Black Plumes Read online

  There was nervous tension in every word and Lucar shrugged his shoulders. He slid off the edge of the desk where he had been sitting and, turning towards the door, caught sight of Frances.

  "Why, it's Miss Ivory," he said, giving the name an unction which was both arch and insulting. That's cheered up my afternoon. Mind you, wait. I'll be down in a minute." He flashed a meaning smile at her and bounced out, leaving them all uncomfortable.

  "Hello, Frances." Robert forced an unconvincing smile. "You've met Mr. Field, haven't you?"

  "I should hope so." The painter sprang up. "She was my first client. I painted her when she was fourteen. The fee Meyrick paid me got me into the U.S. Hence my career. Hallo, Frances love, I'm very depressed. Someone's been sticking knives into my beautiful senorita. It's the insult that gets one down. Madrigal doesn't appreciate that. What are you doing now? Come out and have a sherry. Or is it out of hours? I can't get used to my home town again after years of freedom. Well, never mind, let's go and eat ice cream."

  He was talking to relieve her from any embarrassment which Lucar's reception might have afforded her and she was grateful.

  "There's nothing I'd like better," she said honestly.

  "Fine. We'll go now before Little Consequential re-turns, shall we?" The sneer was a very gentle one, considering, and she was surprised at his restraint. Most people's pet names for Lucar were less polite.

  Robert cleared his throat. "I didn't think you'd be going out, Frances," he said. The words came haltingly and with so much suppressed irritation behind them that they turned to stare at him. Frances caught the message in his eyes and was indignant. He was actually ordering her to stay because Lucar had expressed a wish to see her.

  "Oh, but I am," she said firmly. "I don't get a sound offer of ice cream every day. Shall we go now?"

  She held out her hand to Field impulsively, and he took it at once and tucked her arm through his.

  "I painted her licking an ice-cream cornet," be remarked grinning at Robert. "The sticky highlights round the chin were masterly. Where is that picture, by the way?"

  "In Meyrick's bedroom." Frances spoke absently and added with an ingenuousness which she knew to be undignified, "Oh, do come on."

  "Poor woman, she's starving," said Field. "Righto, ducky. Did you think you can bear up until we get across the road?"

  He swept her out of the room, still laughing, and they left Robert standing behind the desk, his shaking hands resting on the blotting paper.

  Looking back on that scene in the long, terrifying days to follow Frances Ivory was to wonder how much might have been altered, how much disaster averted, had they stayed beside him.

  3

  They went to the Cafe Royal, which was practically deserted at that hour of the day, and as Frances played with the sundae she did not want she considered Field afresh. At fourteen she had decided that he titled the somewhat exacting requirements of her ideal man. He had been younger then than she had supposed, and now it occurred to her that the seven years between twenty-five and thirty-two had not altered him particularly. He still had the fine head with the sensitive, almost ascetic features, which were contradicted by his expression which was both lazy and sophisticated. There was no Grey in his dark hair, and his square painter's hands were hard and full, like a boy's.

  "What's going on at your place?" He put the question casually and seemed surprised when she avoided his glance.

  "How do you mean?" she said defensively.

  He stirred and she knew he was smiling, with his mouth drawn down at the corners.

  "You don't want to talk about it. All right. I rather got the impression you did. Sorry. We'll talk about string."

  "Why? Did you notice anything?" She realized that the question was absurd as soon as she had put it and he laughed,

  "I did, as a matter of fact." he said. "Either Phillida's husband or that painful little excrescence with the ginger hair stuck a penknife into one of my best paintings. You may feel it's negligible, but it's not the sort of treatment your poor papa would give a canvas he was commissioned to sell, or at least I don't think so unless times have changed while I've been staggering round God's own country. I may be wrong, too, but I thought you were in a spot of trouble yourself. My dear child, you positively clung to me. It was most touching. Don't apologies. I liked it. My youth came rushing back with all the vine leaves and tendrils of romance. However, don't bother. Don't open up the family bone cupboard if you don't want to. But if you do here am I with nothing on hand, safe, sound and respectable, also eager to sympathize. What's up? The ginger twerp has something on Robert, has he?"

  "Blackmail, you mean?" Now that the word was out it did not seem quite so terrible.

  "Well, I don't know." He was being cautiously casual. "I don't suppose Robert did the knifing himself, and when one chap covers up another with such desperate determination the evil thought has a way of cropping up in one's mind. It's horribly bad for business, though, that sort of thing. I'm quite remarkably easygoing, even for a painter, and I'm sitting here seething. Do you realist that?"

  Frances looked at him sharply. His tone had changed slightly and she caught him unawares. Behind his smile his round dark eyes were sincerely furious. He caught short her stream of apology.

  "I don't want that, my dear," he said. "It's nothing to do with you or your old man either. Those two lads evidently have something on and I rather wondered what it was. That was all. Had any other trouble?"

  He made it so easy. Frances had experienced one disastrous attempt to confide that afternoon and now she found in him the ideal listener. She told him the story. She described the little incident of the broken Kang-Tse vase in the antique room, mentioned the infuriating affair of the special catalog prepared for royalty only to be discovered, a heap of charred remains, ten minutes before the august personage was due to arrive, and sketched in the circumstances which had led to the resignation of the invaluable old Peterson who had been with the firm for thirty years.

  It was a curious history. The series of suspicious incidents, each one a little more serious than the last, made up a considerable sum of disaster, and the underlying fear in the young voice was appealing. He listened to her attentively.

  "It's not good, old girl," he said at last. "In fact it's damned disturbing. They're not the little petty things which an office boy might do in a fit of ingrowing adolescence, either. The vase was darned near priceless, I suppose? Peterson was important and my picture might have caused a hell of a row if I hadn't been so blessed slack. What are you going to do? It's difficult to get Meyrick back at once, I take it? You're all pretty sure that Ginger is the man?"

  "Oh yes, I think so." Frances spoke soberly and afterward she shivered a little as an unbidden thought crept into her mind. He noticed the gesture immediately. He was amazingly sensitive to her least reaction, she realized, and put it down to his vast and notorious experience.

  "Who is he?" he inquired. "Where did he come from?"

  She began to explain, and a light of comprehension passed over his face.

  "Dolly Godolphin's Tibetan expedition? The secret climb through the Himalayan pass?" he said. "I read about that at the time. Wonderfully exciting. They were very interested in it in the States. All the papers reported it. Robert and Lucar were the only two to return, were they? Oh well, that accounts for a lot. Ginger probably saved Robert's life or something. That show was a sporting effort all round. All kinds of people might have thought up a project like that, but no one but Godolphin could possibly nave persuaded a tough old nut like Meyrick to finance him. Robert went as Art Adviser," if I remember? I bet that was Meyrick's idea. I can hear him insisting that Dolly take someone who could tell a valuable from a mere curio. I can't exactly see Robert on an adventure like that, though. It's odd, isn't it? It always is the rabbit who returns while the lion is left to bleach in the sun. Godolphin was an extraordinary chap. He would have reveled in your present situation, by the way. You knew him, of course?"


  She nodded. "I saw quite a lot of him in the school holidays during my last year. He and Phillida ran round together quite a bit."

  "So they did." His eyes were wide and amused. "Your half sister believed in numbers."

  Frances looked at him briefly. It had been true, then. Phillida had always added Field to her list of conquests but there was never any guarantee with Phillida's reminiscences. Field, then, and Godolphin and half a dozen others; they had all been in love with Phillida, who had forgotten them for a string of imaginary ailments and who had married in the end Robert, of all people. It seemed to Frances that the older she grew the more extraordinary life became.

  "Robert stuck," she said slowly, continuing her thought aloud. "The others drifted away and Godolphin got lost in Tibet, but Robert stuck. He's got a sort of character under all that nerviness, you know. There's a sort of determination about him which is almost terrifying. He gets his own way if it's only by sticking to his point long after everyone is exhausted. That's why I'm so stupidly afraid, I suppose."

  David nicked her up. 'That's a strong word," he said. "Why afraid? I didn't know people of your age were ever anything so undignified."

  "Robert wants me to marry Lucar," she said frankly, "and although I know it's absurd he has such an uncanny way of getting what he wants that I sometimes feel that I might go mad and do it."

  He caught her expression and his eyebrows rose.

  "Ginger?" he demanded. 'This isn't serious, is it? I shouldn't stand for that. That's damned insulting. Robert's nuts, of course."

  His unusual vehemence was comforting and she grinned at him.

  "He's such a little tick," she said and he nodded.

  "He makes himself a bit of a nuisance, I suppose? That type can. They're the only specimens left alive. The women seem to have got the rest of us to heel, but that thick-skinned bumptious breed can make themselves a blot on the landscape for years. They're unsnubbable. You don't like to go off to the South, of course, because of the trouble, I suppose? Yes, well that's not good, Frances my love. You're in a mess."

  She smiled at him wryly. It was very comforting and pleasant to be in his company. He had ease and friendliness and, above all, that curious sophisticated sympathy which made talking to him a Rolls-Royce affair.

  "You'd better get engaged," he said. They’ll scotch all that nonsense until Meyrick returns. Betrothal is old fashioned, I know, but it has its virtues, like flannel. Any likely lad about?"

  She laughed. "No one I could ask," she said.

  He did not seem to be particularly amused. "It ought to be someone you know or it might lead to marriage," he said seriously. "When's your father due home?"

  "January or February."

  "A long time. Phillida's just her own sweet self. I take it?"

  "Just about."

  "Oh. Well, suppose I take you out now and buy you a ring? Not a violently expensive one, but decent enough to show the relations. Any good?" He had lost a great deal of his lightheartedness, and it flashed through her mind that he was embarrassed. She was astounded. David Field had one of those curious reputations which are based on no concrete fact, that is to say, although he was reputed to be a lion among women there were no actual names with which his own was linked. There had been no marriages, no divorces, no engagements. No one remembered any actual affair of any duration.

  He was watching her face and she reddened guiltily.

  "I'm not asking you to marry me and I don't suppose we ever should," he said with an abruptness which was unlike him. "I mean even if we became hysterical about each other and that sort of thing does happen, you'd be surprised there's the question of money. I'm very sensitive about money. I make a bit, quite enough to feed a healthy female, but I'm not outrageously rich and I never shall be. You've got an indecent amount of cash. That rather rules out marriage, you see. My blessed child, don't look at me like that. I know I'm insane on the subject. I wish I wasn't. It's a phobia with me. I was once accused of being a fortune hunter and I damned nearly killed the old woman who suggested it. I had an Indian club in my hand at the time honestly, this is no laughing matter and I raised it. I didn't hit her, thank God, but I was going to. I felt it. I've never been more frightened in my life. My hat, that was a near thing!"

  He sat back and it dawned on her that he was not entirely joking. His smile had vanished, and for an instant she saw determination in his eyes and a half frightened, half-passionate honesty.

  "So marriage is off," he resumed cheerfully, "unless, of course, you could see your way to a large-scale hospital endowment scheme, and I shouldn't do that for a hit because, you never know, we might not get on. However, joking apart, I don't go back to New York until April, and meanwhile if you'd care for an engagement ring let's go out and buy one."

  Frances remained silent. She was not even sure if he was serious. On the face of it the proposition was a wild one but it was attractive. Meanwhile he continued to regard her quizzically, his eyes half shut, his mouth drawn down in its familiar smile, and she wondered if he was laughing at her. As it happened, he was merely considering her with the dispassionate curiosity of the professional painter. He saw that the line bones which he had painted five years before were now more apparent and that the slightly upward line of the long narrow eyes, which had so delighted him when he first discovered it, had become accentuated. She was lovely, nor was it, he thought, the beaut du diable. When Frances Ivory was as old as Gabrielle she would have strength and breeding in her shapely head, character and sensitiveness in her wide mouth.

  "Well?" he said.

  "It would settle one of my difficulties until Meyrick comes home, but it seems a frightful imposition." She made the announcement dubiously and was then unreasonably dashed because he did not protest.

  "Anything to oblige an old client," he said lightly. "That's a bet then. We'll buy the ring, write the newspapers and go and tell the family. Ginger can bite his fingernails and Robert can lay off the matchmaking. They’ll be one embarrassment settled. When the time comes you can throw me over for another or we can quarrel about the ballet, which is a nice refined thing to do. Meanwhile stick to the story. That's the main thing."

  She hung back awkwardly.

  "You won't be upsetting anybody?" she inquired at last. "Any other woman. I mean."

  "I? Oh lord, no, I'm free, unattached and unbeloved." He laughed at her expression. "I'm doing you a signal honor in entrusting you with my precious liberty. I hope you realist that! I'm banking on your nice bringing-up.

  I've never even been engaged before. The old man is a frightful cad at heart. He always slithers out of it in the end. None of the objects of my adoration has ever got her hooks in me."

  "Why? Was it always money?"

  He frowned. "Eh?" he said. "Oh yes, money. That and other things. Come on, you'll have to have an aquamarine with those eyes."

  They were laughing again as they stepped into the street, and the fitful wind plucked at their sleeves and threw warm, soft rain in their eyes tormenting them, beseeching their attention. Afterward they both remembered it. As they went over each incident in that fateful day the motif of the squalling wind kept recurring like the thin blast of a warning trumpet, but they were deaf to it and went on their predestined way unaware.

  4

  "Where are they now? In the garden room? Oh, Frances, how could you do this? How could you?"

  Phillida Madrigal lay among the lace-covered cushions on her day bed and wept in the firelight.

  "It's the strain, the intolerable strain," she whispered. "Every little hideous sound sends a network of pain all over me. Wasn't it enough for me to be annihilated: by the impossible scene with Gabrielle without you rushing in and starting another with Robert and David Field?"

  Frances stood on the hearthrug of the white-paneled bedroom. It was typical of Phillida to behave like this after a row which had been nothing to do with her, she reflected.

  "I had no idea that Granny had come here, let al
one that she was still in the house," she said, twisting the new ring round her finger. "It never occurred to me that she might actually drive out and tackle Robert. She's so terrifyingly old. I didn't think she understood a word I said this afternoon."

  "Oh, she understood." Mrs. Phillida Madrigal forgot her tears in her anger. "She's as strong as a horse and as obstinate as a mule. I wish to God I had her strength. When she came in on old Dorothea's arm she positively dominated the entire house. Robert was mad to be rude to her. That was sheer idiocy. I stood there with my heart racing, which means I shall be a rag tomorrow. She listened to him, she let him rage, she let him say the most unforgivable things, and then she simply sat down and sent Dorothea out to prepare Meyrick's bedroom for her. Naturally Robert protested I did myself. How can she stay here? Is it reasonable? She was utterly obstinate. She said it had been her room for thirty years and she was going to bed in it. What could one do? There was nothing to say. I thought Robert was going to faint. He looked like a death's-head. Finally Dorothea took her up. Gabrielle ignored Robert. She simply looked through him. But she had heard what he said. She's dangerous, Frances. A hard, selfish, proud old woman. And she's in the house. It's your fault. You may have killed her. You may have started up anything. Oh, don't you think you ought to go down?"

  She was sitting up now, and the faint light was kind to her, taking out the petulant lines round her mouth and deepening the shadows round her eyes, burnishing the copper lights in her smooth hair.

  "Do go down to those two, Frances."

  "How can I?" The younger girl spoke wearily. "Robert said he wanted to talk to David alone. He could hardly have made himself more clear."

  Phillida got up and walked down the room, her lace negligee trailing on the dark carpet.

  "Frances," she said suddenly and with more force in her voice than her half sister had ever suspected it could contain, "have you ever thought that Robert might be mad?"