by Sara Seale
“Didn’t you? Perhaps she thinks—perhaps I need—well, go and buy Alice’s Christmas presents, my dear—other matters can wait till later.”
Apart from the pleasure of choosing presents for Alice, Emily did not enjoy the expedition to Plymouth. Shorty surrendered the wheel to her with the deepest distrust and had little encouraging to say about the way she handled a car.
“I haven’t had a great deal of experience,” she apologized nervously. “And never of such a good car as this.”
Shorty sniffed and looked as sour as he felt. He had not yet forgiven her for putting him in the wrong over the matter of her bedroom.
“That I can well believe,” he observed. “You won’t ’arf cop it with the governor when you drives ’im. Got a respect for a good engine, ’e ’as. Used to be a rare good driver when ’e ’ad ’is sight. Gor blimey, miss! Don’t rev your engine like that—it fair makes me ’ead ’um.”
Shorty’s aspirates seemed to vanish altogether when he was upset or annoyed. His report to Dane on her driving would not be complimentary, she knew.
He waited for her outside shops, grumbling at the parking restrictions, the weather and everything else, but, to her surprise, he took a genuine interest in the parcels which began to pile up on the rear seat. Dane had been generous in tile matter of expenditure and Emily, remembering the delight of opening parcels on Christmas morning, had collected as many as possible rather than spend the money on one or two expensive gifts. She explained this to Shorty, and for the first time saw a look of I appreciation on his flat monkey-face.
“That’s as it should be,” he approved. “Kids like surprises and there ain’t much of a surprise in a cheque, in a manner of speaking, when you’re ten years old. Shame there ain’t some kids hereabouts for her to play with.”
“Yes,” said Emily. “Perhaps she could bring home one of her school friends next holidays.”
Instantly the little man’s mouth turned down.
“Wouldn’t do at all,” he said. “Strange kids larking all over the ’ouse and shifting the furniture. Mr. Merritt wouldn’t ’ear of it and don’t you go putting such notions into ’is ’ead—if you’re still ’ere, that is.”
“Why do you dislike me, Shorty?” Emily asked, anxious, in spite of his rudeness, to come to terms with him, but he only gave her the contemptuous look that told her she should know better than indulge in personalities with a servant, and once back on the road to the moor, surrendered the car to her again and indulged in criticism all the way home.
On Christmas morning Alice’s eyes grew round at the number of parcels piled in front of her place at the breakfast table, but she did not immediately open them, eating her porridge and boiled egg with unusual patience in one of her age. There was a cheque for Emily from Dane, impersonal, and, to her mind, unwarranted on such short acquaintance, and a china pig from Alice “to keep her money in”. The cards were a little sorry—for Dane neither sent nor received any. There were four or five for Emily from girls she had struck up vague friendships with in the past year and, surprisingly, one from Miss Pink.
“How odd!” exclaimed Emily, and at Dane’s enquiring expression, explained from whom the card had come.
“Really?” He sounded amused. “What banality has she chosen?”
“Very uncharacteristic, I should have thought. Bells and hearts and a message that reads: May the coming year bring joy to you, and wishes great and small come true.”
“I always suspected Louisa had a sense of humor,” said Dane, and Emily flushed scarlet.
“Why are you blushing, Emily?” asked Alice in her clear, high voice, and Dane said, with a little quirk of the eyebrow:
“Never draw attention to a lady’s confusion, Alice. I wouldn’t have known she was blushing if you hadn’t said so, would I?”
“But why should Emily be confused by a Christmas card?” demanded Alice.
“True, why should she? Open your presents, young woman. I want to know what’s inside them as well as you.”
Alice obliged without hurry, unknotting string and winding it up neatly, making Emily’s less controlled fingers itch with impatience, but even Alice’s sedate composure was ruffled as she opened parcel after parcel and marvelled at the varied treasures which Emily’s ingenuity had devised for her. Emily wished Dane could see the child as she explained to him with growing excitement what each object was, her cheeks growing pinker and pinker until her plain, pinched little face looked quite pretty.
At the end she went to stand by his chair and shyly kissed him, the first spontaneous gesture towards him Emily had ever witnessed. She thought he looked taken aback and, for an instant, genuinely moved, but in his surprise he moved towards his ward awkwardly and knocked over the coffee-pot, sending a thick black stream across the table and on to his trousers.
His face went a little white, and Emily, watching him dabbing ineffectually at the stains with his napkin, sprang to her feet to help.
“Careless of me,” he said, irritably resisting her gesture to take the napkin from him and repair the damage. “No, don’t bother, Emily. Ring the bell for Shorty while I go and change.”
He got to his feet clumsily, uncertain of his bearings in the confusion of the moment. Emily would have proffered her arm but Alice shook her head and they stood and watched without speaking while he made his way from the room, the bitch, Bella, close at his side, looking up anxiously every so often to assure herself that he did not come to any harm.
“You musn’t, Emily. You must never help him,” said Alice as soon as the door had closed.
“I know,” said Emily ruefully. “But it’s so hard to remember.”
For both of them the incident, so small in itself, marred the promise of the day. Alice put her presents carefully back in their wrappings and Emily finished mopping up the table, for Shorty, after one comprehensive glance at the results of the mishap, had gone straight upstairs to attend to his master.
It was a fine morning with a deceptive mildness after the cold weather. Emily went for a walk and listened to the bells echoing faintly across the moor. She would have liked to have gone to church, but the walk to the village and back was too far for Alice and Emily did not like to ask permission to drive the car. As she walked, she reviewed the future, and, for the first time, tried to imagine what Dane could want of her, for she felt instinctively that the month’s trial was to decide more than he had first implied. Was it for Alice’s sake that he silently weighed her up? Did he mean to offer a permanent position in his household to someone whom, in the years to come, the child might need; to secure a buffer between himself and the young life he felt unequal to manage? Emily knew a swift, humble desire to be accepted, not only for the sake of a little girl whose liking was not difficult to win, but for the far more hardly earned approval of a lonely embittered man.
As she turned for home, she saw Dane with his dog coming across the moor towards her. She stood watching them, marvelling as she always did at the sureness with which he negotiated the rough places, the bitch checking every so often, then turning right or left, waiting patiently while he got his direction. They reached the road, and Bella, seeing her, immediately sat on her haunches and waited for orders.
“Who’s there?” asked Dane sharply.
“It’s only me,” Emily answered. “I was just going home.”
“I’ll come with you,” he said, and gave the bitch the order to turn back.
“I was watching you,” Emily said, then bit her lip for she knew he disliked being watched.
“I’ve always wondered how these dogs are trained,” she went on hurriedly to cover any suggestion that her interest might have been in him. “How do they know which way to go, what to avoid? There are bogs on the moor, aren’t there?”
“They don’t,” he answered. “They are taught to avoid obvious dangers, of course, but they work through the intelligence of the handler. There are only four very simple commands, you know—Forward ... Right ... Left, an
d Back. Direction is the handler’s business, not the dog’s.”
Oh, I see. You must know the moor very well, then. Mr. Merritt.”
“Yes, round this part of the country. I used to stay here a lot when old Ben was alive. Even when I was a boy I spent summer holidays at Pennyleat.”
“Then you know what Alice looks like?”
It was a foolish remark, thought Emily, as soon as she had made it, but he only smiled.
“I’ve seen her, if that’s what you mean,” he said. “But that was six years ago or more. She was only three or four at the time. She scarcely remembers me as I was then.”
“No, of course not.”
She enjoyed walking with him on that sunny Christmas morning, aware of a companionship she had never known with anyone else before. Even with Tim she had not experienced the strange unity which seemed suddenly between them on the empty moorland road. She saw the grey roof of Torcroft in the distance, the upper windows flashing in the sunlight.
“The shutters are down,” Emily said with interest. “Perhaps the people are coming back.”
“What are you talking about?”
“That house across the moor. I think Alice said it was called Torcroft.”
“It’s been empty for years. The owner’s abroad.” Dane spoke so sharply that she glanced up at him in surprise.
“But people come home eventually—even if it’s only to die,” she said.
“You’re talking nonsense,” he countered with disconcerting harshness. “The place hasn’t been lived in for years.”
The illusion of companionship had gone, or perhaps she had only imagined it. His face, as he strode bareheaded in the sunshine, was suddenly set in forbidding lines and she could plainly see the faint scarring if his eyes in the strong light Emily kept him company in silence. She could not understand why her innocent remarks should have disturbed him but his past associations with the house across the moor were clearly unpleasant.
“I was probably wrong—about the house, I mean. One can’t see very distinctly from this distance,” she said as they reached their own gates.
“Very likely. In any case it’s of no importance,” he replied, and walked away from her up the drive.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE days passed swiftly, one much like another. In the mornings Emily sometimes worked with Dane in the study, but he seemed in no hurry to get on with his thesis and Emily found there was little for her to do except to devise holiday occupations for Alice. The little girl, though as solitarily inclined as her guardian, seemed to like her company. On wet days they would repair to the little-used drawing-room where there was an old piano, and Emily, who had once possessed a quite appreciable gift for playing by ear, taught Alice the chansonettes and carols she had learnt herself in childhood.
Once they found Dane standing in the doorway listening to them. Emily stopped playing, wondering if their singing disturbed him, but all he said was:
“Get a piano tuner out if you want to use the thing. It probably hasn’t been touched for years.”
The tuner came and performed mysterious rites on the piano which seemed to fascinate Alice who, when he had gone, had the first fit of giggles Emily had ever heard from her.
“Wasn’t he funny!” she said, and promptly sat down to perform the treble part of chopsticks like any normal schoolgirl.
“Emily,” she said once, “you are going to stay with us always, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know, Alice,” Emily replied evasively, reminded again of all that such a request might imply.
“Oh, please promise—please, please promise,” the child begged.
“What is Emily to promise?” asked Dane’s voice behind them. It was a little unnerving, Emily thought, how seldom they heard him coming unless he was using his stick.
“To stay here always,” said Alice, looking a little alarmed.
“Always is a long time,” he replied gravely. “Emily might not want to commit herself for so long.”
“You could marry her, Uncle Dane, and then she’d have to.”
“Yes, I could do that,” said Dane, and Emily, embarrassed and unsure where all this was leading, told the child not to talk such nonsense.
Alice ran out of the room, her cheeks hot, but Dane remained.
“Is it such nonsense?” he enquired mildly. “You seem to have made a conquest of my ward. She’s not an easy young person to make friends with.”
“Perhaps you haven’t tried the right way,” said Emily, her own cheeks as hot as the child’s.
“Very probably not. I’m unused to children,” he replied, and sounded suddenly weary. “She’s afraid of my blindness, you know.”
“Yes, I know. But that’s natural at first. You have an uneasy gift for knowing without seeing. That can be disconcerting to a child.”
“And to you, too?”
“Quite often, but perhaps half the time you’re only guessing.”
“Perhaps I am. Well, Emily, I think Louisa Pink would consider this exchange between employer and employee rather odd, don’t you?”
She glanced at him quickly.
“Have I been—unprofessional?” she asked, and he smiled.
“It depends what you mean by that,” he observed softly, and turned to leave the room.
It seemed to Emily that she was becoming trapped by her own desire to give; to Alice who flattered her sense of necessity, even to Dane who did not. Pennyleat, old-fashioned and comfortable, was a haven from the uncertainties and make-shifts of the world she had known, Dane and his silently padding dog symbolic of the cruelty of life. It was all a little unreal.
Mrs. Pride and Shorty still maintained their hostility but Mrs. Meeker, the daily help from Pennycross, was a Devonshire woman of comfortable habits. She would always stop work for a gossip and a surreptitious cup of tea away from the kitchen, and it was she who confirmed the fact that the shutters had indeed been taken down from the house across the moor.
“They do say old Mrs. Mortimer be coming home at last from they foreign parts,” she told Emily one morning. “Leastways, house is being opened up again and the workmen in, so shouldn’t wonder if ’tisn’t true.”
“She might have sold it,” said Emily, unwilling for Dane’s sake that old Mrs. Mortimer, whoever she might be, should return to disturb him.
“Her wouldn’t do that!” Mrs. Meeker exclaimed with proper indignation. “Mortimers have been at Torcroft for generations. Her’s not much herself, not being proper family, but her wouldn’t sell on account of the nephew’s expectations.”
“Expectations?”
“The house itself when the old lady dies. There bain’t much money — never was.”
“Did Mr. Merritt know Mrs. Mortimer?” Emily asked, wondering why Dane should resent an old lady who had been abroad for years.
“Oh, yes, but that was in Mr. Carey’s time afore I worked here.” Mrs. Meeker shot Emily a sly look, then evidently decided not to enlarge any more on past history.
“Poor gentleman,” she said, attacking her dusting again with unaccustomed vigor. “ ’Twas proper cruel to lose his sight like that. If it had been known then as Mr. Carey was going to leave him the place and his money when he died, things might’ve been different.”
“What things?” asked Emily, but Mrs. Meeker became vague and then embarked on a long and involved account of the doings at the village public house on Boxing Night, from which it was impossible to wean her.
“Your Mrs. Mortimer is coming back,” Emily told Alice the following afternoon, but the child only replied without much interest:
“Is she? But she isn’t my Mrs. Mortimer, Emily I don’t remember her.”
It was New Year’s Eve and Emily felt unaccountably depressed. If she had been in London she would have joined the crowds in the streets tonight and seen the New Year in. There was something sad, she thought, about going to bed and letting the midnight hour slip away unnoticed. She asked Alice if such was the case at Pennylea
t, knowing that it probably was.
“Uncle Ben used to keep it,” Alice, her eyes suddenly alight at the memory of the rare treats which had come her way. “Mrs. Pride used to wake me at a quarter to twelve and bring me downstairs, and the gardener came in with a piece of coal for luck and then we all, drank hot punch and welcomed in the year.”
“And now?”
“Oh, now we just go to bed. Uncle Dane says there’s nothing to celebrate.”
Emily felt an unreasoning anger with Dane.
“It’s defeatist,” she told him, tackling him while she was still in the mood. “There’s always something to welcome the New Year in for—always.”
“Is there?” he said, looking up in mild surprise. “How fierce you sound, Emily. To me one year is much like another, now.”
“How do you know? Every year holds something new. Why, not so long ago you were poor as well as blind—you told me so yourself. One of those years at least brought you good fortune.”
“True. Have you great expectations of the coming year, then, Emily?”
She was silent, and he enquired with gentle mockery; “Are you blushing again?”
“Of course not!” It was only that I—that Alice—I’m sorry,” she finished. “I suppose I’m being idiotic.”
“You can have your New Year, you and Alice, if it means so much to you,” he said a little wearily. “But don’t expect me to fall into the traditional hysteria and sing Auld Lang Syne or anything, will you?”
“But you’ll be there?”
“Oh, yes, I’ll be there, and Shorty and Mrs. Pride, too, if you like. They’ll think I’m demented.”
But when the time came and they all assembled in the library just before midnight, the two servants, if surprised, seemed almost human. Mrs. Pride had always thought it only proper to be invited to drink champagne with the gentry on New Year’s Eve, and Shorty, if, like Emily, he had been remembering with nostalgia past, more wroughty occasions in his native London, had shed his aggressive manner for the moment. Alice in her long blue dressing-gown clung to Emily’s hand and watched the' clock with expectant eyes and only Dane stood a little apart, his face curiously still, his eyes, because he could not see the Clock, turned towards the radio in the corner of the room. Their glasses were already in their hands, and as Big Ben struck the hour in the quiet room, they seemed frozen into immobility while the slow, deep notes hung on the air.