A Nightingale Sang Read online

  “Very well, let’s leave it at that. If I take you back and dance with you, we may both be disillusioned and that, I think, would be a mistake.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “I want to go first, but incidentally, I am not going back to the dance. I am going to walk, think of what we have said to each other and look at my future in a different way from what I’ve done before.”

  “I hope you will find – everything you – seek.”

  “Perhaps you have given me an idea of what I am seeking. I don’t know yet. I have to think about it by myself.”

  “I shall – think too.”

  “Yes, do that, but remember above everything I have told you, not to let anything spoil you. Hold on to your ideals, and never, never accept second best.”

  The man rose as he spoke and she looked up seeing his dark outline, realising that he was tall and broad-shouldered.

  Then he put out his hand and drew her to her feet.

  “I want to wish you luck,” he said, “and I want too to say goodbye to my heart and my conscience.”

  He pulled her closer to him as he spoke.

  She did not struggle or try to prevent him and he had an idea that she was feeling, as he was, that it was all unreal.

  Then very gently, as a man might kiss a flower, he found her lips.

  It was a kiss that might have been part of a dream, almost inhuman, and yet the softness and innocence of her mouth was an enchantment that he had never known in his whole life.

  Instinctively his arms tightened, his lips became a little more possessive and he felt a quiver go through her.

  Then resolutely and without speaking he released her and, turning, walked from the Temple out between the pillars and into the garden.

  He walked towards the gate not looking back, but, as he went, he was almost certain that he heard a nightingale singing overhead in the trees.

  *

  1921

  Down the long drive Sir Harry Wayte had his first glimpse of his house ahead and thought as he did so that there was no place in the whole world quite so attractive or so beautiful.

  Kings Wayte had been built early in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, but it was not until King Charles II stayed there a century later that he changed its name.

  Owing to difficulties on the road and incompetence of his staff, the King’s mistress, who was due to join him at a party given by the owner of the house, had not arrived until long after she was due.

  “My impatience has grown with every hour that has passed,” he told her when she finally arrived.

  “Your Majesty had to wait through no fault of mine!” she retorted.

  The King had laughed.

  “Whoever we blame I was still kept waiting,” he said. “In future this house will always remain in my memory as the King’s Wait!”

  Sir Harry’s ancestor had thought such a christening an amusing jest and the family house of the Waytes had from that time forward, been known as ‘Kings Wayte’.

  There had been rich Waytes, poor Waytes, Waytes who had squandered their money and those who had hoarded it.

  But Sir Harry thought as he drove across the bridge that spanned the lake that there had never been a Wayte who was quite as impecunious as he was at this moment.

  As if the car that he was driving wished to express its own feelings, it began to backfire, then to move jerkily forward until it came to a standstill a few yards from the front door.

  Before Sir Harry could get out, a girl came running down the steps.

  “Harry, you are here!” she exclaimed. “I was worried in case something had happened to you.”

  “I’ve had the devil of a time, Aleta,” her brother answered.

  “As far as I can make out, the car’s only firing on one cylinder and I have run out of petrol!”

  “Hitchen will see to it. You are here and that is all that matters!”

  Harry climbed out of the car pulling off his cap and goggles as he did so.

  It was an open and very ancient vehicle, a 1910 model that he had bought cheap and which had given endless trouble ever since he had owned it.

  But then, as he had said often enough, what could you expect for the small amount of money he could afford to pay?

  His sister slipped her arm into his and drew him up the steps.

  “Tea is waiting for you and if you are hungry you can have a boiled egg.”

  “No – I’ll wait for dinner. You look distressingly thin. What have you been doing to yourself?”

  “There has been an awful lot to do in the house and I suppose too I have been worrying.”

  “Can we do anything else?”

  “I suppose not.”

  “I have a solution that will stop us worrying for a little while, but you may not like it.”

  His sister looked at him apprehensively.

  Harry threw his cap and goggles down on a chair and pushed his fair hair back from his forehead.

  He was a handsome young man and there was a faint resemblance between brother and sister for Aleta was also fair, but her eyes, which seemed to fill her small pointed face, were grey while her brother’s were blue.

  “Come and tell me all about it,” she said. “Then I have some bad news for you.”

  “Bad news?” Harry asked quickly.

  “The ceiling has fallen down in the Tapestry room. I heard a crash in the night and wondered what it could be. You have never seen such a mess!”

  “That’s the third in the last month. We’ll have to get them repaired.”

  “Repaired! How can we afford it?”

  “That is what I am just going to tell you.”

  Aleta looked at him apprehensively as they walked into a large and beautifully proportioned room with diamond-paned casements, which overlooked the lawns that sloped down to the lake.

  It was a room with an atmosphere and the furniture was part of it and had been there for generations.

  But the carpet was nearly threadbare and the curtains had faded to a very pale echo of the rose pink they had once been.

  There was a tea table in the window and on it was a silver tray containing a silver teapot with the Wayte crest on it. It looked somehow surprisingly small and the milk jug and sugar basin were not of the same period.

  Aleta, as she sat down at the table, forced herself not to think of the beautiful George III set that they had sold only a month ago.

  She poured out a cup of tea for her brother and one for herself and then she said,

  “You said you had a – solution.”

  He knew by the tone of her voice and the anxiety in her eyes what she feared and he said quickly,

  “No, I am not intending to abandon the house – not yet.”

  “Oh, Harry, I lay awake all last night worrying in case that was what you meant to do. I could not bear to watch Kings Wayte fall down!”

  “We may have to do so later,” Harry replied. “How could father have died owing so much money?”

  It was a question that they had asked themselves thousands of times already and, although Aleta knew that there were some more or less reasonable answers, she did not bother to make them. She merely waited for Harry to explain himself.

  “What I have to say,” he said tentatively, taking a cucumber sandwich from the plate in front of him, “may shock you. At the same time I think you will agree it has possibilities.”

  Aleta drew in her breath, but she did not speak.

  “I have a chance to let the house for a year!”

  The words seemed almost to be forced from between Harry’s lips and there was an uncomfortable silence until Aleta said faintly,

  “Let – it? But who – to?”

  “An American.”

  Then quickly, as if he thought he had better get it over, Harry said,

  “It was Cosgrove who suggested it. I was in the Club wondering if I could afford to buy myself a drink and he came up to me and said,

  “‘Hello, Wayte. I wanted to s
ee you.’

  “‘What about?’ I asked.

  “‘I know you own one of the finest houses in England and it’s just what I am looking for at the moment.’

  “‘Looking for?’ I echoed rather stupidly.

  “‘I have an American client who wants to come over here and do things in style. As a matter of fact he intends to marry off his daughter to a Duke. It is a pity that you are not a Marquis or an Earl, otherwise he might have settled for you!’”

  Harry paused and then he said,

  “I felt like punching him for his impertinence, but you know Cosgrove. That sort of joke is his sense of humour.”

  Aleta had never met Cosgrove, but she had heard of him often enough from her brother.

  He had set himself up as a kind of universal provider and was making a lot of money out of it.

  He had been in the same Regiment as Harry and, while other Officers wandered around wondering what they should do when the war was over, Captain Charles Cosgrove had made himself a go-between, a purchasing agent, with a success that gave him the reputation of being able to obtain everything anyone might require.

  If a friend wanted a reliable hunter he found it, if someone else wanted a cheap or an expensive car, Cosgrove procured it.

  There were even rumours that he had the telephone numbers of some very attractive women, but this piece of information Harry had not passed on to his sister.

  Now he continued,

  “I was just about to say I would not dream of letting Kings Wayte, especially to an American, when Cosgrove said, ‘my client is prepared to pay through the nose and I mean that! I thought of asking him for five thousand pounds for the rent and everything extra on top of that’.”

  “Five thousand pounds?” Aleta exclaimed. “He could not have said that!”

  “He did and it took my breath away,” Harry admitted. “Then he explained that Wardolf, that is the American’s name, is a millionaire several times over. He owns half the railroads in America and so many oil wells that even Cosgrove has lost count of them!”

  “But – five thousand – pounds!” Aleta said hardly above a whisper.

  “I thought you would be impressed,” Harry said, “but there’s more to it than that.”

  “In what way?”

  “Apparently this American has no wife and he therefore wants the house to be in perfect running order for himself and his daughter. He intends to entertain in a big way and he wants us to provide the servants, the horses, the cars, the gardeners and every other facility you can think of.”

  Aleta was speechless and she could only stare at her brother as Harry went on,

  “It’s not going to be easy and we have only a month in which to prepare everything before he arrives at the end of May.”

  “But, Harry – !”

  “I know, I know!” her brother interrupted, “but Cosgrove says we can spend anything we like in getting the house ready. We can paint, repair and buy new linen and new carpets if we want to. All Wardolf wants is to be able to stay here and give huge parties to introduce his daughter to the right people.”

  Harry grinned.

  “Cosgrove will see to that! Of that you can be sure.”

  “But how – can we? It’s – impossible!”

  “We have to make it possible because as you and I well know we can not only do with five thousand pounds, but all the other pickings as well. Think what it would mean to have a new carpet in this room, for instance.”

  “But, Harry, how can we find workmen, servants and all the other things in a month?”

  “We have to and what is more I was thinking as I came down that we shall have to supervise everything ourselves.”

  “You mean – stay on here with our – tenants?”

  Harry was silent.

  Then he said,

  “You are not going to like this, Aleta, but it was Cosgrove’s idea, that you and I should stay to run things. Incognito, so to speak.”

  “I – don’t – understand.”

  “Then let me put it very plainly. You will be the person who runs the house and I will see to everything else.”

  “You said – incognito.”

  “That is exactly what I meant. Obviously it would be embarrassing for the Americans if they knew that we owned the place, so we have to pretend that we are the servants of the owner and are acting on his behalf. The only problem is deciding what we shall call ourselves.”

  Aleta rose to her feet.

  “I think you’re mad! We cannot do it! We will be found out! The whole thing is an impossibility!”

  Harry’s lips tightened.

  Then he said slowly,

  “Not if we have unlimited money to spend.”

  “Unlimited?”

  “That is what Cosgrove said. As a matter of fact he is in a fix. He has tried all the other big houses near London, which is where Wardolf wishes to be and there is not one available. This is his last hope and he is determined not to lose the very large commission he will receive on all the arrangements. And he will help us in every possible manner, you can be sure of that.”

  “And I would be – the – housekeeper!”

  “You know as well as I do that we could not have a team of strange servants mixed up with our old lot unless there is someone to give the orders and to keep everything running smoothly.”

  This was irrefutable and Aleta was silent, knowing that the few elderly women left in the house whom they could not afford to pension off, would never get on with strangers or know what to do unless she was there.

  It was not, she felt, that the position would be ignominious. It was just that the whole thing seemed such a colossal task that she was afraid of the vast amount of detail that must be seen to.

  She knew better than Harry the state the house was in. It had been left to crumble during the war with only a few very ancient retainers to look after herself and her Governess.

  Most of the time their father had lived in London having a vague job, which was never very clearly defined, at the War Office.

  He had died last year and they had both been appalled to find the amount of money he owed.

  When Harry had returned from France, where he had been the last year of the war, he had nearly cried when he saw not only the state of the house but also the stables and the gardens.

  “When I think what it used to be like,” he kept saying to Aleta and she too had felt like crying.

  In order to live and to pay off their father’s creditors to whom they had promised some sort of repayment month by month, it had been necessary to sell many of their most precious possessions.

  It had broken Harry’s heart, Aleta knew, not only to part with the silver that had been in the family for generations but also a number of the pictures.

  She knew, although neither of them mentioned it, that because a particularly fine Gainsborough had gone to America they could neither of them think of that country without feeling something suspiciously like hatred.

  Yet it was an American who would now move into Kings Wayte and Aleta found herself already resenting it and realised that she was being foolish.

  “Have you really – decided to do this?” she asked.

  “What alternative is there?” he replied, “except to sell more pictures?”

  She knew that he was fighting to keep other family portraits done by Reynolds and Lawrence, which they both loved, but which they knew day after day grew nearer to going under the auctioneer’s hammer.

  It was the thought of the Gainsborough that made Aleta make up her mind.

  “I’ll do anything for five thousand pounds!”

  “And let’s not forget all the repairs and redecoration as well,” Harry added.

  “You will have to repair the stables. You could not put a horse or even a car under the holes in the roof.”

  “I realise that.”

  He put his hand in his inner pocket and drew out a piece of paper, which he lay down on the tea table.

&
nbsp; Aleta looked down. It was a cheque for one thousand pounds.

  “Oh, Harry – !” she breathed.

  “That is for our immediate expenses,” he explained. “Cosgrove said any big bills like repairs, furnishings and anything else we need to buy we can send to him.”

  Aleta’s grey eyes widened.

  She was just beginning to understand what this would mean and she felt a little wave of excitement sweep over her.

  “I cannot – believe it’s true! You must be – making it all up!”

  “It is true,” Harry replied, “and, although it may be damned awkward in some ways turning ourselves into superior servants and being ordered about by an American, we shall just have to remember that it will pay off most of father’s debts and Kings Wayte will get the repairs it badly needs.”

  Aleta sat down beside him again and put her arms round his neck.

  “If we can do that it would be worth working as a galley slave. Oh, Harry, I have worried terribly, thinking that the only solution would be to sell the house and the estate.”

  “As a matter of fact I cannot do that,” Harry said. “I know we have talked about it, but it is entailed. Not that I shall ever be able to afford to have a son!”

  There were tears in Aleta’s eyes, but her lips were smiling.

  “Our luck has changed!” she said. “It’s just as if a huge black cloud has lifted and we are sitting in the sunshine! Now, nothing will have to go, not even the other Gainsborough.”

  Harry smiled too.

  “I cannot do this without your help.”

  “Of course I will help you. And it will be fun because we will be doing it together. We will have to start work right away.”

  “That is what I thought,” Harry agreed, “so I stopped in the village on the way here. Johnson says he will be up to see us within the hour.”

  “Then he had better bring his tools with him,” Aleta laughed. “He is going to need them!”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Aleta gave a deep sigh and sat down on the sofa.

  “I cannot do anymore!” she complained, “and if anything’s not to their satisfaction they are just going to have to put up with it!”

  “You have been marvellous!” Harry said, “And I have told Johnson that all his men shall have a bonus. They have really done miracles!”