Master of Melincourt

by Susan Barrie

  “Well, I don’t.”

  Tina lay looking up at her in the warm glow that streamed from her bedside lamp.

  “You know,” she observed, as if she had been deliberating on the matter for some time, “I think I like you after all. I think I like you very much.”

  Edwina cautioned her a little dryly:

  “If I were you I wouldn’t make rash statements of that sort just because one of your idols has toppled sideways on her pedestal. Miss Fleming was possibly not feeling quite herself to-day, and that’s why she developed a few prickles. To-morrow—the day after—she’ll be herself again. It wouldn’t do to split your allegiance just because she found you rather boisterous when she wasn’t in the mood to be responsive.”

  But Tina’s eyes were big with doubt as she gazed up at her from her pillows.

  “What do you mean by ‘split my allegiance’?”

  “Open your heart to someone else because you’re feeling piqued.”

  “I don’t know what piqued means, either.”

  “Well, it doesn’t matter.” Edwina adjusted the shade of the bedside light, and then prepared to switch it off. “Are you quite comfortable? Do you feel like going to sleep?”

  Tina shook her head violently on the pillow.

  “No, I wish you’d stay and talk to me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because—because ...” She frowned, and tried to puzzle out the reason why she really wanted Edwina to remain. And all she could manage at last was, “I’ve already told you why. I think I’m beginning to hope you’ll never go away from here.”

  “Never is a long time.”

  “But you won’t let anything I’ve ever said—or done—drive you away, will you, Edwina?” she enquired anxiously. She shot up in bed and clasped both her small arms about her drawn-up knees. Her strange, black boot-button eyes were definitely anxious. “Will you?” she insisted.

  Edwina felt inclined to smile a little, but not with anything remotely approaching triumph.

  “I won’t allow myself to be driven away,” she promised.

  “And you’ll stay? Stay as long as I want you?”

  “By this time next week you’ll probably be appealing to your uncle to give me the sack,” Edwina observed without rancour. “So I think I can safely promise to stay as long as you want me.”

  “I won’t. I won’t ever again ask Uncle Jervis to give you the sack!”

  Now that she felt reasonably secure again she was beginning to be aware of sleepiness stealing over her, and Edwina induced her to lie flat again and tucked her up for the second time. Before she put out the light and stole quietly away she felt another insistent tug on her sleeve, and bent to find out what was required of her this time.

  “You can kiss me good-night if you like,” Tina said simply.

  Edwina kissed her. She felt touched, but not entirely overwhelmed.

  “Good-night, chicken,” she said, making use of one of the terms of endearment Jervis Errol frequently made use of when in contact with his niece. “Pleasant dreams!” she added.

  She walked quietly away over the thick carpet, and once back inside her own room she moved to the window and looked out. Below her was the terrace, an oasis of deepest shadow at that hour because the late-rising moon had not yet climbed high enough in the sky to cast a flood of light across the head of the short flight of steps which led up to it from the dim greenness of the lawns, and where she was sure two figures were standing, because their voices carried clearly in the silence of the night, and the woman, at least, was laughing as if her good humour was entirely restored.

  “Oh, darling,” she exclaimed, “you do have the oddest ideas. And of course I didn’t really mind, although I must have seemed upset. After all, Candy and I have been friends for years...”

  Not wishing to overhear the full context of the conversation, Edwina drew back a step. And then the light, amused voice floated up to her again.

  “The trouble with you, darling, is that you jump so rapidly to conclusions! And you simply don’t allow me any latitude at all!”

  A man’s voice answered in so low a tone that Edwina quite failed to catch what was said, and she wasn’t in the least sorry because she realised it was no affair of hers, and if Jervis Errol allowed Marsha Fleming latitude before they were married ... although, of course, it all depended on what Miss Fleming meant by ‘latitude.’

  But it was plain that once again they were on the best of terms with one another.

  The moon rose above a clump of trees that grew close to the ornamental sheet of water that was one of the features of the grounds of Melincourt, and within seconds the two figures standing close together on the terrace were outlined in silver. The man was tall, and wore a dinner-jacket, and the girl had silken hair drawn up on to the top of her head and piled in curls that shone like moonbeams with every graceful movement of her head; and the dress she wore, that outlined the sinuous shape of her figure just as the moonlight itself did, was also a pale, silvery affair that combined to create the illusion of a Dresden-china figurine coated in molten silver. Particularly as she was not very tall.

  Edwina heard her say:

  “I feel as if we’re being picked out by a searchlight, and every eye in the house is watching us. Let’s find a corner of the grounds where it’s really dark. What about that summer-house where we used to meet before? It used to be smothered in roses at this time of the year, and earwigs dropped on us, and you said something about having it pulled down—”

  A triumphant laugh answered her.

  “But it hasn’t been pulled down yet! Come along, and if your heels make holes in the lawn I’ll carry you!”

  Edwina turned away, for the first time in her life -—for a reason that she quite failed to understand—feeling actually revolted. It could have been revulsion because she had allowed herself to overhear so much, and according to her code eavesdroppers were unpleasant people. But that explanation didn’t entirely satisfy her, because the revulsion was actually accompanied by a quite extraordinary sensation not at all unlike dismay ... and there was no earthly reason why anything about the interchange on the terrace should have dismayed her or anyone else, for that matter.

  Unless it was Candy Shaw, if she had a particular interest in her host.

  Therefore the experience was a dismaying one in itself.

  She had half made up her mind to have a bath and go early to bed, but all at once the very thought of doing anything that was so much a part of an uninspired routine failed altogether to appeal to her. She even felt curiously rebellious, and rebellion decided her to take a walk instead of a bath.

  She slipped into a pair of stouter shoes, put on a coat and ran down one of the back staircases and let herself out into the grounds by means of a side door. Normally, since she was town reared, even the grounds at night, with their inky black shadows cast by trees and shrubberies, alarmed her a little, because she was never quite sure what might or might not be lurking in impenetrable places. But to-night her sudden restlessness drove her right down to the main gate and out on to the lonely stretch of country road that ran between two equally isolated villages. The road, it is true, was as bright as day in the moonlight, but the hedges on either side rose tall and black against the sky, and only the sweet scent of them was reassuring. Edwina felt greatly daring as she moved off down the road in the direction of the nearer of the two villages, and it was astonishing how quickly the exercise and the sense of unusual adventure under a sky full of stars soothed and consoled her after a time, and common sense asserted itself before she had time to reach the outskirts of the village and recognise from the church clock that it wanted only an hour to midnight.

  Somewhat guiltily she turned back, and she hoped that in her absence Tina had not wakened and wanted her, or gone in search of her; and she hoped, also, that she would be lucky enough to get back inside the house without running into either her employer and the young woman who had set off to share the loneliness of the s
ummer-house with him, or her employer’s brother and, possibly, Miss Candy Shaw, who was the only member of the party who had struck her as likely to indulge in a considerable amount of exercise, which she might have persuaded Jeremy Errol to share with her.

  But she met no one in the drive, and as she made her way round to the side of the house there appeared to be no one on the terrace who could recognise her—and she realised that if either Miss Fleming or Miss Shaw caught sight of her they might think she was one of the maids returning from an assignation and an evening out in the village.

  Somewhat breathlessly she ascended the same flight of back stairs that she had descended a short while earlier, and when she entered the nursery corridor she felt reasonably safe and secure, and was slipping out of her coat and making for her own room when she caught sight of the light shining under the schoolroom door.

  She paused and stared at it, felt absolutely convinced that she had turned it off before Tina went to bed—indeed, they had not needed a light before Tina went to bed—and then decided to investigate.

  She pushed open the door of the schoolroom, and could hardly believe the evidence of her eyes when they recognised the man sitting thoughtfully in the one comfortable chair the room contained, while the light above the ink-stained table shone down on him and his sleek, dark head, and the cigarette he was smoking appeared to be glowing dully at the tip as if he was not really aware of what he was doing, and had lighted it purely from habit.

  He looked up as Edwina pushed open the door and then appeared in the doorway, and his eyebrows arched enquiringly. Then he realised that she was carrying a coat and her cheeks were delicately flushed as if she had been hurrying, and there was the curious sweetness of the out of doors clinging about her.

  “You!” he exclaimed. “I thought you were in bed!”

  CHAPTER VII

  EDWINA felt almost as guilty as she looked. The coat over her arm clearly gave her away, and in addition she was panting slightly after her ascent of the steep side staircase and her race along the corridors. She shifted the coat from one arm to the other, pushed back the warm brown hair from her smooth, pale forehead with a gesture that was purely defensive, and looked at her employer with guilty eyes.

  “I was going to bed,” she explained truthfully, “and then I decided to go for a walk instead. It’s such a lovely night, I—I couldn’t resist going for a walk...”

  His black brows actually met as his frown increased.

  “Do you normally go for walks at this hour of the night?”

  “No.”

  “When you do go for walks do you go alone?”

  “I, er—yes, of course.”

  His eyes were a trifle bleak.

  “There’s no reason why you should say ‘of course.’ You’re a free agent, and over twenty-one. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here at all. For all I know—and for all I care, if it comes to that—you could be having an affair with a local lad. You might even be seriously contemplating marrying a local Lothario.”

  Edwina was so taken aback that she stared at him.

  “I don’t know anyone in this district. And I’m certainly not having an affair with anyone.”

  He shrugged.

  “It’s no concern of mine. I merely suggested that you might, if you felt tempted, indulge in a little light dalliance. It’s usual with girls of your age ... and no one can say you nay. Certainly not me!”

  She tried to assemble her facts. He was in the schoolroom at an unusual hour. He had been sitting there either waiting for someone, or because he was desirous of temporarily escaping the society of someone who was a guest beneath his roof. It couldn’t be the latter, or he wouldn’t have invited them to stay with him, and only a short time ago she had seen him standing on the terrace with his principal guest at his side ... the lovely, fairylike, gleaming, golden girl who might one day be his wife. Whom Tina confidently expected would be his wife one day!

  They had disappeared together in the direction of an unseen summerhouse, and as it wasn’t so very long ago he ought to look a little ruffled. There ought to be traces of powder on his dinner-jacket and, possibly, just a smear of lipstick on either the whiteness of his shirt-front or his lean, dark face; and, by rights, his hair should be a little disordered, and as he had been in a summer-house that was entirely covered by a climbing rose some indication that the brambles had caught at him and the odd insect alighted on him.

  All this she thought as she stared at him, and it struck her as strange that his appearance was immaculate, and there wasn’t so much as a hair of his head out of place, and there were certainly no traces of powder on the fine cloth of his dinner-jacket. He didn’t even smell delicately of highly concentrated perfume, and he looked calm to the point of being detached and, very definitely, just a little aloof.

  “Well?” he said, wrinkling his brows at her again. “What are you looking so hard at?”

  “N-nothing.” She coloured immediately, and, still hugging her coat, crossed the room to a chair near the old-fashioned nursery fire-guard. “I was just wondering why ... why you are here.”

  “Haven’t I a perfect right to be here, since I own the house?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Well then, try not to feel so amazed because you come in from a near-midnight walk and find me sitting at the table over which you like to preside in the daytime. This is your domain—I recognise that. But I also have a right to be here. Now, tell me precisely where you’ve been.”

  “I went for a walk about an hour ago and walked very nearly as far as the village of Fordham.”

  Fordham? But that’s a good three miles from here! Don’t tell me your boy-friend lives in Fordham?”

  “I tell you I haven’t a boy-friend,” and she sounded really indignant.

  “You mean that you haven’t a boy-friend at all?—Not even in London?”

  “N-no...”

  “Ah!” His voice was sharp and he wagged a finger at her. “I notice you hesitate! You don’t instantly deny that you have no interest at all in the opposite sex, so I’ll be discreet and probe no further. However, I would like you to know that I do not approve of a young woman of your age taking long, lonely walks at night in this district. We’re right on the edge of the moors, and the next thing you’ll be doing is taking Tina hitch-hiking on the moor. And then you’ll both get lost.”

  “I promise I won’t do that.”

  Her voice was quiet but emphatic, although by this time the colour had died out of her cheeks and she was feeling very tired and not at all like listening to a lecture on what she should, and should not, do while she remained in his employ. His dark blue eyes gazed steadily at her, and the small but livid bruise on her forehead seemed to interest him a good deal, and he stared at it even harder than he had stared earlier in the day.

  “One reason why I came up here to-night,” he told her, “was to have a little chat with you about that bruise you’ve collected which I commented on this morning. I hoped you would be up, and I hoped you would give me a truthful explanation of how you collected it. You said you were walking about in a dream ... well, in this dream, what was it that rose up and hit you and left that mark behind?”

  “I—I—er—”

  “The truth, mind!” he warned.

  She looked extremely uncomfortable.

  “Do I really have to tell you?” she prevaricated. “It’s just possible I can’t remember ... I mean, I don’t honestly think I can remember.”

  “Nonsense.” His voice was crisp. “You remember perfectly. It would be quite extraordinary if you didn’t, considering the type of experience that was yours.”

  To her horror she realised that he knew how she had collected the bruise, and as he rose and walked across to her and put out his hand and lifted her chin, turned her face to the light, she quaked inwardly because his face, all at once, looked so grim, and it boded no good for the unfortunate Tina, sleeping the sleep of innocence and youth not very far away from them.
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br />   “You mean, you—know all about it?” she whispered huskily.

  “Did you suppose I could remain in ignorance of such an incident for long? Bennett told me when I went across to the stables within half an hour of my return this morning. He gave me a highly coloured and possibly over-coloured account of what occurred, but even if he did the experience must have been one that you won’t forget very easily, and I find it difficult to put into words how strongly I feel about it, and how seriously I view Tina’s conduct—”

  “It wasn’t fair of Bennett to give her away!” Edwina exclaimed, in high indignation. “He gave me his word that he wouldn’t! I particularly asked him not to say a word to anyone—”

  “Bennett conceived it his duty to warn me. He sees my niece as a kind of menace unless something is done about her ... and more or less immediately.”

  “That, of course, is absolute rubbish,” Edwina declared.

  She felt very uncomfortable because Jervis was still retaining his light hold of her chin and studying her intently, and short of making a deliberate movement to escape him she could do nothing to free herself. With his free hand he touched the livid bruise on her forehead, and his pressure, although light, caused her to wince.

  At once he released her.

  “So it still hurts,” he said.

  “Not really,” she denied. “As a matter of fact, I bruise very easily, and bruises always last with me. You mustn’t be alarmed by Bennett’s story and a bit of a mark on my forehead which ceased to trouble me days ago.”

  “How many days ago?”

  She calculated, “Three or four. Perhaps five.”

  “Why didn’t you get in touch with me and let me know what had happened? Why didn’t you, if it comes to that, just walk out ... sending me a bill for damages when you got back to London!”