by Sara Seale
CHAPTER THREE
I
WHEN Lucy awoke the next morning, the sun was shining. It poured into the room as Smithers drew the curtains, and even the sound of the breakers seemed less insistent
“How lovely,” said Lucy, stretching luxuriously. “And how different it makes everything seem, doesn’t it?”
“I suppose so,” said Smithers repressively. “But in this part of the world, bad weather is the rule, rather than the exception. You’ll get used to it, madam.”
“Oh! Yes, I suppose I will,” said Lucy, feeling discouraged. “Was Mr. Travers late last night?”
“I really couldn’t say, madam.” The servant’s eyes closed in mild reproof. “He has gone into St. Minver as usual. He did not wish to disturb you. He will be back, I understand, in time for dinner.”
“Oh!” said Lucy again, and wriggled her arms into the old cardigan which must soon be replaced with the bed-jacket Smithers seemed to think so important. “Well, I shall be able to get out into the garden. I haven’t seen the garden yet. Are there really no flowers, Smithers?”
He thrust his hand into the breast of his jacket as if about to make a set speech.
“None since she was taken,” he said in a reverent voice. “When she was alive, ah, then—then she would stand in her little flower-room surrounded with blossoms, and she the fairest flower of them all. It was the prettiest sight to see her. She would place a blossom here, a blossom there—” he made ridiculous motions of arranging flowers—“and she would laugh and sing little French songs, and now it’s all gone.”
“Yes, well—it sounds a charming picture,” Lucy said, wriggling her toes, torn between embarrassment and a desire to laugh. “I must persuade Mr. Travers to restock the gardens. I like flowers, too.”
“That he never will do,” said Smithers, shaking his head. “Ask Abel.”
“Abel? Who’s he?”
“Abel’s been gardener here for thirty years or more. He set great store by young Mrs. Travers—the first Mrs. Travers, I should say. Will you be lunching with Master Pierre and Mr. Bond in the morning-room, or alone in the dining-room?”
“With Master Pierre, of course. What time does Mr. Bond come?”
“At nine-thirty. He will be here any minute.”
Lucy began pouring coffee into her cup, splashing it clumsily.
“I must get up earlier,” she said. “I’m not used to breakfast in bed.”
“Indeed madam?” said Smithers with raised eyebrows, and left the room.
Lucy crunched toast and marmalade with angry impatience. He was absurd and a mountebank, of course; still, these deliberate allusions to the dead Marcelle were disturbing. Bart himself had scarcely mentioned her, but her presence could be felt in the house, in the flower-room, in the drawing-room which nobody used, and most sharply of all, in that great blank space over the mantelpiece, more eloquent than any portrait could have been. Seven years ... does one never forget? she wondered.
“It’s unhealthy!” said Lucy aloud, and bounced out of bed. “The house is a shrine—no wonder the child is strange!”
When she was dressed she leaned out of a window to have her first sight of the garden and saw Pierre trotting beside a young man who was strolling across one of the smooth lawns. He was tall and slight with an odd, unconscious grace in his movements, and the morning sunlight turned his thick fair hair to pure gold. He was laughing, and every so often the boy looked up into his face and laughed too.
Lucy made her way downstairs with a lifting heart. She did not know quite what she had expected of the unknown tutor, but not this, not youth and laughter and the impression that, like herself, he was still outside the claims and demands of Polvane.
She went through the flower-room in to the garden, leaving the door open, and presently she saw them skirting the terrace on their way back to the house. She began to walk across the grass, calling to Pierre, who gave a shout of delight and ran to meet her.
“Did you sleep well, my poppet?” she asked as he flung his arms about her knees.
“Poppet—what is that?” he enquired, screwing up his nose in puzzlement.
“It’s an English term of endearment like your French petit chou, but nicer than a cabbage, don’t you think?”
“What does it mean?”
“I don’t know. Someone who’s nice, I should think. Someone like you when you’re good.”
“Oh, Baba, you are so drole,” he laughed, wrinkling his nose like a rabbit, and the young man, at his more leisurely pace, joined them.
Paul Bond had more than his share of looks, she thought, observing him at closer quarters. His eyes were blue, not the cold, appraising blue of Bart’s, but with depth and color and curiously enlarged pupils. His face had a hint of delicacy, or was it weakness, but his mouth curved into a promise of laughter, although at the moment it was pulled down slightly at the corners as if he already disapproved of her.
“How do you do, Mr. Bond?” she said, and held out her hand. “I’m Lucy Lamb—I mean Travers. It’s hard to remember, yet.” Her eyes were shy as she stumbled a little over the small slip, and suddenly he smiled.
Why, she was scarcely more than a kid, he thought, someone to be beguiled, not a threat to his own position at Polvane.
“How do you do, Mrs. Travers?” he replied, and his voice was light and charming. “I’ve heard a very great deal about you from Pierre. You’re his pin-up girl, you know.”
“Have you to start lessons yet?” Lucy asked. “I thought, perhaps, you might show me the garden.”
“I should be delighted,” he said. “Lessons are rather a figure of speech. I’m more of a nursemaid than a tutor, you know.”
They turned to walk across the lawn to some stone steps which took them down to another. There were a series of lawns, Lucy saw, all terraced and dropping one below another.
“Oh, I like this,” she said. “Perhaps it doesn’t need flowers, after all. It would spoil the formality.”
“You like formality?” he asked, sounding amused.
“Perhaps I’ve never known it,” she said. “It gives a pattern, I think, a sense of security.”
He glanced at her curiously. Was that why she had married Bart, he wondered? There had been gossip and speculation, naturally, at his sudden marriage. He had been prepared for a capable governess type who might soon endanger his own job, but he had not been prepared for Lucy with her long legs and little-girl politeness. Where on earth had Bart picked her up, and what had induced either to marry the other?
“Pierre took a fancy to me,” she said, as answering his thoughts. “My—my husband would do anything for the boy, as I expect you know.”
He gave her a sharp glance. Did she realize the extent of her own admission, he wondered wryly. She met his look with one of enquiring simplicity from those curiously widely spaced eyes, and he knew that if that had indeed been Bart’s reason for marrying her, she would accept it as perfectly natural.
“I must see the rhododendrons in sunlight,” she said as they came round to the drive. “I’ve never known any so high or magnificent before. On Tuesday it was misty.”
“Your wedding day,” he said with the desire to hurt her a little, to extract, perhaps, another admission. It had been common knowledge among the servants that Bartlemy Travers’ second marriage would be no love match. But she only replied “Yes,” quite simply, and reached up to touch one of the giant blooms above her head. The flowers were still heavy with yesterday’s rain and a shower of bright drops fell on her upturned face, making her laugh and blink her eyes.
“You make a very charming picture, Mrs. Travers,” he said. It was an old chestnut, he knew, but she turned to him with shy pleasure.
“So you think so?” she said, and he smiled on discovering so easily that compliments had not often come her way.
They walked down the short avenue with the spreading rhododendrons almost meeting overhead, and soon the house came into view, its slate and stone ugly in
Lucy’s eyes.
“You don’t like your home?” Paul asked, observing her expression.
She turned startled eyes to his.
“I hadn’t thought of it as that,” she said. “I must try to like it, mustn’t I?”
“It might be as well in the circumstances,” he answered dryly, and she laughed.
“You must think me very naive.”
It was exactly what he did think, but there was a quality about her which intrigued him, too. Provided she offered no threat to his own security she might prove a pleasant diversion from an occupation he was finding tedious.
“Pierre, run up to the schoolroom and start getting out your lesson books,” he said to the boy. He wanted to show the rest of the garden to Lucy alone.
“No,” said Pierre firmly, “I shall stay with Baba.”
“You’ll have plenty of time to be with your stepmother after lessons. Run along, now.”
“She is not a stepmother—they are wicked. She’s my Baba, and now that she is here I do not need you any more, Paul. I shall speak to Papa,” the child said, and his voice was a ludicrous echo of his father.
Lucy interposed quickly, “That’s rude, Pierre,” but she saw the tutor’s expression change to one of annoyance and he said sharply:
“Go indoors at once when you’re told, or it will be I who will be speaking to Papa.”
The boy’s eyes went uncertainly to Lucy and his lower lip quivered. It was clear that he was unused to being addressed in such terms by his tutor.
“Run along, poppet,” Lucy said gently. She did not want to be left alone with Paul Bond, but she felt obliged to uphold his authority. The child at once obeyed her, and Paul gave a short laugh.
“I can see I shall have to abdicate,” he said. “Until now it was poor Bart who found himself at loggerheads with his son and I who poured oil on troubled waters. Have you any idea that he means to dispense with my services now he has married again?”
He stood looking at her under frowning brows, and his mouth, which was so fashioned for indulgence and laughter, was twisted into a grimace of discontent.
“No, I’m quite sure he hasn’t,” Lucy said quickly. “In fact we were speaking of you only yesterday, and when I suggested—”
“You suggested I should be given the push?”
She colored slightly under his accusing eyes. In trying to reassure him she had said too much.
“N-not in that way,” she stammered, looking distressed. “I didn’t even know, until Bart told me, that Paul had a tutor. It only struck me as—as unnecessary now that I’m here to look after him, but—but Bart thought otherwise.”
“And so he should,” the young man retorted. “Pierre has far more fondness for me than he has for his father, and Bart knows it. That’s why he was only too thankful to keep me on.”
“You wanted to leave, then?”
“Not exactly, but—well, it’s hardly a full-time job for a man, is it?”
“I suppose not. But if you felt that way, I’m sure my husband would have understood.”
“There were reasons—still are,” he said, and she remembered that Bart had said the tutor was badly off and not too strong. It was possible that he was not fit to do a more exacting job.
“The boy has obviously transferred his affections, as children will,” he said, and his blue, resentful gaze troubled her, “but don’t count on it too much.”
“I’m a woman,” she reminded him. “Pierre is only seven and has missed a woman’s care all his life.”
“And so my cousin several times removed brings you into his masculine household and life is to change for all of us.” He spoke with the crossness of a spoilt child, and Lucy sighed, thinking that, after all, he was only one more person who resented her coming. But he was her own kind of generation; she could make a plea for herself which was not possible with Bart’s servants.
“Please, Mr. Bond, don’t resent me too,” she said, putting out a tentative hand towards him, and, despite his annoyance, he found the gesture touching.
“Who else resents you here?”
“The servants, but that’s natural.”
“Well, I’m a servant of a different kind, perhaps. Still, never mind that. No doubt the feminine touch will be good for us all.”
“Do you think so?” she asked doubtfully. He saw the faint clouding of those wide, enquiring eyes, the uncertainty in the gentle mouth, and his ill humor vanished. Poor kid, he thought, she couldn’t know what she had taken on. She was naive and unsophisticated and anxious to please. With the right handling she could be an ally rather than an enemy.
“Of course I think so,” he said lightly. “Polvane has needed a woman for a long time. Bart let his first wife’s death throw him right off balance, but now—may I say without offence, Mrs. Travers, I consider he has made a very charming second choice?”
It was gracefully spoken and Lucy knew a little glow of gratitude.
“Thank you,” she said gravely, then asked if she might be shown the rest of the garden.
He took her round to the other side of the house where more well-kept grass intersected with paths and neat, dwarf hedges of yew spread to a small plantation of flowering shrubs. Beyond she could see a rough stone wall which marked the boundary to Polvane, and beyond this again, the coarse, bleached grass of the headland and the great arc of sky which met the sea’s horizon. The breeze was sharp and laden with salt, and the sound of the breakers, thundering on the cliffs below, mingled with the harsh cries of the gulls overhead.
They came upon an old man turning the soil in a bed that once must have been a herbaceous border. He paused to lean on his spade, and watch them, and as they approached he muttered:
“Youth ... youth ... ‘tes going back a brave little way.”
“Have you met Abel, Mrs. Travers?” Paul asked, and when she shook her head, he continued, “This is the new Mrs. Travers, Abel. She seems distressed that there are no flowers growing at Polvane.”
“Flowers?” The old man straightened up, observing Lucy with sharp dark eyes which, for all his age, had retained their brightness. He was dark-complexioned, like so many Cornishmen who have Spanish blood in their veins, and his face was lined and weathered from years of exposure to the Atlantic gales.
“The mistress liked flowers, but they won’t grow proper here,” he said. “This was a border that nursed plants well once, but what’s the use any more?”
“Could you not try again, Abel?” Lucy asked, and he frowned at her discouragingly.
“Maister had ‘em dug up seven years ago,” he said. “ ’Twasn’t no good to nobody, see? You’m the new mistress, you say? You’m but a maid, m’dear.”
“We all have to grow up,” she said. “Couldn’t we grow flowers again, Abel?”
“I dunno,” he said, staring at her. “When I sees you and Mr. Paul coming across the grass to me, I says to myself ‘Youth,’ I says. I don’t know about they flowers.”
“You keep it all very beautifully,” said Lucy, feeling a little uneasy. “You’ve been here a long time, I understand.”
“Thirty, year. Old maister and mistress was alive then. Mrs. Travers, she liked fine vegetables, but Mr. Bart’s lady wanted flowers—but she weren’t like you, m’dear, a little maid blown in from nowhere.”
“Is that how I seem to you, Abel?”
“No offence, ma’am,” he said apologetically. “But maister’s marriage was sudden-like. Us thought—that is, if you’ll excuse me, ma’am—I’d expected an older lady.”
“I’m sorry if you’re disappointed,” Lucy said, “but we still might try growing flowers again, mightn’t we?”
“Maybe,” he rejoined, and began digging again, taking no further notice of them.
“He liked you,” Paul said as they made their way back to the house.
“Then he’s the first one,” Lucy said, and Paul paused to take her hands and swing her round to face him.
“Fit in to the life of Polvane and
you’ll have no cause for regrets,” he said. “They are all frightened of you—Smithers, Gaston, Abel perhaps—even myself. Don’t make changes.”
She drew her hands gently away from his. For a fleeting instant she preferred the hostility of the servants to his ready assumption of advice.
“I wouldn’t dream of making changes without my husband’s sanction,” she said gravely. “Thank you for showing me the garden, Mr. Bond. Hadn’t you better be going in to Pierre?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I meant no impertinence.”
“I’m sure you didn’t,” she replied, but she knew with the knowledge born of her past, scant experience that had she not been his employer’s wife he would not have spoken with such respect. She had been given little chance to meet young men of Paul’s type, but, for a brief moment, she recognized him for what he was.
“I’ll leave you then,” he said. “Will we be meeting for lunch or do you eat alone in state?” He was laughing at her now, as if warning her that she would not find it easy to put him in his place.
“I shall be lunching with you and Pierre in the morning-room. I’ve already told Smithers,” she replied, and he raised a hand in salute and ran back across the lawn to the house.
II
Bart arrived home earlier than was expected. They had just settled down to tea in the morning-room, which, Lucy understood, was largely given up to Pierre’s mealtimes, when he walked in.
“Hullo!” said Paul, jumping to his feet.
“Hullo...” Bart replied a little blankly, and stood for a moment surveying the domestic scene with a slightly surprised expression, as if he had not expected to find Lucy presiding over the tea-table.
“Pierre, ring for another cup,” Lucy said, and pulled a chair up to the table beside her.