by Sara Seale
Sabina listened, still kneeling on the hearth, an apple-bough in her hands. So much was explained: the pair of armoires, one at Penruthan, one at the rectory, Brock’s strange familiarity with the house, his oblique defence of the mother he had misjudged, his contempt for Lucille Faivre, who had contributed so much towards misunderstanding in two generations. Above all, was not the explanation of Tante’s behaviour plain? Tante entering into the conspiracies, taking orders from the man who had so strangely crossed their paths ... But she could not see, in the raw state of her shocked mind, that, for Brock, what had started as a diversion and an irresistible urge to upset the apple cart might have ended, as it had for her, in a more serious engagement of the emotions. He had never said he loved her; he had not, even now, sought in any way to soften the shock of Jeanne’s disclosures.
Sabina placed the wood carefully on the fire and immediately the nostalgic scent of burning apple filled the room, reminding her of those snowy evenings when she and Brock had sat alone by the fire and her love had blossomed shyly and begun to grow.
“Were there, then, no negotiations? Did Tante invent it all?” she asked wearily.
“Not all,” replied Bunny gently. “Your aunt had made tentative proposals, and Brock, familiar with the old tradition, was willing to meet her, but he is not French, and certainly not the man to take a wife in order to acquire a house.”
“Then why couldn’t he have said so when that Jouvez woman was making things so hideously plain?” Sabina said, springing suddenly to her feet. “He stood there as if nothing mattered—as if all she said was true!”
“My dear Sabina!” Bunny reproved. “Brock would scarcely indulge in—er—tender scenes in front of a woman of that kind.”
“Why wouldn’t he?” demanded Sabina. “Because he was once fond of her? Because he doesn’t really care what happens to me? He’s never told me once he loved me. He doesn’t—he only loves the mountains and—and himself!”
She ran out of the room before Bunny could reply, desiring now only to get out of the house and into the wild March weather before Brock returned. But she was not quick enough. She met him in the living-room, and he took her by the wrist as she tried to slip past him. “Running away again?” he said.
His black hair was ruffled by the wind and his hands felt cold and harsh. Whatever the outcome of his private intercourse with Jeanne, his dark face was forbidding, with no hint of tenderness for Sabina as he forced her to meet his eyes.
“Running away? Yes, why not?” she said, accepting the suggestion with defiant relief.
“Because a clever woman can make trouble for you so easily?
I thought you were more sane than that, Sabina.”
“You thought I was a fool,” she said. “You thought it would be amusing to shake my faith in Tante’s arrangements and get what you wanted at the same time.”
“Is that what you really think?”
“What else should I think?” she cried. “You and Bunny playing a game of your own, and I young enough and silly enough to fall for it!”
The familiar room seemed forbidding and unfriendly with the cold ruin of the morning’s fire and a thin trickle of light coming from the hall. The smell of soot still hung in the air and the wind roaring down the vast chimney brought fresh falls to settle on the hearth. She felt Brock’s fingers tighten on her wrists, drawing her closer, and she was unable to resist, though her body instantly stiffened.
“Yes, you are young and silly, my foolish lamb,” he said, his voice suddenly gentle. “Why should the truth make any difference? You didn’t love poor M. Bergerac—you hadn’t even met him, though you were willing to marry him.”
But M. Bergerac was no longer a joke he could fall back upon when it suited him.
“That’s Bunny’s argument,” she said with hardness. “Neither of you seem to understand that falling in love alters everything.”
“Does it?”
“Yes, it does. At least you never pretended you loved me— at any rate not really, but now—well, everything’s different. I suppose there’s nothing to stop me making over Penruthan to you, is there?”
His eyes were frosty and unrevealing in his dark face. “Do you not intend, then, to honour your part of the bargain?” he asked coolly.
“No,” she said, and the bitter humiliation of her hurt swamped the earlier felicity of the day. “You and Tante laughing together over my silly letters which cost such a lot to write—when all the time you knew it was a game ... No wonder Tante was so obliging ... no wonder poor faithful Marthe couldn’t understand ... Willie Washer wasn’t so simple when he thought Penruthan should belong to you, was he? These country people have known and accepted you all along, I suppose. Only I was the credulous fool ...”
He was silent, watching her tears, then he put out a gentle hand to brush them away.
“I’ve hurt you very much, haven’t I?” he said.
She made no answer and suddenly, abruptly, he let her go. “Finish your weeping alone,” he said wearily. “This, it would seem, is no time to reason with you.”
He watched her run from the room and listened to the sound of her light feet on the stairs, then he went back to the parlour and Bunny.
The governess sat by the fire on one of the hard, upright chairs, her hands folded impotently in her lap. She had lighted the lamp, and in its radiance her face looked tired and pinched. She had heard Sabina’s raised voice in the next room and the abrupt slamming of the door.
“Well, Brock,” she said, “I’m afraid you took too many chances. You should at least have made sure that Madame Jouvez had returned to France.”
“Is that your oblique way of saying ‘I told you so?” he asked. “No, but I never did approve of this deception. Have you made no effort to explain your own feelings to the child?” she asked.
He sat down wearily, stretching his lame leg stiffly before him.
“It was hardly the time or the place in that chilly room of yours with soot blowing down the chimney,” he retorted. “In any case she was not in a receptive mood.
“That’s scarcely to be wondered at,” Bunny commented dryly. “You made little effort to take the sting out of that unpleasant young woman’s observations.”
“What do you take me for?” he inquired harshly. “The damage was done. It wasn’t going to help anyone to explain or expostulate then.”
“So I tried to tell Sabina, but she’s at the age when a fine show of feeling counts a great deal.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“I gave her credit for more sense,” he said shortly, and Bunny patted her neatly netted hair with a small, ineffectual movement.
“My dear boy! I think you’ve expected more maturity from poor Sabina than it’s as yet in her power to give,” she said. “She told me you have never once said that you—er—loved her—in fact you loved only the mountains and yourself.”
He rubbed his eyelids with a tired, nervous gesture. “Oh, heavens, Bunny, what did she expect!” he exclaimed irritably. “Doesn’t a woman know what a man feels for her without being told?”
Her smile was the one she used to bestow on him when as a small boy he had been particularly stubborn.
“I don’t know,” she said with a certain primness; “but I can imagine women like to hear it in so many words. That’s only natural.”
He grinned at her suddenly.
“I had thought there was plenty of time for that. We hadn’t even reached the formality of being engaged,” he said.
“But you do love her, Brock?”
She asked the question with delicate diffidence because she had always considered such probings to be an impertinence, but his eyes held a tender affection as he replied gently:
“Yes, dear Bunny; I’ve learnt the wisdom of your counsels.” “That there are other ways of fulfilment besides climbing mountains.”
“Then see that she knows it too, dear boy. The young are very vulnerable, and I believe first love must be handled w
ith care. Where is she?”
“Crying in her room, I imagine, and probably packing a
suitcase.”
Bunny looked alarmed.
“You mean you think she might run away?”
“Well, she has a weakness for it, hasn’t she? Especially running away from the man she’s supposed to marry! Don’t worry, Bunny. It’s a rough evening, and she won’t get far, carrying a heavy suitcase. We’ll hear her go if she does. Incidentally, you don’t need to worry about Willie’s whereabouts. He was lurking among the graves when I had my little plain speaking with Jeanne. I shouted to him when she had gone, but he went over the wall to the moor looking as if he’d seen a ghost.”
“He saw her at Penruthan yesterday,” Bunny said absently. “I think he confuses her with your mother, who he is convinced haunts the place.”
“Perhaps she does,” he said, sounding suddenly tired. “Perhaps Penruthan is best left to rot in its decay.”
“Was that the front door?” Bunny got to her feet, but he smiled at her reassuringly.
“No, my silly dear, it was the wind. Don’t fuss—I shall hear her if she goes.”
But they neither of them heard her. Bunny dropped into a fitful doze and Brock, brooding on his own follies, became used to the noises of the house and ceased to separate one sound from another. Sabina crept out of the house an hour later and began the long walk to the little railway halt beyond the village.
Her bout of weeping over, it had not taken her long to decide what she must do. To stay another night at the rectory was impossible after what had occurred. Had Brock taken her in his arms and replied to Jeanne Jouvez taunts, or later sought to comfort instead of telling her to finish her weeping alone, she could have tried to listen with reason to the explanations Bunny had started in the parlour, but he had made it only too plain that he found her attitude illogical, that she had no more right to expect tenderness from him than from the mythical Rene Bergerac.
She could not pack everything into one suitcase, but they would, perhaps, send the rest after her. When she reached Marthe at the address of her Hampstead friends she would write, tendering gratitude for her visit and apologies for causing so much trouble. She did not want to go to Marthe, but there was no one else. Very shortly now, Tante must return following the successful culmination of her plans, and Tante, too, must be faced and the endless, weary scenes and arguments.
Sabina looked anxiously in her purse, counting the money which Bunny had said Tante had sent for her. There was just enough for a single third-class fare to London, but poor Willie would have to go without his present. She thought of Willie as she packed, while Brock’s cold mountains looked down at her from the walls. It seemed so long ago now that the tow-headed boy had stood in the kitchen in his muddy boots and told her that Penruthan was cursed. Well, perhaps it was. It had brought the Bergeracs no happiness and certainly none to her, for those brief days of felicity had been bound not with the house, but with Brock whom she had thought to be poor and without guile.
She shut the bulging case, fastening the locks with difficulty. He should have his house. If it was legally possible to give Penruthan away she would return it to the only person who had a right to it, but she would not barter herself now to a man who did not love her. When she was ready to leave she stood for a moment, bidding a silent farewell to the room. She gazed longest at Kanchenjunga with its five snow summits. It had always been her favourite of them all, and she lifted a mocking hand in salute.
“You win,” she said softly and turned to go.
The wind took her as she went down the drive, whipping her clothes like paper to her body, and buffeting the suitcase against her legs. It was very dark and the tombstones in the graveyard sprang like gaunt spectres from the shadows. The wind sighed through the long grass between the graves, and beyond, the moor was a vast pool of blackness.
Sabina battled with difficulty against the wind, stopping every so often to change the heavy suitcase from one hand to the other. As she went down the deserted road to the village, Willie’s tune came unbidden to her mind, and accompanied her flagging footsteps in the darkness:
Willie Washer’s proper mazed,
Doesn ’t know where he was raised ...
A stone had got into her shoe, and she had to prop herself on the high, crumbling bank in order to remove it:
Silly Willie proper dazed,
Sillie Willie Wash-er
Poor Willie, she thought, her arm aching
painfully, he would be disappointed that she had forgotten his present and left without bidding him good-bye.
The village seemed deserted, too. Only the little inn showed a bright light of invitation over its door, but no one went in or out. Sabina felt exhausted. The day’s emotions had drained her, and the wind and her encumbering suitcase had taken the last of her strength. The little halt was still a long way off at the top of the steep hill beyond the village; she could not, she thought, carry the suitcase any further. She left it on the little green outside the inn and walked on. Someone would find it and take it back to the rectory.
When at last she reached the halt she was fighting for breath and her legs felt as if they no longer belonged to her. The old porter who was sole guardian of Truan station knew her by sight and seemed amazed by her demand for a single ticket to London.
“Lunnon!” he said, “you’ll not get there tonight. Connection for the six o’clock from Kairy went at four. Did ’e walk up here, missy?”
“Yes. Isn’t there a train at all?”
“There’s the midnight, but connection from here don’ t go till ten.”
“What’s the time now?”
He peered at an ancient turnip watch the size of a saucer.
“Seven fifty-eight precisely,” he announced in tones which sounded as if he expected her to contradict him immediately. “What be the rectory folk a-thinkin’ of to let ’e walk on a night like this?” He thrust a whiskered face suddenly into hers and added suspiciously: “Do they know you’m goin’ to Lunnon?”
“Yes ... yes ...” said Sabina hurriedly. “Can I have my ticket please?”
He produced one reluctantly and took her money, then came out of his small wooden cabin to lock the gates.
“Can’t wait here,” he said. “No train for two hours, and I be goin’ home for me bite.”
Sabina looked at the dark countryside, which offered no shelter, and despair made her want to cry all over again.
“But can’t I wait on the platform?” she pleaded. “I must—I must sit down. I can’t walk about for two hours.”
“Well—” he scratched his head, giving her a very old-fashioned look at the same time. “I don’t never allow it when I’m not about, but—well, p’raps you’d best sit in the shelter, but no larking on the line, mind you, like they dratted boys. If I find you been up to tricks I’ll be powerful angry.”
Sabina laughed a little hysterically.
“I don’t feel at all like larking on the line,” she said, and he let her through to the platform and locked her in!
There was a rough wooden shelter with one bench, and she sank on to it thankfully. As she stretched her aching legs, rubbing the calves, in which pins and needles had started little points of pain, she thought of Brock spending his boyhood in Penruthan, living in one wing with only his mother and governess for company. Had he felt bitter when she, an interloper, had come to inspect the house he knew so well, or had he listened to her comments with tolerance, knowing that through her he could get his home back again? Had he been happy with no companions with whom to share the walled-in gardens, or had he been impatient for the moment when his exile was over and he could return to his stepfather’s comfortable chateau in France? It no longer mattered, she supposed, and whatever ties there were with the past, all that remained now to Penruthan was its use commercially.
As time went on and only the wind howled through the darkness, Sabina came to know a great desolation. It seemed to her that she m
ust be the only creature left alive in this isolation of blackness; no trains had ever passed this way, no train ever would; she was condemned to sit here for ever and no one would come to unlock the gates.
She must have fallen asleep, for she did not hear Brock’s dragging steps on the wooden platform, nor was she aware of him standing there looking down at her until the beam from his torch flashed in her face. For a moment she thought it was that other occasion when he had found her asleep in the snow at Penruthan, and she murmured, as then:
“I came straight across the moor, going west ...”
He bent over her and roughly shook her awake.
“You have a genius for causing alarm and despondency in people’s otherwise quiet homes, haven’t you?” he said, and she blinked up at him, shocked back into the reality of the moment.
“I might have known that you would catch up with me before I had a chance,” she sighed.
“A chance for what? To arrive in London in the small hours with no luggage and nowhere to go?”
“I was going to Marthe. I would have written.”
“How thoughtful of you. And did you suppose that the estimable Marthe wouldn’t have sent you straight back here?”
“No, why should she? She didn’t like you. She thought you would interfere with Tante’s plans.”
“Very likely,” he retorted with extreme dryness. “But it must be presumed that by now your aunt has communicated with her devoted servant and made everything clear.”
“Oh!” said Sabina. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
She glanced at him a little timidly. He seemed as she remembered him first at Kairy with a hat pulled over his eyes and the collar of an old raincoat turned up to meet it. It would not have surprised her if he had suddenly offered her a glass of brandy.
“What do you want me to do?” she asked with the reasonableness of utter defeat.
“I seem to remember telling you when I left that the next time you ran away you would have to be punished. What would you suggest—an old-fashioned spanking, or just exiled to France with an unsympathetic husband?” She did not reply, but only gave him a faint, uncertain smile, and he sat down beside her on the hard, shiny bench and studied his hands clasped between his knees.