachel told Gale Brandon the story as they were crossing the Square.

“It’s rather nice to feel that there are some things money won’t buy.”

He stood still under the very shadow of Sir Albert Dawnish.

“Now, Miss Treherne, I don’t like to hear you say that. And why? Because it sounds to me as if you were letting money get you down. You know, you’re all right as long as you’re on top of it, but the minute you let it get on top of you you’re done. It’s a servant, and like all servants you’ve got to look out it doesn’t get the upper hand. Use it, work it, don’t let it drive you, don’t let yourself think you can’t do without it, don’t let yourself believe for a single moment that it can give you any value you haven’t got already. It’s the other way round. It’s you who give money its value by the way you spend it.” He laughed suddenly and came down on a schoolboy joke. “It isn’t the money that makes the man, it’s the man that makes the money.”

“I didn’t make mine,” said Rachel.

“Then somebody made it for you.”

He laughed again, and took her across the line of traffic. With her hand on the latch of Mr. Enderby’s door, Rachel said with all her heart,

“I wish they hadn’t.”

Thomas Enderby was exactly like an old gray mouse, except that a mouse’s eyes are bright and dark, and his were veiled and of no color at all.

There was an interchange of courtesies reminding Rachel of an old lady she had known as a child who was wont to say with an approving nod of the head, “Compliments pass when gentlefolk meet.”

The compliments having passed, Mr. Brandon said something in a low voice, from which Rachel inferred that their visit had not been without preliminaries. With a bow Mr. Enderby disappeared through a door in the back of the shop, returning immediately with a square of black velvet which he laid before Miss Treherne. He then disappeared again, and this time for longer.

As she sat waiting, Rachel was aware of the romantic atmosphere. This old house, this old room; the very chair she sat in, with its high back and straight arms; the floor, black with age, uneven from the passing of the generations— all made a setting for the man who had brought her here to choose a love-gift for another woman. She was conscious of him as she had never been conscious of a man before. His look stirred her as if it had been a touch, and his touch… She steadied her thought to face what this might mean—the folly of a lonely woman who had had no time for love and had let it pass her by; the terror of a frightened woman groping for a hand that she might trust to; or something deeper, saner, more steadfast… Whichever it was, it meant pain. It meant that she must brace herself to meet pain, to endure it, to tread it down.

The change in her feelings dazed her. She had found pleasure in Gale Brandon’s society, and in his obvious admiration for herself, but she had never dreamed that she would feel like this because he told her that he loved another woman.

Thomas Enderby came back with an old-fashioned box of Tonbridge ware. He sat down at the table, opened the box, removed a layer of cotton wool, and took out three packages done up in tissue paper. His hands moved in a delicate and leisurely manner as he unfolded the paper. In the end he sat back and contemplated the three ornaments which he had disposed upon the square of black velvet, his eyes no longer hooded and dim, but bright with the discerning admiration of the connoisseur.

Rachel looked too.

The oak spray came out of its wrappings first. She found it hard to take her eyes from it—two diamond oak-leaves and three acorns, the cups shining with brilliants, and each acorn a pearl, two white and one black.

She said, “Oh, how lovely!” and Mr. Thomas Enderby agreed.

“It was my father’s design. It was commissioned by the Duchess of Southshire, but she died before it was completed. Now this chain came to us from abroad—Italian work, made to a Russian order.”

The chain was about twenty-five inches in length. It had pale gold links, most exquisitely fine, between alternate sapphires and emeralds, each stone beautifully cut and set with diamond sparks, the whole effect one of lightness, brilliance, and grace.

“This of course is the finest stone,” said Mr. Enderby. He touched the third ornament caressingly. “There is nothing like a ruby after all, and this is one of the best we have had. Look at the color!”

The ruby burned between two diamond wings—the lifted arch of an eagle’s wings. Between the flash of them the stone seemed alive.

“I am not, unfortunately, at liberty to give you the particular history of this piece,” pursued Thomas Enderby. “My father designed it for a member of a royal house, and it has recently come back to us.” He turned to Gale Brandon. “Those, sir, are our three best pieces.”

Rachel felt rather dazzled. The jewels were most beautiful. They were also most costly. She admired the romance of the gesture which would offer one of these exquisite things as a declaration of love without any certainty of its acceptance. But quick on this came the thought, “It spoils it all to let another woman choose.”

It was at this moment that he leaned to her and said,

“Which do you like best?”

The words struck a spark of resentment from her. She said, a thought quickly,

“But it isn’t what I like. I can’t choose for a woman I don’t know. Pearls are for one sort of woman, rubies for another, and emeralds and sapphires for another still. You’ll have to choose for yourself. I can’t help you.”

Gale Brandon’s eyes danced with a teasing light. He looked most extraordinarily alive in the little dark room.

“Isn’t that too bad!” he said. “But I wasn’t asking you to choose for me. I just felt very interested to know which of Mr. Enderby’s pretty things you liked best. Because, you see, I’ve figured it out this way. Say there’s one that I like best. Well, if you choose it too, then there are two votes for that. Do you see what I mean?”

“But it isn’t my vote that ought to count, because I’m quite in the dark. Why, I don’t even know the color of her hair.”

A smile flickered over his face.

“Well, we’ll all be getting gray hair some day. I hope she’s going to wear it a good long time, so it would be better to choose something that’s going to go on looking good when she’s got those silver threads among the gold.”

So she had golden hair… It didn’t go a good gray as a rule… She said in the friendliest tone she could compass,

“If she is fair, the emerald and sapphire chain would suit her.”

“But I didn’t say she was fair, Miss Treherne.”

“I thought you did. You quoted the song about silver threads among the gold.”

“That was a figure of speech. I certainly shouldn’t call her fair—except in the romantic sense—and I can’t see that there is one of these jewels that wouldn’t be mighty becoming to her. But I really would appreciate it if you would tell me which one appeals to you, Miss Treherne. You see, it’s the woman’s point of view I’d like to get.”

She found herself laughing a little scornfully.

“Do you really think all women are alike?”

He laughed too.

“It would certainly be dull if they were. But I would really like to know which of these pretty things you do like the best. I’m interested in your point of view. And then I’d like to know whether you like the one that I like, and when we’ve settled that we’ll ask Mr. Enderby which is the one he’d save if his shop was burning.”

Thomas Enderby’s hand went out a little way and drew back.

An irrational gust of gaiety blew into Rachel’s mind. She put out her own hand and touched the oak spray with its pearl acorns.

“Oh, that’s my one. I lost my heart to it at once. But I don’t believe Mr. Enderby can bear to let it go. He’s lost his heart to it too.”

“And I’ve lost mine,” said Gale Brandon—“so there are three of us. Well, Mr. Enderby—what about it? Will you let me have it—for the loveliest and kindest lady in the world?”

“It’s not everyone I’d let it go to,” said Thomas Enderby.