Unknown

JOURNEY INTO SPRING

Jean S MacLeod

Old Mrs. Abercrombie was a darling, and Elizabeth was delighted to land the job of escorting her from Australia around the world to Scotland. But the old lady's stern grandson Charles was another matter: first Elizabeth crossed swords with him, then she fell in love with him. But Charles, she knew, was going to marry someone else....

THE roof of the Opera House caught the morning sun, like the sails of some fabulous barque come to rest by the waterside, and out across the Gove the gleaming stretch of the great Harbour Bridge stood silhouetted in a perfect arc against the skyline, its paler reflection completing the circle in the water below.

Sydney, city of the sun and a thousand points, was living up to its name. Beyond Bennelong, Kirribilli and Milson's and Blues stretched eager fingers towards the heart of the city where the great ships were moored all along the Circular Quay, spilling their cargoes and passengers almost directly on to the Expressway as it hurried towards Bradfield.

Looking down on it from an office window in one of the high buildings above the Quay, Elizabeth Drummond drew in a deep breath of appreciation, yet the hot sunshine which warmed her through the window-pane would soon be a thing of the past for her if she had her way. The interview before her was her first step towards a journey to the other side of the world, one she had been determined to make ever since her mother had died without fulfilling the secret desire in her heart to revisit the distant land of her birth.

Elizabeth had known about her mother's wish for many years, but there had never been enough money in the family purse to take them both to Scotland, and after her father's death it had been scarcer than ever. They had lived comfortably enough in a suburb of Brisbane until her mother's final illness, but now, after a year, it seemed to Elizabeth that it was time to go. In an odd sort of way she felt that her pilgrimage to the Old World would fulfil some of the dreams which, for Janet Drummond, had never crane to fruition.

Turning from the window, she looked about her once again. The interview room was large and expensively furnished, with a thick carpet covering the floor and a large, formidable-looking desk taking pride of place in the centre of the room. Half a dozen leather-upholstered chairs were set at vantage points around it and a globe of the world stood before one of the long windows overlooking the Cove, while the walls were adorned by several pictures in heavy gilt frames, each with a maritime theme. Tall ships and little coasters sailed their separate ways across the canvases, each proclaiming that the Abercrombie empire had been built on the traffic of the oceans which stretched between Sydney and their headquarters in Scotland on the other side of the world.

Idly Elizabeth rotated the globe by her side, allowing her imagination to carry her across the seas until the door at the far end of the room opened and a tall man in a light tropical suit came towards her. He was younger than she had expected.

"Miss Drummond?" he speculated. "Please sit down. I'm sorry I had to keep you waiting, but pressure of business and all that..."

He regarded her quizzically, as if he did not quite expect her to believe his statement, his blue eyes amused at the thought of really hard work, but perhaps she was judging him too swiftly.

"I was admiring your view," she told him, aware that his unexpected youthfulness had disconcerted her for a moment "It must be one of the finest in Sydney."

"It certainly takes in most of our interests," he allowed, glancing carelessly through the other window which afforded him a vista of the gardens surrounding Government House and across Farm Cove to Mrs. Macquarie's Point "One gets used to it, I suppose." He turned to face her again. "You sound as if Sydney was new to you."

"I've been here a month," Elizabeth confessed. "I haven't quite got my bearings yet, but I love it."

"Yet you want to leave us." The keen blue gaze was suddenly speculative. "Why?"

"I've always wanted to go to Scotland," Elizabeth explained. "My mother was born there and she talked so much about it, but we never had enough money to let her return, even for a flying visit."

"I take it your mother is dead?"

"She died three months ago."

"No other family?" He threw the question at her in a businesslike way which pulled her thoughts together. "No especial ties?"

"I have a brother working at Mount Isa, but he's married with a family of his own."

"Which leaves you more or less free to please yourself," he suggested. "You mentioned in your letter that your father had died some time ago."

"He was killed in an accident three years ago—in Brisbane."

Perhaps that was why she had come to Sydney in the first place, she reflected in the brief pause which followed. To get away from so many painful memories.

"I'm sorry," he murmured conventionally as he offered her a cigarette from the silver box on the desk "It does make it easier for you to travel, though. Without let or hindrance, so to speak. You don't smoke?" He snapped the box shut. "Perhaps that's just as well. My grandmother has a horror of women with a cigarette eternally between her fingers. She's French." '

Although she could not quite follow his reasoning, Elizabeth was now keenly interested. The advertisement had said 'Secretary-companion to lady travelling to Scotland' and she had jumped at the chance, but now she waited for further information with a new excitement tingling in her veins.

"You looked after your mother for some time," he said after a brief reappraisal of her written qualifications. "I know she was sick and my grandmother isn't, but you must have acquired a lot of experience of older people while you nursed your mother."

Elizabeth nodded her agreement.

"I'm also an efficient secretary," she reminded him. "I trained in Brisbane and held a post there for two years."

"H'm," said he, turning over the neatly-typed reference which her former employer had signed with his habitual flourish. "That won't be as important as your ability to cope with Grand'mere." Suddenly he was laughing, his fair head thrown back, his blue eyes sparkling. "I think you could do it," he declared. "You've got a determined look about you which suggests that you really want the job." He thrust impatient fingers through his hair. "I've read dozens of applications and yours seemed to be the only one with a sensible reason for wanting to go to Scotland. Most of the others wanted to call it a day once they had reached London. The Great Metropolis, Mecca of the young Australian heart!"

"You sound peculiarly disillusioned," she remarked, because he was young himself. "But perhaps you have been to London often enough."

"I was born there," he said, getting up to look out of the window. "I came to Australia to take over the Sydney branch of the business when I was twenty-five, having sown some of my wild oats in Scotland by then. It's something of a tradition in our family that young males don't really come of age until they're well past their twenty-first birthday, and certainly my grandmother wouldn't allocate responsibility to anyone under twenty-five."

Elizabeth looked surprised.

"That doesn't apply to secretary-companions," he hastened to add. "She's going to like you."

"How can you be so sure?"

He smiled confidently.

"Because Grand'mere and I are two of a kind," he declared. "We like the same things and enjoy the same freedoms. She's seventy-three, but age doesn't mean a thing where she's concerned. She could be twenty-three for all the sense she's got sometimes, and she's determined to go on travelling around the world till she drops in her tracks, organising this and that, business-wise. She'll gladly plan your life for you, too, so look out!"

It was developing into a most unconventional interview, and Grand'mere was already beginning to take shape in Elizabeth's mind as a spry old lady observing the world through sparkling blue eyes while the keen, businesslike brain behind them worked with crystal-like clarity, assessing all that went on in the world about her. She could hardly wait for their meeting.

"Is your grandmother here, in Sydney?" she asked.

"She has a friend's flat out at Rose Bay." He glanced at his watch. "I'll take you over there. We'd better have lunch in the meantime," he suggested with the same breezy familiarity. "I'll ring her for three o'clock."

He lifted the telephone receiver and Elizabeth moved back to the window.

"Hullo! Grand'mere?" he called brightly when the connection was made in the outer office. "I've found someone I think you'll like."

There was a brief pause.

"As a travelling companion," he explained. "Of course, you need a companion, but this one is also an excellent secretary."

The phone buzzed with the voice from the far end of the line while Elizabeth tried to concentrate on the hazy smudge of Fort Denison across the Cove and the nearer trees in the Botanic Gardens.

"No, she's not middle-aged and stodgy. Not at all." Elizabeth was aware of the blue eyes appraising her across the desk even although her back was turned. "She's young, and she has a glorious mop of red hair, and she wants to go to Scotland because her mother was born there but was never able to go back."

Again there was a brief silence in the office while the distant voice took over the conversation.

"Of course," her prospective employer agreed at last, "we wouldn't expect you to accept anyone you hadn't met first. Can I bring Miss Drummond over this afternoon? Three o'clock, I thought. Would that suit you?"

There was a brief rejoinder from the other end of the line, followed by what seemed to be a quick barrage of further questioning.

"Oh, Charles!" Elizabeth turned from the window to find her companion frowning at the telephone. "He's gone out to Rushcutters' Bay, but he should be back before four o'clock. We can confront him with the
fait accompli
when next we see him."

The voice on the line was sharp with reprimand.

"It isn't 'atrocious French' at all," her companion laughed, "and we're not really conspirators, Grand'mere. Surely you can make your own choice of a companion without Charles laying down the law about age-groups and what have you?" The laugh strengthened. "All right, 'atrocious English' if you like! We'll see you at three o'clock."

It was just after twelve. Elizabeth's interview had been for eleven-thirty, so she was probably the last in a long line of candidates for the post of secretary-companion to Mrs. Abercrombie. It didn't follow, however, that she should be taken out to lunch.

"I can
come back at half-past two," she offered. "I can find some shopping to do in the town."

"And spoil my lunch?" He got up from the chair behind the desk, tall and slim and very fair in the shaft of sunlight penetrating the room of a sudden. "I hate to eat alone. My name's Jason Abercrombie, by the way. We're a small family, all dedicated to the business in our separate ways," he added as he held open the door for her. "You'll get to know us in next to no time."

"Depending on your grandmother's ultimate decision," Elizabeth reminded him, because already she recognised that old Mrs. Abercrombie would have the final say when it came to employing her.

Jason Abercrombie was silent for a moment, weighing up the pros and cons of the situation as they went through the outer office. For the first time since the interview began he seemed uncertain.

"I don't think we need worry," he said at last. "Charles is no real match for Grand'mere once she's set her mind on something."

"Charles?" For no good reason the name sent a chill through Elizabeth's heart.

"My older brother," Jason explained. "He's mainly responsible for the Scottish end of the business, but he travels to and fro occasionally, chiefly seeking orders. He's hare just now."

There seemed to be an odd reserve in him when he spoke about his brother, as if the older man's name had opened up an old sore.

"Would it be impossible for your grandmother to travel back to Scotland with him?" Elizabeth asked.