by Sara Seale
"I don't understand you," she faltered and he gave a small, impatient shrug.
"Sometimes I don't undertand myself," he said and then exclaimed with sudden harshness: "Oh, grow up, Alice Brown! Stop taking us all at our face value! No, don't, on second thoughts; there's too much to bridge between your age and mine . . . too little excuse for building a bridge at all. . . . You're looking quite bewildered, and no wonder, poor infant. Well, I must get down to some work. Goodnight, Alice."
"Goodnight, Pendragon," she replied.
CHAPTER FIVE
I
"LET things work out Pendragon's way," Emma told her not long afterwards. "What will be, will be, and it's no concern of yours, Alice, how this household shapes."
No, thought Alice humbly, it was no concern of hers. She was merely employed here and what the Pendragons chose to do with their lives was not her business. She devoted herself to Doone, deliberately shutting her eyes to the matters which, concerning Pendragon, in some distrubing way also concerned herself, but these mild April days when a fresh softness touched that wild piece of coast with promise made her vulnerable to things which had never mattered before. The gentle sunshine and the secret burgeoning of the erath beneath her feet brought her close to tears a dozen times a day. Spring was an unsettling season, so Aunt Brown had often said, but there had been no spring quite like this one that Alice could remember, no time when she had been so aware of the sensibilities of others.
They went for long, leisurely walks along the cliffs, which at one time had been forbidden in case the wheel-chair should get out of hand; but the chair was a thing of the past, now. Doone's thin little legs were muscling up with exercise, and the honey-toned skin had the added warmth of health.
Sometimes they would meet Pendragon as they wandered home at tea-time and he would glance at his half-sister with a puzzled satisfaction, then walk between them, helping them both over the rough places on the headland.
"The change is remarkable," he said to Alice, "and there's a difference in you, too. You've lost that look of the little waif who was thrown across my doorstep."
"I was never a waif," Alice replied with composure, disengaging her arm. "Just someone trying to earn a living."
"I beg your pardon;" he replied gravely, and Doone, who had his other arm, did not try, as usual, to release her-
self.
"That's the first time I've ever heard you beg somebody's pardon, Pendragon," she remarked with interest. "Is it insulting to call a person a waif?"
"Alice seems to think so," he replied lightly "Well, Doone, what have you been doing with yourself today?"
She recounted in detail the trivial happenings of the afternoon, forgetting her aversion in the pleasures which she had discovered through Alice's eyes. They had found sea thrift already blooming in sheltered places; the gorse would be in flower very soon, and Alice had lain flat on her stomach to reach for a gull's egg in a nest beneath the cliff's overhang, before carefully replacing it.
"The boys would have robbed the nest, and Trelawny would, too, but Alice said that was cruel," she stated with some complacence, but Keir's indulgence seemed to vanish and he turned swiftly to Alice.
"You are not to take Doone near the edge of the cliffs —understand? If either of you disobey me I shall have to forbid you the headland again."
"Yes, Pendragon," Alice said dutifully, but Doone immediately pulled away from him and fell into a sulk.
"Spoiling fun, as usual," she grumbled, and ran ahead, stumbling almost immediately on the tufty grass because her legs were still not quit strong enough to match an act of defiance.
"There, you see!" he exclaimed, picking her up again. "Shall I carry you the rest of the way?"
"No!"
"Very well. Take my arm, then." "No!" she said again, and he sighed and glanced at Alice. "Do I spoil your fun, too?" he asked, as if addressing another child.
"No," she replied sedately. "But I'm scarcely employed just to enjoy myself."
"An ambiguous reason," he said somewhat shortly, and suddenly snatched the familiar ribbon off her head. She was so surprised that she stood stock still for a moment, staring at him, while her hair, released from its restraint, blew wildly about her face in the wind.
"I often want to do that when you talk to me like a Zombie," he told her calmly. "I find you a very con-
fusing mixture at times, Alice Brown. Did that?"
"Not half as confusing as I find you," she retorted, and his eyes rested with speculative intentness on her flushed face. They had both forgotten Doone, and when she suddenly gave an excited shout of "Trelawny!" Alice, at any rate, jumped.
Trelawny was walking along the headland to meet them, her two greyhounds at her heels. She was, thought Alice, magnificently animal and alive, with her short curls blowing in the wind and her black eyes brilliant and demanding in her olive face.
"Well!" she drawled, observing them with a sudden little flash of malice. "What are you trying to do to poor Alice? She looks as if she's been pulled through a hedge backwards!"
Alice at once felt gauche and awkward, conscious that the color which still stained her cheeks was not passing un-noticed by the other girl, but Keir was quite unmoved.
"Don't you think she looks charming with her hair blowing all over the place?" he said, with what seemed to Alice deliberate intention to annoy.
"No, I don't. She's not the type," Trelawny said shortly, and shrugged as he gave her a sudden grin, very like Keverne's. At the same moment one of the greyhouds put up a hare and both dogs" sprang to course it, twisting and turning amongst the gorse and thick undergrowth with beautiful grace.
"Watch the bitch, Keir!" Trelawny shouted, and he was immediately diverted by something he understood and appreciated. They stood together watching the coursing dogs, their strong, lean bodies tensed in a mutual expression of exultation, then there was one sharp cry of agony and the chase was ended.
Trelawny sprang into the bushed to retrieve the hare and Doone danced up and down at Alice's side, shouting excitedly: "Let me see! Let me see!"
Trelawny came back carrying the hare. Its eyes were already glazing and there was a curious defencelessness about the look of its soft white belly that brought a lump into Alice's throat.
"It's only a young leveret — not ready for the hazards
of the wild, yet," Keir said and, as he spoke, he became aware of the tears which she could not control, sparkling on Alice's lashes.
"I'm sorry, my dear," he said gently. "I was forgetting that this is probably your first experience of a kill."
"It was doing no harm," Alice said, blinking back the tears. "It had a right to its life . . ."
With what seemed to be deliberate cruelty, Trelawny thrust the dead hare into Alice's hands.
"Here — take it and don't be such a little sissy!" she exclaimed contemptuously. "Kill or be killed — that's the law of nature."
"Shut up, Trelawny!" Pendragon snapped as he might have done to one of his half-brothers, and took the hare from Alice, burying it in the bracken, at the same time beating off the excited dogs. "We aren't all created in the same mould, remember."
"Sentimental rubbish!" the girl retorted, giving Alice a look of pure dislike. "I never thought the day would come when I'd find you chicken-hearted, Pendragon."
"You made that suggestion once before," he replied, straightening his back and calling off the dogs engaged in a last half-hearted effort to retrieve their kill. "We change with the passing of time, perhaps. Life has more value when one gets older. Call your dogs to order — you should have taught them by now when to leave their kill."
Doone watched the two cousins, plainly trying to make up her mind on which side to join in, then she saw Alice's tears and became suddenly a little girl whose natural liking for something soft and furry overcame her anxiety to boast.
"You've upset my Alice," she said, her lower lip beginning to tremble. "You're cruel, Trelawny."
Trelawny looked at her and then at Pendr
agon's regretful face.
"Well!" she drawled. "Miss Alice Brown seems to have made milksops of the pair of you. You won't care, I imagine, to come to the dogs tonight with Keverne and me, even though the hare is only stuffed?"
"On the contrary, I'll take you myself and let Keverne stay at home with his wife for a change," he replied smoothly and her angry mouth curled up in a slow smile.
"Better still — three is never company — or was that only your way of reminding me that Keverne is a married man?" she said.
"You'll put your own interpretation on that, whatever I may choose to say," he answered, and putting a hand under her elbow, turned her firmly back towards the gates of Polrame. It was difficult, thought Alice, following behind with a tearful Doone, to know whether anger or hidden jealousy prompted his last remark, but she did not think that Trelawny, for all her manoeuvring, was going to have an entirely pleasurable evening at the race-track.
They sat down to supper that night with little prospect of enjoying the meal. Relieved, for once, of Pendragon's presence, the two brothers were more talkative than usual, but Keverne, possibly because he was annoyed at being excluded from an evening in his cousin's company, was brusque to the point of rudeness with his wife, and Alice was glad when the men went out of the room and she and Emma were left to clear the table.
"Why do you put up with it?" she asked Emma crossly, for there were times when the younger Pendragons' propensity for behaving like spoilt children overtaxed her patience.
"Do you mean Keverne?" Emma replied. Her voice was uncomplaining but she looked tired tonight.
"He's so rude to you and, after all, you are his wife."
"It doesn't mean anything. He was only working off his disappointment."
"But don't you mind?"
Emma tucked a stray wisp of hair into the neat bands that bound her head and stood looking a little vaguely at Alice.
"I used to," she said slowly, "but I've learnt, now, not to expect too much. Later, he'll come and say he's sorry, you know — like a little boy. You — and Pendragon, too — see the worst side of him, I'm afraid, Alice. It would be better, though, if Trelawny hadn't come back. It's unsettled him — unsettled all of us."
"Aren't you afraid?"
"Of losing him to Trelawny? No, she's only playing off one man against the other, just as she always did. Besides, Pendragon wouldn't stand for it."
"But if he marries her — as you all seem to think he will in the end — could you still go on living here all together?"
Emma began to stack the dishes.
"I don't know," she said. "It would depend on Pendragon's views, I suppose — but sometimes I've thought it might be Keverne's chance to break loose. Pendragon would be in a position then to buy him out — and Merryn, too, perhaps."
"I see," Alice said, feeling suddenly a little cold. "Their joint share in the mine, I suppose you mean. Would Pendragon really marry for only those reasons?"
"No one's ever known what is at the back of Pendragon's mind," Emma replied. "It would be a way out from keeping us all for the rest of our lives, wouldn't it? And Trelawny, I'm sure, would like Polrame to herself."
"Yes, of course," said Alice and began loading up trays to take to the kitchen.
Later on, she heard Keverne go upstairs to his own quarters and she was glad to know, that he could show a softer side to his wife in private. It might have been better, she thought, settling by the fire with a book in the empty day-room, had Pendragon not been so conscientious towards his responsibilities in the beginning.
As the fire burnt low and she became conscious of the silence of the house, her attention began to wander from her book. She was never entirely easy with the baleful glass eye of Horace, the shark, upon her in the lamplight and, as she grew sleepy, he seemed to move, like the dragons on the walls of the tapestry room. Sharks . . . unicorns . . . why had he told her that strange little legend about the unicorn . . . how did he talk to Trelawny, driving home across the dark moor? Would he match her provocation with his own bitter tongue, or would he kiss her, perhaps, knowing the bickering to be a game they both understood which he would end in his own time?
She must have fallen asleep at this point, for it was the sound of logs being thrown on the fire which told her he
had returned, and the hands of the clock pointed to a few minutes after midnight. He kicked the wood into a blaze with his foot, then turned to look at her.
"You should be in bed," he observed a little brusquely. "We don't wait up for each other in this house."
She felt that she was being reproved, and began to pull her crumpled dress over the legs she had tucked beneath her.
"I wasn't waiting up for you, Pendragon," she said. "I just fell asleep over my book."
"H'm . . . fairy-tales again?" he asked, picking up the book which had fallen to the floor. "Do you never read novels — nice romances with happy endings suitable to your age and, probably, woolly conception of love?"
"Sometimes," she said, eyeing him uneasily. "Why do you sound so cross, Pendragon? It isn't peculiar to like fairy-tales — or stories with happy endings, either."
"Neither it is," he replied, and stood there, rubbing his chin uncertainly as though surprised by his flash of ill-humor. The evening had gone awry for him, she thought shrewdly; whatver he had hoped for or expected from Trelawny had somehow turned sour on him.
"I'll go to bed now," she said, thinking it best to leave him alone, but as she began to uncurl her legs, he said quickly:
"No, stay up a little longer. We've got a good fire going now."
She settled back in her chair and stared into the flames leaping up the black cavern of the chimney, aware that he wanted something of her, but not knowing how to help him.
"Did you win any money on the dogs?" she asked, because she felt she must say something.
"No, I lost. Trelawny, though, had her usual phenomenal luck," he said. "Tell me, Alice, what was it that so particularly upset you over the hare this afternoon."
She hesitated, surprised that he had evidently been troubled by the episode.
"I don't quite know," she said slowly. "I — I think it was the look of its underneath — so young and soft and defenceless. I can't explain."
"You explain very well," he returned dryly. "It's that
measure of understanding that must condemn most blood sports, I suppose, Man, when he goes out to kill, doesn't consider the look of his prey's underneath, I'm afraid." "But you felt it today?"
"Yes— through your eyes. I'm sorry it happened."
"Please don't apologize for something that to you must seem perfectly natural," she said politely, and he sent her an odd, uncertain little look of enquiry.
"You have an exaggerated conception of the tough Pendragons, I think," he said and she crinkled her nose at him like a conspiratorial child.
"I don't think you're as tough as you sometimes seem, dear Dragon," she said, and this time, deliberately addressed him in that fashion.
He smiled, watching the firelight play on her face, and she knew again that strange weakening of the limbs when she saw the hard shell of his habitual expression melt into that fleeting suggestion of tenderness.
"Perhaps I shouldn't have kept you, after that first month," he said unexpectedly. "Perhaps you were right when you wanted to leave."
She blinked up at him, her arms still outstretched, her eyes already a little unfocused with sleep.
"Are you regretting it, Pendragon?" she asked. "I can go tomorrow, if you want."
"No!" he exclaimed with sudden roughness. "Where would you go to? The regrets, if any, should be on your side, not on mine."
"I don't understand you," she said, and he reached out suddenly to take her hands in his and pull her out of the chair.
"I suppose you do," he said, and stood for a moment holding her, his hands slipping up to her shoulders. "Have you regrets, Alice?"
"No," she said, aware that it was not altogether true. "In any case,
Doone was my reason for staying, wasn't she?"
He released her at once, thrusting both hands into his pockets.
"Ah, yes, Doone, of course," he said, and turned to kick a log into a brighter blaze." Well, you're doing a
good job there, Alice. I've been wrong, evidently, trying to make her into an invalid."
"Because you felt responsible?" she asked, and he wheeled round on her.
"So you've heard the story of the mako?"
"Yes."
"And you think, like Doone, that I'm to blame?"
"Perhaps no one was to blame," she answered gently. "It was just bad luck. Besides, you told me Doone doesn't remember."
"No, she doesn't."
"Then someone has been talking," said Alice gravely. "You shouldn't blame yourself when, perhaps, no blame is due."
"What do you mean?"
"I don't quite know, except that — perhaps I know you better than the others."
For a moment his expression was enigmatical, then she saw the mask of hardness settle over his features again.
"You don't know me at all — you don't know any of us," he said harshly. "Go to bed, Alice, and forget the nonsense we've been talking, and another time, don't wait up."
"No, Pendragon," she said, moving to the door. "Goodnight."
II
The last few days of April saw feverish activities in the kitchens. Emma baked bread and pies and the authentic pasties which were seldom met with these days outside a private house, and there was starry-gazy pie, that famous Cornish delicacy of pilchards with their heads protruding from the crust.
"'Tes all on account of May morning, see?" Mrs. Biddle explained to Alice. "The old custom is given up in most parts, these days, but around St. Mewan, they've stuck to 'un and tourists still come to watch the Furry Dance through the streets. We don't get none of the riffraff here, now, but the men from the mine and the quarry have their own Hobby Horse parade and come to Polrame first to greet Pendragon with the Morning Song.
Sounds mazed to you, I shouldn't wonder, used to city ways."
"No," said Alice, her eyes wide as a child's with wonder. "It's part of all this, really, isn't it? I mean Polrame and the tinners and smugglers and — and generations and generations of dragons — I mean, Pendragons."