The Strange Waif

by Violet Winspear

  The curtains billowed and the room was redolent of wind-tossed seas and storm-washed moors, and Lygia thought sadly that the proud heather would now be lying flat, beaten down by the rain. And the little witch-tree, the rowan, would be standing bedraggled in the uncaring wind…

  Then Lygia stiffened in her bed, for her door had opened.

  "It's only me, child." It was Mrs. Chase who came into the room. She was carrying a lighted lamp and the shadow of her bent, long-gowned figure wavered up the walls, and the sound of her breathing was heavy and old. She came slowly to the side of Lygia's bed and lowered herself into the chair that stood there. She settled herself, still breathing heavily. "I didn't think you'd be asleep. Avery upset you, didn't he?"

  Lygia was sitting up now and the wavering lamplight showed the paleness of her face and the long shadows her lashes threw on to her cheeks. "He's usually so fair-minded about things, that's what upset me," she admitted. "Surely he can't really believe Gerda's insinuations about—about Robert and me?"

  "Are they only insinuations?" Mrs. Chase enquired dryly.

  Lygia flushed and her arms tightened about her up-drawn knees as she remembered those dark, whirling moments in Robert's arms, the crushing hardness of his mouth on hers, and the frightening sensation of solid earth breaking open beneath her feet. Pluto carrying Persephone off to Hades! Avery had said it long ago, and that was how it had felt, to be in Robert's arms.

  "Well," his grandmother was watching her in a dry, knowing way, "did he make love to you?"

  "He kissed me." Lygia just breathed the words.

  "Um—how did that come about? D'you want to tell me, right from the beginning?"

  Lygia nodded her head and all at once the words were spilling from her. She hadn't known that emptying the heart could be so easy, and so easing. Out it all came. The hours slept away under the rowan. Robert standing before her when she awoke, with the wind lifting his dark hair above the thin, haughty Spanish modelling of his face. Tea at the cottage. Memory flooding back—and Robert angrily certain that she was playing a game after all and reaching for her with fierce hands, laying her over his arm and kissing her as he would kiss a wanton…

  "The boy's a devil when he's a mind to be one, there's no denying that," Mrs. Chase said, and she worried the ruby on her hand and it glowed blood-red as passion as the lamplight was caught in it; went dark as sin as the lamplight fled out of it. "He worries me, Lygia; yes, he worries me. There's no real knowing what he'll do with his life—and I get older and wearier every day—and closer to that last door we must all pass through. We pass through many doors on our way to old age, child. There's sunshine behind some, shadows behind others, but I think you're already beginning to learn that, aren't you?"

  Lygia looked into the elderly, jetty eyes, with all life's mysteries uncovered to them, and the aching vulnerability of her own youth and her fears of what might lie ahead of her took her by the throat and made her voice shake as she said: "Life is like a mountain, too, I think. W-we climb and slip and find good patches and get let down over others. It's all rather fearful!"

  Mrs. Chase nodded, remembering the uncertainties of her own youth and the slips she had made, and the discovery, as the years went by, that the footholds which wealth and position had offered had been shallow ones after all.

  "You really intend to leave us tomorrow, child?" she asked.

  "Yes. I can't go on aimlessly, without a job. I must do something."

  "What about money? There's your fare into Torquay and you'll need a few pounds to keep you going until you find a job."

  "I have my fare," Lygia said quickly. "Avery has been providing me with pocket-money and I have enough left over to get me to Torquay. I shall pay it all back, of course, as soon as I can."

  "If he'll let you." Mrs. Chase spoke dryly. "He's a good boy and he behaved badly tonight because he was jealous. Always forgive a man his jealousies, Lygia, for they're really compliments."

  "Of course I forgive him!" The quick blood ran up into Lygia's face. "He's been kindness itself to me and — and I repaid him by going to Robert's cottage. Today of all days, while he was in Plymouth! It must have looked as though I'd deliberately waited until he was out of the way." She glanced down at her hands, clasped about her knees. "Nice people, I think, have a streak of hardness in them which hurts you far more when you run up against it than the hardness in—in cynical people."

  "People like Robert, do you mean?" Mrs. Chase asked.

  "Yes, I suppose I mean people like Robert. You can't disillusion the cynic, can you? There are no angels for them; no heaven on earth; no gardens in winter." She gave a little shiver, as though something cold touched her. "People are all so different and all so hard to know, aren't they?"

  "Yes, so hard to know when we're young," Mrs. Chase agreed, and there was a new, almost compassionate note in her voice. Lygia glanced at her, grateful for her understanding. Then Mrs. Chase said: "Look here, child, I'm not going to persuade you not to go tomorrow, but don't stay away from us, not now we're friends. Don't let your pride, which you young people are eaten up with," she smiled slightly, "keep you away. Avery would want you to come back; he would want you to regard Chase as a sort of second home."

  "Would he?" Lygia looked uncertain; even a little afraid of the invitation. "I—I should have to think about it."

  "By all means think about it. Distance might obscure the eyesight, but you'll find that it has a way of clearing the mind—and the heart. Now open your hand, I want to give you a going-away present."

  Lygia's lashes gave a startled flutter and she drew back against her pillows. "No—I—"

  "It's only a bauble, from my own floundering youth." Mrs. Chase was looking sardonic as she slowly opened a handkerchief and a gold chain, fine as a couple of interwoven hairs, glinted in the lamplight. Upon the chain there hung a little aquamarine sea-horse, so translucent that the light struck through it. "Pretty, isn't it?"

  "Yes—but—"

  "Oh, be quiet—and lean forward so that I can put this around your neck." Lygia reluctantly complied, and when Mrs. Chase had fastened the chain, with old, slow hands that shook a little against the back of Lygia's neck, she said: "Poor little sea-horse, he should ride against a young, warm breast, he's been lying in a worn old jewel-box too many years. There, his eyes are beginning to sparkle already! His eyes are real diamonds, Lygia. D'you like him?"

  "I can't help liking him! It's wonderfully kind of you to want me to have him." Lygia could feel the gem against her skin, cool and slight, there in the V made by the open collar of her pyjamas. "It must be very valuable, though, Mrs. Chase! It is valuable, isn't it?" She worriedly searched the elderly eyes, wanting to accept the little sea-horse and wishing Mrs. Chase would make acceptance easy by saying in that inflammatory way of hers: "Valuable? Pish, young woman! A boy got it out of a party bonbon years ago and gave it to me for a kiss!"

  But Mrs. Chase didn't say any such thing. Her eyes were wandering over Lygia, thin and angular in the big bed, that white skin of hers mopping up shadow and her breasts a mere flutter under the linen of her pyjamas.

  "Lygia," she spoke with the sharpness of anxiety, "be very sure that you're doing the right thing in leaving us. You're very young to be alone in the world."

  "Oh—I don't know." Lygia plucked diffidently at the bed's counterpane. "I've been alone for the last eight months." Then she smiled and put a hand to the little sea-horse. "Anyway, I have a lucky mascot now. At least, I'll keep him if he isn't too valuable."

  "You'll keep the sea-horse and no arguments," Mrs. Chase retorted. "It was given to me many years ago by a young man I knew. He went to the South African war and we never met again, but I want you to have his gift because you have his will-o'-the-wisp quality. You beckon, Lygia, though you know it not—so be careful, my child, out there in that big wild marsh of a world." Mrs. Chase took hold of Lygia's hands and held them tight for a moment, then she got to her feet and as she walked to the dressing-table and took
up the lamp, Lygia saw the drawn, rather ill look of the dark old face and she felt her heart give a jump of apprehension.

  "Mrs. Chase—"

  "Yes, child?"

  "Thank you for all your kindness."

  Mrs. Chase was standing by the door now, looking back at Lygia. The violet eyes were big and young and darkly uncertain of the future, and one thin hand slowly climbed to the sea-horse, translucent as the sea itself against the young throat. "Who is it you're running away from this time, my child? Do you know yourself, I wonder?" Then Mrs. Chase smiled in her dry way, and her black frock rustled as she stepped out of the door and the lamp lit up the gallery for a moment. "Goodnight, Lygia!" she said, and she closed the bedroom door and everything was dark again, and silent.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  When Lygia awoke, grey morning light was thrusting in through the windows and she lay a moment, feeling certain that what had roused her had not been in accord with the early morning sounds she had come to associate with Chase. It came again, for all the world like the spattering of hail against the window nearest to her bed—hail, or small stones. She fumbled with the tangled bedcovers and thrust them back from her. She went running across the carpet to the window, and the little jewelled sea-horse bobbed against her skin and her toes winced as they came into contact with the uncarpeted strip of parquet under the window. The curtain was till slightly damp from the rain that had blown in last night—damp and cold in her fingers as they closed convulsively upon it.

  "You!" Her mouth just formed the word as she stared down into the courtyard, straight into Robert Chase's dark eyes.

  He smiled, fleetingly, and made thrusting movements with his hands, plainly indicating that she open the window wider. She fumbled with the latch, for her hands had gone like jellies, and she caught her breath as the chill morning air came blowing through the thin material of her pyjamas.

  "W-were you throwing stones?" she called down.

  "Yes. Get dressed. I want to talk to you about something."

  She stared speechlessly at him, for it seemed incredible that he should be down there, wearing his grey and black jacket, his legs, as always, looking long and impatient as he straddled the still damp pavement of the courtyard.

  Then anger washed through her at his audacity in coming here, after last night. "Well, I don't want to talk to you," she said. "We said goodbye last night. Let's leave it at that."

  "Lygia, don't shut the window!"

  "Go away!"

  "You damnable female—I want to offer you a job!"

  "A—job?" Her arm remained outstretched, holding the window, and she stared down at him, all violet eyes and clustering black lashes in a ravaged, wondering scrap of a face.

  "What do you mean? What sort of a job?"

  "We can hardly discuss it like this," he retorted, "bellowing at one another like Romeo and Juliet. We'll wake up the entire household."

  "Romeo did not bellow," she protested.

  "He might very well have done, had you been his Juliet," was the dry reply. "Now get dressed and come down here to me. I repeat that I want to offer you a job if you're interested."

  The dark eyes held a faunish glint as he waited for her to accept or decline his offer—or perhaps to fly out angrily at him again. But for moments on end she only gazed down at him, filled with remembrance of their goodbye last night and the way he had walked away from her down the pine-walk, cloaked in darkness, with his footfalls muffled on the fallen cones. The melancholy of the scene lingered like a spell and she knew, without a doubt, that he had meant their parting to be for good. That was what made his return this morning so bewildering, and his offer of a job so—so unreal!

  A job? She met his eyes, with their laughter that was like sunshine flitting across dark lakes, and though she wanted a job, any job, from anyone, she couldn't help the hesitation that swept through her.

  I fear that wicked laughter round his eye,

  Which wrinkles up the skin even to the hair.

  Those words of Shelley's flashed into her mind and out again, a moment before she said to him: "A-all right, I'll get dressed."

  When she reached the courtyard, about ten minutes later, the morning light had brightened considerably. Starlings were noisily squabbling in the park beyond the green door, and from the direction of the stables there came the sound of someone wielding a yard-broom and talking in the broad soft dialect of Devon. One of the horses drummed impatient hooves on the door of his stall, and Lygia watched Robert turn swift eyes towards the sound, as though that primitive impatience met and linked itself to a similar feeling within him.

  "Hullo!" She spoke breathlessly.

  He swung to face her. "The time you females take, throwing on a few clothes!" he exclaimed.

  "Well, I had to wash my face."

  "You should have drawn yourself a bath." He looked sarcastic. "I've got all day."

  "I haven't!"

  "You haven't?" His eyes swept her face, and she made a little movement of retreat from him when he suddenly touched the side of her left eye with his long fingers. Lygia bruised rather dramatically, and that mark from her fall on the stairs last night was the colour of a blue-black grape this morning. "Who's been knocking you about?" Robert's hand ran down to her shoulder, held her almost concernedly. "You've almost got a black eye."

  "It isn't anything." She spoke quickly. "Do you want to talk here?"

  "Not here, no." He held her wrist and swung open the door into the park. The tall, wet grass splashed their shoes and the starlings went quiet for a moment. Then wings flurried noisily above the trees and the sharp ack-ack call of a jackdaw came from one of the horse-chestnuts. Lygia felt the wetness of the grass and she remembered the storm. "Did the storm do much damage?" she asked. "David said last night that a bad storm could cause flooding, and anyone can see that the sea-wall down in Brinsham is crumbling away."

  "Were you worried about me, Lygia?" He was laughing under his breath and she pulled free of his hand sharply.

  "This job you mentioned—what is it?"

  "Playing my daughter in Storm My Heritage."

  She was shocked into stillness, facing him there in the tall grass, her eyes wildly scanning his face. "You can't be serious!" she gasped.

  "The offer's quite genuine, you little cynic! I'd have mentioned it last night, only I didn't think of it then."

  "Y-you were too busy calling me a little cheat." She was almost crying. "Leave me alone—I'm going back to repertory—"

  "You're not, you know." His hands pulled at her and she came suddenly close to his grey and black jacket. "You little fool, d'you think I don't know all about repertory and being on the road? D'you think I've never walked some of those loose stage-boards and tossed and turned in a strange bed that seemed to have a mattress full of lumps of coal?" He shook her, and her hair danced and the diamond eyes of the little sea-horse flashed with alarm as he swung backwards and forwards on his chain, hitting against the wool of Lygia's jumper. "Of course I know, and I'm telling you it isn't necessary for you to go back to it all. Do you hear me?"

  She was trembling, his hands could feel it. And the bruise beside her eyes stood out upon her drained skin like an ink mark.

  None of this was real! The trees and the grass were part of a painted backcloth and she and Robert were two people who played out a scene in a play.

  "Oh, come on, say something," he ordered.

  "I've had no West End experience." She spoke like an automaton. "I've—I've never regarded myself as the sort of person who breaks into the West End. I'm not much good in a part unless I can sympathize with it—and I'm nothing to look at."

  "I can see you're nothing to look at, but I don't happen to be casting a voluptuous cabaret sketch," he retorted. "And any lack of West End experience won't prejudice Fenton Laye, if he takes you. Anything further?"

  "I—" she turned her eyes from his and watched sallow leaves flop wetly from the trees and land in the grass like large, flat-footed toads—"I
don't think we could work together."

  "Why not?"

  "Why not!" Her glance flew back to his face. "Have you quite forgotten that you dismissed me as a little cheat last night? Don't you feel any remorse at all when you hurt people?"

  "Would I hurt people in the first place if I was capable of remorse?" he drawled.

  "Oh, I despise that kind of talk!" she exclaimed.

  "Fruitless, isn't it? Let's say, instead, that I don't waste time regretting what I can't undo."

  "You could say you're sorry." Her young, pale, bruised face was lifted to him and the dignity of pure truth was hers, along with the pain of having had her truth questioned by him, from the very beginning. "Why haven't you ever wanted to believe in me?" she asked simply. "Why do you dislike me so much?"

  She heard him catch his breath, as though he caught back an annoyed retort that she should question him on his personal feelings. Yet why shouldn't she ask? She hadn't earned his distrust, even if he couldn't like her…

  She pushed the hair back from her eyes. "You were nice enough at the cottage yesterday, while we were having tea. Why can't you always be like that?"

  "I really don't know!" He caught at her pointed chin. "Come on, let's get this play question settled. You need a job and Fenton Laye needs an actress with just your kind of funny face. When I got back to the cottage last night I thought of you, sitting wet and lost in that damned dressing-gown of mine, and I realized that you were what we wanted for Storm My Heritage. My dear girl, Storm, with her school tunic and her spectacles and her inability to win the love of a selfish father, is a marvellous part. And then again Fenton Laye will lose an option he has on the Gala Theatre if something definite isn't fixed by the end of October. So what do you say?" His eyes searched her face. "Do you want to come to London and see Fenton or don't you?"

  "I—I have to decide here and now?"

  "Of course. Let's get it settled before you leave Chase. You are leaving, aren't you?"