by Sara Seale
“Jealous! Why?” It was not at all the explanation she had expected to hear.
“Of Bart, I suppose, of the times when I’m shut out. You don’t know what it’s meant having you here in this barrack of a house. Until now I’ve felt that you were as glad of my company as I was of yours, because Bart—but he’s got you, too, as well as so many other blessings in life he doesn’t need, hasn’t he?”
“You forget he’s my husband,” she replied, but looked quickly away. There could be no more polite pretence between them on that score. He had already voiced the knowledge he must always have had, and which she, perhaps, had unwittingly given him.
“You were right, of course, when you said that Bart had only married me on Pierre’s account,” she said quietly. “I’ve never tried to hide the fact that ours was a marriage, of convenience, neither has he.”
“I shouldn’t have thrown that at you especially in front of the boy,” he said. “That’s why I waited to apologize But, Lucy—you’re too sweet, too soft to be sacrificed to the egotistical whim of a crank.”
So whyte ... so soft … so sweet, is shee ... The words ran, unbidden, through Lucy’s mind, and she sighed. Dragged into the open the truth had an ugly sound and the brightness of yesterday was dimmed.
“Why do you hate Bart?” she asked, aware for the first time that the young man did hate his cousin.
“I don’t know,” he replied, squatting down on the warm stones at her feet. “Yes, I do, though. He’s always had everything, health, money, ability, acclamation—all the things most of us have to struggle for and very few of us get. You don’t know how it’s galled me.”
She recognized the pain in his voice, the desperate bitterness of the have-nots.
“Yet, on your own showing, if it hadn’t been for Bart, you would have been struggling in some ill-paid job with no prospects,” she said gently.
“And what prospects have I here?” he demanded fiercely. “A bonus at the end of my usefulness. A promise of other work should the opportunity arise—and what have I to be grateful for?”
“A great deal, I should say,” she replied. “After all, my own position is little better than yours, and I can be grateful.”
“With the difference that you’ve married the great man and, however empty that may be, in the eyes of the world you’ve become part of the Travers circus, and Cousin Bart will keep up the polite fiction to save his face.”
“I don’t understand you,” said Lucy wearily, and he suddenly buried his head in her lap.
“Don’t you, Lucy?” he asked in muffled tones. “Don’t you understand that amongst all the other things, he’s now taken you, and I can only stand by and watch you fall in love with a man who doesn’t want you? You are falling in love with him, aren’t you?”
“Yes—oh, yes,” she said, too tired, and too honest to prevaricate, and only knew when he looked up quickly and met her eyes that until then he had not been sure.
“You poor lamb ... you poor silly little sheep...” he said softly, but there was an odd kind of triumph in his eyes as if, for all his protestations, her admission pleased him.
For the second time that afternoon a shadow fell across the crumpled folds of Lucy’s dress and she raised startled eyes to see Bart leaning against the open french window, watching them. For a moment she imagined that his dark face held such a bitter, frozen look of anger that it would not have surprised her if he had struck her, then he moved with deliberation and the look was gone.
“What an odd attitude to find you in, my dear Paul. Are you saying your prayers to Lucy, or have you got something in your eye?” he observed without a trace of emotion.
Paul sprang to his feet, running a hand through his tousled gold hair. He had the rather engaging air of someone who has been caught in an undignified position, and that was all. Lucy marvelled at the swift, effortless change in his expression; it was she who showed embarrassment, and even guilt.
“Neither,” he laughed. “Actually I was demonstrating Smithers’ latest histrionic efforts. He’s reciting Gunga Din at the local concert at the village hall, you know.”
“Really? We shall have to patronize the performance, I suppose. Lucy, you look very flushed. You aren’t running a temperature, I hope?”
“Of course not. I must have gotten sunburnt or something, or else it’s the curry—we had curry for lunch— not Pierre, of course—haven’t you come home very early? We didn’t expect you.”
Lucy heard herself saying all the wrong things, saw the amusement in Paul’s eyes and the grave enquiry in Bart’s. It was, she knew, the young tutor’s astonishing switch over from one mood to another as much as anything else which had made her blush and stammer and feel utterly in the wrong. Bart did not help matters by replying smoothly,
“That would seem self-evident,” and Paul, with an easy gesture of farewell, embracing them both, said he would collect the clothes he had left on Friday and take himself off.
Bart pulled up a basket chair beside hers and enquired for Pierre.
“I’ve brought his present,” he said. “He’d better have it before he goes to bed and get the excitement over.”
“He’ll be coming down for tea,” Lucy said nervously, and hoped the boy would not see fit to recount the lunchtime quarrel to his father.
She wished Bart would come right out with whatever he was thinking. The memory of last night and his tentative suggestions in the moonlight seemed very far behind them.
He was regarding her thoughtfully.
“I brought you a present, too, but on second thoughts, I don’t think I’ll give it to you just yet,” he said.
For an instant her embarrassment was lost in surprise and pleasure. He had never given her anything personal except the unexpected gift of his mother’s pearls.
“Show me,” she begged like an expectant child, but the expression in his eyes suddenly chilled her.
“No,” he said, “it’s not the moment. You seem very nervous, Lucy. Have there been—upsets in the day’s routine?”
“Well, yes, a little,” she admitted, thankful that she could offer some explanation of what he clearly thought was odd behaviour on her part. “Pierre talked too much about the picnic and his new-found discovery of Papa, and Paul was a little short with him. We had tears, of course, but your son’s devotion to you remains unshaken.”
Lucy knew she was speaking with bright unnaturalness and she thought that Bart’s quick ear, trained to listen for the nuances in a patient’s voice, could hear it, but all he said was:
“I’m glad to know that. I think I’ll go and find him,” and she watched him go into the house, feeling a little hurt. She would have liked to witness the child’s pleasure and response. The shadows were lengthening on the grass now, grotesque shapes of buttress and gable, and the pointing fingers of conifer. It was too cold, as yet, for sitting long out of doors, but Lucy stayed where she was, the day’s events springing back to her mind, and she realized, with a small sense of shock, that thanks to Paul’s unexpected outburst on the terrace, she had never taxed him with her half-formed suspicions, nor asked for an explanation of his interest in Marcelle’s room.
III
She was still nervous when they sat down to dinner. There had been no opportunity for a word with Bart before the gong sounded, for Pierre had waylaid her as she left her room, and insisted on displaying his present. He chattered naturally and excitedly about Papa’s great kindness, and Lucy was glad to see that he seemed to have entirely forgotten their earlier conversation.
“Am I not fortunate?” he said as he finally snuggled under the bedclothes. “My Papa has for wife my Baba and both are mine. Paul tells me often how beautiful was my real mama, but she could not be as beautiful as you in that dress like Cinderella’s. Kiss me asleep.”
She held his face between her hands as she softly kissed his eyelids, and knew a fierce, unexplained longing for a child of her own. She was only twenty, she thought, with passionate awareness, and
the years stretched ahead, barren and unrewarding unless she could find the way to Bart’s heart.
Looking at him now in the soft radiance of the many-branched candelabrum, she wondered; a little hysterically, if he had one, and was instantly aware of his eyes on her, probing, measuring.
“Are you sure you’re feeling quite well, Lucy?” he asked with polite concern.
“Well, perhaps I’m a little tired,” she said. It was easier to admit an imaginary malaise than have him quizzing her with unspoken questions.
“Early to bed, in that case, then, and I prescribe another glass of wine,” he said.
She tried, after that, to make small talk, but he seemed pre-occupied, only once offering a contribution of his own when he suggested, unexpectedly, that Mary Morgan should be asked to dinner.
“Of course,” she said, looking surprised. In the three months she had been married to him they had never once entertained visitors at Polvane, nor received hospitality themselves.
“Mary takes an interest in you, you know,” he observed with a crooked little smile. “She once tried to persuade me to employ you here for Pierre—but you knew that, of course.”
“Yes,” said Lucy, and remembered his odd proposal that day up on the moor when he had said, “I won’t employ you, my dear, but I’m prepared to marry you.”
It had, of course, been Matron who had put the idea into his head; Matron, who had come, to their wedding as the only representative of the bride, Matron who, only the other day, had wondered aloud if Lucy were perhaps too young and inexperienced,, and then left the sentence hanging in the air, unanswered.
“Mary had a few disquieting things to say to me today,” Bart remarked. “You made quite a little stir at the Hospital Ball and were not at all what the wives of the medical profession had expected, so I understand. You and Paul made a romantic couple, as I could see for myself.”
He was talking obliquely, frightening her a little with the smooth assumption that she would understand his riddles. Smithers had left them to their dessert and he was peeling an apple with his usual neat skill.
“Do you think, as Matron did, that I shouldn’t have gone to the dance without you, then?” she asked trying to find the root of his displeasure, if displeasure it was.
“On the contrary. After all, it was I who insisted. I’m afraid Mary doesn’t care much for Paul, but that’s largely on account of her long-standing friendship for me. I can’t afford gossip, she says quite rightly, so, my dear, despite my disinclination, you and I must be seen in public a little more. Mary will drop a hint to the women who matter that it will be acceptable to call, and you, in due course, will return the calls and ask them to dine.”
She was so surprised that, for a moment, the implication in his observations escaped her, then the faint colour crept under her skin, and she fidgeted uneasily.
“Very well,” she said, and then raised her chin. She was afraid of him in this sort of mood, but she was not prepared to be criticized, however indirectly, for something she had not done.
“Bart,” she said, “it’s hardly fair, is it, to blame me for small-town gossip? Paul is your cousin and your employee—as I am. If people talked—and they always will —it should mean no more to you than gossip about a couple of your servants.”
She had been stung to a more bitter retort than she had intended and was unprepared for the force with which he suddenly brought his fist down on the table, making the delicate glass and china quiver in perilous danger of smashing.
“There is one very great difference,” he hit back, his eyes no longer hiding their anger. “You happen to be my wife and, for what it’s worth, the keeper of my good name.”
“You should have thought of that when you asked me to marry you,” she replied with valiant defiance. “I’m still your employee and have a right to my own life.”
“Is that what Paul tells you?”
“Paul?”
“For God’s sake, Lucy, do you think I’m blind?” he ‘snapped convulsively. “I come straight from the hospital with Mary Morgan’s well-meaning warnings fresh in my mind and find my tutor with his head buried in my wife’s lap! You even had the temerity to tell me I wasn’t expected!”
She sat there, her hands folded helplessly in her lap, the colour draining from her face. It had not occurred to her that he could be jealous or that the surprise discovery that such an emotion still existed in him could throw him temporarily off-balance.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “You—you’ve got things all wrong.”
He sat for a moment, watching her, and, slowly, the anger died in him. She looked like a stricken child, there in the candlelight, her bent head accentuating the slender line of her neck from nape to shoulder and the delicate curves of her forehead. She was a little less than half his age, he thought with a revulsion of feeling that made him slightly ashamed, and all her life she had been bullied into subjection by the Miss Heaps of this world, and now, himself.
“I’m sorry, Lucy,” he said wearily. “I have no right to demand more than goodwill from you, and that you have given me, It’s not your fault if Paul, poor fellow, should lose his head a little. He hasn’t got much guts, I’m afraid, but fate hasn’t been too kind to him. Forget my stupidity, will you? Paul, like yourself, hasn’t had much experience of life.”
She looked up, and he saw the tears on her lashes.
“Might it be better if he found another job?” she asked, remembering her own newly-awakened doubts, but he only gave a quizzical little quirk of one eyebrow, completely in control of himself again.
“Sack poor Paul?” he exclaimed with tolerant amusement, and Lucy saw, to her bewilderment, that whatever notions he had cherished on the subject of his cousin’s behavior, he could scarcely have taken the matter as seriously as he had led her to suppose. “We couldn’t do that to him and throw him back on old Aunt Minnie—besides, Pierre’s fond of him.”
She swallowed her bewilderment in a sudden little spurt of anger.
“You would sacrifice anyone and everything for Pierre, wouldn’t you, Bart?” she cried. “Pierre likes Paul, so Paul must stay, even though—even though—” she broke off, choking on tears, and he watched her with narrowed eyes.
“Even though he may make love to my wife, were you going to say?” he asked her suavely.
“No, I wasn’t, and he hasn’t—not that you’d care!” she retorted wildly.
He smiled, but the amusement did not quite reach his eyes.
“You sound a little hysterical, my dear,” he observed with maddening calm. “Perhaps, after all, you aren’t well. These evenings in May can be treacherous—you should put on a coat if you want to sit out of doors when the sun has gone down.”
She could not keep pace with his change of mood.
“You might feel hysterical if someone sat there accusing you of vague things and then refusing to listen to explanations,” she said.
His glance was cool and suddenly remote. He was, she thought, groping for-enlightenment, like a man with two masks, and one was as confusing and difficult to penetrate as the other.
“If you’re alluding to Paul again, he gave an explanation of his rather curious attitude, didn’t he? He was, so he said, giving an imitation of Smithers reciting Gunga Din,” he replied smoothly, and Lucy was defeated. Whatever the cause of his original quarrel with her, he was clearly now determined to ignore the whole thing and expected her to do the same.
What manner of man was he, beneath those masks, she wondered uneasily, or was she falling in love with a man who did not exist at all? He had risen to his feet while she sat there staring at him with puzzled eyes, and he leaned across and touched her cheek, as if to remind her of his presence.
“Come, he said. “We’ve sat long enough quarrelling over the dinner table. Our coffee will be cold. On second thoughts, I think I’ll give you my present tonight, after all. An apology, perhaps, for biting your head off.”
She followed him into the li
brary, wondering what he could have bought for her, and wondering with a lifting heart, if his impulse to give her something had any significance. It was only yesterday that he had made an appeal for her tolerance should the need arise, an appeal which she only half understood, and had been too shy or too ignorant to follow up.
He had bought her a ring, a very perfect pearl set with small diamonds, and as she beheld it, Lucy’s simple heart was convinced of its message. Rings meant only one thing in her conclusions, and she looked at Bart speechlessly, searching for the words which would tell him that she accepted and understood his token.
Before she had time to phrase the words adequately, however, he said with a quick frown:
“I hope you’re not superstitious about pearls. St. Minver doesn’t offer a great selection in precious stones, but Mary Morgan thought this would match up with your necklace.”
“Matron? Did she help you choose it?”
“She suggested it, as a matter of fact. The other women at the dance had remarked on your pearls, apparently, also on the fact that you wore no engagement ring. It was remiss of me to have forgotten the symbol of our—er—courtship.”
To Lucy it was like a dash of cold water. It was Matron who had criticized Paul and decreed that the doctors’ wives should call; it was Matron who had chosen the ring and even ordered Bart to buy it because its absence led to speculation. The ring was a token of respectability and a well-lined purse and nothing more.
“Thank you,” she said colourlessly. “Thank you very much indeed. No I’m not superstitious.”
But she was, she thought unhappily, remembering Abel’s injunctions about charms, and did she not curtsey to the new moon, refrain from walking under ladders, and recite the rhyme about the braggarty worm each time she walked on the moor because she was afraid of address? It was well known that pearls meant tears...
“You don’t sound very pleased,” Bart observed a little sharply. “We can change it, if you don’t like it.”
“I wouldn’t want to do that,” she said gently, “but I—I wish you had thought of it yourself.”