Deciding that she had chosen her prettiest dress and that, since it was warm, she didn’t need a coat, she ran down the wide corridor to the Old Gentleman’s room and tapped lightly. The door swung open to reveal a middle-aged, very competent-looking nurse in a crisp white uniform.
“May I speak to him for a minute, Miss Blanding?” Judy asked.
The nurse opened the door wide and glanced toward the bed where the Old Gentleman lay, breathing stertorously, looking like nothing so much as a figure carved from gray granite.
Judy’s heart contracted as though an iron fist had closed over it, as it always did when she saw him like this and remembered him strong, alert, very much the master of Oakhill! But she set her teeth, and went to the bedside and stood looking down at him.
“I don’t think he will hear you, Judy!” said Miss Blanding gently.
Judy bent and put her lips against the Old Gentleman’s ear and said very softly, “He’s coming home, darling. Isn’t that wonderful? Bix will be here in just a little while.”
She watched the gray, expressionless face and saw no faint flicker that would indicate that he had heard her. After a moment she turned away, tears smarting her eyelids as she all but ran out of the room, leaving the nurse to look after her pityingly.
Downstairs, Sam was waiting for Judy. As she came out of the house, he walked beside her to the waiting car and swung open the door for her. But he did not speak until the car was rolling down the drive, with its double border of rosy azaleas in full and triumphant bloom.
“Look, Judy, there’s something I think you should face up to,” he began.
Judy said instantly, “You mean that Bix may have forgotten me. But he hasn’t, any more than I could forget him! I’ve been waiting for him, Sam. He won’t have forgotten. He asked me to wait!”
“A long time ago, and a lot of water has flowed under the bridge since then, Judy.”
“Not enough to wash me out of Bix’s mind or his heart!” Judy insisted stubbornly.
Sam looked down at her, his lean, rugged, sun-bronzed and weatherbeaten face touched with a sadness that she could neither see nor understand. For, of course, she had never guessed that Sam Gillespie, direct descendant of one of the early adventurers who had accompanied the Bullard family when they first came to this new country, had been in love with her for years. But, since he was ten years older than she, he had not dared to make his love known. He told himself now and then that he was waiting for her to grow up. He’d never taken her interest in Bix seriously, especially during the years when Bix had stayed away, not even returning for vacations! But now that Bix was coming home, not because he wanted to but because he was called home by his grandfather’s illness, he could plainly see that Judy was still enveloped in her old dreams of Bix.
She had accepted Sam as a big brother, which was the last thing in the world that Sam wanted. But since they were both living at Oakhill, seeing each other daily, going to parties together, going to town for the movies, he had accepted the half-loaf of her liking and had not dared aspire to the full loaf of her love. He had kidded himself that some day she would discover he was there and waiting. And being the fool he was, he had kept hoping. But now that Bix was coming home, the hope had faded into nothingness. Not, he told himself, that there was any hope that Bix would stay on after the Old Gentleman died. For of course that was the only end to the illness that had striken him down as lightning strikes down a sturdy, stalwart oak. Bix would go back to New York, to London, Paris, and he would sell Oakhill. Which was a prospect so ugly to Sam that he pushed it out of his mind as he had done any time it thrust itself up from his subconsciousness.
The plane was already in when they reached the airport, and the passengers were alighting. Judy stood close against the wire-screen, her eyes eagerly searching, until at last she cried out eagerly, “There he is! There’s Bix!”
He came striding toward them, tall, young, very good-looking, well-tailored, debonair—all the words that Judy liked to apply to him, and that she had never felt fitted any of the young men she had known since Bix had gone away.
Sam watched him as he came striding along and murmured to himself, “The conquering hero to the life. And who in blazes is he planning to conquer? Not Judy, I’d bet a pretty penny on that!”
As he came through the gate, his eyes searching the crowd, Bix saw Sam and came swiftly forward, his handsome face beaming as he thrust out a hand.
“Sam, you old son of a gun!” he laughed. “It’s good to see you. You haven’t changed a bit.”
His eyes swung to Judy even as Sam managed an answer, and there was admiration in them but no hint of recognition.
“Hey, Sam, aren’t you going to introduce me?” Bix demanded, and smiled warmly at Judy.
Judy’s eyes widened, and she stammered, “Why, Bix, I’m Judy!”
Bix caught her hand and squeezed it and said gaily, “Well, hello, Judy,” He added, “Judy who?”
Sam watched their faces and saw humiliation dawn in Judy’s eyes at the shame of seeing that Bix not only did not recognize her but had obviously forgotten her.
“I’m Judy Ramsey, Bix,” she managed huskily. “You and I have known each other since we were infants. You used to baby-sit for me.”
“Did I, now? I was lucky even then, wasn’t I?” Bix laughed, and there was still not the faintest hint of recognition in his eyes.
Still holding her hand he turned to Sam and asked with a hint of anxiety, “How is my grandfather?”
“About the same. No change,” Sam said briefly as he supervised the porter stowing Bix’s not inconsiderable luggage in the car trunk.
“Does he know that I’m coming home?” asked Bix as the three of them walked toward the car.
“I told him before I left,” Judy said evenly. “But I’m not sure he realized what I was saying.”
Bix looked down at her. “You live at Oakhill?” he asked.
“Of course. My mother is the housekeeper, and I’m one of the stable boys that exercises the six thoroughbreds,” she mocked him, her eyes bitter.
“Hey! This isn’t going to be a dull visit at all, not with you around,” Bix assured her as he helped her into the car and slid into the seat beside her, with Sam behind the wheel.
And as though he suddenly realized what he had said, he added hastily, “Of course I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I’m very glad to be here when the Old Gentleman needs me. That is, if he does. I know he must have wanted me to come or you wouldn’t have sent for me.”
“Oh, we felt you would want to be here. When he had the stroke Dr. Dellinger said that he might linger for months, yet he might go out like a light at any moment,” Sam told him brusquely.
Bix looked startled, his brows coming together in a faint scowl.
“Oh, is his illness that serious?” he asked.
“A stroke, when you’re eighty, is never something to be taken lightly,” Sam drawled. Judy glanced at him swiftly, completely aware of the faint touch of contempt in Sam’s voice.
“I’m sorry,” Bix mumbled, abashed. “I didn’t realize it was that serious.”
The rest of the drive was made in silence, save for Bix making a polite remark now and then about the countryside through which they were driving and Sam’s equally polite answers.
When they came up the wide, circular drive and the house stood before them, stately pillars shining in the midday sunshine, the barns and stables well behind it, the sloping garden ablaze with spring bulbs and new grass, the trees shaking out their new green leaves, Bix said, “I’d forgotten how beautiful it is.”
Beth stood on the steps, greeting him pleasantly, her eyes going anxiously beyond him to Sam and Judy, while one of the house servants removed Bix’s luggage and carried it in the house.
Beth and the servant turned toward the house, and Bix paused to say to Judy, “I do hope I’ll see something of you while I’m here.”
Judy eyed him, her chin tilted, her eyes bleak.
“You could hardly avoid it, I’m afraid,” she told him evenly. “I live here.”
“Hi, that’s wonderful! I’ll be looking forward to getting much better acquainted with you,” he told her happily, and followed Beth and the servant into the house.
Judy sat very still for a long moment, and Sam waited, his eyes yearning to offer her comfort and yet not quite daring to do so.
Judy spoke at last, her voice low and husky, thick with the tears she was fighting so hard.
“He didn’t even remember me!” she whispered shakily.
“It’s been a long time, honey.”
“But I remembered him!”
“Yes, but you have been right here at Oakhill where everywhere you turned you were reminded of him,” Sam pointed out. “He’s been here, there and just about everywhere and has met a vast number of women and girls in all the places he’s been.”
Judy nodded forlornly. Two tears slid from beneath her lids and down her cheeks, but she was completely unaware of them, though Sam was not.
“And of course he’s met a lot of beautiful, sophisticated girls and couldn’t be expected to remember a long-legged girl in pigtails with braces on her teeth, could he?” she managed at last.
“Well, even then you were cute as a button and a girl who was sure to grow into what you have become, a lovely and devastating creature, whether he remembers you or not,” Sam told her with a sort of restrained violence.
She smiled at him dimly, her mouth a thin bitter twist.
“Well, you’ve been here a long time, too, Sammy my boy, and you haven’t had much chance to meet any really glamorous gals,” she reminded him, trying desperately for a flippancy she did not feel.
“Who’d want to, when I’ve known you since you were a squalling brat!” he pointed out, and could not keep back the words: “I’ve been waiting for you to grow up.”
It wasn’t at all what he had meant to say.
Her smile broadened a little, and she said huskily, “You’re sweet, Sam!”
And impulsively she lifted her face and brushed her lips across his weathered cheek. Sam started as though he had been slapped and thrust her away from him, saying sharply,
“Don’t do that!”
Startled by his vehemence, Judy stared up at him.
“I’m sorry, Sam. I didn’t mean to upset you,” she stammered bewilderedly.
Sam’s eyes glinted, and his jaw was set and hard as he glared down at her.
“Well, you should be old enough to realize that no man, however much he is your friend, likes to be used to compensate for an unrequited love,” he told her sharply. “Sorry if I sound like a Victorian valentine, but it’s time you realized that.”
She was still staring at him, and he turned his eyes away and said brusquely, “You’d better run on in the house. Miz’ Beth may need you, and I’ve got to get back to work.”
Halfway up the stairs, Judy heard the Old Gentleman’s door close softly. She stood still for a moment before she set her teeth and went on up toward her own room.
Bix was outside the Old Gentleman’s door, scowling in the sun-drenched corridor. But as Judy came to the top of the stairs, he saw her, and his scowl vanished beneath a friendly, admiring smile as he came to meet her.
“Did he recognize you?” Judy asked evenly.
“You mean Grandfather? No, I don’t think so. But the lady in white said she was sure that he knew I was there. I hope he did,” said Bix, and added, “He’s changed a lot since I saw him last.”
“It’s been a longtime, Bix,” she reminded him.
A tinge of color crept into his face, that was almost as brown as Sam’s.
“I guess I’ve been a pretty rotten grandson not to have come home before this.”
“I suppose you’ve been very busy.” Her tone was completely noncommittal, with no hint of censure in it, but his eyes sharpened a little as he studied her.
“Well, yes, I have,” he admitted. “I wanted him to be proud of me, to make something of myself.”
Judy said evenly, “There was only one thing he really wanted of you. That was that you learn to manage Oakhill as the Bullards have done since they first came here.”
Bix’s eyes cooled.
“That’s too bad, because the one thing I don’t plan to do is settle down here and rusticate! Or is it just rust?” he asked her flatly.
She stared at him for a long moment, and then she asked, her voice uneasy, as though she knew the answer to her question even before she put it, “But the place will be yours. You are the Old Gentleman’s heir.”
“Oh, I haven’t decided what I’ll do with the place when it falls into my hands,” he admitted frankly. “I hope that the doctors are wrong and that my grandfather will live many more years. And to plan now what I will do with the place when it falls into my hands seems like planning his death. That I would never be willing to do.”
Judy drew a deep breath and said quietly, “It’s a very profitable place. Sam manages it, and I’m sure he’d be happy to show you the books. The place not only pays its own way but turns up a handsome profit every year.”
Bix smiled a thin-lipped, not too pleasant smile.
“By which you are saying that the money for my shenanigans over the years was earned by Oakhill, and I’m a so-and-so if I’m not willing to bury myself here and keep on spending the profits?”
“I’m not saying anything of the kind!”
“Well, that’s the way it sounded.”
“I’m sorry,” she answered stiffly. “I only meant that a great many people depend on Oakhill for their very existence: the house servants, the field hands, the tenant farmers, the dairy men, the stable hands—”
“You make it sound very much like big business,” he cut in dryly.
“And so it is,” Judy told him hotly, “as you’ll find out as soon as Sam takes you over the place and shows you the way things tick.”
“I’ll bet!” Bix drawled, obviously quite unimpressed. He added, his tone changing, “I believe you said something about six thoroughbreds that you exercise from time to time? Are they race horses? I know there are some famous racing stables in the vicinity.”
“No, these are very fine saddle horses,” Judy answered. “One of them, Starlight, is the Old Gentleman’s favorite. They understand each other so well that he swears she talks to him when they are out riding alone.”