Wintersbride

by Sara Seale

  He was too tired mentally to do more than push the problem aside for the moment, but later he would have to get away.

  It was beginning to worry him a little that he was obliged to leave her so much alone, but he was relieved that since the night of the dinner party Fay had appeared to have dropped her earlier hostility and, indeed, had veered the other way. He gave Mi­randa, however, one word of warning.

  "Don't get too fond of her," he said. "Fay's affections are very capricious."

  "Perhaps. But you see, Adam, she does not have to talk to me as a grown-up. That makes a difference."

  He smiled.

  "Yes, I rather hoped it might. Well, I'm delighted things are working out better, but don't trust Fay too far, my dear."

  Her forehead wrinkled.

  "Not trust her?" she repeated. "What a strange thing to say of your own child."

  "Perhaps it is," he replied gravely, "but I know her rather better than you do. You're a nice person, Miranda, and I wouldn't like you to be hurt."

  "I think," she said gently, "it is the ones who do not trust enough or give enough who get hurt."

  "You think I'm hard and undemonstrative with Fay, don't you, Miranda?" he said.

  She smiled at him apologetically.

  "I think, perhaps, you do not understand her very well."

  "I understand her only too well," he replied with a certain harshness, then his face softened as she turned her head away.

  "Love her if you must," he said with gentleness. "Perhaps, after all, you're what she needs."

  But Simmy did not encourage intimacy between Miranda and the child. She only smiled a little secretly when the subject was mentioned and suggested that Miranda find herself some useful occupation.

  "But I am not allowed to be useful," Miranda complained. "You would think, would you not, that in this big house there must be a place for me?"

  "Yes, I'm afraid Wintersbride must seem lonely to you," Simmy said, busy with her crocheting. "You should get away more often and see people. Why not persuade Mr. Chantry to let you go up to London for a few days and do some shopping and go to a theater or two?"

  Miranda looked surprised.

  "But, Simmy, what should I do in London all by myself?"

  "Have you no friends—girls of your own age whom you knew before your marriage?"

  "No," said Miranda simply. "I was too busy earning my living where and how I could. My one friend, Pierre, is in Europe somewhere, and since my father died, I have lost touch, you understand?"

  "Yes, I see. This friend you speak of—you were fond of him, perhaps?"

  "Oh, yes. Pierre and I were brought up together. He is very cheerful—very charming. I owe much to Pierre."

  "Indeed?" The governess's eyes held a curious expression. "You must miss him. Does he not write to you?"

  "There is no news of him yet for he travels still. But one day—yes, I will see him again."

  "Then I should be careful, Mrs. Chantry," Simmy said, and added, as she saw Miranda's forehead wrinkle in perplexity, "I only meant that old friendships can be misunderstood, but I'm sure you realize that."

  Miranda was a little puzzled by this conversation and later wondered if Simmy had spoken to Adam, for after dinner that night he asked her suddenly if she would care to go away for a few days.

  "But where would I go?" she replied reasonably. "I'm afraid I have no friends of my own, Adam, and it would not be practical to waste your money in a hotel all by myself."

  "Well, that's a very laudable attitude," he said with rather dry amusement. "But quite unnecessary, I assure you. I have quite a comfortable private income apart from what I earn, you know."

  "Have you?" she said with polite interest. "I did not know."

  "Well, run up to town and be extravagant," he said with a vague feeling that he had been neglecting her. "Buy yourself some fripperies and see the sights. Do you like the theater?"

  "Oh, yes, but not alone. One should have someone with whom to laugh and cry."

  "Well, then, take Grace, if you've no friends of your own."

  Miranda looked at him under her lashes.

  "I do not very much want to go away with Grace," she said. "Is it that you wish me to go away, Adam?"

  "Not if you don't want to," he replied a little impatiently, "but Simmy seemed to think a change would do you good. I'm sorry you don't care more for Grace, Miranda. She's a bit old for you, perhaps, but she's been very kind and helpful since you came here, I must say."

  "Yes," said Miranda dutifully. Had he really thought, then, that Grace would sulk and parade her disappointment for him and everyone else to see?

  "You do not, I think, understand women very well," she said, arid he looked suddenly tired.

  "Perhaps you're right," he said shortly. "In fact, according to you, I understand very little—about my daughter, for ex­ample, and presumably about my young but critical wife."

  "You are laughing at me, I hope? But, Adam—if you wish to make a return to Grace for her kindness to me, I will willingly go with her to London as you suggested."

  He ruffled her fair head with a careless gesture.

  "No, you conscientious goose," he laughed. "In any case it was your pleasure I was thinking of rather than hers. But if you prefer to stay with a rather neglectful and dull-witted husband, I shouldn't be anything else but flattered, should I?"

  "Yes," she said with grave consideration which always amused him, "I think I would prefer to stay with you."

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  He did not suggest again that Miranda should go away with Grace, but he tried himself to snatch a day off when he could and to devise some outing for her. Sometimes they would go to Torquay and have lunch at the Imperial and look at the shops.

  Miranda was touched by his efforts to please her. She knew that he must begrudge the wasted hours, but when she suggested a simple outing nearer home he overruled her.

  "You do not have to do this," she told him once. "We could take a picnic perhaps to Spiney Down or walk by the river and pick watercress, and you would not need to waste a whole day."

  "Nonsense," he replied. "You need taking out of yourself."

  Miranda sighed. To look at shops and eat expensive food you did not want was not being taken out of yourself, she thought with a certain despondence.

  "You don't really much care for these expeditions, do you, Miranda?" he asked as they drove home.

  "But yes, it is very kind of you to give up a day to—to look at shops," she protested quickly.

  "Honest, now."

  She lowered her eyes.

  "Well, perhaps not very much. You see I do not want to buy anything."

  He laughed.

  "I thought all women liked window gazing," he said. "Well, we'll have to think of something else."

  He was, she knew, relieved by the lifting of that particular obligation, but as July drew to a close and the hospital was short staffed with the commencement of the holiday rota, the picnics and other small relaxations somehow never materialized.

  Seeing that his unavoidable preoccupation with other matters was beginning to worry him, Miranda tried to please him by asking Grace to the house and accepting invitations to lunch or tea. But she did not much enjoy these visits. Grace and her mother were both inclined to quote Melisande rather too often and Miranda had little to say that would interest either of them.

  "I suppose," she said to Simmy after one of these visits, "I am unreasonable, but I do get so tired of hearing of the perfec­tions of the first Mrs. Chantry."

  Miss Simms regarded her dispassionately.

  "Miss Latham was very devoted to her," she said. "She does not mean to make unflattering comparisons."

  "But she does all the same, and so does Mrs. Yeo. Even you, Simmy, must think in your heart that I am a bad second choice."

  Simmy's smile was a little enigmatic as she replied, "You should not be so fanciful, Mrs. Chantry."

  Miranda sighed. She had not the qualities for
the making of a grande dame, she thought with a regretful shrug; people did not respect her. But there seemed little she could do about it.

  With the beginning of August the hot weather returned. Day after day the sky was an unbroken arc of blue, meeting the shimmering horizon of the moor, and the River Scaw was a mere trickle of water under the old clapper bridge.

  It was too hot, Simmy said, for picnics, but Miranda liked to wander by herself up the bed of the river to the shallow pools, which still held sufficient water, and look for watercress. She washed it from the stream in which it grew, and ate it on biscuits filched from the dining-room sideboard with the guilty knowl­edge that Adam would not approve.

  She was sorry for Adam in his correct stiff collar, she re­flected, as she lay on her back in the cool bracken, watching a lark soaring above her. She wondered if Adam would become a different person were he to idle in the sun, clad in a faded cotton shirt with no buttons. Would he speak then of the things he never told her or lie content at her side in the bracken while she tickled his nose with a stalk? But that she supposed was being fanciful and neither Simmy nor Adam would approve. She could not, anyway, imagine him divorced from his professional attire, and perhaps the transformation would not suit him. He was fastidious about his clothes, and even during weekends, when he inspected his garden, he still looked what he was—a distinguished professional man with little time for dalliance.

  "And I," she said, indulging in her old habit of thinking aloud, "have too much time, and too little company." The French were right. Marriage should be taken seriously, and if there cannot be affection there can at least be children and the firm rock of mutual understanding. What thoughts, she re­proved herself, for one who is scarcely a bride. But then she remembered the way Adam had looked at her when she had thoughtlessly kissed him on the night of the dinner party, and nodded her head gravely.

  "He is not so cold as he likes to think, that one," she said.

  The following day started badly. Adam had not come home the night before, and Miranda, whose custom it now was on these occasions to have a light supper brought to her on a tray, was in Mrs. Yeo's bad books.

  "The master has given express orders that meals should be as usual when he's not here," she said in an aggrieved voice at the end of a list of small complaints.

  "I cannot feel," said Miranda, trying to speak amiably, "that Mr. Chantry minds what I eat or where I eat it."

  "If you will pardon me, madam," the housekeeper retorted, "the master was most insistent that I saw to it you have a proper dinner. Besides, it's bad for the maids. Bessie is getting slack."

  "But, Mrs. Yeo," Miranda pleaded humorously, "why should I sit all alone in that dismal dining room for hours just to keep Bessie busy handing me dishes I do not want?"

  "I'm sorry you find the dining room dismal, madam. In my late lady's time—" Mrs. Yeo began stiffly, but Miranda in­terrupted.

  "Don't say it!" she cried. "Don't say it, Mrs. Yeo, or I shall scream!"

  The woman, offended, left the room without another word, and Miranda chided herself for her impatience. But she was not feeling well. She had felt shivers along her spine ever since she had got up that morning and her head felt heavy. She supposed she must have caught a chill. Simmy, too, was not feeling well. She had a headache and announced her intention of lying down for the afternoon.

  "When Fay has had her rest she can play in the garden," she said. "You'll keep an eye on her, Mrs. Chantry, won't you?"

  Miranda did not at all want to keep an eye on Fay, but it was so seldom that Simmy ever claimed any time for herself that she agreed at once. They had tea in the garden by themselves, but Fay got stung by a wasp and by the time this mishap was dealt with they were both hot and cross and sticky with jam.

  "What shall we do now?" Fay demanded when they had been indoors to wash.

  "Oh, chérie, can you not amuse yourself for a little? I have a headache," Miranda said.

  "That's just an excuse, like one of Simmy's," the child replied. "All grown-ups say they have a headache when they don't want to do something."

  "But I really have—oh, well, what would you like to do?"

  "Let's go up the lane and look for wild strawberries."

  "You go and I'll stay quietly here."

  Fay's eyes were reproachful.

  "You know I'm not allowed outside the grounds alone," she said, and her lips trembled.

  "Oh, very well, my cabbage, I'll come."

  It always surprised her that Fay, so difficult in other ways, was obedient to rules that could so easily be broken without much harm. She had only to open the gates, which were never locked, and walk out, just as she had only to enter the forbidden rooms in the house, but she never did.

  They poked about in the high, dusty banks for strawberries. They did not find any, but Miranda picked up a young sparrow that was lying on the side of the road and stood looking down at the bird compassionately. Its eyes were already glazing, and although it fluttered its wings, it lay without protest in her hand.

  "What is it?" Fay asked excitedly, slipping down from the bank. "What have you found, Miranda?"

  "Look, a little bird. It is dying from the drought, I'm afraid. We will take it home and see if we can save it."

  "Let me hold it," said Fay, and Miranda laid the sparrow carefully in the child's hands.

  Fay stood looking down at it for a moment, her face curiously lovely with an unfamiliar expression of tenderness. Then, with a sudden, passionate gesture, she flung the bird into the bracken. The shock was so sudden, the change from one mood to another so startling, that before she could stop herself, Miranda had slapped the child across the face.

  "Why did you do that?" she demanded, white with anger.

  Fay began to cry.

  "I didn't want you to have it," she sobbed. "It would have been yours, not mine, and you would have loved it more than me."

  "That would not be difficult," retorted Miranda. "I cannot love a little girl who is wantonly cruel."

  She picked up the bird, but it was dead, and she laid it gently back in the bracken.

  "It would, perhaps, have died anyhow, but you have killed it," she said.

  The child looked frightened.

  "Don't tell Simmy, Miranda. I didn't mean to kill it."

  "Didn't you?"

  "No, no. You hit me, Miranda. Simmy's never hit me."

  "What a pity," said Miranda coldly. "Go back to the house now, we are nearly at the gates. I am not coming in for a little while."

  "Will you hate me now like Adam does?"

  "Adam does not hate you, and I do not expect I shall, either. I should not have slapped you, Fay, but I think perhaps it has not hurt you. Now go back to the house. It must be nearly your bedtime."

  Fay's tears stopped. She looked at Miranda a little uncertain­ly, then, without protest, walked quietly back to the gates.

  Miranda sat in the bracken beside the dead bird, feeling very sick. Her head was throbbing violently now, and the evening heat seemed to grow more intense. She sat there for a long time, unwilling to return to the house whose hostility seemed sudden­ly to menace her. Then the first roll of thunder in the distance sent her wearily to her feet.

  It must have been later than she had supposed, for Adam had already returned and was coming down the driveway to meet her.

  "What have you been doing with yourself?" he asked as they met. He took a quick look at her face. "You've got a tempera­ture, and a pretty high one at that."

  He placed a hand on her forehead for a moment, then his fingers went automatically to her pulse, and she burst into tears.

  "My dear child!" he said and without further comment, picked her up and carried her into the house.

  He carried her into his study and put her in his big leather chair, then opened the drawer in which he kept his thermometer.

  "Why did she kill the bird?" Miranda said.

  He paused in the act of shaking down the thermometer to ask sharply, "Who ki
lled a bird?"

  "Fay. It was dying of thirst, I think, and I was going to bring it home to make it well, and she threw it down and it was dead."

  He put the thermometer down on his desk and came and sat on the arm of her chair.

  "You shouldn't have been out in all this heat when you weren't feeling well," he said, sounding unsurprised. He put an arm round her. "You've had a shock, haven't you? Now perhaps you'll understand why I've never allowed Fay to keep animals. Years ago she had a kitten and Simmy had to get rid of it in—rather unhappy circumstances one time when I was away."

  "But why—why?"

  "Jealousy—a form of misplaced affection. Did she think you were going to make a pet of the bird?"

  "I don't know. She said she did not want me to have it because I would love it better than her."

  "You see? I tried to warn you about Fay, Miranda, but I think you only thought I was hard and unfeeling. Her affections are unbalanced—she can't help it. Arthur says it's nothing to worry about, but we have to be careful." .

  "Mr. Benyon?"

  "He's a nerve specialist, you remember. He's kept an eye on Fay ever since her mother died."

  "Yes, I see. Why did you not tell me of this before? I would have understood you so much better."

  "Would you? I suppose I should have explained about Fay when I asked you to marry me, but I didn't want you to get the idea that she was abnormal. She's not, you know. Just highly strung and badly adjusted at present. That's why I leave her to Simmy. Any efforts of mine to establish a normal relationship only upset her."

  She heard the weariness in his voice and said gently, "You have tried to love her, I think. Did she hurt you, Adam?"

  "Oh, yes," he replied a little bitterly, "I've had my day like everyone else. But I was the first to fall from grace, you see, and a child's lost affection takes a little getting used to."

  At that moment he was no longer the coldly professional Adam Chantry concerned only with the fact that she had a temperature. He was the man who held her heart whether he wished it or not, the man who, despite his self-sufficiency, needed comfort as badly as did she herself. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to scramble to her knees and wind her arms around his neck.