Ward of Lucifer

by Mary Burchell

  Norma put out a tentative hand and touched the wide, beautiful bracelet.

  "Richard, it's such a valuable present"

  "No. They're only semi-precious stones." "But the workmanship's so lovely." "Yes, I know. Lots of people wouldn't that," declared Richard, quite erroneously, do, and that's another reason why I should like you to have them."

  Norma wanted to tell him that, if they had been in the family for two generations, they ought to go to the girl he eventually married, but she thought such a suggestion might complicate, rather than clear, the present situation.

  "Richard, don't think I'm ungrateful. I think they're lovely and it's sweet of you to want to give them to me, but, honestly, I don't think I can take a present of jewellery from you. One doesn't, after just a few weeks' acquaintanceship, you know."

  "Dash it all! We aren't just acquaintances, are we?" cried the indignant Richard. "I thought you and I were good friends"

  "Oh, we are!" interrupted Norma, anxious not to hurt him.

  "Well, then, surely a good friend can give you a birthday present," he insisted, just a little sulkily. "It doesn't really rank as jewellery, Norma. I mean, it's not like a diamond necklace, or anything."

  "I know." Norma laughed slightly and bit her lip.

  Then she glanced at his disconsolate face, and felt guilty at having spoiled what he had evidently meant to be a very nice occasion. "Listen, Richard. I'd simply love to have them. I've seldom seen anything I've wanted more. But you must let me ask my guardian first if I may take them."

  "Yorke? What's he got to do with it?" Richard wanted to know, though his face had cleared a great deal when she admitted that she wanted to take the bracelet and earrings.

  "Well, he's a better judge than I am of whether I can be allowed to take them or not," Norma said, in a placatory tone. "Please, Richard. I'd feel more comfortable about it."

  "All right. You take them along and ask him."

  She began to say that it would be better if she asked her guardian first and accepted them, if allowed, later, because she realized that it would be much harder to give them back than to repeat a refusal. But perhaps he had thought that too, because he had already put them into her hands and eagerly closed her fingers over them.

  "You take them along," he repeated, "and see what Yorke says."

  So Norma had to take them. And because she knew that the most sincere generosity had prompted the gift, she added: "And thank you over and over again, Richard, whether I'm able to keep them or not. I think it was a lovely idea of yours."

  He smiled, and looked most transparently delighted.

  So that Norma thought, "It's very easy to make Richard happy. He really is a dear."

  He took her back to Bishopstone, but refused to come in. Possibly he thought that the return of the bracelet and earrings might be made too easy, if he were actually there. And, for her part, Norma thought it would be much easier to discuss the question alone with her guardian.

  It was rather her custom to rush in and start telling him almost everything she had been doing, in spite of the fact that he often listened almost without comment, except for that faintly sarcastic smile, which somehow suggested that, though he found her amusing, he also found her dear.

  But, on this occasion, she decided to wait until after dinner to tell him about Richard's gift, and it was not until they were seated in the drawing-room having coffee that she said: "Richard wants very much to give me a birthday present."

  "Does he? What does he want to give you?" inquired her guardian, stirring his coffee. "Or is that a secret?"

  "Oh , no. It's not a secret. It's rather a problem.

  He wants to give me, in fact, he has temporarily given me a bracelet and earrings which belonged to his mother."

  "What do you mean by its being a temporary gift?" was the dry inquiry.

  "Well, you see, I said I couldn't actually accept them until I'd asked you."

  "Oh , I see. Did you think the gift might carry some implication?"

  "Not exactly. Only, it isn't quite the thing to accept jewellery from a man, is it?"

  Her guardian looked extremely amused. "It is very much 'the thing' in all sorts of circumstances," he assured her. "I suppose what you mean is that one doesn't accept jewellery from a casual male acquaintance. "

  "Yes.!!

  "Are they very valuable?"

  "He says not. But they're very beautiful."

  "I think you'd better let me see them," her guardian said. So Norma went away to fetch them.

  When she brought them back, he held out his hand for them, without saying anything, and Norma stood by, watching, while he held them in his beautiful, strong fingers and examined them with interest.

  "Very beautiful," he commented at last. "Seventeenth century Florentine, I should say. Have you tried them on?"

  "Not?" he glanced up, amused and incredulous.

  "They've been modernized, with screw fastenings, you know."

  "Yes I know."

  "Why didn't you try them on, then?"

  "I thought that, if they looked perfectly beautiful, I mightn't want to give them up again, even if you said it wouldn't do for me to keep them," Norma confessed.

  Her guardian laughed.

  "Put them on now, and let me see how they look on you." His tone was peremptory, rather than indulgent, and Norma obediently took first the bracelet and clasped it on her wrist, and then the earrings and screwed them in her ears.

  As she turned from the mirror to face him, she actually heard her guardian catch his breath slightly.

  "Yes, they're extraordinarily becoming," he said, leaning back in his chair and regarding her. "You ought to have a multi-coloured brocade frock for the evening with them. Something with good, simple, renaissance lines but rather opulent material. We'll see about it when we get to London."

  "Do you do you mean that I may keep them?" Norma smiled, her very red lips slightly parted in her excitement.

  "I don't see why not, if they give you so much pleasure."

  Norma knew that was not a reason which any guardian even her guardian should advance, if the suggested action were really a doubtful one. But, presumably, the whole matter was not so important as she had supposed, and she accepted his decision with the utmost pleasure, even though it slightly surprised her.

  She was not, she found, the only person to be surprised by it. For, the next day, when she showed the bracelet and earrings to Mrs. Parry, and told her they were a present from Sir 'Richard Inworth, that lady registered considerable disapproval.

  "It's not quite the thing to take a present like that from a gentleman. Miss Norma," she said primly. "Not unless you're going to marry him, that is."

  "Oh, Mrs. Parry, do you think these things matter so much nowadays?" cried Norma, eagerly rejecting sentiments which had been her own less than twenty-four hours ago.

  "I certainly do think so. If the young lady is a properly brought up young lady, that is," the housekeeper added severely. "Sir Richard should have known better than to give them to you, and Mr. Yorke won't be at all pleased. Miss Norma. I can tell you that."

  "But Sir Richard meant it so very kindly," Norma explained eagerly. "And Mr. Yorke says it's all right, too."

  "Mr. Yorke said it's all right?" repeated Mrs. Parry, iii astonishment. "That you should take presents of jewellery from Sir Richard Inworth?"

  "Only one present," murmured Norma, feeling it was too bad to put the offence in the plural. "And it is my birthday."

  "Well, Miss Norma, if Mr. Yorke says it's all right, I've nothing more to say," the housekeeper replied rather stiffly. "But it's very odd. Unless" She stopped and gave Norma that curious glance she had given her once or twice before.

  "Unless what, Mrs. Parry?"

  "Nothing, Miss Norma. I was just thinking aloud," said Mrs. Parry, and then shut up like a particularly infuriating oyster.

  Norma felt rather cross, and for a moment her pleasure in the present was slightly clouded. But then
she told herself that Mrs. Parry was severe and rather grimly conventional. Besides she hadn't seen how very nice, and almost pathetic, Richard had been in his eagerness to persuade Norma to accept the present.

  The whole incident had given Norma rather a different view of the baronet, and she said to her guardian: "I'm only just beginning to realize how nice Richard is. "

  "Really? Because of the earrings, you mean?"

  "No. At least, not just because he gave me a present, but because of the very nice way in which he did it."

  Her guardian seemed content to contemplate Richard's virtues in silence. And presently Norma went on: "I know it sounds funny, but there's something faintly pathetic about him."

  "It sounds extremely funny to me," Justin Yorke said dryly. "I had never thought of Inworth as an object of pathos. I should have said he was an insensitive, though generous, creature, with few inhibitions."

  "Y -yes. But he's also rather warm-hearted and sociable, and doesn't really like living alone in that huge magnificent house."

  "There are plenty of women ready to remedy that defect for him," observed Norma's guardian, a little sarcastically.

  "Are there?" Norma looked amused and interested.

  "Do you mean that women run after him?"

  "My dear child, I suppose he's the best matrimonial catch in the country," Justin Yorke said cynically. "He is an exceptionally rich man, quite personable and though I don't pretend to have a woman's view on this I should say he would be extraordinarily easy to turn into an indulgent husband."

  "Yes, I suppose he would," Norma agreed. "Then you think it's just that he prefers to remain a bachelor."

  "I'm not in Inworth's confidence," her guardian replied. "But if, as you say," he added a trifle maliciously, "he is a pathetic, lonely figure living in the midst of disillusioning magnificence, I really can't see why he doesn't take the very obvious way out."

  "I didn't say that," cried Norma, laughing protesting. "I didn't go anything like as far as that. It was just that I imagine he said he thought Bishopstone was a nicer house to live in. Nicer than Munley Towers, I mean."

  Her guardian turned a page of the book which was open on the arm of his chair.

  "He said that? What prompted him to say it?" inquired Justin Yorke casually, without looking up.

  "Oh, I don't know I think I said something about how magnificent his place was, and, though he agreed, he added that he thought Bishopstone a nicer house to live in. I think so, too," Norma added with emphasis.

  "Do you, Norma?"

  "Oh, yes! I shouldn't ever want to live at Munley Towers. It's terrifically grand and all that. But there's something almost dead, or dying, about it. As though all the grandeur is a little pointless, somehow."

  "Grandeur is always pointless unless there is some big personality to give it significance," her guardian said coldly. "Inworth, though a good fellow is mediocre. Whatever Munley Towers requires, it is not a mediocre master."

  "II suppose you're right," Norma agreed slowly, feeling sorrier than ever for Richard, and nearly sure that her guardian's cold, impersonal reading of the situation amounted to much the same as her own only somewhat differently expressed.

  "I suppose it was because you know he's such a good fellow, as you say, that you thought it all right for me to take the present?" she suggested.

  Her guardian glanced at her amusedly. "Still doubtful about the propriety of that?" he inquired dryly.

  "Nooh, no. It was just Mrs. Parry thought I shouldn't have accepted it, you know."

  "Mrs. Parry is not called on to express an opinion," replied her guardian very coldly.

  "Oh, well, I showed her the jewellery and more or less invited her comments," Norma explained hastily, anxious that Mrs. Parry should not be misjudged. "And she said it wasn't right of Richard to give them, or for me to have taken them. She said a well brought up young lady didn't do such a thing, unless, of course, she was going to marry the man," added Norma, smiling as she remembered Mrs. Parry's prim phrasing.

  "Perhaps," her guardian said carelessly, "Inworth hoped he was giving them to the young lady who was going to marry the man."

  "Oh, no!" cried Norma. "I'm sure there wasn't anything like that about it. You don't think there was, do you? He'd been talking about my being a schoolgirl only an hour before."

  "I tell you I'm not in Inworth's confidence," her guardian said, actually laughing at her distress. "But don't take it so seriously. You're too young to take anything very seriously just yet, and I dare say Inworth knows that as well as anyone else."

  "II hope so," Norma said doubtfully. Her guardian looked amused again.

  "Would it matter so very much, if he thought otherwise? I mean if he judged you old enough to be interested in the best matrimonial catch in the county?" He repeated his own words a little ironically.

  "I don't want to start thinking about that sort of thing yet," exclaimed Norma earnestly. "I'm only just beginning to find out what fun it is being a ward. I don't want to consider the question of being anyone's wife yet."

  "Wise child," approved her guardian, with his rather enigmatic smile. "And, anyway, we shall be going to

  London next week, so you "will have plenty to occupy your time and thoughts, without bothering too much about Inworth."

  CHAPTER SIX

  JUST as life at Bishopstone had been like a new world to Norma, so life in the London house opened like a fresh chapter in front of her.

  Thanks to Aunt Janet's views on the correct upbringing of unwanted wards, she had never been in London for more than a few hours at a time, and most of her knowledge of it was confined to disheartening glimpses from taxi windows, as she travelled from one depressing railway terminus to another.

  But the London to which her guardian introduced her was an entirely different affair. A London of art and music, of history and culture, interspersed with a good deal of sheer enjoyment, in the more frivolous sense of the word.

  It was true that the small house in St. John's Wood was on nothing like the scale of Bishopstone. But it had great charm of its own, and the furnishing bore the unmistakable stamp of her guardian's admirable taste. The domestic staff consisted of only one excellent manservant and his wife. But Norma could not imagine that even a staff of twelve could have managed things to greater perfection.

  She thought of Mrs. Parry's dictum" Good wages, good conditions, and no questions asked" and felt certain that these things operated in the London house, as well as Bishopstone. There was an indefinable air of satisfaction and well-being about Coxon and Mrs. Coxon, mingled with a well-mannered discretion which made it impossible to imagine their even contemplating the questioning of their employer's authority.

  They were responsible for the cooking and serving at the small, elegant dinner-parties which Norma found to be part of the natural pattern of things, for her guardian entertained much more often in London than at Bishopstone, and the Coxons were evidently fully aware that, during the time their master was in London, a very high standard of service was expected of them.

  But, Norma gathered, when he was up at Bishopstone, the place was more or less their own, except for odd occasions when the house was lent to one or other of Mr. Yorke's friends complete with the Coxons' services.

  Norma's own room, though not so large as her beloved room at Bishopstone, was beautifully furnished, to look more like an elegant sitting-room than a bedroom.

  "I don't imagine you will want an inexhaustible supply of my company, any more than I shall of yours," her guardian explained, with characteristically brutal frankness. "And, in a small house, two people are apt to find themselves very much on top of each other, if they don't face that difficulty from the beginning. So you had better have the kind of room, Norma, in which you can be happy on your own and amuse yourself reasonably well, whenever you feel you have had enough of me, or I obviously have had enough of you."

  "I'm not sure that I know when you've had enough of me," Norma said rather soberly, not t
aking up the question of when she might feel she had had enough of him.

  "I'll tell you," her guardian promised her with grim humour, "if! find you backward in reading the signs, that is."

  Norma looked even more serious at this, and he laughed and put his arm round her.

  "All right. I haven't had too much of you yet," he said. "But life in Bishopstone was so much less cramped than this that it's well for us to know in advance how to get rid of each other, if we need to."

  "Yes, I see," Norma agreed, and decided to study any signs of impatience with great care.

  However, either she knew by instinct when to efface herself tactfully, or else her guardian was willing to put up with more of her company than he had supposed, for Norma was never given the impression much less the definite intimation that her absence would be acceptable. In addition, he took her out almost everywhere that he went.

  To begin with, there was the question of providing her with a suitable wardrobe for a moderately social existence, and here Norma found herself almost breathless with delight.

  There was no question of a lavish and hastily assembled wardrobe. But everything which was bought was beautiful and had a tasteful significance. Above all, everything either reflected or emphasized, Norma's own individual personality.

  She was astonished to find that her guardian knew so much about women's clothes. But she soon found that he approached the problem from the impersonal standpoint of wishing to produce an artistic whole. He would no more have tolerated a badly dressed ward than he would have tolerated a badly furnished house. And, indeed, he was not by any means kind over one or two

  of Norma's suggestions which he considered out of keeping with his general scheme.

  "But it's / who am going to wear the clothes," protested Norma rather indignantly over something which she specially wanted.

  "It's I who will have to look at them," he retorted cynically. "In any case, I want you to look your best, and I intend to have you properly dressed for the occasion."