Wintersbride

by Sara Seale

  "Because," said Simmy, her voice suddenly venomous, "you are like your mother. You have her bad blood in you and if you don't want to be locked up in a place where you will be forgotten, you must remember that only I can prevent it. As long as I'm here you are safe, but—"

  Adam shook himself free, and his voice was like the crack of a whip as he spoke the governess's name from the doorway.

  Miss Simms wheeled around to face him. There was fear and bitter chagrin in her face before she said, quickly, "Oh, Mr. Chantry, I didn't know you were back. I was just telling Fay—"

  "I heard most of what you were telling Fay," said Adam, and the anger in his voice made even Miranda flinch.

  The child ran past her father into Miranda's arms.

  "It's not true, it's not true what she said, is it?" she said, beginning to cry.

  "No, my rabbit," soothed Miranda. "She is not well, chér­ie—she does not know what she is saying. Go now to Mrs. Yeo in the kitchen and stay there until I come. Dry your eyes, petite, everything will be all right."

  Fay ran across the hall and pushed her way through the green baize door, leaving a tense silence behind her. Adam did not move.

  "You will pack and be out of this house by tonight," he said then, in tones of ice.

  "Won't you let me explain?" Simmy said, beginning to twist her hands together. Her pale eyes looked everywhere but at Adam. "You wouldn't dismiss me without a fair hearing, would you, Mr. Chantry?"

  Adam listened, his eyes like flint.

  "Did Nanny Coker get a fair hearing?" asked Miranda, and Simmy rounded on her.

  "Nanny got what she deserved. She had every chance to explain and she didn't take it."

  "Because it would only have looked blacker for her to accuse "the accuser, and because she was hurt at being disbelieved."

  "How do you know so much about the supposed feelings of a woman you have never met?" the governess demanded scorn­fully, and Adam placed a silencing hand on Miranda's arm.

  "It doesn't matter now. I would rather you left us, Miranda. What I have to say is best said in private."

  She shook his hand off.

  "No, Adam, this is important and matters to quite a few people. I have just come from seeing Nanny, Simmy. You did not wish us to know she lived so close, did you? She has told me the truth. It was you who encouraged Mrs. Chantry's failing, was it not? It was you who afterward put gin dregs in Nanny's empty wine bottles and produced them as evidence of Nanny's guilt one year later."

  "Is this true, Miranda?" asked Adam sharply, and his face was white with the effort to control himself.

  "Nanny has never lied from that day to this," said Miranda. "Or, indeed, I should think, in her whole life."

  The governess was breathing heavily and her eyes had a cornered look.

  "You're mad, Mrs. Chantry," she said, trying to speak rationally. "You always have been fanciful, haven't you?"

  "This is not fancy," said Miranda.

  "No? Well, it's not fact, as any lawyer would tell you. Can you prove your case, Mrs. Chantry?"

  Something had been worrying Miranda all along since her talk with Nanny, some trivial detail that did not fit. Now her mind opened out in a flood of light as she remembered the teachings of her father.

  "Yes, I think I can," she said slowly. "If those bottles had been standing empty for a year the dregs would have lost their bouquet, for gin does not mature, and the strength would be gone. The dregs in those bottles must have been fresh—put there when they were found. Am I not right, Adam?"

  For a moment, sheer surprise drove the sternness from his face as he answered gravely, "Perfectly right. I should have thought of it at the time."

  "You little bitch!" the governess said between her teeth, and as she made a movement toward Miranda, Adam caught her wrists in his strong surgeon's hands, holding her helpless.

  "That's enough," he said, his face suddenly like granite. "Miranda, will you please leave us now? You've proved your case, I think, beyond dispute. Thank you. The rest is left for me to deal with."

  Miranda went. Now that it was over she felt curiously weak, and when she got to the kitchen to fetch Fay, Mrs. Yeo took one look at her and pushed her into her own vast wicker chair.

  "A little drop of brandy, now, madam. You look quite white," she said, and unlocked her private cupboard, which held luxuries not permitted for general use.

  "Are there to be changes, madam?" she asked, one eye on Fay.

  "Yes," said Miranda. "At once, I think."

  "What changes?" asked Fay, who was happily eating raisins and seemed to have forgotten her earlier fright.

  "Simmy will be going, chérie."

  "For good?"

  "Yes, for good. Shall you mind?"

  "I don't think so. Will Nanny come back?"

  Miranda smiled across at her.

  "Would you like that?" she asked.

  The child stopped munching raisins and a strange look of serenity came over her face.

  "I can't remember her awfully well, but she was kind and soft and nice to cuddle, wasn't she? Yes, I should like her to comeback."

  "Then, my cabbage, I think she will," Miranda said. "It will all be as it once was with Nanny and your father to love and perhaps spoil you a little. Only now, of course, there is Mi­randa, too."

  "Darling Miranda… I'm so glad Adam married you and not Grace…" said Fay.

  Miranda was beginning to wonder how Adam was dealing with Simmy when he came into the kitchen.

  "Mrs. Yeo, could you—" he began, and glanced at Fay.

  "Run into the servants' hall, love," the housekeeper told the child. "Bessie's out but Nancy will play a game with you."

  "What has happened?" asked Miranda. He looked tired and a little grim but his voice had lost some of its harshness.

  "She's packing," he said briefly. "But I'd sooner she wasn't left alone for too long. I'd like you to go up, officially to lend a hand, Mrs. Yeo, and stay with her till she's ready to leave. Bidder is bringing the car around in twenty minutes."

  "Yes, sir, I understand." Mrs. Yeo left the kitchen at once and went upstairs.

  "How—how does she seem, Adam?" Miranda asked.

  "Quite quiet. I don't think there will be any trouble, but with a woman of that sort it's best not to take any chances. Mi­randa—" He pulled her out of Mrs. Yeo's big chair, and drew her hands against his breast. "I owe you both an apology and a debt of gratitude I shall never be able to repay. Can you forgive me for being so blind—so easygoing? If it wasn't for you, my gallant little crusader, I might have continued in my crass folly for the rest of my life."

  "No, Adam, you would not," she said gently. "One day when—if you saw me as a woman and not as a child, you would have listened to me, I think."

  His eyes were suddenly sad.

  "Have I never listened to you?" he asked.

  "Once, I thought—but you have never wanted anything of me, Adam, have you?"

  For a moment his eyes were bright and demanding.

  "So you think that, do you? Perhaps I'm not the only blind mouse in the family," he said with a little quirk of wry amuse­ment. "I think, my dear, we shall have to have a thorough spring-cleaning all around at Wintersbride."

  "But spring is far away," said Miranda, so near to tears that she could only think literally, "and you never, Adam, clean house before winter is over."

  "We'll see," he said, giving her a long, searching look that made her glance away, and released her hands as Bidder entered by the back door to say the car was waiting at the front of the house.

  When the two men had gone, Miranda sat alone, listening to the kitchen clock's loud tick and reviewing her own tired thoughts. Had he been apologizing to her because he had not wanted what she had once offered? Did he not understand that he owed her nothing that could not be given freely? Was she still for him a child of whom he had perhaps grown fond because his own child had wanted none of him?

  She closed her eyes. Sleep and forgetfulness
were very near when Mrs. Yeo came back into the kitchen.

  "She's gone," she said. "On her dignity with me to the last, she was, and never once looked at the master when he handed her her wages, and never a word did she say but swept down the steps with never a backward glance."

  Adam was filling his cigarette case from a box on the mantel­piece when she went back to the library. The firelight playing across his face revealed the deep lines of those barren years of self-discipline, but there was release, too, in his face, and a younger, softer quality that had not been there before.

  "Where will she go, Adam?" she asked him.

  "Simmy? She had friends in Plymouth. I've sent a note to Arthur Benyon asking him to give her the once-over. She's not far off a nervous breakdown, I should say, by the look of her."

  "Will she—will she be properly cared for?"

  "I neither know nor care," he replied. "But Arthur will arrange something."

  "Yes, Mr. Benyon is a kind man."

  "And I am not, you mean? Well, do you think she deserves much kindness?"

  "Yes," said Miranda simply. "Sick minds are not respon­sible, as you should know, Adam."

  He smiled a little grimly.

  "I'm afraid your opinion of me as a physician is no better than your opinion of me as a husband," he said, and slipped the full case of cigarettes into his breast pocket. "I'm going to see Nanny right away. She, too, has kindness of heart and if she can forgive my injustice sufficiently, I hope to bring her back with me."

  "She will come—she said she would," said Miranda. "But would it not do tomorrow?"

  "I'm afraid not," he said. "I must," he finished almost shyly, "make my peace with Nanny before I sleep tonight."

  She smiled her understanding.

  "You will not need to," she said. "Nanny bears no grudge. Shall I come with you, Adam?"

  "No, you look tired, and no wonder. Besides, it's easier to humble oneself alone, don't you think?"

  She gave a ghost of her provocative laugh as she said, "I cannot see you humble, Adam."

  He took her suddenly by the shoulders.

  "Can't you?" he said, and his eyes were tender. "You'd find me very humble if you'd try, Miranda."

  He kissed her gently and went out of the room.

  Miranda listened for the sound of the small car driving away, then went to find Fay.

  "Can we go out, Miranda?" the child asked, dancing up and down excitedly. "Can we go to Shap Tor and play hide-and-seek?"

  "It's not a very nice day for hide-and-seek," Miranda smiled.

  "It isn't bad, now. I want to look for the little shiny stones that Simmy said you can have polished and made into beads. She was going to let me go there by myself this very afternoon, to look for them as a surprise, but I would rather you came, too."

  "Simmy was going to let you go alone? Oh, no, Fay, she would not have permitted that," replied Miranda, amused at such a transparent move to persuade her.

  "She did say so. She doesn't like the quarry herself but she told me just where to look for the stones. They were to be a surprise for you."

  "We will go another day," Miranda said. "But you may play in the garden if you wish, chérie. Find a surprise for me there."

  "All right," said Fay obligingly. "I will find a lovely sur­prise for you and then I shall hide it somewhere in the house and you will have to find it."

  When the child had left the house Miranda went back to the library and curled up in a big chair by the fire. With the release from strain, lassitude began to claim her limbs and mind.

  She awoke to twilight and the sound of the telephone ringing in Adam's study. As she went to answer it, she wondered if it might be Adam calling to say the fog would delay him. But it was Simmy's voice that came to her so unexpectedly over the phone, and the chill of the unheated room made her suddenly shiver.

  "Are you alone, Mrs. Chantry?" the voice asked.

  "Yes," Miranda replied, puzzled. "My husband is out. Did you wish to speak to him?"

  "He's but, is he?" The voice had a pleased note. "No, I didn't wish to speak to him—only to you."

  "Yes, Simmy? Where are you?"

  "Does it matter where I am, now? You've had your way, haven't you? Did Fay go to the quarry after all?"

  "The quarry?" Miranda's voice was sharp. "Of course not. Why should you think that?"

  "I had promised to take her. Didn't she tell you? I like to keep a promise, you know, Mrs. Chantry—it's been on my mind."

  "Simmy—would she go by herself?" she asked urgently.

  There was a little pause, then the colorless voice replied, "I told her she could, Mrs. Chantry, but you should watch her, you know. Have you lost her already, as soon as my back is turned?"

  Miranda began to shake.

  "Of course not. She went into the garden to play, but she must have come in long ago," she said.

  "But you don't know for certain." The voice sounded a little amused. "You should really look for her at the quarry, Mrs. Chantry. I told her to go there, you see, and Fay has always obeyed me. But be careful. The quarry can be dangerous, and I wouldn't like to think any harm should come to you, Mrs. Chantry. Goodbye…"

  Miranda heard the click of the receiver being returned to its rest as Simmy hung up.

  She did not wait to ring the bell but ran quickly to the kitchen.

  "Is Miss Fay out here?" she asked Nancy.

  "No, ma'am, I haven't seen her since she went outdoors more than an hour ago," the girl said.

  "She would not still be in the garden, though—it is nearly dark," said Miranda, and the urgency in her voice made Nancy look at her more closely.

  "My, ma'am, you'm looking quite mazed," she exclaimed. "Miss Fay's in the schoolroom, like as not. Will I go and give her a call for you?"

  "No, I'll go."

  But there was no sign of the child in the schoolroom or anywhere else. Miranda stood on the stairs and shouted, then ran out into the garden and shouted again.

  Nancy came to meet her from the back of the house.

  "Her's not outdoors, ma'am," she said. "Be 'ee sure her's not in the house?"

  "She's gone to Shap Tor—to the quarry," Miranda said, and Nancy drew her back into the warmth of the house.

  "Oh, now ma'am, her'd never go there alone. Why, she was always asking, but Miss Simms had a dislike of the place."

  Miranda began to explain, a little incoherently, about Sim­my's telephone call. As she listened, Nancy's eyes grew round and some of Miranda's own alarm was written in her pleasant country face.

  "What'll us do?" she asked.

  Miranda replied, "I must go and find her. At least, if I stand and shout from the road she will hear me and not be fright­ened."

  "Then I'll come with you," the girl said, "I'll just tell Mrs. Yeo, and—"

  "No," said Miranda, "she will delay me, and it is better you stay and explain to Mr. Chantry when he returns. I will be quite safe, Nancy, but I must find the poor little girl, and whoever returns first can come for us. Now, quickly—get me a flash­light, if you please."

  She set forth in the clammy mist. Over the old clapper bridge and fork left at the crossroads, she remembered, and then it was straight forward down the hill and up the other side to the familiar rocks and boulders of Shap Tor. But the fog was tricky. One moment a patch would clear and the next a wall of mist would cut off all vision for a few brief yards. But as she breasted the last rise to the tor, the mist seemed to clear a little and the sky behind Shap Tor lightened with the first hint of moonrise.

  Miranda began to call, but her voice sounded small and lonely in the darkness, and there was no reply. She reached the old quarry, and once she heard an answer to her shout—a noise that might have been a child or only a curlew crying from the bog. The battery of her flashlight was growing weak, but the dim light showed an old track leading into the quarry, and she took it, calling as she went, stumbling over the rough ground. The silence and the darkness of the moor closed in behind her.
>
  The flashlight had to be conserved now for the homeward journey, and she switched it off, feeling with her hands for obstructions and pausing every so often to shout again. She called again, and her voice came back to her in a perfect echo. She took another step forward and stopped suddenly, frozen by a nameless dread. There was nothing to make her hesitate save perhaps an added chill in the air and the sound of water that seemed to be under her feet. But as she switched on the flash­light she saw for a moment the yawning chasm at her feet, the broken platform on which she stood and the gleam of water far below. The light slipped from her hand and fell, echoing strangely in the darkness until at last it reached the bottom of the old mine shaft.

  Miranda stood trembling on the brink and covered her face with her hands. Now she knew why Simmy had never liked the quarry. It was here, here at this very spot that Melisande had leaped or fallen to her death, and she, with one more step, would have gone the same way.

  It seemed to her an eternity while she stood not daring to move, listening to the dripping water. But it was not, in reality, long afterward that she heard voices shouting, Adam's and Bidder's, so close that the road could not be far away.

  She shouted back to them and heard Adam's voice, sharp with anxiety, call, "Miranda! Are you all right?"

  "Yes," she replied, and heard the tremble in her own voice. "But I dare not move without a light. I am on the edge of the old mine shaft."

  "God!" she heard him exclaim, and almost at once a light shone down on her and she could see him, silhouetted against the sky for one moment before he started down the little path that she had been unable to see.

  "Stand quite still," he said quietly. "There's no danger, but those boards won't stand my weight. Give me your hand when I tell you and I'll pull you up."

  It was all very quick and simple. She felt his firm hand grip hers and in a moment he had pulled her onto the path beside him and his arms were around her, holding her close in blessed safety.

  "Fay…" she said, half crying against his breast. "I have not found her, Adam…"

  . "She's safe at home," he told her with the roughness of intense relief. "She was never out of the house except for a short time in the garden."