Diana Lake pressed her small watch against her ear to make sure it was going. Even so it was impossible to catch the faint tick above the surrounding clamour.
What a hullaballoo these creatures made! Every table but hers swarmed with young Indians—students, she gathered, from the near-by School of Economics. She sighed to think that overnight, as it were, her serene Daffodil Tea-Room had turned itself into a social club for failed B.A.’s—with their frequent glances in her direction.
Here was another, who, taking advantage of her gesture, had thrust his own wrist-watch under her nose. He had two gold teeth, and, worse horror, a girl’s bangle studded with turquoises.
“He is very late, what?” His grin was gleamingly facetious. “It is now five-fifteen. You see?”
She must make short work of him.
“Thank you,” she said coldly. “But I have the right time.” And with an aloofness which froze—or should have done—she fixed an expressionless gaze on the door through which Adrian, at any moment, might come.
But would he? Most likely he still had his eye firmly glued to a microscope, calmly oblivious to the passage of time. It was too bad of him, considering he had wired her to meet him, and she, instead of going home after her long train journey, had come straight here. He had news for her—and she had already guessed what the news would be. Indeed, she was secretly hurt that Adrian, oddly dense in some ways, should be rushing to her with the very tidings she least wanted to hear. He had been offered a post. That meant he would be sailing at once back to America. In other words, it was all over save for registering a wholly spurious delight, and composing a nice, sisterly letter for him to read on the boat.
“Oh, well”—and Diana squared her young shoulders philosophically—“since it had to be, how much better now than in another six months! Nothing could come of it for years, even assuming—which I certainly don’t—that Adrian felt differently about me. If we don’t see each other again till we’re middle-aged people, why, there’s no harm done.”
If her reflections were tinged with regret, no one, watching her, would have suspected it. Tranquil and steady, she drank the tea she had very wisely ordered, lit a cigarette, and rather than waste time on sentimental fancies unfolded a letter she had meant to reread, and gave it—to the outward eye at least—undivided attention.
Diana’s type was Irish. Her grey eyes under slender black brows and her dark hair, smooth and with a natural wave in it, she had inherited from her handsome actor-father, Herbert Lake; her milky-pearl skin, humorous mouth and general look of capability came from her little actress-mother, Margaret Fairlamb, now playing in London. In dress she inclined to the unembellished—and this fact contributed largely to her air of restful poise. Dark blue suited her best, and, as a rule, she stuck to it. Her dress now was blue, glove-fitting, without pleat or frill. She had pressed it last night, in Leeds, with her small electric iron, while she was packing up. Blue also was her straight-brimmed little hat, perched at an angle; and the heavy grey gauntlets—she had worn dark ones in the train—lying with her bag beside her cup were stitched in navy. Two-and-twenty she was. She had looked that since eighteen, and she would go on looking it till well past thirty.
The letter she was reading was from her mother, who last week had been in Liverpool. Delayed by tardy forwarding, it had only just reached her, and having glanced at it hastily, she wanted to reassure herself about certain passages. Aunt Rose Somervell—Rose Walsh to the theatre public, and not a real aunt, but only a godmother—had recently died of a stroke. Diana’s mother seemed badly upset over it, though why she wrote as she did . . . was this the bit?
“Only sixty-five, and such a splendidly fit person always! I really can’t take it in.” Diana skimmed. “I suppose, strictly speaking, she and I never had a great deal in common, but after all these years . . . the good times we had together. . . . I keep thinking how kind she was to me when I had my first speaking part in her company and dried up on the opening night. One doesn’t forget these things.”
“Precious Mummy! She doesn’t,” mused Diana, thinking of all her warm-hearted little mother must have endured from the ex-star’s variable moods, and of the good deeds in the stage-world doomed to speedy oblivion. “No, that wasn’t it. Funeral at Marraford—Uncle Nick did everything. He would, of course. Memorial service at St. Martin’s—saw that on the news-reel. Oh, here we are.”
“Most odd she should have suffered from high blood-pressure and not suspect it. I, personally, should never have guessed. People with that complaint are so energetic, and, as you know, poor, dear Rose never exerted herself if she could help it. What I did notice was her increasing forgetfulness. Only lately, though, and I put it down to the constant little nips of brandy she was so fond of taking, or else to her fearfully strong cigarettes . . .
“It’s strange to think that almost certainly I was the last person she spoke to. Just as I was getting off for my tour she rang up. When we’d talked for ten minutes, I heard a crash, and then no more. I tried to get through to her again, but her receiver was still off—and I was obliged to fly for my train not knowing what had happened. Seeing her death notice in the Manchester Guardian, I wrote at once to Nick, and his reply furnished the explanation. It seems old Petty smelled something burning. It was Rose’s cigarette, fallen on the rug—and Rose herself lay unconscious, her head having struck the fender. She revived a little, but could not clearly articulate, and though a doctor was fetched, she died in only a few hours’ time. I’ve been a wee bit troubled, because of something she said which made me wonder if it really was stroke. I have not written about it to Nick, not wanting to add to his distress, but I shall be seeing him next week, and shall learn all about it, just to set my own mind at rest.”
Of course it was stroke. What else could it have been? Besides, the doctor would have known. Diana was about to tuck the letter into her bag when on the back sheet she noticed one of her mother’s inevitable postscripts.
“Apart from the hints she dropped, I’ve no notion how her little fortune was left. We may take it for granted, though, that it will not go to any one who has real need of it. Please don’t think this a harsh criticism! I mention the matter only because I should have liked so much to see Adrian get something. It would be common justice, in a way; but, of course, such a possibility is out of the question. You know how hard I’ve tried ever since Adrian came over to get her to see him. After all, his sole offence, when she and Joe parted, was to stick by his own father; but it was no use, she refused to be interested. Strange that any one so charming should possess this rather hard streak!”
Strange? Not in the least. Rose Somervell had been a thoroughly selfish old woman, as all but Margaret would admit. It was her greed over alimony at the time of the American slump which had helped ruin her divorced husband. Oh, Rose knew that—and she also knew how Adrian’s struggle to complete first his Harvard medical and later his studies in brain surgery had been rendered ten times harder through her rapacity. Here Adrian had been since last April, living in a cheap boarding-house, hardly able to buy shoes, his one idea to crowd a year’s work, under the celebrated Gordon, into six months—yet not once had Rose asked him to a meal or troubled to inquire how he was doing. That was Rose all over.
“Just as it’s Mummy all over to want things for Adrian instead of for herself.” Diana’s thoughts ran on. “Mummy’s right, though. Petty will be left some miserable little legacy. Mummy will get that hideous diamond sunburst and maybe a fur coat, and everything else will go to—”
She looked again at the door. A tall, absent-looking young man in a somewhat battered Burberry had entered the shop, and through horn-rimmed spectacles was scanning the crowded tables. He had the air of trying to recollect just why he had come, and yet he seemed eager, keyed-up with a sort of apprehensive expectancy. Diana sprang up, wormed her way through the throng, and before he had seen her touched his arm.
Adrian Somervell jumped. His near-sighted brown eyes lit with a glad, nervous brightness, but he did not speak, only gripped her hand, let it fall, and swallowed hard.
“You have kept me hanging about!” she chid him. “Look, there’s our table, at the back—and, by the way, I shan’t come here again. This place is spoiled. What are you having? Poached eggs, I suppose?”
He had stripped off his Burberry and dumped it on the floor by the wall. Now he was seated opposite her, regarding her with a fixed gaze till the hovering waitress caused him to start.
“Eggs? Good Lord, no! I’m not hungry. Tea—coffee—oh, anything!”
“Tea and crumpets,” Diana ordered briskly. She was used to attending to such matters, but she wondered why, for once, Adrian was less famished than a sandwich-lunch usually left him. Altogether he was not himself. He was staring at her still in a shy, speculative way that for the first time in their renewed acquaintance made her self-conscious. She put up a barrage of light chatter between herself and the new awkwardness which for some obscure reason had descended on them both.
“The family doesn’t know yet about our company going on the rocks. I didn’t want to worry Mummy till she’d got her first night over. Did you see the notices of her new play?”
“Notices? Your mother’s, did you say?”
“Adrian!” She gave him up in despair. “Don’t you ever know what’s going on outside your hospital? Last night. The Trafalgar. Went over with a bang. Here, wake up!”
“That’s great,” he murmured, contrite and vague. “No, I thought both your parents were out of town. I’ve not been round since you left. And you? Planning to stick here for a bit?”
“If I’m lucky enough to land a part. I’m a makeweight actress, Adrian. I ought to be behind a typewriter, not footlights. Funny, isn’t it? There’s Mummy, practical as they make them, but able to do whatever she likes with an audience; and there’s Daddy, brimming over with temperament, but can’t act for nuts. I must have drawn the wrong combination, that’s all. Between ourselves, I’m ready to chuck it.”
“Chuck the stage? You mean you wouldn’t mind?” He was playing for time. How irritating of him!
“Mind? Don’t be silly! Here, look to your crumpets. Do eat them while they’re hot.”
She dropped three lumps of sugar in his cup and handed him the fork he was vaguely seeking. Round and round he stirred his tea, no longer looking at her; and now it struck her that his brown hair was very sprucely brushed, and that the flecks of red in his lean cheeks added enormously to his appearance. Why, he was definitely good-looking! Or was it some change in herself which made her see a greater attraction in him than ever before? Her eyes dwelt on his mouth. It was a reticent, stubborn mouth, somehow curiously defenceless. The sight of it brought a sudden lump into her throat. At no time had Adrian attempted to kiss her—a thing she could not have said about her other men friends; and now she felt a pang to think that he would soon be going away without leaving her the knowledge of what it was like to—to—
“Adrian!” she cried. “Don’t tell me that’s a new suit!”
He was blushing.
“I slipped round to my digs to put it on,” he said simply. “It made me late. Do you like it?”
“Do I! Immensely! A new tie, too. Dark red suits you. But why all this grandeur just for me? Go on, out with it. Is it a job?”
“A job? Oh, no, not at all. I say, you did get my wire, didn’t you? Yes, naturally. Well, then, I rather wanted you to be the first to know. That is, I—” He stammered, confused, and disjointedly mumbled: “Most stupefying luck. Knocked me endways, it has. Altered my whole outlook. Can you guess what’s happened to me since I saw you?”
Now she understood—and the certainty stabbed her to the quick. Adrian, her comrade, had got himself engaged. He was head over heels in love—and shy about telling her. Swiftly she tried to imagine who the girl could be. The woman at his boarding-house—Uncle Nick Blundell’s secretary—was out of the question, therefore it was—oh, of course!—the American heiress to Tobacco Combine millions, she who had trailed him across the Atlantic to dangle her plutocratic invitations before his study-fogged eyes. Avid little huntress! So she had won out after all. . . .
“Well?” Diana smiled encouragement. “I’m listening.”
“Changes everything,” he muttered. “From my viewpoint, that is. Here—read this letter.” He pulled a long, folded sheet from his pocket and shoved it across to her. “That’ll tell you.”
Uncomprehendingly she stared at the heading. This was no love-letter. Nicholas G. Blundell? Why, he was a solicitor, her godfather, as it happened, and Aunt Rose Somervell’s close friend! She glanced at the communication and uttered a gasp.
“But, Adrian!” she whispered. “Is this true?”
“Oh, yes. Blundell himself drew it up. It is pretty astounding, isn’t it?”
“Astounding! Why, Adrian, I . . . but wait, let me read it through.”
With knit brows she pored over the letter—and as she read her bewilderment grew. In dry, legal language, as though stating the most ordinary fact, it announced that Mrs. Rose Somervell, by her last will and testament, had bequeathed the bulk of her property to her divorced husband’s only son, Adrian Somervell.