CHAPTER VIII A LETTER FROM ENGLAND
The postman, entering through the garden gate which opened on to the street, found Ann busily engaged in cutting flowers. He greeted her with a smile, pleased to be saved the remainder of the distance to the house.
“Bonjour, mademoiselle. Only one letter for the villa this morning.” He handed her the solitary missive which the mail had brought and departed, whistling cheerfully, on his way down the street.
Ann fingered the bulky envelope with satisfaction. It was addressed in Robin’s handwriting, and she carried it off to a sunny corner of the garden to enjoy its contents at leisure.
“Dear Little Ann”—ran the letter. “Here, at last is the good news
we have both been waiting for! I have been offered exactly the kind
of billet I wanted—that of estate-agent to a big land-owner. The
salary is a really generous one, and there’s a jolly little cottage
goes with it, so that you’ll be able to chuck free-lancing and come
and keep house for me as we’ve always planned. Needless to say,
I’ve accepted the job!
“And now to give you all details. My future employer is one, Eliot
Coventry. We’ve had several interviews and I liked him very much,
although he struck me as rather a queer sort of chap. I should put
him down as dead straight and thoroughly dissatisfied with life!
Heronsmere, the Coventry place, is a fine old house—one of those
old Elizabethan houses you’re so cracked on. It reminds me a bit of
Lovell Court. There’ll be a lot to see to on the estate, as the
bailiff in charge has just let things rip, and Coventry himself has
been out of England for some years. In fact, he has never lived at
Heronsmere. He’s a distant cousin of the late owner and only
inherited owing to a succession of deaths. He was abroad at the
time and never even troubled to come home and have a look at his
inheritance.
“One thing I know will please you, and that is that we shall be
near the sea. Silverquay is the name of the village, which is
really a part of the Heronsmere property. It’s comparatively small,
not much more than a little fishing village, but the town of
Ferribridge is only about ten miles distant, so you’ll be able to
obtain the necessities of civilised existence, I expect.
“Coventry wants me to take up the work straight away, so I should
like to move into Oldstone Cottage—our future place of abode—as
soon as possible. How soon do you think Lady Susan would spare you?
By the way, you won’t need to exercise your mind over the servant
question. Knowing you were fixed out in Switzerland, I wrote off at
once to Maria Coombe to ask her if she knew of any one suitable,
and she promptly suggested herself! So she goes to Oldstone Cottage
to-morrow to get things in order for us.
“I think I’ve told you everything. I’ve tried to imagine all the
questions you would want to ask—and to supply the answers!
“Ever your affectionate brother, “ROBIN.”
Ann laid the letter down on her knee and sat looking out across the lake with eyes which held a curious mixture of pleasure and regret. The idea of sharing life once more with Robin filled her with undiluted joy, but she was conscious that the thought of leaving Lady Susan and dear, gunny Switzerland created an actual little ache in her heart. She could quite imagine feeling rather homesick for Lady Susan’s kindly presence, and for the Swiss mountains and the blue lake which lay smiling and dimpling at her now in the brilliant sunlight.
Her glance lingered on the lake. She had not been on the water since the Venetian fête, nearly three weeks ago, owing primarily to the destruction of the Rêve, and secondly to Lady Susan’s incurable aversion to a hired boat. “They roll, my dear,” she asserted, when Ann vainly tried to tempt her into giving the hireling a chance. “And the cushions have villainous lumps in sundry places. No, I’ll stay on shore till we have a new boat of our own.”
So they had stayed on shore, but in spite of herself, Ann’s thoughts often travelled back to the occasion of that last journey she had made on the lake—with the purr of the motor-boat’s engine in her ears and the odd, unnerving consciousness of the Englishman’s close proximity. She would have liked to forget him, but there was something about the man which made this impossible. Ann admitted it to herself with an annoyed sense of the unreasonableness of it. He was nothing to her—not even an acquaintance, according to the canons of social convention—and in all human probability they would never meet again.