The End of the Rainbow Page 16

  She wasn't allowed to finish; he interrupted pleasantly: "Perhaps you would like to look round, my dear, while I talk to Jim about those basement plans."

  Olympia allowed herself to be led away, to exclaim over new curtains, the central heating which had been put in, even right to the top of the house, and the pretty new furniture and comfortable wards. And so many of the old people she had known were still there, sitting round card tables —something Aunt Maria had never allowed-or reading and knitting. There seemed to be plenty of nurses too, and Miss Snow, who was on duty, assured her that Mrs. Drew and Mrs. Cooper were still there too and never wanted to leave. "And it's to be hoped," ended Miss Snow, rather tartly, "that your aunt is happy in that villa in Spain."

  Olympia smiled and nodded and answered questions, all the while thinking that Spain seemed a very unlikely place for Aunt Maria to be living in; she would have to ask Waldo about it presently; she would have to ask him a great deal, but at the moment she wasn't sure what.

  She was quite bewildered and somewhere dcch inside her there was a strong feeling of cxcitement. She was led back downstairs presently to meet him and listened in a bemused way while he talked about the drastic improvements there were to be in the basement; it was quite a relief when Waldo, in the nicest possible way, said that they would have to be going, and she found herself in the car once more. He had barely time to press the starter before she burst out: "You didn't tell me about Aunt Maria."

  He gentled the car into the stream of evening traffic. "No. I was going to surprise you."

  "You have."

  His mouth quirked in a half smile. "Yes, but not in quite the way I had intended. I wanted to show you the home as a fait accompli, as nearly like your ideas as possible."

  She gasped, "You bought it?"

  "Yes." He slid to a halt by traffic lights. "Your aunt needed very little persuasion to sell; once you had gone, she discovered that she had lost her main prop and stay."

  "Oh." She was aware that this was an inadequate answer, but for the life of her she could think of nothing else to say. She said: "Oh," again before she could stop herself. She was still composing her chaotic thoughts into sensible speech when he drew up outside Aunt Betsy's house.

  In the hall she made for the stairs. She really needed time to think, but she was not to be given it. Waldo shut the front door behind him and leaned against it. "No," he said, "don't run away. There are things we must say, my lovely girl."

  She stopped, her foot poised on the bottom stair. Nobody had called her a lovely girl before. She looked over her shoulder and saw the look on his face and without a word turned round and walked over to him.

  "Aunt Betsy was right," he told her, "I should have told you long ago."

  "What?" she asked urgently.

  "A great many things, but only one of them matters. I've fallen in love with you. You see, I found my dream, my dearest darling, but I didn't know it, not until Ria ran away and you went too and I thought I had lost you."

  "But you were so angry, and you believed Elisabeth, you didn't even…' He had covered the foot or two between them in one stride. "I deserve to be reminded of that every day of my life," he told her humbly, "but oh, my darling, it made no difference to my love for you, can you understand that? not for one second did I stop loving you, even while Elisabeth's logic made such sense." His blue eyes were very bright, staring down into hers as he caught her in his arms. "Oh, my dear love, I wanted to make you happy; to do something for you, even though I hadn't realized that it was you I loved, and even when Ria ran away, I still wanted to do that."

  She leaned back in his arms to look at him.

  "You should have told me about Mrs. Focus do you know what I thought…?"

  "Indeed I do, my darling, but I didn't even guess at it to begin with." His arms tightened so that she could hardly breathe. "Olympia., Could we start again—could you learn to love me?"

  She hadn't stopped looking at him; all the things she had hoped for were there now anal she smiled. "I'm not sure how you learn to lour someone. I only know that I've loved you ever since that day in Middelburg when you hoped that I would be happy. I don't need to start again, Waldo."

  He kissed her then, a satisfying, lengthy operation which left her breathless, then picked her up and swung her round to set her gently on her feet again, and when she opened her mouth to protest, he kissed her once more. "Tomorrow," he told her, "we're going out, you and I, and I shall buy you a gift for every day I've known you."

  Gone was the placid expression, the well schooled calm face, his eyes held a gleam she had never seen before. There were several small problems facing them Elisabeth, for instance, but she had the satisfying feeling that if she mentioned her by name at that moment he wouldn't even remember who she was. She reached up and kissed him. "Waldo," she began, and was interrupted by a small shrill voice from somewhere upstairs.

  She smiled. "Your-no-our daughter, dearest."

  He grinned suddenly. "Our eldest daughter, my darling heart."

  She kissed him again. "It won't matter about the boys." she mused,"but the little girls will have to take after you."

  They began to walk, arm in arm, towards the stairs. "My daughters," declared the doctor positively, "will take after their mother, although they can't hope to be half as pretty."

  A satisfying remark. Olympia, under his loving gaze, felt all at once the most beautiful girl in the whole world.