Unknown Read Online Free PDF Page B

convenient to know all the right people!”
    “Oh, but I didn’t know him before !” Sarah protested.
    “Didn’t you?” His face softened a little. “It’s quite something to meet an actress who’s prepared to put her family before the play, but perhaps you weren’t very sure of your success?”
    Sarah lifted her head, looking him straight in the eyes. “I was quite sure, Mr. Chaddox.”
    “Then you’re unique!” he tossed back at her with a curious bitterness. He rose to his feet, forcing a smile. “I must be going. I hope you find everything in order at the house—and that you find Chaddoxbourne without too much difficulty.”
    “Thank you,” she said.
    He nodded briefly and was gone, paying his bill on the way out. Sarah subsided into her chair feeling as though she had just stepped off a scenic railway and had not yet caught her breath. So that was Mr. Robert Chaddox of Chaddoxboume! If only she had been able to make the same sort of impression on him as he had on her! If only ! But it was no use wasting her time in idle regrets for something she could do nothing about. She would never dazzle anyone and she might just as well face up to the fact.
    Sarah finished her excellent steak without having tasted a single mouthful of it. She drank her coffee in much the same state. In a way she found she was quite enjoying the effect Mr. Chaddox had had on her. She was a naturally friendly person and her time in the theatre had meant that she had known more people of all ages than she might have done in another walk of life, but none had stirred her to more than friendship. Mr. Chaddox was different. She didn’t feel in the least bit friendly towards him and he acted on her with all the sympathy of an electric shock! It was astonishing to her that anyone could have such an effect on her, when no one ever had before. It was a new, strange sensation that needed thinking about, when she had the leisure to think about anything. Nevertheless, Chaddoxboume had suddenly become a highly desirable place to live and she couldn’t wait to get there. She almost danced out of the restaurant, leaving the waitress a tip of quite undeserved proportions, and went in search of her car.
    Chaddoxboume lay to the north-east of Canterbury in a little valley at the bottom of which wound a lazy stream. The medieval stone bridge allowed the traffic to cross only one way at a time, but there was a ford alongside for the impatient who didn’t mind taking their cars through nearly a foot of water. On the bend of the river, a little further up the bank, stood the watermill, now abandoned and sad, though there were signs that someone was doing it up, probably to turn it into a private home. Behind the mill stood the church, built of golden stone and with a very fine rose window and a carving of Christ in Glory over the door and a number of ancient sun clocks carved into the portal that had once told the villagers the times of the Masses in the days before the Reformation.
    Sarah took one look at the village and fell in love with it. To her, it was the perfect English village that she had never thought to see. The sun shone on the slow moving water that glinted with light beneath a line of weeping willows. The houses were old, some of them of the traditional Kentish clapboard, some of them built of red brick grown pink with age. The oast-house stood a little apart, its windows gleaming white, and beyond were the imposing gates of the Manor House, the stately Georgian lines of which were just visible beyond the walled garden full of magnificent trees, beeches, ash, and cedars, and even an oak tree so old that it had had to be supported by a framework of wooden scaffolding.
    Sarah drove up to the oast-house, stopping at the gates that were closed against her,, They swung open easily and she fastened them back, eager to see what the house itself was like. She parked the car in the drive and hurried up to the front door, to see that a note had