by Sara Seale
It was a handsome apology, Lucy thought, and one which she had neither expected nor sought.
“Thank you, Smithy,’ she said. “The first Mrs. Travers was very beautiful, wasn’t she?”
“Oh yes. Gay—fiery—very ‘oo-la-la,’ you know. Gaston, of course, understood her far better than what I did, but it was only to be expected, them being the same blood in a manner of speaking. I fear she found Polvane dull—all those beautiful gowns and the master so seldom home to see.”
The mention of Marcelle’s wardrobe reminded Lucy uncomfortably that in Smithers’ eyes she was probably still held to blame for the discovery and disposal of all those lovely things.
“Smithy—” she began tentatively—“I—had nothing to do with Mr. Travers’ orders about her room. I never even knew it existed until that day when the shutter was banging. I—I hope you didn’t get into trouble on my account.”
His light eyes held a strange fanatical look for a moment, then they softened into one of acceptance.
“I was wrong to keep her things all that time,” he said jerkily. “But I couldn’t bear them to go for junk—such materials—such reminders of the theatre! Mr. Paul used to laugh at me for my care of that room, but he never knew her or understood my craving for fine things.”
“Mr. Paul!” Lucy exclaimed sharply. “Did he know about her room?”
“Oh, yes, he encouraged me in what he called my play-acting up there. He would often come, too when the coast was clear, and bring Master Pierre to look at the clothes his mother had worn.”
Lucy knew a moment’s sick revulsion. She could understand Smithers with his starved love of pageantry, taking innocent, if misguided, pleasure in preserving the room as a shrine, but that Paul, who had no concern with Bart’s first marriage, should find amusement in such matters and even encourage the child, came as a shock.
“It wasn’t healthy,” she said gently. “Mr. Paul should have known better.”
“Yes madam,” Smithers said, his habitual mask settling once again over his face, and left the room with dignity.
Lucy took her bath thoughtfully, reflecting on how strange Bart’s household was and how little he probably realized of the private dramas of his employees. She had thought at first that their common knowledge of Marcelle had bound them all together after she had died, but Paul had not known her, and Pierre would never have been willingly encouraged by his father to cherish the memory of what a dead woman had once worn.
She went, when she was dressed, into the garden to talk to Abel. The odd exchange with Smithers had been a little disturbing and she was glad, in the circumstances, to be relieved of the tutor’s presence until after the weekend, but the May morning was fresh and sparkling, the memory of last night still warm within her, and she walked across the dew-soaked grass with a light step. Things had changed since yesterday; Polvane lost its air of bleakness in the spring sunshine and she had an unfamiliar sense of belonging.
She found old Abel chanting a rhyme for Pierre, making strange gestures with his dry, gnarled hands.
“Underneath the hazlin mote
There’s a braggarty worm with speckled throat;
Nine double is he ...
“ ‘Tes a charm against snake-bite, see?”
“What’s a braggarty worm?” asked Pierre, who had a great liking for strange words.
“Why an adder, for sure, same as you get on the moor. Mornin’, young missus—did ee enjoy the ball? I’m told ee looked a proper miracle.”
“She looked beautiful, beautiful!” shouted Pierre. “If a braggarty worm came out from under that stone, Abel, what would you do?”
“Why, say the charm, m’dear, quick as ninepence,” the old man replied, and winked solemnly at Lucy. “Where would you like they bulbs for next spring, ma’am?”
Next spring ... for a moment Lucy was lost in the wonder of all the springs to come, of the blossoming of flowers that would be hers, of Pierre’s growing taller and stronger, and Bart, if not forgetting, at last relinquishing that other love. She became aware that Abel was watching her curiously, with a little half-smile, and she began hurriedly to talk about the garden.
Bart, returning for luncheon, watched them reflectively, noticing the fresh sturdiness in his son and the way the morning light drew brightness from Lucy’s soft brown hair.
She turned and saw him and gave Pierre, a little push. “Run and meet your father,” she said, and the boy, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, raced across the lawn, shouting, “Papa, Papa! Do you know what a braggarty worm is?” and was caught up on to his father’s shoulder in one welcoming swoop.
“ ‘Tes good to see’n,” Abel muttered approvingly. “A brave few changes you’m brought here, ma’am. ‘Tes proper wonderful.”
Filled with this pleasant sense of her own importance, Lucy walked across the grass to join father and son.
“Was the operation successful?” she asked, and he smiled at the air of wifely concern which sat so oddly upon her.
“Very satisfactory,” he replied. “And still more so is the fact that, so far, the week-end is clear. What would you like to do?”
It had so often happened that Lucy’s hopes for the week-end had been dashed or just forgotten, that she was at a loss to know what to say to him, but Pierre was in no doubt.
“A picnic, a picnic!” he shouted, and Lucy looked enquiring and a little doubtful. She could not visualize the distinguished Bartlemy Travers in his immaculate striped trousers eating hard-boiled eggs and lettuce in his fingers.
“Why not?” he said, smiling briefly as if had read her thoughts. “But it will have to be tomorrow, Pierre. Gaston will have our lunch ready now, and I’m late already.”
The week-end passed so felicitously that Lucy wanted to hold her breath. Bart was not called out, neither did he show a desire to occupy himself apart from his wife and son. The weather held; Gaston prepared a picnic which was a gastronomic miracle of improvisation, and, crowning wonder, Pierre toot a passionate delight in his father’s company every hour of the day.
When they had performed the final concession of bathing the boy and tucking him up for the night, Bart handed Lucy a glass of sherry in the library before dinner and thanked her gravely.
“I don’t know what your magic is, Lucy, but I’ve felt for the first time that my son has some liking for me.”
It hurt her that he had accepted for so long a situation that should never have arisen.
“The magic is your own, not mine,” she told him shyly. “Perhaps you have been too—too busy to get to know Pierre.”
He gave her a level, searching look from under his heavy lids.
“You don’t mean that, I think,” he said. “What you wanted to say is that I’ve been too preoccupied with the past.”
She was silent, turning her glass slowly between her fingers, while she watched the last of the evening light strike fire from the amber liquid. It was the first time as far as she could remember that he had alluded to his former marriage so directly.
“Isn’t that what you meant?” he insisted, and she raised her eyes to his.
“Perhaps, in a way,” she replied. “One can’t, surely, live for ever with the memory of a dead love.”
“No,” he said, and sounded suddenly harsh. “That way lies morbidness and neurosis. Is that, how you’ve thought of me, Lucy Baa-lamb?”
She shook her head, not knowing what to reply. He had never encouraged personalities and she was afraid of sounding impertinent.
He sighed a little sharply.
“I wonder where you learnt your self-restraint,” he said with a tinge of impatience. “Are you never goaded into saying what you really think?”
“You learn self-restraint through your employers, if you want to keep a job,” she replied simply.
“And I’m just another employer?”
“That’s how you told me to think of you when you asked me to marry you.”
“Did I?” He regarded
her with a puzzled frown. “Well, come to think of it, you would hardly have married me, otherwise.”
“Why not?”
“Why not? Well, my dear child, I wouldn’t have got very far if I’d made other demands—a man you hardly knew.”
“I knew you a little. You’ve forgotten that you saved my life a long time ago,” she said.
His eyebrows rose in cool scepticism and his voice was a little mocking.
“You aren’t going to try to kid me that you cherished a schoolgirl crush for your unknown rescuer all those years?” he said.
“I wouldn’t try to kid you about anything, Bart,” she replied mildly. “You asked me to marry you purely as a business proposition. You made that very plain.”
“Yes, I did, didn’t I? Good God! What a self-satisfied robot you must have thought me!”
She was beginning to feel the strain of this unexpected conversation, realizing in a half-comprehended fashion that their relationship had shifted since the night of the Hospital Ball, that even the servants were conscious of a change. The long, unlooked for intimacy of the week-end had been bitter-sweet, and although Bart was still a stranger, he was a stranger who was no longer entirely impersonal.
“I thought nothing you didn’t intend me to think,” she assured him, and was, relieved when Smithers chose that moment to sound the gong for dinner.
As she undressed before going to bed, she wondered if he would remember to come and bid her goodnight as he had done the night before, and when she was ready she drew the curtains and leaned from the window to sniff the warm May night, conscious again that, did she but know the way, the shaping of events might lie in her own hands. She was still standing there in her nightdress when he knocked briefly on the door and came in.
“For heaven’s sake, child, you’ll catch your death!” he exclaimed sharply. “Get into bed!”
She obeyed him silently, flitting across the room like a small ghost in the moonlight. When she had pulled the covers over her he sat on the side of the bed and took her hands in his, chafing them gently.
“The month of May plays tricks. Next week we shall probably be back to fires,” he said.
“It’s been such a lovely week-end,” she said sleepily, and he did not think she was only referring to the weather. In the dim light her face was a small, indeterminate blur against the pillows, but he could see the brightness of her enquiring eyes.
Lucy—” he began hesitantly. “Sometimes our most heedless actions catch up with us. I have no right to make demands, or even to ask favours, but supposing I did—would you be prepared to be kind?”
She could feel the warmth and hardness of his thigh against hers, the firm, pressure of his hands, but her inexperienced heart could not find a way to meet him.
“Demands—favours? You have never asked anything of me, Bart,” she said.
“Perhaps because I have so little to give in return,” he replied, and the ghost of that first love brushed between them, pushing Lucy away.
“Anything I can give you, I will, gladly” she said, but the brief moment had passed.
“I believe you would,” he said, releasing her hands and tucking them under the bedclothes. “One day I may take you up on that.”
He bent over and gently kissed her, but she knew that the strange, unexpected urgency had gone out of him, and long after he had returned to his own room, she lay weeping because she knew she must have failed him.
II
By Monday the house had resumed its normal air, and Lucy, left alone with Paul and their joint charge, wondered if she had imagined the subtle change in her husband, but Pierre left her in no doubt. He chattered excitedly all through luncheon of yesterday’s picnic and Papa’s attentions until Paul, rather sharply, told him to be quiet.
“Don’t discourage him,” Lucy said. “He’s just beginning to get to know his father.”
“Bart’s moods are proverbial,” said Paul shortly. “By tonight he’ll have forgotten he has a son.”
“No!” cried Pierre triumphantly. “Tonight he brings me back a present and I stay awake till he comes. He said so.”
“Bribery?” Paul murmured softly, and Lucy gave him a quick, troubled look.
“An unexpected treat can hardly be described as that,” she said. “And you know very well Bart’s life is bound up in his son. He’s scarcely likely to forget he has one.”
“Well, if you take my advice, young man, you won’t bother your father. He’s a busy man,” Paul said to the boy, ignoring Lucy, but Pierre looked sulky. Not today was he in his usual receptive mood with his tutor.
“Always you say that. Do not bother him—keep out of his way—he does not want a little boy when he is busy, you say,” he grumbled, and Lucy frowned.
Had Paul, for some reason of his own, deliberately fostered that unhappy misunderstanding between father and son?
“Your father would never be too busy to attend to you, poppet,” she said. “You know, he often thinks it’s you who don’t want him.”
The boy’s great black eyes opened wide while he sat considering the point.
“Perhaps I did not want him once—he made me afraid,” he said slowly. “But now—perhaps he needs me—yes?”
“He needs you very much,” Lucy said, and Paul pushed back his chair with an irritable exclamation.
“Now we shall have arguments and scenes every time I have to use my own authority,” he snapped. “What do you suppose you’re going to gain, Lucy?”
She raised her clear eyes to his discontented young face and countered calmly:
“I might ask you what you hope to gain by keeping Bart and his son apart?”
“That’s ridiculous! Is it my fault if the boy is afraid of his father?”
“It might be. Your influence over the past two years could explain a lot.”
He looked suddenly uneasy.
“Are you going to make trouble for me?” he asked a little unpleasantly. “Your small success at the Hospital Ball seems to have gone to your head, Lucy Lockett—Pierre, the servants, even the revered Bartlemy Travers all eat out of your hand. You’ve not done badly for a girl whose only experience of life has been that of a paid companion.”
Lucy had gone a little white, and Pierre, looking suddenly frightened, scuttled from his place at the table to stand and hold her hand.
“I hope you don’t mean to be as rude as you sound,” she said quietly. “And I certainly have no wish to make trouble for you, but Pierre’s welfare is as much my concern as yours, and his father’s too.”
“Of course. That’s why he married you, wasn’t it?” Paul retorted, but even as he spoke his angry eyes held the ashamed acknowledgement that he had said the unforgivable thing.
“You’d better go home for the rest of the day. I’ll explain to Bart that I gave you the afternoon off. Come along, Pierre; you shall rest on your bed while I read you a story,” Lucy said, and led the child out of the room.
Upstairs Pierre burst into’ tears, and it took her much time and skill to soothe him. Garbled accounts of past disciplinary measures came out between sobs, and Lucy, troubled and dismayed, wondered how much she should believe. A child tended to twist and exaggerate the truth, and Pierre was an excitable small boy whose mixed blood fed a precious imagination. Like most children, he was apt to revile whoever found disfavour with him at the moment, and it was possible he was quick enough to see that his beloved Baba’s sympathies lay with his father and not with his tutor.
“But Pierre, Paul has never punished you cruelly,” she said, trying to arrive at something concrete.
“Non, non, non, non, non!” he protested in exact imitation of Gaston. “It is Papa he say will do that. He will beat me, perhaps, or lock me in a dark room, should I displease him, so I keep out of his way like Paul say and then he does not tell Papa when I am naughty.”
For a moment Lucy felt as she had on discovering Marcelle’s room, a quick revulsion from the abnormal, the emotionally unbalanced. A
child, surely, would not invent such a tortuous misrepresentation, and for Paul, would that not have been the easiest way out? In using the child’s father as a perpetual threat, he ensured his own position as ally and go-between.
“Listen, Pierre,” she said gravely. “Never hesitate to ask your father anything. You know, now, you have no reason to be afraid of him.”
“Yes, Baba.”
“These tales of beatings and dark rooms—Paul was teasing you. Your father has been sad that you didn’t want him. He loved your mother very much and now he has only you.”
“Yes, well, that is different. I will tell you a secret. He married me to give you what you wanted. That should show you how much he loves you.”
“Did he not want another wife, then?” the boy asked, sounding surprised.
“I don’t think so. Sometimes if you have been very happy with someone, you cannot bear another in their place, so you see, my poppet, your father made a sacrifice for you—he put your happiness before his own wishes.”
He blinked up at her from the pillows, his eyelids already heavy with sleep.
“I do not understand,” he said drowsily. “But I think Papa must love you, too, Baba, or why would he not just have bought you for me?”
She smiled and kissed him and he went to sleep almost immediately without the need of a story.
Lucy went downstairs and out through the flower-room to the garden. She felt wearied by the two small scenes and unable, at present, to sift one truth from another. She sat down in one of the basket chairs on the terrace and, shutting her eyes gratefully against the pleasant warmth of the sun, was almost immediately aware of a shadow falling across her.
“Paul!” she exclaimed in some dismay. “I thought you had gone home.”
He stood there, looking down at her, and his face was the charming, boyish face of the good companion who had delighted so many of her lonely hours.
“I couldn’t go without an apology,” he said, and his blue eyes sought hers, anxiously. “I—I don’t know what came over me Lucy. I suppose I was jealous.”