Enchanting Samantha. Бетти Нилс
he didn’t like her all that much, either.
But as the evening wore on she was bound to admit that he was allowing none of his true feelings towards her to show; indeed he was friendly in a cool kind of way, although he made no effort to single her out. He spent a good deal of time talking to Mrs Fielding, whose cosy chuckles and tinkling laugh bore tribute to the pleasure she was having in his company. Her granddaughter, listening to the Squire boring on about winter grazing and the price of animal foodstuffs, wished, quite unfairly, that her grandmother wasn’t enjoying herself quite so much; it was ridiculous of her, old enough to know better, to succumb to the man’s charm so easily.
‘You’re frowning, Sam,’ the Squire interrupted himself to say. ‘Perhaps you don’t agree with me about this question of silage.’
Samantha’s wits were quick enough behind her placid face. ‘The Common Market countries—’ she began, apropos of nothing at all and hoping that it might mean something to her companion.
It did. ‘Clever girl,’ he praised her, ‘you’re thinking of the price of beef…’ He launched himself happily into a further explanation which only necessitated her saying: ‘You don’t say,’ or ‘Yes, I see,’ or ‘Well, I never,’ at intervals. She had turned her shoulder to her grandmother and the doctor, but she could still hear her grandmother’s delighted chuckles.
They left soon after ten o’clock, and Samantha, who was driving again, was deeply mortified when she clashed the gears and put the Morris into reverse by mistake, in full view of the Squire and the doctor, who had come out to see them off. It was dark except for the powerful lights from the house; she had no doubt that if she could have seen Doctor ter Ossel clearly he would have been both amused and mocking.
That her grandparents had enjoyed themselves was evident from their conversation during the short drive home, and over their bedtime cocoa Mrs Fielding remarked: ‘I liked that Doctor what’s-his-name—Giles. Such a nice young man, don’t you think, Sam?’
Samantha was filling hot water bottles at the sink. ‘I don’t know, Granny,’ her voice was prim. ‘I suppose he’s all right.’
Her grandmother spooned the sugar from the bottom of her cup and gave her a bright glance which she then turned upon her husband, ending it with a wink. He lowered a wrinkled eyelid himself and rumbled obligingly:
‘Yes, yes—a very good sort of chap, I thought. Humphries-Potter tells me that he’s considered very promising as a physician, too—does quite a bit of consulting work, I gather, and comes over here from time to time. Quite young, too.’
A bait to which Samantha rose. ‘How young?’ she wanted to know.
‘Thirty-five,’ declared her grandfather in an offhand manner. ‘He has a practice in Haarlem, I’m told. Got his M. D. Cantab. too, as well as a fistful of Dutch degrees. Clever fellow.’
Samantha, washing cups and saucers, was thinking up a few careless questions to follow this interesting information, but her grandfather was a little too quick for her. He stood up and walked to the door.
‘Well, I shall turn in,’ he observed, and after kissing her, stumped upstairs, leaving her with her curiosity sufficiently aroused to prevent her from falling asleep for quite a long time.
She was up early, all the same, taking up tea to the old people, attending to Stubbs’ wants, pottering round the little house, tidying up and getting breakfast, so that it was after that meal was finished and the remainder of the chores done that she was up in her room again, doing something to her face. The beds were made, the coffee hot on the side of the stove; there was little left to do. Samantha sat before the old-fashioned dressing table, not seeing her own reflection but Doctor ter Ossel’s strong features. She closed her eyes upon it, brushed her hair into a shining brown curtain and tied it back with a ribbon. She was pulling at its loops when there was a knock on the front door and she poked her head out of the window to see who it was before going downstairs.
There were two people; Mrs Humphries-Potter and Doctor ter Ossel, and as that lady was already looking up at the window Samantha had opened, it was impossible to withdraw her head and pretend she wasn’t there.
She called down politely: ‘Good morning, I’m just coming,’ and heard her grandfather going to open the door as she spoke.
In the kitchen she added two more cups and saucers to the coffee tray and carried it in the sitting room, where Doctor ter Ossel politely took it from her while Mrs Humphries-Potter exclaimed: ‘Giles is so anxious to see the Beach, and I’m such a bad walker, as you know, so I hit on this perfectly splendid idea of Samantha acting as guide in my place. She knows this district so well and can answer any questions Giles might ask.’
She turned her head, crowned with a mud-coloured Henry Heath hat, and smiled at Samantha, who didn’t smile back. ‘I’ve a great deal to do,’ she started to say. ‘There’s lunch to get ready and I was going to make some cakes…’
Her grandmother wasn’t on her side, though. ‘Nonsense, Sam,’ she said quickly, ‘you’ve done everything, I saw you with my own eyes, and the cakes can be made after lunch. You run along and enjoy yourself, dear.’
‘I could always go alone,’ interposed the doctor in a voice which somehow conveyed bravely concealed resignation at the prospect. ‘I daresay there are plenty of books I can read to discover what I should want to know.’ He turned his eyes upon Samantha and they were dancing with mirth. ‘I shouldn’t like to impose…’
She all but ground her teeth at him. ‘I’ll go and put a coat on,’ she told him ungraciously, and fled upstairs, to fling on the old tweed coat, bundle her hair under its hood, snatch up some woolly mitts, and run downstairs again, her face a little pink with temper and some other feeling she refused to acknowledge.
It wasn’t much of a morning; they walked briskly down the lane which led seawards under a sky covered with high grey cloud, while a fitful wind blew in their faces. The doctor, hatless and wearing a Burberry which emphasized the width of his shoulders as well as being gloved expensively in pigskin, didn’t appear to notice the weather, however. He carried on a cheerful conversation about nothing in particular, to which Samantha contributed but little, answering with a determined politeness and a faint coolness of manner, for she had no intention of succumbing to his charm. She had no doubt, she told herself crossly, that if there had been another girl boasting the good looks she didn’t have, he wouldn’t have come near her that morning.
They had walked right down to the coastguards’ houses facing Chesil Beach itself, and she began to explain with meticulous thoroughness, as though she were a guide making something clear to a foreigner, that the Beach was seventeen miles long, that the stones at one end were much larger than those at the other, that if he chose to search, he might find Wolf’s rock from Cornwall, Devon granite, quartz rock and banded rhyolite, that if he were interested there was no reason why he should not take one of the larger pieces home with him—people used them for paperweights. ‘The Beach changes from day to day,’ she went on, a little prosily. ‘The tides…’
‘Why do you dislike me?’ He cut her off in full spate and left her openmouthed. ‘Or rather, why will you not let yourself like me?’
She remembered to close her mouth while she sought for words. ‘I—’ she began, and then burst out with: ‘What difference could it possibly make?’ Her hazel eyes were bright with sudden rage. ‘I don’t know anything about you; I shan’t ever see you again…’
He smiled faintly. ‘But you don’t enjoy my company? Come, let us be honest.’
She said wildly: ‘But I’ve not been in your company—I don’t…’
‘Know me? Don’t repeat yourself, Samantha. Perhaps given the opportunity, you might get to know me better.’ He sounded so very sure of himself that she said instantly, not meaning a word of it: ‘I have no wish to know you better—no wish at all. We’d better go back or you’ll be late for your lunch.’
He appeared not in