by Sara Seale
"There! Don't you think I'd make an efficient lady's maid?"
Without consciously thinking, she slid her arms round his neck and kissed him, and as always, he turned his face a fraction away from her.
"I'm glad you're back," she said.
"Are you, Shelley? It's good to be home," he replied, and stood and watched her while she sat down at her dressing-table
and began to comb her hair.
There was a difference in her this time, he thought. A new awareness, a fresh pliancy of mind, perhaps, something too delicate to define as yet; but the face which looked into the mirror was still the grave face of the child in the portrait.
"I must go and change," he said, and went into his own room.
After dinner he showed her the presents he had brought for Martin, telling her to choose which of them she would like to give him personally. They were expensive toys, and he had clearly been to much trouble in selecting them, but she felt she had no part in this present-giving. She wrote out cards, then set the gifts aside with the parcels already arrived from India. The boy was to have breakfast with them the next morning, and Nicholas told her that she must wait until then to open her own presents.
She flushed and her eyes were distressed. She had nothing for Nicholas, but she had managed to find something for Colin. She was aware that he was looking at her enquiringly, and said:
"I've nothing to give you, Nicholas. I had no money to buy you anything." He said gently:
"My dear, I don't want presents from you."
"But Christmas," she said a little helplessly, "is a time when one wants to give. It's - it's rather humiliating only to receive."
His face was suddenly weary.
"Yes, I should have thought of that," he said. "Look, Shelley - I've bought myself a rather charming little eighteenth century snuff-box. Would you like to give me that? Wait -I'll fetch it for you to see."
She turned the snuff-box over in her hands, aware of his pleasure in it, and aware, too, of something anxious in his manner that did not wish her to be hurt.
"It's charming," she said gently. "If you would like it that way, Nicholas, I -I - "
He took the snuff-box from her and put it down on a table.
"Am I clumsy, Shelley?" he asked.
"No - no," she said quickly. "But I feel so - impoverished." He touched her hair gently.
"Never feel that," he said, "You have so much that has nothing to do with money and what money can buy. Just - " "Just what?"
He turned away, and his voice was harsh again.
"Just be yourself. That's all I ask," he said.
Breakfast, the next morning, was gayer than Shelley had anticipated, for Martin, delighted by his presents, forgot for the moment, his awe of his uncle, and became a natural, excited child. There were presents for Shelley, charming, expensive trifles, purporting to come from Nicholas and Martin alike, and a beautifully bound rare edition of the works of Shelley from Lucius.
But since she had known Colin, Shelley had learned to be sensitive to people's gifts. This was no expression of her father's choice. Nicholas had chosen it himself, and had probably paid for it, too.
Baines came in to clear the table, smiling at the pile of paper and festive string. Martin followed him round and began to sing Holy Night in a high, uncertain treble.
"That's very nice, Master Martin," the old man said. "Do you remember anything else the young gentlemen sang?"
"The young gentlemen?" said Nicholas enquiringly.
"The carol-singers, sir," Baines said. "They came a week or so ago, as Mrs. Penryn will have told you. Sang beautifully, they did, especially the young gentleman with the high voice."
"Carol-singers?" said Nicholas idly. "You never told me, Shelley."
She exchanged a guilty look with Martin. The carol-singers were their own special secret.
"They came over from Polzeal," she said. "They did sing very well. We had them in and gave them drinks."
"Really?" Nicholas did not sound very interested. "I haven't known carol-singers at Garazion for years, have you, Baines?"
Shelley expected Martin to say: "And we've seen Colin nearly every day and he gave us a present for Christmas," but
he made no mention at all of Colin, only his wary look of distrust for his uncle returned, and he left the room very shortly.
Later they went out on to the moor, and Martin played in the snow. Shelley surprised Nicholas watching the boy with the dark, brooding look she was coming to know so well.
"You're fond of him, aren't you?" she said softly, and he replied with gentle strangeness:
"He might have been my son."
After tea, they lighted the few poor candles on the tree, and put out the hall lamps. But the little tree looked lost and forlorn in the gloom, and the magic of the day had already departed for Martin.
With Christmas over, Nicholas returned to the works and was gone for most of the day. No more snow fell, and quickly it seemed, the existing snow melted into slush, and the moor was visible again, brown and bare and bleak. Garator shed its icicles, and a wind blew from the west, scattering the last snowflakes, and presaging rain.
Martin viewed the heap of dirty slush that had been the snow-man and suddenly wept.
"Nothing's the same, nothing's the same," he sobbed.
No, thought Shelley, nothing was the same. The magic of the snow had gone, and Colin, her one friend, had walked each day to Penzennen's Pool, and she not there to meet him.
She walked there one morning in a thin drizzle of rain, and, surprisingly, he was waiting for her.
"I thought you'd deserted me," he said, coming to meet her. "And this is my very last day. We move on tomorrow."
"Tomorrow?"
She had scarcely meant to come, and had certainly not expected to find him, but the thought that he would be gone tomorrow filled her with dismay.
"Where are you going to?" she asked.
"Devon, Somerset, Wiltshire; little towns in each, working our way back to London. Then we split up."
"Oh!" Her voice was bleak, and he said:
"But I'll be back. I'll be back in the spring, and then - "
All at once she was crying gently.
"The spring is such a long way off," she said and did not believe that he would come.
"Have you forgotten your namesake?" he chided. "If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?'"
"Nicholas gave me Shelley for Christmas," she said, trying to smile. "At least it was supposed to be from my father, only Nicholas chose it."
He did not understand the distinction, but her weeping distressed him, and he said quickly:
"Is he good to you - this Nicholas Penryn?"
She brushed the tears from her lashes.
"Oh, yes, very good."
"And yet you're not happy."
"I think I'm lonely," she said. "And I don't understand him very well."
He took her arm and they walked slowly along the shores of the little lake.
"You're different from other girls," he told her then. "Do you realize that had you been anyone else I would have been making love to you long ago?"
"Would you?" she said, surprised. "But I'm married."
"Yes, you're married," he mocked gently. "And I'd very much like to know what kind of a marriage it is. In the spring, I'm coming back to find out."
"My marriage," she said slowly, "Nicholas - Garazion -have nothing to do with us."
"No? And yet you are part of them all, you know - a little strange - the Sleeping Princess."
"Why didn't we meet before?" she asked forlornly, but she asked it as a child might, and she looked as a child might, with the raindrops trickling from her wet fringe into her eyes.
His smile, as he watched her, was a little wry, and he experienced the age-old masculine urge to be the first to waken her, for Nicholas Penryn, whatever his status, had certainly not done that.
"Shelley - " he said, his hands on her shoulders - "say good-bye to m
e properly - give me something to take away with me besides your medal of St. Christopher..."
She offered him her hps, instinctively, and naturally, but
there was no passion in her kiss, and he released her gently. Their time had run out. He must go tomorrow...
"Yes," he said, touching her lips, "Prunella - a sleeping Princess. Sleep till the spring, Shelley. Good-bye, my dear..."
She walked away from him slowly and looked back once. He was still standing by the water watching her, and so great was her desire to turn back to him once more, that she started to run, blindly, in panic, through the rain.
Nicholas had just come in when she got back to the house and he observed her with thoughtful surprise.
"You seem very wet and out of breath," he remarked.
"I am out of breath," she said. "I've been running."
"Where have you been?"
"To Penzennen's Pool."
She took his hand and suddenly held it very tightly. He looked at her more closely.
"Did something frighten you on the moor?" he asked.
"No. No, nothing, Nicholas. I'm just out of breath, that's all," she said, and did not realize she was still clinging to his hand.
His eyes were thoughtful.
"I shall be staying at home for the rest of the day," he said. "Shall we have a lazy afternoon together? Perhaps you'll play for me."
"Yes - I should like that," she said with a little sigh, and felt suddenly safe.
January was a cold, wet month, with fog rolling across the moor from the Atlantic, and the gulls flying inland as far as Garazion where they circled, screaming round the house for food. Shelley and Martin were much indoors at this time, for the boy had a series of colds and bronchial attacks brought on by the damp weather. They would sit alone in the high room with its tapestries, and formal, unchildlike furniture, while rain beat on the tall windows, or fog silently embraced the house, causing the lamps to be lighted at half-past three.
Very occasionally, Nicholas would join them, and sit, silent in the shadows, listening to Shelley reading fairy-tales. He would watch them, curled up together in one big chair, the
firelight glancing on their absorbed faces, their two heads close, the one so dark, the other so fair, and his thoughts would stray, those thoughts which he found so impossible to put into words to his young wife.
Phrases from the story would fall on him at random: A bride for me before a bride for you ... Supposing he had said that to Justin so long ago ... As soon' as the door was shut, the Lindworm turned to her and said, "Fair maiden, shed a shift." The shepherd's daughter answered him, "Prince Lindworm, slough a skin ..." But how to slough a skin? How to slough the defensive skins of years, the ugliness of bitterness no less than the ugliness of the flesh?
"Poor Lindworm," he said when the story was finished, and Shelley looked across at him in surprise.
"But it was quite all right in the end," she said seriously. "He was only enchanted, you see."
He smiled a little crookedly in the shadows.
"It's so simple in fairy-tales, isn't it?" he said. "You make the right spells, say the right words, and lo! the enchantment is ended."
Martin said, his eyes enormous with a new idea;
"Are you enchanted, Uncle Nick?"
Nicholas rose abruptly to his feet.
"Yes, Martin, perhaps I am," he said and left them.
He had always been reluctant to take Shelley over the clay works, saying that visitors were not encouraged, but one day, when the weather was better, he gave in to her request, agreeing that she had been cooped up in the house too long.
He showed her everything, explaining with meticulous care the whole process of the china-clay industry. She watched, fascinated, the clay stream flowing through the mica drags, like a slow river of snow, and the china-clay churning and frothing like cream as the monitor washed it from tank to pit. She held the fine, powdery stuff in her hands, letting it sift through her fingers, wondering what delicate porcelain it would ultimately fashion, carried across the seas in the little coasters.
The foreman was a nice little Cornishman who looked at Shelley with polite curiosity, and gave her, at parting, a charming piece of pottery which had been made at the works.
"What's in there?" she asked Nicholas as they passed a small building which she had not been taken inside. "The laboratory," he replied. "Can I go in?"
"No," he said a little shortly. "There's nothing to interest you - only test tubes and a lot of paraphernalia."
"But I should like to see the clay being tested," she said with interest.
He took her arm and turned her from the place.
"I don't want you inside there," he said.
"'Tes safe enough, sir, these days," the foreman said, but Nicholas replied curtly:
"A laboratory is never safe for the novice. You should know that, Trevena."
"Yes, sir, but that time was twelve years ago, and Mr. Justin told not to meddle - "
"That'll do," Nicholas said, "It's time we went home, Shelley. There's nothing more for you to see."
They drove in silence for the first few miles across the moor. Shelley glanced at Nicholas' dark profile. The disfigured side of his face was nearest her and she could see the deep puckering of the skin, the slight lift to lip and eyebrow, dragging both out of line. Twelve years ago...
"Did something happen in the laboratory?" she asked quietly.
He did not take his eyes off the road.
"Yes, there was an explosion."
"Is that how it happened - your face, I mean?"
"Yes," he said again, "that's how it happened."
"Oh, how terrible," she said softly, thinking of the agony he must have endured. "Why did the foreman say your brother had been told not to meddle? Did he cause the accident?"
His face twitched.
"Justin was ignorant - and pigheaded," he said shortly. "Fortunately, he wasn't hurt. More fortunately still, neither was Lydia."
"Martin's mother? Was she there?"
"Yes, she was there."
He remembered them so vividly; Lydia, the charming visitor, exclaiming, asking soft questions, just as Shelley had done, and Justin, debonair, stubborn, showing off in front of Lydia.
Shelley's hand was on his knee.
"I'm sorry," she said gently. "I wouldn't have asked you to take me if I'd known."
"It's of no consequence now," he said. "But I'm running no risks for you, my dear."
The days passed uneventfully into February, and Nicholas! was away from home again. Shelley missed him this time. With no other distraction she had little to occupy her thoughts but the picture of Nicholas she was slowly piecing together. Such intimate knowledge of him as she possessed had only been gathered through the unguarded moments of others. Nicholas himself, unless directly approached, had seldom hinted at the bitter circumstances which had made him what he was, only through Baines, and even the boy, Martin, did she learn to know him better. She sometimes questioned Baines about those early days, as they worked together, tending the contents of Nicholas' cabinets, and slowly a picture formed of the two brothers and the young Lydia who had laughed and teased them and been like a spoilt only sister until one of them had fallen in love with and married her.
"Mr. Justin was always the gay one, reckless and on for a lark, you might say," the old man told her. "But Mr. Nicholas was the unselfish one, and the stronger of the two. We always thought it was Mr. Nicholas that Miss Lydia preferred, but there, she was fond of them both, and it was Mr. Justin she married, and now she's dead, poor soul."
Shelley paused in her work, fingering the delicate pattern of Imari porcelain, unaware of its texture. Had both brothers been in love with Lydia so many years ago, and was that why Nicholas sometimes looked at Martin with such sadness? Lydia's child, who might have been his, a dark Penryn so like them all; and she remembered him on Christmas morning watching the boy playing in the snow and saying: "He might have been my son."
Her fingers tightened on the thin plate which snapped in her hands, and she burst into tears.
"Oh, dearie me! How did that happen?" murmured Baines, but he was more distressed at her tears that at the loss of the plate. "Don't take on so, miss, dear - I should say, ma'am. Accidents will happen. Mr. Nicholas will understand."
"It's I who don't understand Mr. Nicholas," she sobbed, trying to fit the two halves of the plate together. "Oh, poor Miss Lydia... poor Nicholas..."
"There, there, I've been upsetting you." Baines took the broken pieces from her and laid them carefully on a table. "It will mend, it's a clean break. Not the same, of course, to an expert, but it'll hardly show."
She sat on the floor looking up at him with drowned eyes.
"Why couldn't she have loved him best?" she said.
He looked back at her, puzzled, and a little embarrassed.
"Well, as to that, no one can say," he replied. "But it was all so long ago, and if Miss Lydia had married Mr. Nicholas and not Mr. Justin, where would you have been, ma'am?"
"Yes, where would I have been?" she echoed forlornly and scrambled to her feet.
When Nicholas came home she braced herself to tell him about the broken plate, but Baines had already done so.
"You shouldn't have been so upset, child," he said with concern. "The old man was most distressed about you. He thought he must have upset you in some way."
"Poor Baines. He was sweet. It was only that - "
"Only what?"
"It was only that I suppose I was careless," she said. "I'm so very sorry, Nicholas. One of the Imari plates, too. First Martin, and then me. We must be a couple of hooligans."
He brushed the hair from her puckered forehead, and his smile was tender.
"My dear child! There's nothing else worrying you, is there?"
"No, only" - she smiled nervously - "things go in threes, don't they? I hope there won't be a third breakage."
"Well, so do I for the matter of that. Now, take those worried puckers out of your forehead and come and see what I've brought you from London."
His presents were always delightful; sometimes a trinket,
sometimes a new scent bottle for her dressing table, or even a foolish toy which had taken his fancy. This time he had brought her a little sable muff, and she stood in the lamplight, holding it to her face and looking at him over the dark fur with eyes that were soft with pleasure.