Dear Dragon

by Sara Seale

  "Not at all what you think, my dear brother," Keverne retorted insolently. "She is a nursery governess, or some such—a very prim and proper person. Ask her yourself."

  It was only then that Keir took any notice of Alice. As he raised the lamp to look at her for the first time, she struggled into a sitting position on her heels and gazed up at him, her face wet with rain and tears. She blinked at him, too shaken to speak, and saw the surprise drawning in his hard eyes.

  "Why, she's only a child!" he exclaimed. "What fresh folly is this, Keverne?"

  "No folly, I assure you, except the folly of expecting any thanks from you. Her name is Miss Alice Brown— what could be plainer? She was engaged by those mad Tregenas to look after their brat and was stranded. You want another employee. She wants a job. Ask her."

  At last Alice found her tongue.

  "I would not care to remain in your employ at all. Mr. Pendragon," she said in a clear, unruffled voice quite at variance with her distraught, dishevelled appearance. "It would seem that I shall have to accept your brothers hospitality for the night—that is if you care to second it— but tomorrow I need trouble neither of you again."

  She thought she saw Keir's lips twitch for a moment and Keverne observed with enjoyment:

  "Very precise and quite in character, if you're to be believed, Miss Alice Brown."

  "Shut up!" snapped Keir, passing him the lamp, and stretched down a hand to Alice.

  "Won't you get up?" he said, suddenly icily polite. "My half-brother introduced you in a somewhat unorthodox fashion. You must make allowance if I misjudged the situation."

  She felt the hard grip of his fingers as he pulled her to her feet. Her head barely reached his shoulder, but she could see more closely now the little network of creases at the corners of his eyes and the deep lines carved from nostril to mouth which stamped his face with a hard-bitten auterity. She was past caring, now, how this night should end, but she met his piercing scrutiny with a level challenge.

  "Your eyes are green," he observed irrelevantly, sounding as if the fact surprised him very much, and Keverne drawled with a return of his usual brashness:

  "So I also noticed—very green and very large, grandmamma—also, her nose turns up. Well, Pendragon, won't she do? When she's dried out she'll look quite presentable."

  "To young—much too young," Keir replied absently, still watching her.

  Alice looked from one to the other of them with acute dislike.

  "I think, if it's any interest to either of you, that you're both impossible!" she said distinctly, and Keir smiled for the first time.

  "So we are," he agreed gravely, and her composure began to melt again. The smile completely altered his face; it had none of the insolent charm of Keverne's ready grin, but a strange quality which might almost have been taken

  for tenderness. Despite herself she found that she was smiling back.

  "That's better," he said. "Well, we'd better get a room ready for you. Keverne, shout to Emma for some bed linen."

  Keverne went to the foot of the curving staircase, still holding the lamp, and shouted. As he moved, the circle of light went with him, leaving them both in the shadows. Alice stood awkwardly beside her host, very conscious of their sudden isolation in the darkness, but Keir did not speak again while they waited, and presently, in response to another shout from Keverne, a young woman wearing a man's woollen dressing-gown, came down the stairs, carrying a lighted candle. She moved like a sleep walker, her shadow grotesque and clumsy on the wall, and when she spoke her voice held the patient resignation of someone who was surprised at very little any longer.

  "What did you want, Keverne?" she asked.

  "Bed linen and a fire in one of the bedrooms. We have a guest," Keverne replied, a little mockingly. "Miss Brown, this is my wife, Emma."

  "Please don't trouble to light a fire," Alice said quickly, surprised that there appeared to be no servant to call upon in such a great house.

  "It's no trouble," Emma replied indifferently, turning to go back up the stairs. "I will get the tapestry room ready, Pendragon. I think there is a fire already laid there."

  "Thank you, my dear," Keir said courteously. "I'm sorry we had to get you out of bed."

  She made no answer and, watching that ungainly shadow precede her slowly up the staircase, Alice felt a shiver of distaste. Were they all misfits, these strange Pendragons? she thought, and wondered whether the two she had not yet met were as divided against themselves.

  "You're very wet, and probably hungry," said Keir who had observed the shiver. "Come with me to the kitchens and I'll make you something hot."

  "No—oh, no, thank you," she said hastily, remembering that whatever she might think of the Pendragons, she was a stranger among them and causing trouble.

  "I think so," he said calmly, and taking the lamp from his half-brother, put a firm hand under her elbow. As she

  accompanied him through a green baize door at the back of the vast hall, she was aware of Keverne grinning at her with malicious enjoyment over the banisters.

  "I hope you'll stay with us awhile, Miss Alice Brown," he said mockingly. "It should be interesting to see what you and Pendragon eventually make of each other."

  "What did he mean?" Alice asked cautiously as the door swung to behind them, but Keir's only answer was to warn her to watch her step on the rough flagstones.

  It seemed to Alice's overtaxed imagination that there were endless passages, cold striking sharply from the flagstones and the high granite walls. Shields and trophies hung on the walls, as they did in the hall, and she would not have been surprised to find that the doors had prison grilles let into them.

  "Was Polrame ever a fortress?" she asked, because their passage through the house was beginning to get on her nerves.

  "In a sense, I suppose," he replied absently. "In the days of the tinners and the riff-raff that joined them, every great house was a fortress. There was no telling, you see, v/hen you might be raided."

  "Oh!" She had never heard of the tinners and was too tired to seek an explanation. In the morning, anyhow, it would cease to matter.

  They came at last to the kitchens and Alice had an impression of shining copper, and great crossbeams from which hung hams and bundles of dried herbs, and endless strings of onions. The enormous range had a spit and a primitive bread oven, and the smell of freshly baked bread hung on the air.

  "Oh, do you make your own bread?" she said, feeling that here, at last, was something familiar.

  "Yes, Emma bakes excellently," he replied, raking the stove expertly and pushing a still simmering pot to the flames. "But you in the cities have lost the art of home baking, like many other things."

  "Aunt Brown always did her own baking," Alice said with pride. "She taught me, too."

  "And who is Aunt Brown?" he asked with polite indifference.

  "She was my father's sister. She brought me up," Alice said, crouching beside the range to dry her hair. "I see. And where is she now?" "Dead."

  He did not offer the usual apologetic regrets, but said instead:

  "So it's true you were looking for a job."

  "I had got a job, only I found the house empty except for a horrible old caretaker person. They haven't even paid my fare," she said, indignation at her treatment returning to make her forget, for the moment, her still more surprising treatment at the hands of the Pendragons.

  A savory smell of rich home-made broth was coming from the pot he was stirring, and presently he ladled some into a thick blue bowl, set a place at the enormous scrubbed table and bade her eat.

  He sat on the corner of the table watching her, his arms folded across his chest. Her hair had dried now and clung in pale disorder about her neck. He observed the bony roundness of her high forehead, the childish impertinence of her nose, and the dark, innocent crescents of her downcast lashes as she bent over her soup.

  "How old are you?" he asked abruptly, and she looked up at him and quickly down again, her eyes very
green in the lamplight.

  "Nineteen," she said.

  "H'm . . . and how have you been earning your living to date?"

  "In an office—only I didn't type very well. Aunt Brown never had me trained for anything, you see." "So they gave you the push?"

  "Not exactly. There—there were difficulties with the manager."

  "Indeed? It doesn't seem to have taught you much, accepting an offer of a night's lodging from a perfect stranger."

  He sounded suddenly censorious and she choked a little over her soup.

  "Wasn't Mr. Pendragon serious when he offered me a job?" she asked and he shrugged.

  "Possibly. You wouldn't, I think, on closer reflection, be his taste for other purposes, but you never can tell. It's

  not the first time he's kidnapped a young woman and brought her home, when he's had too much to drink."

  She flushed, aware that his imagined friendliness had gone. He was Pendragon, the head of his house and accustomed, also, to getting what he wanted.

  "Wasn't it true, then, that you wanted a companion for your half-sister?" she asked dubiously.

  "Oh, yes, but the final choice is mine, not Keverne's. I think you are probably a nice, honest young woman, Miss Brown, but quite unsuitable for my purpose."

  "Why?" she said stubbornly, and he shrugged again.

  "Oh, various reasons. Besides, you told me in no uncertain tones only a little while ago that you would not care to remain in my employ at all, so there's no basis for discussion, is there? It's gone midnight. If you've finished your soup, I'll take you up to your room."

  III

  Alice passed an uneasy night in her great four-poster bed. The room had looked enormous to one accustomed to the narrow confines of a hostel bedroom, and the massive furniture seemed designed to accommodate more clothes than any one person could possess. The walls were hung with tapestry which gave the room a gloomy air, and the bed was so high that it was necessary to climb three shallow steps in order to get into it.

  The fire which Emma Pendragon had lighted had nearly burnt out, for there had been no fuel left with which to replentish it and, in the shadowy corners, the design on the tapestry seemed to twist and change its pattern so that sometimes it was a castle, sometimes a dragon and sometimes just a man's dark face with slanting, threatening brows and the look of a pirate.

  She woke several times during the night and lay listening to the unfamiliar sounds of a strange house. Once she imagined she heard voices quarrelling, and once the lonely weeping of a child. Her candle had burnt out and there did not seem to be another to light. She curled herself up in a tight little ball and, pulling the bedclothes over her head, slept again.

  She awoke to the sound of the heavy drapes being drawn back from the windows by Emma. The grey light from outside lit the room with chill impartiality, revealing dust which had not been apparent the night before and the small signs of long disuse. It was a room, thought Alice, struggling into wakefulness, which bore the imprint of another generation, another life, and she was an alien intruder.

  "Did you sleep well?" Emma asked, but she sounded disinterested. "Breakfast is- in the day-room. It'll be cold, I don't doubt, but Pendragon said not to wake you."

  "I'm sorry if I overslept," Alice said politely. "Have I kept you all waiting?"

  "The men have gone to the mine, it's past nine o'clock," Emma said. "We don't wait for anyone in this house."

  "Oh!" Alice felt snubbed. "I—I will have to make arrangements to leave. How will I get to the station?"

  "There's no one to drive you with the men gone. Are you not staying, then?"

  "No. I'm not, evidently, what Mr. Pendragon had in mind."

  "But I thought Keverne said—oh, well, Pendragon will be back for his lunch today. You can wait till then."

  She turned to go but Alice put out a tentative hand to detain her.

  "Mrs. Pendragon—this child—I thought I heard her crying in the night," she said. "Is there no one to look after her?"

  "Only me, and she doesn't care for me much," Emma said apathetically, and Alice knew a moment's unwarranted irritation. Emma Pendragon might be older than her bold, handsome husband, but she was still a young woman and pleasant to look at in a negative, slightly outdated fashion. Her dress was warm and plain, and her long brown hair neatly wound in plaits about her head. She seemed more like a privileged servant than mistress of the house and Alice wondered again why Keverne had married her.

  "How old is your sister-in-law?" she asked, because the thought of a child incarcerated in this great, unfriendly house was beginning to trouble her.

  "Twelve, maybe thirteen," Emma replied with curious indifference, then added, with a sudden touch of feeling:

  "It's a pity you won't stay, Miss Brown. It would leave me so much more time for my own child, you see." "You have a child?"

  "A boy, three months old. He's fretful today. I can't divide my time, but Pendragon won't see it."

  "But there have been others employed for the little girl, I understand."

  "Oh, yes, but none of them stayed. No one who isn't bred here will stay at Polrame for long," said Emma and went silently from the room.

  When she was dressed Alice went to the window to observe by daylight the manner of place to which the evening's strange encounter had brought her. Her room must look towards the front, for beyond the high stone archway under which Keverne had driven her jutted the spur of headland on which the house was built, and she could see the winding ribbon of road across the moor which must lead to the village on the other side of the bay. It was still raining and, as she surveyed the bleak, grey countryside, she shivered and turned her back on it. In London, she thought, there would be bustle and life and color, and she forgot, for awhile, the loneliness she had experienced in a city, the lack of friends, the nostalgic yearning for Aunt Brown's little house in the country which had sheltered her from the frightening necessity of earning a living. But as she wandered down passages and through silent, deserted rooms, looking for the place where her breakfast waited, she chided herself for inconsistency, just as her aunt would have done. She had fled to Cornwall because it seemed remote and far removed from uncongenial problems, and now, here she was, wishing to run away again to try to salvage, with no promise of certainty, the boats she had so hastily burnt.

  "You're a spineless idiot, Alice Brown!" she admonished herself aloud as she opened yet another door, and jumped when she heard a voice reply:

  "Who's Alice Brown?"

  She paused on the threshold, looking for the speaker, but at first she had only an impression of the room, high and austere, like all the others. It seemed to be half library, half nursery; books lined three of the walls, but the fourth was stacked with the discarded treasures of childhood,

  rocking horse, doll's house, teddy-bears and wooden animals on wheels. Faded nursery pictures hung on this wall and a scratched upright piano with old-fashioned candle sconces stood across one corner.

  "Shut the door, the fire will smoke," the voice said again with a familiar ring of imperiousness, and as she obeyed, Alice saw the little girl who sprawled on a sofa by the fire, a rug draped carelessly across her knees, and a half-completed jig-saw spread out on a low table beside her.

  "Who are you?" she demanded.

  "Alice Brown."

  "Do you talk to yourself, then?" The question was half insolent, half surprised.

  "Sometimes. You must be Doone Pendragon," Alice replied.

  There had been no need to enquire her name. The family likeness was startlingly apparent, only in the child's face each feature had been moulded with perfect symmetry so that even the proud Pendragon nose did not mar its balance. She would, thought Alice, grow into a very beautiful woman.

  "Yes, I'm Doone. How did you know?"

  "By your likeness to your brothers."

  "To Keverne?" Her face lit up as though she had been paid a compliment, but immediately set into lines of discontent when Alice replied:

>   "And your half-brother, too."

  "Oh, Pendragon!" she exclaimed impatiently, and added with satisfaction: "I talk to myself, too. The Zombies never did. They said it was the first sign of madness. I might easily go mad, you know."

  "I shouldn't think it at all likely," Alice retorted unsym-pathetically. "Who were the Zombies?"

  "The women Pendragon hired to look after me. Are you another of them?"

  "I don't think so."

  "Neither would I. You don't look much older than me." "How old are you?"

  "Thirteen, but of course I'm far more mature than most girls of my age, owing to my circumstances. I've often heard them say so."

  Alice might find herself at a disadvantage with Keir and even Keverne Pendragon, but Doone she could meet on equal ground.

  "You shouldn't listen at doors," she said with a prim echo of Aunt Brown.

  "That sounded like one of the Zombies," Doone said a trifle smuggly. "You mustn't grow into a Zombie, Alice Brown, or you'll never get a husband. Ask Keverne—-he often used,to tell them so."

  "Then it was very rude of him, and rather unkind," Alice promptly replied.

  "Keverne's always right," Doone said imperiously, but she sounded a little surprised. "Come and help me finish this puzzle. I've been doing it for days, and I can't fit the pieces in."

  "No," said Alice, "I want my breakfast. Where's the room called the day-room?"

  "In the other wing. Get them to bring your breakfast here. Ring that bell by the fireplace," Doone said, and suddenly swept the jig-saw off the table on to the floor, exclaiming petulantly: "Silly old puzzle! You can pick up the pieces, if you like, but ring the bell first."

  "Ring it yourself!" retorted Alice, who was not going to be ordered about by a mannerless little girl. "As for the puzzle, you can pick up the pieces yourself, too. You threw it there."

  For a moment sheer surprise drove the ill-temper from the child's face and, without another word, she began to wriggle her way to the edge of the sofa. Her movements seemed slow and clumsy, or perhaps she was merely sulking at having to give in, but as the rug slipped from her knees and she stood up, Alice caught her breath sharply. Her thin legs had the weak, undeveloped look of someone not used to walking and she moved with careful slowness to the fireplace and tugged at the bell, then stood there, grinning triumphantly at Alice.