The Strange Waif

by Violet Winspear

  His eyes moved over her face, as though he re-checked previous impressions of her features and her colouring. His thin lips twitched with a smile as he read her fear of him. "Well," he drawled, "how are you getting on?"

  "All right—thank you."

  "And has Avery proposed yet—or does he still think you're somebody else's property?"

  "Oh, how can you say that?" The contours of her face seemed to grow sharper and whiter, throwing into relief the black tendrils of hair that lay along her forehead. "How can you talk about anyone as fine as your cousin in such a spiteful way?"

  "Perhaps I don't like the idea of seeing him duped." Robert was looking suavely sarcastic as he regarded her. "He is, after all—apart from being so fine—a very rich man."

  "But I don't want his money!" Lygia gasped. "What makes you hate me so much that you have to say all this? I—I wouldn't dupe Avery. I wouldn't know how to."

  "I wonder?"

  "I don't ask you to wonder anything," she cried back. "It happens to be the truth. Now let—let me go!" She tried to pull away from him, but there was a remarkable amount of strength in that slender hand of his and it held her determinedly; it hurt her, too, but as she bit her lip, she felt the long fingers ease their hold a little. In a sudden defeated, exhausted way, she said: "You're very cruel, aren't you? You have the remorseless face of a—a Spanish Inquisitor, like that man in the portrait over there on the wall."

  "Really?" The denunciation seemed to amuse him rather than anger him, but Gerda, who was sitting beside the fire, swinging a complacent foot, stirred out of her complacency now to exclaim, "Why, you cheeky little brat, Lygia! Do you fully realize who you're talking to?"

  "Come, Gerda, you know she doesn't," Robert drawled. "She has amnesia, remember." He didn't look at Gerda as he spoke, his eyes remained intent upon Lygia.

  But as he said this, Gerda grew rather restless. She drummed the arms of her chair with long, scarlet fingernails. "Avery says it as well, Robert, don't forget that," she protested. "I mean, he is a doctor." Her voice rose slightly. "Oh, leave the kid alone, can't you? If Avery gets to hear that you've been tormenting her, he'll get really wild with you and forbid you the house. She isn't worth that, surely?"

  "I couldn't care less about Avery's damn house and whether or not I can come here," he retorted. Then he felt Lygia tremble against the grey and black of his check jacket and he glanced down at her. "So you consider that I have the face of a Spanish Inquisitor, eh, Lygia? Well, my mother was a Spanish dancing girl from Madrid. Or did you know that already?"

  She flushed beneath his satirical, questioning glance. She did know about his mother, for old Tanner had told her what a furore had been caused when Robert's father had brought his Spanish bride home to Chase for the first time. She had been wonderfully striking, according to Tanner, but a little too exotic and unconventional for the open-air tastes of the Chases and their West Country friends. The visit, and others like it, had not been successful…

  "Yes, I know about your mother," Lygia admitted. "Tanner the gardener told me. I suppose I shouldn't encourage him to gossip, but old people like talking about the past." Her violet eyes moved over Robert's face, seeing the unyielding definition of his cheekbones, the slight dent in the bridge of his nose, and the way he could make his dark eyes go stony and blank whenever anyone looked directly into them. It was almost as though he put up shutters between onlookers and his thoughts, and there, behind those shutters, he dwelt in a kind of dark isolation. "May I go now, please?" she asked quietly.

  "By all means." He put her away from him and swung to the fireplace. As he tossed the dead end of his cigarette into the fire, he heard Lygia cross the carpet to the doors. They swished open, just enough to release her thin body, then they closed again with a hurried, jolting bang.

  "You're a frightening enemy, aren't you, Robert?" Gerda said, and her blue eyes travelled from his face to the face which Johann Zoffany had painted.

  Robert, following her glance, said amusedly: "Perhaps it's my long drop of Spanish blood, my dear. Spanish blood, you know, was in the Chases long before my father became enamoured of his dancing girl from Madrid. A couple of the Chase men were officers in Drake's navy; one of them included a Spanish bride in the plunder he brought back from a Cadiz raid. Adam Chase's grandmother," he pointed towards the portrait, "was a Spanish Marquesa. The attraction appears to have persisted down the years."

  "But not in you, Robert—I hope." Gerda held out a scarlet-tipped hand to him, and her lips grew lush and full when Robert leant over her and drew her out of her chair and into his arms. He studied her face as it lay against his arm. "Pretty as paint, aren't you?" he murmured. "Miss Calendar-girl! Miss Chocolate-box!" Then he grinned, derisively, as her scarlet mouth formed into a pout just a few inches from his mouth.

  "I'd like to scratch your eyes out!" she whispered.

  "How dare you be cruel to me? That's a fate reserved for funny little things like Lygia."

  "Have I been cruel to you?" He raised a mock-innocent eyebrow at her. "Well, in that case, you won't want me to kiss you, will you?"

  "Oh, you dark, strange devil you!" Her cream-white, cream-soft arms closed in a warm, wanting arc about his neck. "You damn well know that I'd want you to kiss me if you had me on the rack!"

  Upon leaving the drawing-room, Lygia had gone at once to her bedroom, but a strange restlessness seized her the moment she shut the door. In a little while the dinner-gong would be sounded and she would have to go down to dinner. She shrank from the thought of that dinner, with Robert Chase watching her across the table…

  Again her bedroom door slammed and she was running back along the gallery to the stairs and retracing her steps to the hall. She ran past the doors of the drawing-room, wincing at the clatter her brogues made on the oak floor, and when she reached the hall-closet, up near the front door, her hand was shaking with nerves as she pulled a raincoat from the closet. She scrambled into the coat, which hung loose, the belt dragging, as she made from the house like a creature pursued.

  An autumnal mist moved wraith-like through the pines, and now Lygia's brogues were silenced on the carpet of needles as she hurried away from the house and down the pine-walk.

  Now that September had drawn closer, the evenings had lost their summer mildness and the breeze that had come with the fall of dusk had turned into a chilly little wind. Lygia pulled the collar of the raincoat well up about her face, no decision made in her as to where she intended to go. She only knew that escape from Chase had been imperative.

  The skirts of the raincoat flapped about her legs as she walked, and she was reminded of the Sunday morning walk she had taken with Avery in this same raincoat; the walk which had told her that Chase and all the things pertaining to it were new in her life. From whatever sphere she had wandered, she was certain it was not one where silent-footed servants attended to big, lovely rooms and delectable foods came to the table in silver dishes. Nor did thoroughbred horses stamp in a white line of stables and two big cars glisten in a big garage.

  From where had she come—and why had no one called in at Brinsham's police station, or phoned or written, to lay claim to her?

  Avery had been down in his car several times through the week to make enquiries, but each time he had received a negative shake of the head from the Sergeant there and the information, or more correctly the opinion, that it might be very probable that the young person with the amnesia was alone in the world and that all Dr. Chase could really do was to wait patiently until she 'came to herself and remembered who she was and from where she came.

  Alone in the world? Was that the answer?

  She sighed as she walked, her thin hands clenching into balls in the baggy pockets of the raincoat. It was a desolate thought, that she might not have a soul in the world to worry about her, to wonder where she might be and whether or not she was being cared for.

  Then, insidious and painful, came remembrance of what Robert Chase had said. "Has Avery proposed
yet, or does he still think you're somebody else's property?" The irony in Robert's voice had plainly revealed that he did not believe her to be 'somebody else's property', and she was growing increasingly convinced herself that her particular world was barren of people who might regard her as 'property'. There was no husband! Whatever sort of ring had marked her finger, it had not, she felt sure, been a wedding-ring. Perhaps it had been a signet-ring and she had worn it upon the third finger of her left hand because it would fit no other finger?

  Again she sighed.

  Oh, but she was tired! And her left brogue was rubbing her heel. She leant against the slim trunk of a pine and stood rubbing her heel. Where on earth did she think she was going? Into Brinsham? Yes, why not Brinsham? There was a cottage-hospital there and she wouldn't have to feel herself an interloper in a hospital. Robert Chase could not come there and mock her with his dark eyes and accuse her of playing a game with Avery.

  With Avery!

  Her face contorted and in a moment her head was pressed to the impersonal trunk of the pine and she was crying. She cried with the sad abandon of a child; her tears racing down her cheeks, her body shaken both by misery and cold. She cried for an end to this fearful blankness of mind—and she cried because she was afraid of all the emptiness which might lie behind the cloud of forgetfulness over her mind.

  When her storm of weeping finally ceased, she warily searched the pockets of the raincoat for the handkerchief she had felt in one of them as she had come down the pine-walk. She found it. It was large and masculine, and as she put it to her nose her heart seemed to turn over. It held the acrid scent of Egyptian cigarettes, and childishly she wanted to cry out to the gods of chance to stop tormenting her. Fiercely she dried her face with the handkerchief, making her cheeks tingle. Then she hastily thrust it back into the pocket from which she had drawn it.

  This raincoat, she knew, was one occasionally worn by Gerda. Had Gerda, then, borrowed the handkerchief from Robert during a stroll they had taken together one day; a stroll across the park or the moors, where he had kissed her, perhaps, and she had used the handkerchief to wipe the vivid, tell-tale marks of her painted mouth from his mouth?

  A night bird rustled in the pines and the stars were suddenly sharper in the sky, warning Lygia that time was hurrying while she stood and cried and foolishly wondered whether Robert Chase was in the habit of kissing Avery's secretary.

  She moved out from the pines—and then stood still again, the tear-swollen lids of her eyes lifting back in alarm, her eyes straining wide as the wind brought to her the barking of a dog.

  A strange, almost puppyish note lay in the barking. An appeal, lost and lonely, winging straight to the lost, lonely heart of the girl beneath the pines. This was Banker! Golden Banker, with his bright, friendly eyes, and something in the quality of his barking told Lygia that she need not fear a meeting with Robert. The dog was alone—and in some sort of trouble!

  Almost before she fully realized what she was doing, Lygia had darted out from the pines and she was running back up the pine-walk, calling to the dog. "Banker! Banker!" A minute or so later he responded to her call and came loping out from the pines. He ran straight towards her, again barking in that hurt, puppyish way, and he thrust his head against her raincoat. "Banker, what is it, boy?" She quickly ran her hands over him. Over his back, his sides and his legs, but he seemed, as far as she could make out in the darkness, quite intact. He wasn't limping and there was no wet-ness on his coat to indicate blood from a cut of some sort, yet that he was hurt in some way was obvious from the way he trembled and pressed to her.

  "Banker, I'd better get you home to Chase," she said, and in her anxiety for the dog she quite forgot that she had been making for Brinsham and the cottage-hospital there. She took hold of Banker's collar, urging him towards the house. But he wouldn't budge; his sturdy paws were pressed down hard upon the pine needles. "Banker, please!" she said, and in the end she wrapped her arms about him and forcibly hoisted him off the ground. He lay heavily in her arms, his head pressed to her shoulder and his throat emitting low little whines and snorts of pain. His distress frightened and worried Lygia, and as she staggered up the pine-walk with him she spoke to him as to a hurt baby, showering him with absurd names and telling him he would soon be better. She mounted the front steps of the house with difficulty and found and pulled the bell. She heard it ring in the hall and waited impatiently for David to come to the door, Banker growing heavier and heavier in her arms. "It won't be long now, lovely," she whispered. "Soon we'll see what's wrong with you."

  Banker licked her cheek, just as though he understood her words, and in that moment the door of Chase came open and the butler was staring wide-eyed at the truly absurd picture Lygia made as she stood in the arched porchway, a raincoat to her ankles and Robert Chase's dog, almost her own size, clasped in her arms.

  She said breathlessly: "G-go and fetch Mr. Chase, David. Go quickly. Banker has had an accident."

  "An accident, miss?" David's lugubrious mask slipped just a little and he looked almost concerned as he watched Lygia carry the dog past him into the hall.

  "I don't quite know what he's done to himself, but do hurry and fetch Mr. Chase," she urged.

  "The family are at dinner, miss—"

  "Oh, for goodness' sake!" Lygia quite forgot her former awe of the butler in this moment, her violet eyes flashing angrily over his hesitant face. "Mr. Chase must be told about this at once. The animal is in great pain—can't you see that he is?"

  David went, then, dark and dour across the hall, and Lygia lowered Banker to one of the high-backed settles that stood about the hall. She put her hand under his throat, and as she lifted his handsome face to her she cried out protestingly, and her own face went chalky white with horror. Protruding from Banker's left eye was a thick thorn, about an inch long!

  And then brisk footsteps came across the hall behind Lygia, and she swung round to face Robert, her hair tumbling above the worry-stormed pools of her large eyes and the front of her raincoat stained with blood from Banker's cruelly pierced eye. "Poor Banker's run a thorn into his eye!" she cried out. "I found him down among the pines."

  Robert's eyes went sharply black, and the next moment he was standing beside her and bending over Banker. The dog's tail gave a pathetic little wag of greeting, and Lygia watched the infinitely gentle way Robert's slender hands lifted the dog's head. He examined the pierced eye, and after a moment he said: "Is Avery there?"

  Lygia glanced round towards the dining-room, and she was relieved to see Avery coming across the hall. His long legs threw shadows before him and his blond face was stern. "Where have you been?" he demanded of Lygia.

  "I—" she gestured helplessly at the dog—"I went for a walk. I found Banker—" She trembled in the folds of her raincoat, suddenly feeling rather sick. "He has a big black thorn in his eye. Can you get it out? It's hurting him so much!"

  "Look," Avery took hold of her and turned her towards the drawing-room, "you go in by the fire. Tell Gran she's to give you a tot of brandy."

  "You will hurry and take the thorn out, won't you?" She had to turn again and look at Banker, who was trustingly permitting Robert to wipe blood from his golden face with a spotless white handkerchief. "I've an idea, you old fool," Robert said, "that we'll be changing your name to Nelson before this little lot is over." He turned to look at Avery. "It's in deep, old man. Think you can cope, or shall we get in touch with a vet?"

  Lygia moved away from the little group then, automatically obeying Avery's injunction that she go to the drawing-room to his grandmother. She was tapping upon the double doors when Gerda went running past her, making for Avery and Robert.

  Lygia watched her with a wondering 'child at a toyshop window' look in her eyes, and then that horrible sick feeling swept through her again and she dragged open the drawing-room doors and walked into the room in a rather blind way.

  Mrs. Chase was sitting on the tapestry couch, peering with an eagle-like intensity at
a newspaper that was spread open on her lap. A pair of gold-rimmed spectacles were halfway down her arrogant nose and the subdued music of a portable wireless was at her elbow.

  She glanced up, hearing the doors open and close, and her eyes behind the gold-rimmed spectacles travelled sharply over Lygia. "What are you doing in here in that dirty raincoat?" she demanded, the newspaper suddenly lax in her hands and rustling a little.

  Lygia, with clumsy hands, undid the buttons of the raincoat and pulled it off her shoulders. "I—I didn't realize—" She turned away, as though to take the coat out of the room.

  "For heaven's sake, child, put it on a chair," Mrs. Chase snapped.

  "There's blood on it—from Banker's eye. He's picked up a thorn. I found him and—and brought him home."

  "You're talking about Robert's dog?" Mrs. Chase got no further, for the doors swung open and Avery strode into the room. He was buttoning himself into an overcoat. "Has Lygia told you about the dog, Gran?" he asked.

  "Yes. Got a thorn in his eye, eh?"

  Avery nodded. "Bob and I are going to run him down into Brinsham to the vet. I could extract the thorn myself, but Bob's so almighty worried about the animal that I'd feel like a criminal if anything went wrong." Avery's glance moved to Lygia and slowly slipped over her as she stood clutching the soiled raincoat to her. "Why did you go out?" he asked.

  "I felt like a walk," she said, and she evaded his eyes, in case he read in them that she had intended to walk away from Chase and its occupants for ever. She didn't want to hurt him. Not Avery.

  "Well, it was rather a peculiar time to pick for a walk. You missed your dinner," he reproved. "I'll tell David to bring a tray to you here. And now I must be off." He took hold of the silver handles of the doors. "By the way, Lygia, Bob asked me to thank you for bringing Banker home to Chase."

  "Will he be all right?"

  Avery shrugged his shoulders. "He isn't a young dog, he's seven years old, and a shock like this could do him quite a bit of damage. We'll have to wait and see how he goes. Anyway," he smiled at her, "stop looking so big-eyed and worried." He glanced at his grandmother.