by Sara Seale
“Oh, Belle, thank you!” she cried. “Now my legs will be decently covered for special occasions because, of course, I shall only wear it on very special occasions. How kind you are to me.”
“For goodness’ sake control yourself,” said Belle impatiently. “You’re crushing my new dress. Really, Tina! I hope you won’t consider such demonstrations necessary every time my cousin offers you a treat—if he ever does.” In the privacy of her own little back bedroom she tried on Belle’s frock and viewed her reflection with distaste. Even clothes could do little for her, she thought with resignation. She was too slender for such an elaborate style and her throat looked too long. Even her hair was perverse, she decided, wishing she had Belle’s crisp dark waves instead of this soft, nebulous curtain of hair which clung to her neck like silk. Sixteen was the awkward age, so everyone said, neither one thing nor the other, but she did not feel like a schoolgirl any more after six months of hotel life and Belle would not treat her as a woman.
Now that it was so near the time for departure she observed her ugly bedroom with loving eyes. It had been home for longer than most and had the familiarity of all such rooms. What place was there for her at Tremawvan living on Pentreath charity so grudgingly offered because Brownie’s rheumatism had made her past running Cousin Craig’s house with the expected efficiency? It was terrible, thought Tina tragically, to be still unfledged and dependent on strangers.
Belle did not look forward to the journey. She disliked travelling without a man to smooth away the small annoyances and difficulties, and Tina was a tiresome liability. She chattered at the wrong moments or lost her belongings and she had her father’s inefficiency with porters.
“For heaven’s sake,” Belle told her when they took their seats in the Cornish Riviera Express, “don’t keep opening the window as you did coming up to London and getting yourself covered with smuts. If you feel sick go and stand in the corridor.”
“I won’t feel sick once we’ve had lunch,” Tina replied anxiously. “I didn’t eat enough breakfast. When do we arrive at Tremawvan?”
“Tremawvan’s the name of the house. We change at Truro and get to Merrynporth round about eight.”
“Oh. What a long time. Is the house far?”
“About five miles. They’re sending a car.”
“Have you been there before, Belle?”
“Tremawvan? I used to go there for summer holidays as a child. There were statues everywhere, I remember, but expect Craig has altered all that.”
“Statues? Like Versailles?”
Belle’s lips twisted in derisive amusement.
“Not in the least like Versailles, though I daresay Uncle Zion’s vulgar obsession with his money’s worth would be gratified to hear it.”
Tina looked puzzled.
“But your uncle wouldn’t be vulgar, would he, Belle?” she asked, trying to understand.
But Belle was tired of talking.
“The Pentreaths are a self-made family,” she replied cryptically. “Find something to read and be quiet, Tina. The carriage is filling up.”
Tina frowned silently out of the window. The Pentreaths did not sound at all nice, and if, Belle had remarked, Cousin Craig was like Uncle Zion it was going to be difficult to put up with his charity, let alone like him. She sighed, settling herself in her corner as the train began to move. Already the impermanency of the past few years was beginning to cloud her expectations. The journey seemed endless, the long journey indeed of the fortune teller’s prediction, and Tina’s thoughts turned to the dark stranger reflecting, with perfect seriousness, that someone entering your life with violence could apply to robbers or even murderers and it might be wise to treat all dark strangers with caution and reserve.
Having exhausted such reading matter as had been provided for her long before the train reached Exeter, she began to talk to her next-door neighbor until Belle frowned her into silence. Tea was a welcome diversion, for she could renew her acquaintance with the friendly waiter who had served them with lunch, but Belle frowned again and remarked impatiently:
“Really, Tina, you’ll get yourself into trouble one of these days if you are so confiding in all and sundry.”
Flushing, Tina looked out of the window and watched heavy clouds cast their shadows on the sunlit fields. After Plymouth the character of the country changed. Fields had given place to moorland and the wind was rising. When at last the train reached Truro, where they were to change for the little branch line to Merrynporth, the sun had gone down and gusts whistled across the platform, whirling litter on to the line.
“Br-rr!” said Belle, shivering beside her suitcases. “West country hospitality, indeed! Tina, for goodness’ sake find a porter and get this stuff put in the right train. It wouldn’t have hurt Craig to send the car here and save us this slow stopping journey.”
The connection was already in the station and when their luggage was stowed on the rack Belle told Tina to find the buffet and buy her some cigarettes.
“Don’t dawdle on the way, you haven’t much time,” she said. “And if you miss this you’ll have to find your own way on the next train, so hurry!”
Tina hurried, but the buffet was on another platform and it took several minutes to get served only to be told there were no cigarettes. A whistle blew somewhere and Tina raced back across the bridge to see the little train already steaming out of the station. Belle’s head appeared for a moment at a window, then she gave an angry wave of the hand and was gone.
Tina stood disconsolately on the windy platform looking after the vanishing train. The porter who had carried their luggage eyed her disapprovingly and remarked:
“Didn’t ‘er wait for ‘ee, then? Next train to Merrynporth bain’t till 8.25. Don’t ‘ee miss that ‘n.” He walked away without further interest.
Tina went slowly back to the buffet feeling that she wanted to cry. She was tired and cold and Belle would be very annoyed. People who missed trains and arrived at unexpected times were tiresome, she had always said, and if Cousin Craig Pentreath was the sort of man who ordered a car to meet a train instead of having the courtesy to do it himself, it was unlikely that he would turn out to meet the next one, even supposing he knew when it was due to arrive.
The time passed slowly, and long before her train was due Tina was on the platform for fear she would miss it. A grey twilight was falling as the little train puffed leisurely from halt to halt. It was getting too dark to read the names of the stations and Tina could not understand the broad dialect in which a name was shouted once and never repeated. Cottage lights glimmered sparsely now as the train slowed into another station, and Tina, hanging anxiously out of the window, at last caught the name she was listening for. Almost before the train had stopped she was out on the platform, aware of the sound of the sea and the wind blustering through the darkness.
A surly-looking man demanded her ticket and she had great difficulty in making him understand that Belle would already have given up her ticket and explained the position. He insisted suspiciously that no lady had got off the last train here and where was she bound for, anyway.
“Tremawvan!” he exclaimed. “Station for Tremawvan is Merrynporth.”
“But this is Merrynporth,” Tina said and he spat over his shoulder.
“This ‘ere’s Gwerrenporth,” he replied with contempt. “Merrynporth next stop.”
With difficulty Tina kept back the tears. Could she hire a car, she asked, but was told that country folk were all in bed by this hour. It was no use ringing up Tremawvan as the line was out of order.
“You’ll ‘ave to walk it m’dear, there’s no ‘elp for it. Follow the road till you comes to Merrynporth cross roads, then turn right and ask three mile along to the Spanish Inn.”
She started her long walk wondering if she would ever find her way in this unknown country of banks and walls and deserted narrow lanes. She turned right at the cross roads and began an endless journey between the high, stone-topped banks which b
ordered a road which seemed to lead to no human dwelling. She met no one, and, used as she was to towns and lighted streets, the dark desolation seemed to swallow her.
At last she scrambled on to the bank to get a better view of the road ahead and thought she saw a lighted window very far in the distance. Was that, she wondered despairingly, the inn where she was to inquire? As she stood there with the wind tearing at her skirts she heard the sound of a car coming up behind her and looking back she could see powerful head lights throwing a long beam ahead; a big open Lancia being driven fast. It was travelling in the right direction and she must stop it at all cost and beg a lift or at least directions. She leapt down from the bank as the car was almost upon her, shouting to the driver to stop. There was an instant shriek of brakes and the car, swerving violently to avoid her, grazed the far bank with a scream of metal.
Tina stood in motionless alarm while the driver uttered a string of expletives, then the door of the car was wrenched open and a man jumped out.
“What in hell do you mean by flinging yourself off banks in that suicidal fashion?” he demanded furiously.
He towered over her, silhouetted in the lights of his car, and his face, she thought numbly, with its aquiline features and dark skin was the face of a pirate. He was hatless and his hair in the darkness looked pitch black.
“The dark stranger...” she said staring up at him with eyes stretched wide with wonder, adding under her breath “...entering my life with violence...”
CHAPTER TWO
I
“DO you realize you might have been killed, jumping out like that? What were you doing up there, anyway?” he asked, still sounding very angry.
Tina took a deep breath. The dark stranger appearing so quickly on the heels of the long journey had unnerved her.
“I—I’m terribly sorry,” she said. “I wanted to stop you and I didn’t know you were so close. I—I hope you haven’t damaged your car.”
“Well, the paint will scarcely be improved, but we’ll let that go. I can think of more tactful ways of thumbing a lift if that’s what you want.”
“I don’t know. I mean it depends which way you’re going.”
For a moment a flicker of amusement crossed his face. “Don’t you know which way you’re going?” he said.
“Not—at least I don’t know if it’s the right way. I’m trying to find a house called Tremawvan only I never seem to get to the Spanish Inn where I’m to ask.”
His expression altered.
“Tremawvan! You wouldn’t by any chance be the Linden girl, would you?”
Tina looked astonished.
“Yes—yes, I am. How did you know?”
“But how on earth did you get here? You weren’t on the 8.25 to Merrynporth.”
She was too tired to think his question strange.
“I got off at the wrong stop—the names sounded so alike,” she answered.
“Did you go to meet me, then?”
“Naturally. What did you expect?”
He suddenly took her by the shoulder and turned her into the full glare of the headlights, scrutinizing her frowningly. The widely-spaced eyes looked up at him with startled clarity in the strong glare and the wind blew the hair back from her ears and forehead, exposing the delicate planes and structure of her face.
“H’m,” he said abruptly. “Not what I expected.”
Perhaps it was the red silk handkerchief knotted carelessly round his throat which heightened the likeness to a pirate, and she saw now that his eyes were a vivid, piercing blue against his dark skin.
She stood patiently waiting for his scrutiny to end, and asked:
“Is Mr. Pentreath annoyed that I missed the train?”
His mouth twitched.
“Mr. Pentreath is much more annoyed at narrowly escaping being had up for manslaughter,” he said and she stared at him.
“But—are you my stepmother’s Cousin Craig?” she asked with disbelief.
He smiled with a touch of malice.
“I’m your stepmother’s Cousin Craig who, I’m sure she has told you, is high-handed and ungenerous like all the Pentreaths.”
“Oh!” she said blankly, and he was surprised to see her flush. “I—I think it’s most—generous of you to have me here as well as Belle, Mr. Pentreath. After all, she is a relation and I’m not.”
His eyebrows lifted.
“Gratitude so early? Wait till you know us all better,” he remarked cryptically. “That shouldn’t disconcert you, you know. I’m sure Belle must have prepared you for Tremawvan hospitality.”
“It isn’t that,” she tried to explain, puzzled by his manner. “It’s just that I had imagined you quite different. You must be younger than Belle.”
The wind sent another gust between them and he stepped out of the beam of light.
“I think we’d do better to continue this conversation on the way home,” he observed, opening the door of the car. “You must be tired after all your adventures. Get in.”
He backed the car out of the ditch, cursing under his breath, then drove on up the road.
“Why did you allude to me as the dark stranger?” he asked.
“Did I?” she said sleepily. “Well, a fortune teller told me I would go a long journey and a dark stranger would enter my life violently. It did seem like fate, didn’t it?”
He gave her a brief glance but did not laugh.
“Yes, I suppose it would,” he remarked mildly.
“Are the statues still there?” she asked. Her thoughts were becoming hazy.
“So you’ve heard about the statues, too. Yes, they’re still there.”
“Oh, I’m glad. Belle said you would have changed all that.”
“Nothing is changed at Tremawvan,” he replied a little grimly, then observed on a different note: “And there’s one thing I should say to you, Miss Clementina Linden, it’s unwise to stop strange cars in isolated country lanes. Kindly remember in future.”
Her eyelids were already drooping.
“Yes,” she said and fell asleep.
She woke when they reached the house and followed Craig into a wide high hall with a roughly flagged floor and oil lamps set in alcoves round the bare stone walls. Two statues sculpted from granite flanked the staircase and a third held a lighted torch on the first landing.
“Inside, too?” said Tina, blinking with surprised delight.
“Inside too,” replied Craig and opened a door on the right. “Well, here’s your missing stepchild, Belle. Unlike you, she approves of the statues.”
“Tina’s taste is naturally still a little unformed.”
Belle’s dry voice from the other end of a long, lofty room sounded small and brittle. She sat beside a great polished granite fireplace, and although it was mid-June, a wood fire burned in the hearth. You would, thought Tina, with interest, need fires all through the summer evenings in a house with floors and walls of stone. Rugs covered the flags sparsely, as if carelessly flung down, and rush matting ran between two doors which clearly marked a well-used passage through the room.
“Taste, my father always said, was a matter of personal preference,” said Craig, answering his cousin as he shepherded Tina across the room.
“And education, too,” replied Belle smoothly. “But after all one is entitled to furnish one’s house as one likes, even down to statues, though I imagine you have probably allowed Uncle Zion’s taste to over-rule your own—or couldn’t you just be bothered?”
He did not appear to think the point worth arguing. “You forget I was brought up here,” he remarked indifferently. “You will find the house quite comfortable, Belle, even if the decorations offend you. Where’s Brownie?”
“She’s gone to see to Tina’s supper, I think.”
“Oh, but she mustn’t! I mean doesn’t she have rheumatism, Mr. Pentreath?”
“Not badly enough to cripple her,” said Craig. “The servants are all in bed by now, I’m afraid. We keep early hours in the country
.”
“Did you get the cigarettes, Tina?” asked Belle casually.
“Cigarettes?” For a moment Tina looked blank.
“Well, my dear, you missed the train and put Craig to a lot of trouble on account of them.”
“Oh, those. They hadn’t got any, I’m afraid, Belle, so it was all a waste, wasn’t it?”
“Bother!” said Belle crossly. “I won’t last till the morning. You know I can only smoke Turks.”
“Zachary can go into Merrynporth in the morning and bring you back some,” said Craig, taking an ordinary cigarette for himself from a box on an old-fashioned occasional table.
Tina sat on a long stool in front of the fire and held out her thin hands to the blaze. She wondered why Cousin Craig had not mentioned her further stupidity in getting out at the wrong station and his subsequent meeting with her. Belle must take it for granted that she had been met at Merrynporth, and it seemed easiest to leave it at that for tonight.
She took surreptitious glances at Craig as he stood smoking and talking to her stepmother, and remembered Belle’s easy statement that a clever woman could influence any man. She did not think he looked the sort of man who would brook interference kindly. There was a hardness in the jaw line that betrayed a certain intolerance and his replies though always courteous held a crispness which might be a deliberate or merely his natural rather abrupt way of speaking.
There was a distinct likeness between the cousins, Tina thought, not listening to the conversation, then Craig suddenly smiled at something Belle had said and his face had an unexpected charm.
“Tired?” he asked, conscious of her grave regard. “Well, here’s Brownie with your supper. When you’ve finished she’ll show you where you’re to sleep. Now—I’ll introduce you to another cousin, Miss Maud Sennen, and after that you will call her Brownie like everyone else.”