by Susan Barrie
“I didn’t mean to sit down. I thought it better to stand...”
“But—but how—?”
He reached for the electric light switch which she hadn’t even noticed, and the whole place became flooded with radiance. Marquis, objecting to it, stamped up and down, and Mothball, who had been very quiet and quiescent, blinked protestingly. Bennett shouted over the partition at the grey:
“Get back, you—!”
He was startled by the sight of Miss Sands’ pale, drawn face, and asked her anxiously:
“Do you think you can walk, miss? Or would you like me to carry you?”
“No, no, I’m perfectly all right.” She was drawing deep breaths of the cool night air, and although her whole body was shaken with cold the very freshness of it and the unconfined quality of it revived her. She walked stiffly across the yard at Bennett’s side, and he explained that he had forgotten his keys, and had come back to look for them.
“Otherwise you’d have been in there all night. But how did you come to be shut in, miss?” His bewildered look said plainly that he had never detected in her a particular preference for the stables. “Did someone shut you in?” his eyes narrowing.
“No, no,” she answered again, a little too eagerly this time. “I—it was an accident. I came across to have a look at—to have a look at—-Mothball, and by accident I allowed the door to close behind me.”
“Oh, yes?” She could tell by his sudden dark look, and the drawl in his speech, that he didn’t believe her—that nothing would induce him to believe her. “And what was Miss Tina doing all the time you were shut up with Mothball? It’s eleven o’clock now, and by the looks of you you were shut up some time ... hours, I’d say. Did Miss Tina think you’d vanished into thin air, or something? And didn’t she think it was worth mentioning to anyone?”
“She thought I’d gone to my room, with a—a headache...”
“Oh, yeah?” he returned this time. “And at what time was that?”
“Five o’clock... half past five. I can’t remember.”
“So you were shut up in the stables since five o’clock?”
“Oh, it must have been later than that.”
He decided to cease putting her through any further inquisition, and with the occasional assistance of his arm, and his coat wrapped round her, they reached a side entrance to the house, and she prepared to dip through it like a shadow, plainly not anxious to attract any further attention to herself.
She handed him back his coat.
“Thank you so much, Bennett,” she said, with real gratitude in her voice. “I’ve never been so pleased to see anyone in my life as I was to see you!”
“I can believe it, miss.” He looked down at her from his considerable height. “Did that brute Marquis give you any trouble? He couldn’t have got at you, you know. You were quite safe.”
She said thinly, apologetically, “I’m frightened of horses.”
“I know.”
She smiled up at him wryly, her small, pale face quite shaking his heart.
“Was it so obvious?”
“I’m afraid it was, miss. But I shouldn’t worry about that, if I were you. Me, I don’t like black cats. Can’t think what it is about them, but I simply can’t stand them. And I don’t like rats, neither.”
She smiled again, in a distinctly wobbly manner. “You won’t say anything, will you?”
“About to-night, you mean? Not if you don’t want me to—”
“I don’t.”
He looked as if he disagreed with her—violently. “I’d like to give that kid—But there, I suppose she’s half ruined by the boss. Do you think you’ll be all right, miss? You don’t think you ought to see a doctor, or get me to rouse the housekeeper?” thinking she still looked alarmingly pale.
“No, thank you, I’ll be perfectly all right,” she repeated mechanically. All she wanted to do was to slip away up the dark side stairs and reach her room that way. “Perfectly all right,” she added.
“If I were you, I’d have a nip of brandy—” as if she was bound to keep it in her room—“before I got into bed. You look as if you need it,” he added feelingly.
She made her way slowly up to her room, her limbs still feeling very stiff, and when she reached it she was startled to find Tina sitting in a curiously crouching attitude on the side of her bed. She had been sitting in the dark, and her face was strained. The moment Edwina switched on the light she jumped off the bed and flew across the room to her.
“Oh, thank goodness someone let you out! I was beginning to wonder what I was going to do—”
“About what?”
Edwina’s voice was clear and cold, and she moved mechanically into the centre of the room and, when she reached it, knelt down in front of the electric fire and turned it on.
“About you, of course.” Tina’s voice was extremely strained, and rather husky, but there was a faint hint of impatience in it, too. “All the evening I’ve been worrying and worrying because I couldn’t get across to let you out, and I thought perhaps you might have a fit or something, if no one let you out!”
“I’m sorry you seem to have had a disturbed evening,” Edwina replied, looking at her distantly with far-away eyes, “but mine wasn’t particularly comfortable. However, I didn’t have a fit, or anything of that kind, so you can allow your anxiety to abate. But why didn’t you let me out as you promised?” she enquired with sudden biting sharpness. “Are your promises like pie-crust, or did you forget that you’d locked me up in the stables?”
Tina drew a deep breath.
“I didn’t forget... of course I didn’t forget. But I just didn’t have the chance to do what I promised. When I got back here after—after locking you up, the vicar was here, and he wanted to see you as well as me, so I had to pretend you’d be in any moment, and he sat there talking and talking ... and of course you didn’t come, and at last he had to go away. And then Mrs. Blythe sent me down to the kitchen to fetch our supper because Anne, the housemaid who looks after us, had sprained her ankle or something like that, and had had to go down to the doctor’s surgery. And then on my way upstairs I dropped the tray with the plates and knives and things on it, and all the china was smashed, and there was a horrible mess, and Mrs. Blythe was so cross she sent me to bed without my supper... and I’d already told her that you didn’t want any because you’d got a headache. I said you thought you’d got a touch of sun.”
“Highly inventive of you,” Edwina commented coldly—indeed, with nothing short of arctic coldness. “I don’t think your uncle realises what a clever child you are. And what happened after you were sent to bed without your supper? Did the lack of food deprive you of the strength to go across and let me out?”
“N-no, of course not ... But I thought I’d wait until Mrs. Blythe had had her supper, and had gone to her sitting-room to watch television, and then steal out and let you out. But by that time,” she admitted, “it was dark, and I—I don’t like the dark—”
“You mean you’re afraid of the dark?” with scathing coolness.
“I’ve never been out alone in the dark,” the child defended herself, “and it’s a long way to the stables.”
“It was also very dark in the stables, since I neglected to find out the position of the electric light switch,” Edwina informed her, with the same air of frozen calm. “But I’ve no doubt if you’d thought of it you’d have been good enough to inform me where it was before you left me to my own devices.”
Tina sounded suddenly exasperated.
“But I didn’t mean to do it! I mean, I didn’t mean you to be there in the dark!” she attempted to convince Edwina.
“But you did mean to shut me in, didn’t you? That wasn’t by any chance the result of a mental aberration?”
“A mental wh-what?”
“Oh, forget it!” Edwina rose from her knees, and looked down in an appalled fashion at her stained cotton dress. A long, long time ago she had been looking forward to a bath and a
change of garments, but that seemed so long ago now that it might have been in another existence. However, she was beginning to feel a little warmer, and her teeth were less inclined to chatter, and altogether she felt stronger and more like herself. The sight of the child’s concern aroused a measure of sympathy inside her, for Tina’s face was so woebegone and so apprehensive that it was plain she had had a good many twinges of conscience during the course of the evening, and no doubt, also, her imagination had pictured a good many things happening to Edwina.
There must have been moments when the thought of what she had done—and could not, apparently, undo—came near to filling her with a larger amount of alarm than she had felt in the whole course of her life up till now.
“I think we’d better forget what happened tonight,” Edwina said distinctly ... and, she realised, with decidedly unfair magnanimity. Tina herself would almost certainly have preferred to be violently upbraided, since she knew she had done something outrageous, and the whole object of the exercise had been to undermine Miss Sands’ determination to remain at Melincourt in the position of her governess. She was not magnanimous herself by nature, and she didn’t like things being overlooked.
But when she allowed herself to look curiously at Edwina’s face she was not so sure that relations would ever be the same again between her and Miss Sands.
“You—you hate me, don’t you?” she said huskily, and somewhat theatrically.
Edwina looked down at her with a smooth, pale mask of a face.
“I don’t hate anyone,” she told her tonelessly, “and I certainly can’t work up the enthusiasm to hate a self-centred child like you.”
“Wh-what is self-centred?” Tina enquired, lapsing into the stammer that affected her speech sometimes.
“It means that you think only of yourself.”
“But I don’t! I think a lot about my Uncle Jervis. I love my Uncle Jervis!”
Edwina made a hopeless little gesture with her hands. She wondered why she was waging war with a child ... and where it would get her, anyway, if she continued to wage a form of cold war with such a strong-minded and unpredictable child as Tina Errol.
Less than twenty-four hours ago she had thought that they were cementing a friendship ... or, at any rate, that there were the beginnings of a friendship growing up between them, and certainly that there was no longer any undisguised ill-will. Up until the moment that Tina slammed the stable door on her they had had a particularly pleasant day together, and were looking forward to a companionable high tea in the well-appointed schoolroom at Melincourt ... the room in which so many children, with all kinds of dispositions and problems, all kinds of grudges and moments of pure happiness, had toiled over their lesson books and shared their meals with a young woman like Edwina who was appointed to look after them.
But surely not one of them had ever been guilty of quite such a calculated piece of malice as that which the sallow-faced Tina had been guilty of without any real cause for quite so much vindictiveness?
All the same, she was very small for her age, and she was very spoiled, and at the moment she did look rather abject. Edwina couldn’t bear the sight of her anxious, black boot-button eyes upturned to her appealingly, and she knew that the appeal concerned her Uncle Jervis.
Would Edwina, or would she not, tell Jervis Errol what had happened in his absence, and would this affect his opinion of his niece in any way?
Edwina suddenly shook her head.
“No, I won’t tell your uncle, and I won’t expect him to compensate me because I’ve collected a very bad headache—genuine this time—and my dress appears to be ruined by contact with the stable floor and the affectionate overtures of Mothball. Unlike a certain parlourmaid I shall say nothing ... but I shall be careful to hand in my notice to your uncle as soon as he returns. The one thing you desired above everything else will now become an established fact.”
“You mean—” Tina spoke in a whisper—“that you won’t stay here?”
Edwina sighed, and went across to her dressing-table to search the top drawer for a bottle of aspirin tablets.
“I don’t want to spend another evening locked in with Mothball and Marquis,” she replied.
“But I wouldn’t lock you in again—”
Edwina turned and glanced at her sceptically.
“You’d probably think of something else to bring me to heel. As a matter of fact, I think you’d have gone down very well with the chiefs of staff who ran the Spanish Inquisition.” And then she remembered that Tina was partly Spanish, and decided that might account for it. “I’ll just tell your uncle I don’t find the country as good for my health as I imagined, and ask him to release me as soon as someone else can be found to come and look after you. Or he decides that you’d be better off in a school!”
“Oh, no!” Tina exclaimed.
Edwina poured water into her tooth-glass and swallowed her aspirins.
“Ever heard of a boomerang?” she enquired conversationally.
Tina looked at her blankly.
“It’s a thing that comes back at you after you’ve thought you’ve got rid of it,” Edwina explained. “It’s a little like conscience,” she added thoughtfully.
Tina still stared at her.
Edwina nodded her head in the direction of the door.
“If I were you, I’d go to bed,” she said. “I’m going myself as soon as I’ve had my somewhat delayed bath.”
CHAPTER V
JERVIS ERROL returned to Melincourt a couple of days later, and with him was Miss Marsha Fleming and one of her girl friends, and a couple of men friends of Errol himself.
Errol telephoned a few hours before he was due to arrive, and the telephone call sent the housekeeper scuttling round in a hurry to prepare beds for the three unexpected guests, and make certain that everything was as it should be in Miss Fleming’s room. Apparently Miss Fleming’s mother was not accompanying her, but as her grandmother lived in the district she would not be entirely cut off from her family during her stay.
Tina, when she heard the news, looked at first delighted and then rather more sober.
“Do you think I ought to wear my best dress?” she enquired, surveying Edwina with a certain uneasiness ... although for the past two days their relations had been quite amicable, and Edwina had said nothing at all to lead her to believe that she would go back on her word to say nothing at all to Jervis Errol about her incarceration in the stables. However, Tina plainly could not quite believe her, and she followed her about once the news had been received that the returning master of the place and his friends were on their way, and once she even tackled Edwina on the subject.
“You won’t—you won’t say anything to Uncle Jervis?”
“Not a word,” Edwina promised, looking mildly surprised. “Didn’t I give you my word?”
“But people don’t—don’t always keep their word...”
“Well, I do.”
Tina heaved a tremendous sigh of relief.
“Oh, well, I didn’t really expect you’d say anything. But you never know, you might feel tempted if he asks you how well I behaved myself.”
“I’ll simply say your conduct was exemplary,” with dryness.
That vaguely alarmed Tina.
“What is exemplary?” she began. And then she decided there wasn’t time to find out, and if Marsha Fleming was arriving any moment she ought to be suitably attired to welcome her. Marsha, according to Tina, was nothing short of a fashion plate—and indeed, she had done a certain amount of modelling in her time. Her father was a retired army man who had found it difficult, on his pension, to maintain his daughter’s wardrobe at the peak she expected, and Marsha had had various kinds of jobs since she left her expensive finishing-school. Now she was planning to marry money, and with that end in view she would almost certainly arrive looking her best Tina repeated:
“Shall I wear my best dress?”
“Good gracious, no, why should you?” Edwina was about to reply,
when she realised that that would merely involve her in argument, and she was growing a little tired of arguing with Tina. She shrugged her shoulders. “Oh, well, yes, of course ... if you feel you ought to. But you’ve so many dresses that I’m not quite sure which one you consider to be your best.”
“This one.”
Tina dragged a smart lemon-yellow pure silk from off its hanger, and went round searching for the right shoes to go with it, and other etceteras. In the end she decided that white kid sandals and a series of Indian bracelets which her uncle had given her did the best for her appearance as a whole; and when she went downstairs at last she was jingling the Indian bracelets as they encircled her immature wrist, and smelling rather strongly of cologne ... which also was a present from her uncle.
“Of course, Marsha always uses wonderful perfume,” she observed, as she and Edwina stood together in the hall, looking out through the glass doors at the gracious sweep of the drive along which the cars would appear in procession. She suddenly recollected that Edwina, too, had had a bottle of perfume once which .she might well have valued, and she glanced sideways at her uneasily. “If Uncle Jervis gives me some more pocket-money when he gets back I’m going to buy you a present,” she announced.
“For goodness’ sake, don’t do anything of the kind,” Edwina implored her. “Your pocket-money is to spend on yourself.”
“But I’d like to buy you a present.”
Edwina met her uneasy eyes.
“My dear child,” she said quietly, “I don’t need bribing. And I certainly wouldn’t want you to spend money on me.”