by Sara Seale
“I wish you could spare more time for him,” Lucy told her husband. “I—I’m so afraid you will lose all you have gained.”
“Is that so much?” he returned coldly, and his eyes were grave and a little forbidding.
“I thought so.”
‘The boy has you—and Paul. It should suffice.”
“That wasn’t what you used to think,” she retorted, hoping to force him into some sort of explanation, or even accusation, but he only replied with apparent indifference:
“I thought a great many things at one time, Lucy. I haven’t, I’ve come to the conclusion, a gift for feeing in touch with my fellows. It’s no doubt a quality that exists in the unprejudiced findings required in my profession.”
It was one of his rare mornings at home and they were in the library watching the rain beat down on the deserted terrace. His face, she thought, with a little stab of pain, was as grey and bleak as the day outside.
“Bart,” she said impulsively, pulling at the sleeve of his jacket, “what’s the matter with you? If it’s something Matron has said—” Her words trailed off as he turned to look at her. For a moment his eyes held the same look of frozen anger they .had shown when he found her in Marcelle’s room, an anger because she had trespassed.
“Why should you suppose Matron could upset me?” he said. “Had you any reason for mentioning her?”
It was as direct an opening as he had ever given her to offer explanations of her own and she braced herself to pull down, if she could, the defences he had built against her.
“Yes,” she said. “There is something she misunderstood, and so, I think, have you. I have no means of knowing what she said to you, if, indeed, she said anything, but in fairness to me, Bart, if Matron has made mischief—”
She broke off as Paul unexpectedly joined them, and turned away, clenching her hands in helpless frustration’ at his ill-timed appearance.
“Matron?” he said, with eager curiosity. “What’s that old trout been up to? She’s always hated my guts.”
“Perhaps you’ve given her cause,” Bart remarked with unsmiling briefness, and turned on his heel and left the room.
“Cousin Bartlemy seems in a bit of a tizz. Did I interrupt a tender scene or something?” Paul said, his hand reaching automatically for the sherry decanter, then regretfully withdrawing as he remembered past strictures.
“Oh, go on, help yourself,” said Lucy angrily. “And give me one, too. I need it.”
“My charming little cousin-by-marriage, what, might I ask, has roused you to such untypical behaviour?” he asked softly, and his eyes were suddenly bright and experimental on her tell-tale face. He poured a couple of drinks, handed her one, and patted the sofa invitingly.
“Now,” he said, “let’s sit down and be cosy and you shall unburden yourself on my bosom. You’ve been behaving for too long like a jilted bride, my sweet. Tell all.”
“That’s exactly what I am!” cried Lucy, and burst into tears.
She would not normally have confided so unthinkingly in a young man she did not trust, but her husband’s studied coldness, and the bitter disappointment that now, when she might have broken down his resistance, the moment had been thrown away, made her grateful for kindness, whoever might offer it.
Paul watched her with interest. She would, he knew, regret her indiscretion later, but for the moment he could pry and prod about in her naive little mind and draw pleasure from the fact that he had been able to put yet another spoke in Bart’s wheel.
“Well, well,” he said mildly, “have your wifely advances been rejected, my poor sweet? Come and sit down and let Councillor Paul give you some advice.”
She forgot that she had said she needed a drink, and put her glass, untasted, back on the tray, and sat beside him on the sofa. He offered her a handkerchief with which to dry her tears and grinned at her amiably.
“Well now, for one thing, you don’t know much about men, do you?” he said.
“No—I haven’t known many.”
“And, unfortunately for you, you think you’ve fallen in love with your silly husband?”
“That’s the only thing I’m sure of,” she said with sad simplicity, and his expression suddenly changed.
“God, Lucy! How do you think I feel?” he exclaimed. “For years I’ve watched Bart take as his due all the good things of life that came to him, and now he has you and wants you no more than he’s wanted anything else since Marcelle died. He’s a machine that needs only the power and adulation his profession can bring him—admiring nurses, grateful patients, the flattering awe of the doctor’s wives—he’s not a human being, he’s the god in the machine.”
“That’s not fair!” said Lucy, shocked and startled by his outburst. “He doesn’t react in the least to flattery—he wouldn’t even notice it, and the power you talk of is only what you haven’t got yourself, the power belonging to someone strong and able.”
“It’s easy enough to be strong and able when you have money and a total disregard for the feelings of others,” Paul said sourly, swallowing his drink and reaching for Lucy’s glass.
“You’ve always resented him because he’s had what you haven’t, haven’t you, Paul?” she said, and because her heart was tender, and she herself had been deprived of so much, she could still feel compassion for him.
“What chance have I ever had—bad health, a poor education, and helpless Aunt Minnie round my neck for the rest of her days.”
“Helpless? She’s not an invalid, is she?”
“Not physically, as yet, but she’s the clinging, dependent sort with the brain of a hen, as I’ve often told you. She’ll be the shawl and hot-water-bottle type before very long.”
“Poor Paul,” she said softly, already forgetting her own troubles in those of another. He was not a very admirable character in many ways, she supposed, but circumstances were, perhaps, against him.
“Well, my problems don’t help to solve yours, do they?” he said patting her hand encouragingly. There was still a great deal more that lie wanted to find out. Did that old bag of a matron really make mischief for you?”
“I don’t know. She gave me a little talking to a while ago and said she was going to speak to Bart, too. It’s ever since then he’s been so—so unapproachable.”
“Why don’t you ask him?”
“Bart will never tell me anything unless he wants to. Besides—there was something Matron had misunderstood and—and, I suppose, I’m afraid to know if he has misunderstood, too.”
“The handsome young tutor making hay while the sun shone and, perhaps, getting some response?” he said with a satisfied gleam of amusement, and she gave him a troubled look.
“How did you know?” she asked, and he flung back his yellow head and laughed.
“Because, my poor innocent, I’ve been doing my best to create just that impression,” he replied, with devastating frankness. “It was a way of getting my own back, since you, my dear Lucy, have been so successful in weaning Pierre’s affections away from me.”
“I was right, then,” said Lucy wearily. “You had been encouraging the boy’s aversion for his father. Why—why, Paul?”
He watched her with that bright, flickering glance, seeing the tiredness in her face and the disappointment. She had wanted, he realized with surprise, to keep some illusions about him, or perhaps it was just that her rather irritating goodness of heart merely wished to protect her husband from knowledge.
“I doubt if you’d understand,” he replied glibly. He could not shock her now; she had known too much, instinctively, already. “Perhaps it gave me that sense of power we’ve been talking about—taking something away from someone who had so much.”
“Pierre was all he had left—all he cared about,” she said accusingly.
“Well, that’s as may be. Then you came along and I thought it would be fun to put a spoke in that wheel, too.”
“Fun! Are you a monster, Paul?” Lucy cried, but even as she spoke
she saw him for what he was; no monster, only a little boy who likes to pull the wings off flies.
“You never played up to me Lucy,” he said with the complaining disappointment of a child. “When Bart brought you here and I saw you weren’t the sort of female to get one given the push, I thought we could have some fun. It would have been so much more sensible to encourage me to make love to you, in the circumstances. Bart may be content with his celibate couch, but you won’t be.”
“You—you’re impossible!” she exclaimed, springing to her feet.
“Yes, I am, aren’t I?” he agreed with a return of his old impudence. His moods, she saw, were as facile and inconsistent as quicksilver. The Pauls of this world never grew up. Their minds, instead of maturing, merely became warped with age. There was no cure for the complete egocentric.
“I think you should look for another job.” she said.
“You mean you’ll get me thrown out, after all?”
“No, the move must come from you. Bart will help in any way he can. I know he feels he’s kept you too long here in leading strings.”
“Leading strings! That’s good! Wasn’t I heaven-sent at a time he was beginning to find his son a problem? Bart got plenty out of the arrangement.”
“And so,” she pointed out, “did you. Let’s forget all this Paul, it’s—it’s rather distressing. When you’ve gone—well, perhaps things will adjust themselves.”
He got to his feet and took her suddenly by the shoulders. For a moment his face was the boyish, handsome face of the young man who in those early days had been playmate, friend and companion. Even now, a regretful fondness looked out of his eyes.
“If you want him that much, go out after him,” he said with tolerant pity. “Fight fire with fire, my dear. Would the world-wise Marcelle have wooed her man with a well-scrubbed face for the night and a healthy smell of toothpaste? Use her weapons, Lucy Locket, if you know how—scent, make-up, seductive negligees. For all his monkish habits, my stick of a cousin is, presumably, a man, and he once loved Marcelle.”
She stood, unresisting, under his hands, her face, even after the shock and distress of this interview, humbly , begging for an assurance she could not, herself, feel.
“Do you think—?” she began doubtfully, and, as he lightly kissed the tip of her nose, she saw Bart pass the window in the rain on his way to the garage.
“You can but try,” Paul said. “Was that the great man himself going by? I want a lift as far as the garage on the St. Minver road. I had to leave my car there this morning with a broken oil pipe. I’ll go straight back to Merrynporth after that—Pierre’s lessons are finished for the day.”
She was about to detain him with an anxious question, bewildered by the ease with which he could return to normal, but he heard the sound of his cousin’s engine revving, and with a wave of the hand was gone. Mechanically, Lucy picked up one of the used glasses and poured herself some sherry.
She and Pierre lunched alone in the morning-room, and Smithers appeared concerned at Lucy’s lack of appetite.
“Gaston is disturbed, madam,” he pronounced grandly. “Meals on trays, no proper set-out of the dinner-table—it’s not what we’ve been used to.”
Had he spoken like this three months ago, she would have known she had been found wanting in the servants’ eyes, but now she only smiled apologetically at his reproof. He and Gaston had developed a tolerant affection for her lately, she thought, and tried in their separate ways to make her feel part of the household.
“I’m sorry, Smithy,” she said, “but I dine so much alone and that table is so enormous for one person. A tray by the fire is cosier.”
Smithers sniffed, and Pierre suggested with the hope of establishing a fresh novelty that she should take nursery supper with him at six o’clock.
“Will Papa be late tonight, Smithy?” he asked, already planning in his mind an extension of the allotted half hour in the schoolroom for milk and biscuits.
“Your Papa will be out for dinner but not late home, so I understand,” Smithers replied, then, observing the rain still beating against the window, added: “Cor! Flaming June!” and left the room, cracking his finger-joints.
When Pierre had been sent upstairs for his rest, Lucy wandered round the house wondering how to spend the wet afternoon. Had Paul, she speculated, taken the opportunity to suggest a change of occupation to Bart when he begged a lift into the garage before luncheon? But it would take more than a hint from her to shift him voluntarily from the ease and comfort of Polvane, she thought wryly, and wondered why she had not been more shocked by his own admissions of spite and petty jealousy.
She found herself in front of the drawing-room door and, on impulse, turned the key and walked in. The room bad never been used since the first night of her arrival, when, she was convinced, one of the servants had lighted a fire there as a reminder to Bart that they did not approve of his decision to remarry.
“Fight fire with fire,” Paul had said, and she wandered round the room, examining everything minutely, trying to imagine just what sort of woman Marcelle had been, but the dusty, well-filled cabinets told her nothing. The costly bric-a-brac and delicate Empire furniture spoke only of a foreign taste for wealth and elegance, and the space where the portrait had hung was a mute rejection of the room’s ownership.
Lucy opened the piano and sat down to try the yellowing keyboard. The instrument was badly in need of tuning and the first notes filled her with a sense of alarm at her own temerity; then her fingers wandered into the air that was still Pierre’s favourite and she sang softly to herself:
‘ “Have you seen but a whyte lillie grow
before rude hands had touch’d it;
Have you mark’t but the fall of the snow
before the earth hath smutch’t it...”
Would he ever think that song was like her? Would he ever ask her to sing it, he who had been wooed with the less simple sentiments of French composers and the sensual music of cafés?
“ ‘O so whyte, O so soft, O so sweet, so sweet is shee...”
“Mon dieu!” exclaimed a voice as she stopped singing, and she turned with a guilty start to see Gaston standing in the doorway, his little bright eyes round with surprise.
“Pardon, madame, for a little moment, I heard a ghost,” he said, and advanced gingerly into the room, flicking dust from the occasional tables as he came.
“I’m sorry,” Lucy said. “I shouldn’t have trespassed. It was her piano, wasn’t it?”
“But of course, but she did not sing as you do madame—better, oh yes, with the trills and the panache the best teacher in Paris could give her ... but this piece you sing, it is gentle—like you, madame.”
“Gaston, what was she really like?” Lucy said, and could ask the question because the room had once been Marcelle’s, and the piano and the bric-a-brac and tills fat little man had come with her from France.
Gaston shrugged, but his eyes were shrewd and suddenly very kindly on her face.
“You have no need to ask that, madame,” he told her gently. “She is gone, la pauvre, and we do not concern ourselves with ghosts, hein?”
“She is a ghost that has haunted me ever since I came here,” Lucy said, and gave a little shiver. “Sometimes I think it is she who is alive and I the ghost.”
“Enfin, it is an idea!” Gaston retorted cheerfully. “And what does this poor little ghost desire for dinner tonight?”
“Oh, something on a tray,” she replied without thinking, and he threw up his hands in mock despair.
“Non, non, non, non, non!” he protested. “Trays ... the poached egg ... the steamed fish! It is the way of the English mees, no longer young, who finds pleasure neither in l’amour nor the stomach, and that I will not permit.”
“But m’sieur will not be dining at home,” she said helplessly, wondering a little wildly if next, like Paul, he would be offering her advice on how to capture her husband’s attentions.
“What matter?�
�� he replied. “M’sieur will not be late tonight, and it is easier to deal with a tired man when the stomach is well filled, n’est-ce pas?”
Really, thought Lucy nervously, it seemed as if there must be a conspiracy in the house.
“Very well, Gaston, but I leave the menu to you. Your choice is always right,” she said, closing the piano.
The cook beamed on her, rubbing his plump white hands together.
“And M’sieur Paul—he will be leaving soon, yes?” he asked innocently.
“Leaving?”
“I thought perhaps—” he shrugged, pulled down his mouth, and left it at that How did they do it, Lucy wondered, with amazement? How did servants know and react to changes in a house without being told?
“I don’t know, Gaston,” she said carefully. “There may possibly, be changes, but that, of course, will be for m’sieur to decide.”
“Bien sur...”
They looked at each other with mutual respect and the Frenchman stood aside to allow her to leave the room, turning the key in the lock of the door with a small click of finality.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I
LUCY’S spirits rose with the waning of the afternoon. There was undoubtedly a conspiracy, she decided, hearing sounds of bustle from the kitchen and finding fires had been lighted in the main rooms to dispel the cheerless gloom of the wet summer day, or perhaps the change was simply in herself. She had been content for too long to regulate her moods to Bart’s, and she remembered him telling her angrily, once, not to be so self-effacing. Well the day’s mischief was done, but it was in the open at last. Paul would be leaving soon, and she ... she must cease to be Lucy Lamb, an English miss who ate things off trays and could not find her way into a man’s desires, let alone his affections.
On an impulse she slipped out into the rain and picked a little bunch of the mignonette Abel had sown for her and, arranging it with loving care, set it on Bart’s dressing table. It would greet him when he returned and he would perhaps, think to open the door between their rooms and thank her.