by Sara Seale
It was just after half-past eleven when James parked the car in Shepherd Market and rang the bell of Peronel’s flat. She answered the door herself, smiled a lazy greeting, and took him into the living-room.
“It was nice of you to come,” she said, and selecting one of her Russian cigarettes, tapped it delicately on her thumbnail. “You know, I’m breaking the tradition of years this morning.”
“How is that?” asked James, thinking, as he watched her perfectly made-up, but rather weary face, that it would be difficult to guess at the real Peronel.
“I never interfere in other people’s affairs. I’ve always believed in letting them find out their own mistakes. Don’t you agree?”
“Up to a point,” said James gravely.
“Yes.” She inhaled deeply, and blew a delicate stream of blue smoke from her nostrils. “You’ve never much approved of Sarah’s association with me, have you?”
. He answered her honestly.
“I’ve never thought you had much interest in the child—beyond dress,” he said gently. “Sarah’s admiration for you is quite understandable.”
‘Thank you. Up to a point, of course, you were right. But somehow, there’s something young and naive and rather sweet about Sarah that gets one in spite of oneself. I don’t want to see her mess up her life for no reason.”
“Let’s come to the point,” said James. “What do you want to tell me?”
“I’m not altogether sure,” she said slowly. “So much is guesswork, and I may be quite wrong. But you are fond of Sarah, aren’t you? I wouldn’t have sent for you if I’d thought it didn’t matter to you personally.”
“Go on.”
“Well, it’s only this. I think there’s something between Sarah and Mick Fennick. I think he’s up to his old tricks, only this time he’s more serious. Sarah owes him money—perhaps you didn’t know that? I heard yesterday that Mick is trying to persuade his wife to put her divorce through. That looks to me like business. And Mick himself is going abroad tomorrow.”
“Is that specially significant?”
“I don’t know. If Sarah goes back to Fallow tomorrow, I suppose not.”
“But Sarah is at Fallow,” he said sharply.
Peronel raised her eyebrows.
“She’s spending tonight here at the flat,” she remarked casually. “Didn’t she tell you?”
“No,” said James slowly. “In fact, I offered to bring her up with me for the day, but she said she had things to do there.” He remembered Sarah’s face as she had said good-bye to him. Queer—at the time he had thought there was something odd about her.
“What makes you think that this visit has any connection with Fennick?” he asked quietly.
“Something she said to me the other day. Oh, and several things. I’d be willing to bet that Sarah means to go away with Mick tomorrow.”
“I was sending her away myself—with Sophie, until this thing blew over,” he said, and remembered Sarah, standing straight and still before him saying: “You won’t have to send me away, J.B. You won’t have to be bothered with me ever again.”
“But the thing’s an outrage!” he exclaimed loudly and incredulously.
Peronel looked at him curiously.
“You don’t really want Clare, do you?” she said.
“Clare?” All at once he felt angry. “You took good care to tell Sarah I’d settled Clare’s account with you, didn’t you?”
She moved a little impatiently.
“Oh, I daresay I shouldn’t have talked, “ she admitted. “But in my world, James, those sort of actions have a certain significance, and from what Sarah had told me, I was beginning to think you might have some interest in Clare. Sarah thought so, anyway. And I’m sure Clare has been getting at her.”
James remembered that letter of Clare’s three mornings ago, and Sarah’s colourless face as she had read it.
“I wonder,” he said thoughtfully, “if I’ve been on the wrong tack all the time.”
“I shouldn’t be at all surprised,” Peronel said dryly. “Why don’t you marry her, James?”
He smiled slowly.
“Perhaps I will,” he said, and looked suddenly happier than when he had arrived. He glanced at Peronel, and, for the first time since he had known her, felt genuine liking for her. He looked at his watch. “Half-past twelve,” he said, getting to his feet. “I’ll have a snack on the way and go straight back. I ought to catch her before she leaves. If by any chance I don’t, will you give me a ring when she arrives, and I’ll come up and fetch her back? I’m going to get this business cleared up once and for all.”
“Very well,” said Peronel. “I’ll stop in tonight just in case. And, James, when you do talk to Sarah, will you try and remember that you’re not just a guardian? Handle her carefully. It’s a tricky situation.”
Yes, thought James, threading his way impatiently through the London traffic, it was a very tricky situation. He was now as positive as Peronel that Sarah meant to do something foolish. Despite his endeavour not to force a crisis, he nevertheless seemed to have succeeded in doing so. If Sarah really believed herself to be in love with Fennick, then it was going to be extremely difficult to convince her, but if, as Peronel had suggested, something else lay behind the affair, then it was up to him to straighten out the tangles.
He stopped on the way for a glass of beer and a sandwich, then drove on into Sussex, his anxiety increasing with every mile. A thin drizzle had started to fall as he left London, and as he neared Heronsgill the rain came down in earnest. The Downs were blotted out in a wall of mist, and although it was only a little after three, the daylight was going already. He reached Fallow in another twenty minutes, and leaving his car in the drive, hurried into the house.
Sophie was in the library, dozing over a book. She opened her eyes with a start and blinked up at James.
“You are early,” she said. “We didn’t expect you till dinnertime.”
“Where’s Sarah?” he asked brusquely.
“Upstairs packing, I think,” she said, and added: “Oh, she forgot to tell you, James. She’s going to spend the night in Town with Miss Chase. Such a pity she forgot—she might have gone up with you this morning.”
But James didn’t wait. He went up the stairs two at a time, and knocked on Sarah’s bedroom door. She called: “Come in!” no doubt thinking it was Sophie or one of the maids, but when she saw James standing in the doorway she went as white as the tissue-paper which littered the floor.
“I thought you weren’t coming back till dinner-time,” she faltered.
‘ “So I gathered,” he observed. “May I come in for a moment?”
She stood looking at him as he came into the room and shut the door behind him. He glanced at the suitcase open on the floor, at the clothes heaped in confusion on the bed.
“Going away?” he asked pleasantly.
“Only for the night.” She recovered herself. “I forgot to tell you this morning.”
“Aren’t you taking rather a lot for one night?” he remarked. She said nothing, and he moved a pile of underclothes and sat down on the bed. “I hear Fennick is leaving the country tomorrow,” he said. “You weren’t by any chance thinking of going with him?”
Sarah looked suddenly cornered. Fright leapt into her green eyes, and she said defiantly:
“Well, what if I am? You wanted me to go away, didn’t you?”
He gave a wry little smile.
“Not quite like this!” he said with humour. “I wanted you to go away to try and forget about Fennick.” She said nothing and he went on more gravely: “You admit, then, that you’re going?”
“I admit I’m going to London for the night—Peronel expects me,” she said stubbornly.
“I’ve just seen Peronel,” he told her gently. “She suggested a number of rather alarming things.”
Sarah stiffened.
“But she can’t know anything. I never told a soul—” Her fingers flew to her mouth as she r
ealised too late the implication of her words. James said nothing and she decided to brazen it out. “All right, suppose I’m not coming back? What are you going to do about it?”
He said quite quietly: “Tell me this, Sarah—are you in love with him?”
“Would I be going away with him if I wasn’t?” she countered.
He looked thoughtful.
“I’m not so sure. He’s married, you know.”
“His wife’s getting a divorce.”
“And you’re to be the scapegoat? Not very nice, do you think, Sarah?”
“Oh, what does it matter?” she cried. “In a year we’ll be respectably married and everyone will have forgotten.”
“And you think you’ll be happy?”
“Why not? Mick’s fun. At any rate, I shan’t be dull.”
“My dear, he’s not the sort of man you want, and in your heart you know it,” said James gently. “Just why are you planning to do this thing? Can’t you tell me about it?”
“I can’t give you any other reason, but that,” she said desperately. “Isn’t it enough to want to be with a person?”
He shook his head.
“Not as you try and explain it,” he said. “And you don’t think for one moment, Sarah, that I’d let you ruin your life in this fashion, do you?”
“How do you propose to stop me?” she demanded. “It’s my life. I’ve a right to ruin it if I choose. At least I’m not ruining anyone else’s.”
“How do you know you wouldn’t be ruining mine?”
She stared at him with anguished eyes.
“I’ll ruin yours if I stay,” she said. “I know I’m just a responsibility, J.B. I couldn’t help being wished on you like this, but I can get out when I see the chance.”
He looked at her steadily.
“Is it possible, my darling child, that you have some extraordinary notion that I don’t want you?” asked James softly.
Her eyes filled with tears.
“You’ve always been kind,” she said a little piteously. “You always will be kind. But leave me alone, J.B. I don’t know how you guessed about Mick, but leave me alone.”
“Well, look me in the face and tell me you’re in love with the man,” he replied, but she said on a note of hysteria:
“Why should I? I don’t ask you to look me in the face and tell me you’re in love with Clare. I know.”
“What on earth are you talking about? I’m not in the least in love with Clare.”
“But—but you paid her debts, you bought her a house—”
“I paid her debts for the sake of old times and because she was in difficulties. I thought you’d understand that it meant no more than that. As to the house—well, I hoped you’d like it, Sarah.”
“But she said—Mick said—everyone thought—”
“Not everyone,” said James gravely, and asked: “That letter of Clare’s—may I see it?”
She hesitated, but only for a moment. What did anything matter now? She found the letter at the bottom of a drawer and handed it to him without a word.
He read it through without hurry and such kindly feelings as had re-awakened in him for Clare died for ever as he finished reading the postscript.
“Do you want me to tell you who your parents were, Sarah?” he asked quietly, and watched the colour stain her high cheekbones.
“You don’t have to,” she said with dignity. “I know, Mick told me. Handley Grey—the man who ruined you.” Her composure went abruptly, and she covered her face with her hands. “How you must have hated me all those years,” she cried, and broke into a storm of weeping.
The rain drove in a sudden gust down the chimney, sending out a billow of smoke from the fire. James went to her and took the weeping, desolate little figure into his arms.
“Oh, Sarah, how little you know me!” he said. “Was that the reason? Was that why, my darling child?”
“If you’d only told me,” she sobbed. “If you’d only told me long ago.”
He sighed, and cradled the red head closer. Yes, he had been a fool. He should have told her when she first began to gamble. He had wanted to spare her, but he should have told her. The shock would have been less coming from him than coming from a stranger. Heaven knew what ideas Clare and Fennick between them had fostered.
He felt her arms go round his neck and tighten convulsively. “That’s right, hold on. Hold on tightly and cry it all out,” he said tenderly, and presently the racking sobs subsided, and she grew quiet in his arms. She lifted her head wearily.
“I’m so tired,” she said in an exhausted little voice.
Still holding her hands, he sat down by the fire, and she squatted on the floor at his feet.
“Hadn’t you better tell me all about it?” he suggested gently. She rested her aching forehead against his knee.
“It’s so involved,” she said with a sigh. “I owed Mick a hundred pounds—he’d held it over from the debt you settled originally. Then he insisted on making a small investment for me which he said would clear it off. It went wrong and then I found I owed him three hundred pounds. I didn’t see how I could pay, so—so when he suggested—I thought—”
“But why on earth didn’t you tell me? I’d have dealt with the fellow in no time.”
“I couldn’t. You thought I was gambling again. I couldn’t ask you for more money. And then there was Clare. I invented that silly gag that you were going to marry me, and ever since, she’s been at me, pointing out what a strong sense of duty you had, and when I found out who I was, I understood how awful it must have been for you. So altogether it seemed the best way out for everyone. But there’s one thing I would like you to know, J.B.,” she moved abruptly, “I never touched gambling after I promised I wouldn’t, and I never sold your pearls. Mick has them as security. Tomorrow”—her voice dropped to a whisper—“tomorrow I was to have them back.”
James was filled with two conflicting emotions. A desire to hit Mick Fennick hard on the jaw won over a moment of panic at such childish quixoticness. He relieved his feelings on both points when he exclaimed:
“Of all the swine! And of all crazy little idiots to listen to him! Really, Sarah, you might have had more opinion of my capacity to understand!”
She looked up, and her long lashes were still wet and stiff with tears.
“But I couldn’t make you understand,” she said simply. “You didn’t believe me about the gambling and about the pearls. I loved you so very much, J.B., but I couldn’t make you understand that either.”
He looked down into her tired face, and suddenly pulled her up into his arms again.
“It was you who wouldn’t understand,” he told her a little roughly. “All this nonsense about Clare, when Sophie, Peronel—almost anyone could have told you I was fool enough to fall in love with my own ward!”
“But why didn’t you say so?” cried Sarah, and he replied quickly:
“How could I say so? You were my ward—nearly young enough to be my daughter; you knew nothing of life. All these poses and dramatisations—very charming and refreshing, I admit, but slightly bewildering to someone in my invidious position. But I admit I was wrong, if that’s any consolation to you. I ought to have asked you to marry me ages ago, whether you cared for me or whether you didn’t, and put a stop to all this other nonsense. After all, you were quite willing to experiment with my affections the very first evening we met!”
She drew away from him a little.
“You aren’t doing this because—because you want to save me from a Fate Worse than Death, are you?” she said, her voice quavering.
He gave her a small shake.
“There are other methods of persuasion besides offers of marriage,” he said a little grimly. “I could spank you and lock you in your room, which is really the treatment I think such idiocy deserves, but let’s have it the other way for a change, then there can be no more misunderstandings.”
“And you don’t mind—about my father?”
His mouth softened, and he took her face between his hands.
“Another time, Sarah,” he said with great gentleness, “we’ll talk all that out, but all you need to remember now and always is that it’s you who matters, not who you are. And for me you are the essence of all that is sweet and honest and adorable and that sad story has nothing to do with you at all. Are you answered?”
Her eyes had filled with tears again.
“Am I all those things to you, J.B.?” she asked humbly.
“All those things and lots more that are going to take me a long time to tell you—all my life, perhaps. Remember, Sarah, I told you once if you married me, you stayed married. I meant it, and although I’m not going to make the mistake again of waiting to give you time to grow up, there won’t be any second chances once we’re married. It will be for keeps.”
“But don’t you know yet that I love you?” she asked wonderingly. “That it was always you, only I didn’t know?”
He looked at her long and steadily, then stooped to kiss her. “Perhaps it was,” he said softly.
There was a knock on the door and Sophie’s voice remarked plaintively:
“Are you nearly ready, Sarah? You’ll miss your train.”
“My train?” said Sarah vaguely.
James smiled and pulled the lock of untidy red hair which fell over her face.
“Sarah isn’t going, after all,” he called to Sophie. “We’ll be down in a minute for sherry.”
“You’ve neither of you had any tea,” said Sophie mildly, and they could hear her high heels receding down the corridor.
“Come on now, wash your face, and let’s go and tell her the news,” said James. “Hullo! What are these doing here?”
He picked up a bunch of fading primroses which were lying on the bed tied up with blue ribbon.
‘They were the ones I found at Little Barrow,” said Sarah, sponging her face with cold water.
James dangled them by their ribbon.
“You weren’t, by any chance, going to take them with you, were you?” he asked in a curious voice.
“Yes,” she said, “I wanted them.”
He began to laugh helplessly.
“Well, if you don’t take the biscuit!” he exclaimed. “All set for the first steps in a murky divorce, and arriving clutching a bunch of primroses tied up with blue ribbon!”