Charity Child

by Sara Seale

  “She’s regained consciousness, but that’s about all,” he answered grimly. She looked like a little ghost, standing there in the doorway, and his eyes softened.

  “Go and get tidy, Charity Child,” he said. “There’s nothing anyone can do at present, and you don’t need to sit about in laddered stockings, do you?”

  “You should exercise more discretion when you make your passes, darling,” Roma observed as Charity left the room, and he wheeled round on her.

  “Do you have to persist in this cheap form of belittlement even when we’ve more important things to think of?” he demanded furiously, and she shrank back at the unfamiliar look of distaste in his eyes.

  “Marc—I’m sorry—” she said softly. “I—I’ve been jealous, I know. You’ve only been trying to pay me back, haven’t you? But I can still be jealous—even of a poor little drip like Charity Child. You see, I didn’t know till too late what a fool I’d been seven years ago. Can’t you understand?”

  He took out his case to select a cigarette and absently offered it to her. The momentary anger seemed to have gone from him and he regarded her with curious abstraction.

  “Every seven years one becomes a different being, haven’t you heard that one?” he said. “One sheds a skin, or grows another—I forget which.”

  “And have you changed your skin, Marc?”

  “I shouldn’t be surprised. Seven years is a long time.”

  “I must have changed mine too, then. Marc—it isn’t easy for me to be humble. Can’t you forget the past and start again? I—I’ll come to you on your own terms this time, no matter what Astrea decides about her will.”

  “I wonder,” he said a little cruelly, “if you’d be so willing had all those dollars not been lost to you.”

  The color flamed in her cheeks and he remembered how easily he could provoke her temper.

  “If anyone else but you had said that to me, I’d have spat in his eye,” she said stormily, but he only smiled.

  “If you’d any pride left you would have spat in mine,” he told her amiably. “Your timing is bad, Roma. This is hardly the moment for staking a Grand Reconciliation scene.”

  She stubbed her cigarette out violently, and lighted one of her own.

  “Oh, your British sense of decorum!” she exclaimed. “Can’t I declare my feelings because your aunt upstairs may die?”

  “I don’t think it’s really a matter of nationality,” he replied mildly. “After all, you’re English yourself, my dear, however much you like to cling to that fetching American accent.”

  “Is she really bad?” Roma asked, admitting defeat for the moment “What did the doctor say?”

  “He was, not unnaturally, slightly stuffy on the question of past attacks. Why didn’t somebody tell me?”

  “Astrea wouldn’t have it Besides, Minnie said it wasn’t serious.”

  “Not serious—heart attacks!”

  “Well, you know Minnie—guards the old girl like a lioness and is as stubborn as hell. How long does he give her?”

  Marc’s eyes were shrewd and attentive.

  “You’re thinking of the will, aren’t you?” he said with deceptive gentleness.

  “Well, naturally. Do you like to think of all that money going to charity—or have you, by any chance, got hopes for the other Charity?”

  “I think we’ll leave the other Charity out of this,” he said quietly. “You’ve done enough damage, Roma. Let well alone, now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know very well, I think. You’ve distorted the truth and, where truth didn’t exist, you’ve invented.”

  “Has Charity also been distorting the truth?” she asked unpleasantly, and he shook his head.

  “You traded on that, too, didn’t you?” he said. “Charity doesn’t run from one person to another with tales, and you knew it.”

  Quite suddenly, she saw that all she had schemed for had slipped through her fingers, just as had those bright American dollars: all except her inheritance, and for that she would work, no matter what it cost, in the short time that might be left.

  “You’ve changed, Marc,” she said, on a little sigh. “There was a time when you would never have spoken to me like that—never compared me—unfavorably— with your aunt’s paid companion.”

  “Yes,” he agreed gravely, “but in those days, you see, I hadn’t met Charity. I understand from Minnie, by the way, that it was the scene you made when you discovered I’d taken her out to lunch that precipitated Astrea’s attack. Not very pretty, is it?”

  “Oh, you’re impossible!” she exclaimed violently, and suddenly slammed out of the room.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ALL the next day they waited uneasily for any change. The doctor came and went, promising to send a night nurse to relieve Minnie, who would not leave the sickroom. There was, he said, nothing to be done. Astrea’s valiant old heart was worn out; she might last indefinitely if she avoided another attack, or she might go out like a light.

  It grieved Charity immeasurably that she was not allowed in the sick-room.

  “Sorry, honey, but she’s got a bee in her bonnet where you’re concerned since that day she sacked you,” Roma told her quite kindly. “In a little while, maybe, she’ll be more reasonable, but you know Astrea! At the moment she won’t let me out of her sight. Having a bit of remorse, I guess, at her true spiritual daughter being left in the cold for seven years.”

  “Yes, I see,” said Charity unhappily. “But you will tell me if—if she should ask for me?”

  “Sure I will.”

  “And don’t—don’t bother her about the will, or lawyers, or anything.”

  “Anything else, Miss Child?”

  “No—just give her my love.”

  The day dragged slowly. The sound of church bells through the open windows reminded Charity of that other Sunday when she and Marc had walked to church together on Easter morning, but even Marc was not very clear in her mind just now. She busied herself with Minnie’s daily chores, helped by the village women, who were ghoulishly enjoying the solemnity of a possible death in the house, and she only saw Marc at meal-times.

  “You’re taking this too hardly,” he told her when, in the evening, he managed to persuade her to sit down in the music-room with a glass of champagne. “She may recover if she avoids another attack, the doctor thinks.”

  “She doesn’t need me any more—she doesn’t even want to see me,” Charity said. “Marc—don’t let Roma worry her about the will.”

  His mouth tightened.

  “Even Roma wouldn’t badger a dying woman,” he said.

  “Dying? But you said—”

  “It was a figure of speech, but—we must be prepared, my dear. She’s very old—a great deal older than she’s always let on.”

  “Is she? I can’t imagine her gone.”

  “You’re very fond of her, aren’t you, Charity?” he said with tenderness, and sitting down on the arm of her chair, drew her gently against him.

  She did not, in that moment, think of him as the man she had hated, then loved and, finally, been humiliated by. She only knew that there was a great comfort to be drawn from him and that in some strange fashion he too might need comfort.

  “You’re like my father,” she told him, resting her head against his shoulder.

  His smile was a little twisted.

  “Do you want me to take the place of your father, Pierrot?” he asked with a certain dry humor.

  “No, not really. It’s all quite different.”

  “I hope so. I’ve misled you sadly, I’m afraid.”

  “Misled me?”

  “Yes. But you see I was unsure of you—I think I still am, for want of better encouragement. Perhaps I had already sensed this confusion with your father.”

  “Yes,” she said, too exhausted to understand, and he gave her shoulder a little squeeze.

  “You’re very tired, aren’t you?” he said gently, and suddenly Roma came into
the room trailing filmy draperies and a cloud of scent.

  “Well!” she observed with malicious sarcasm, “what a cosy spectacle! Champagne, too—are you celebrating something?”

  Marc rose unhurriedly to his feet

  “The champagne is mainly medicinal; we’ve all been under a strain. You’d better have some, too,” he said, and moved to the table to fill another glass.

  “I could do with it,” Roma said. She had clearly been too much trouble over her appearance when no one had thought of changing, and had entered the room with great buoyancy, but now she flung herself into a chair and took the glass Marc handed her with a tired little droop.

  “I’ve been on duty most of the day,” she said, yawning. “Poor old Minnie had to have some rest. She’s not so young as she was.”

  “Minnie is as tough as Astrea. There’s no need for you to wear yourself out,” Marc said.

  “Oh! Will you be going back to town tomorrow?”

  “Yes, but I shall be down again in the evening.”

  “Oh,” she said, again, and frowned. It did not suit her to have him around any longer. She had lost him, and that mealy-mouthed little miss should be made to pay, but Roma had always been one to cut her losses, and she had other fish to fry before it was too late.

  “That should please you, shouldn’t it, honey?” she remarked sweetly to Charity. “A man’s sympathy is always easier to batten on, isn’t it? Poor old Astrea won’t have you at any price.”

  With a gesture so sudden and unexpected that it took both girls by surprise, Marc seized her roughly by the hand and pulled her to her feet. The champagne spilled down her lovely dress, but even Roma did not notice. She stood there dazedly with Marc towering over her, and Charity, appalled, thought he would strike her.

  “Have you lost all sense of decency?” he said with dangerous calm. “Can’t you stop your brawling and baiting for five minutes when a woman may be dying upstairs? If this was not my aunt’s house I’d turn you out neck and crop.”

  “Who says she’s dying?” said Roma defiantly, and at that moment the door opened and Minnie stood there, her old face puckered, her eyes red-rimmed and hopeless.

  “What is it?” Marc asked sharply, and Charity rose to her feet with a sudden premonition of disaster.

  “She’s asking for Miss Charity,” the old dresser said apathetically. “Been asking all afternoon, but Miss Roma made excuses. You did ought to go to her, ducks, even if she did hurt your feelings, giving you the push. She’s sorry, now.”

  “But I thought—” The blood rushed in a wave of color to Charity’s face, and in a flash she was out of the room and they could see her long legs taking the stairs two at a time.

  “Well,” Marc said, stooping to pick up the empty glass which Roma had dropped. “One more of your charming tricks uncovered.”

  “Oh, go to hell!” snapped Roma, and poured herself another glass of champagne.

  “Should have fetched young miss myself, I suppose, but I didn’t like to leave Madam alone with Miss Roma,” muttered Minnie, who had paid no attention to this exchange. “Always on about that dratted will, she was, and my poor lady wanting to sleep.”

  “It didn’t, I suppose, occur to you,” observed Marc, turning to Roma with the utmost calm, “that with a lawyer already under the roof it was scarcely necessary to panic so much about getting another?”

  She stared at him stupidly, the champagne beginning to trickle over the edge of the tilted glass.

  “But you’re a barrister,” she said.

  “I’m still a lawyer. Really, Roma, for a woman of your sharp wits, you can be incredibly stupid at times.”

  “You mean you’ve already drawn up her will?”

  “Oh, yes, this morning. She signed it and the doctor and Mrs. Who-is-it from the village witnessed it. You can relax now, Roma; there’s nothing to be gained.” He pushed gently past Minnie in the doorway and went upstairs to his aunt’s bedroom.

  Charity, when she reached Astrea’s door, knocked timidly and stepped inside. The room presented an unfamiliar appearance, tidied of its customary litter, and the vast ornate bed turned back to front with its foot pressed against the wall because Astrea had insisted that she might have been wrong about her theory of the magnetic north. The first warm promise of summer evenings drifted in at the open window; the sound of a mowing machine, the intermittent notes of bird-song dying with the fading light.

  At first Charity could not see Astrea propped up in the bed, then a weak hand stretched out to her.

  “Is that Charity?” she asked, and her voice sounded old and alarmingly frail, Charity moved swiftly round the high, draped head of the bed and took the old, wrinkled hand in both her young ones.

  “Dear Astrea,” she said. “I would have come before if I’d known you wanted me.”

  My little Ganymede ... my cup-bearer ... they said you would not come because I was turning you away.”

  “Roma knew that wasn’t true,” said Charity steadily, and Astrea sighed,

  “Yes, yes ... she was jealous, no doubt. But she only wants my money ... America has changed her ... or perhaps it was my fault in the very beginning.”

  “It’s easy to spoil those we love,” Charity said gently. “And Roma is so beautiful.”

  “I was like her at that age—do you find that hard to believe?” Astrea asked a little wistfully, and Charity smiled, her eyes filling with tears. Without the paint and mascara, the old face looked strange and oddly unfamiliar like the swept and garnished room; only the dyed red hair bore witness to that valiant battle with age. Astrea was just a tired old woman, no longer caring very much that she had long since been forgotten.

  “I have remembered—it was you I struck that day—not Roma,” she said suddenly in a stronger voice.

  “You were muddled afterwards. It didn’t matter.”

  “But she let me think it was her. She accepted my contrition so charmingly, and all the time, my dear, dear child—”

  “Astrea, it doesn’t matter—in any case it was an accident.”

  “She would not have it so. She means to marry my nephew this time, you know. She will break his heart all over again ...”

  Charity had not heard Marc’s footsteps on the thick carpet, and she jumped when she saw him standing there, tall and dark, on the other side of the bed.

  “She didn’t break it the first time, dear aunt. My heart is composed of pretty durable material as, no doubt, Charity would tell you,” he observed a trifle grimly.

  Astrea turned her head to look at him, pulling fretfully at the old, threadbare drapes at the head of the bed.

  “You like to think you are impregnable, dear boy, but we none of us are ... we none of us are ...” she said, and sighed.

  “No, my dear, but don’t let it trouble you.”

  “Trouble—trouble! I had thought that you and my little Ganymede—but she wouldn’t do, I don’t doubt. You would walk over her.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” he replied mildly. “Do you ever imagine I would walk over you, Pierrot?”

  Charity had not dared to meet his eyes. Astrea was ill enough to be humored in her statements, it was clear, but she had no wish to be drawn into such meaningless personalities.

  “Well, do you?” he persisted when she did not reply, but Astrea intervened.

  “Ah, Pierrot ...” she said, and began to sing in a wavering thread of the voice which had once been famous:

  “Au clair de la lune ... mon ami Pierrot ... She is like Pierrot, isn’t she, Marc? You would have none of her then—or she of you ... Ma chandelle est morte ... That’s true, too. My candle is burnt out ... I had so much hoped that you and she—but no matter. I’m near the end, am I not, dear boy?”

  He bent over to the bed. His face had changed as he listened to the cracked old voice trying to sing that familiar nursery song, and Charity saw a great tenderness there and a strange sort of hunger, as if he too could be moved by the simple things which brought tears.
>
  “If you are, Astrea, you’ve had a good innings,” he told her gently. “What is it you want of us?”

  “I don’t know ... I don’t know ...” she answered fretfully. “If Roma hadn’t come home ... I don’t know, Marc ... but who will look after my little Ganymede now?”

  “I’ve asked her to marry me. Wouldn’t that do?” he said, and her old eyes lit up with a semblance of their remembered fire.

  “Dear child ...” she said, stretching out a hand to Charity. “Dear boy ... can I die on that?”

  “You are not going to die yet,” Marc said, and frowned on Charity’s instinctive recoil. “Would it make you happy if Charity would have me? She turned me down, you know.”

  “Turned you down? But perhaps she was thinking of Roma.”

  “Perhaps she was. Were you, Charity?”

  Charity did not know where, to look. Astrea was being humored, she knew—she might even be dying— but it was no reason for Marc to stand there on the other side of the bed, looking at her with the old mockery, daring her protest.

  “It was all a hoax. He was making fun of me,” she said and saw the sudden glint in Marc’s eyes. “Astrea—it’s unfair to—to chivvy us both.”