The Dark Stranger

by Sara Seale

  “The pretence?”

  “The pretence of a home,” she said.

  A white moth settled on her hair and he flicked it off with an absent gesture.

  “Then you do like Tremawvan?”

  “Yes,” she said on a little sigh. “But you see, it’s no use getting fond of places. I couldn’t explain that the other day.”

  “I see.” He took her arm and began to walk with her back to the house. “You can stay if you like, you and Belle.”

  She caught her breath.

  “Indefinitely? Belle’s a good housekeeper, isn’t she, and—and very decorative in your home?”

  “Oh, undoubtedly,” he said blandly, “But there’s one condition, Tina.”

  “Yes?”

  “You go back to school for another year.”

  She stopped dead in the middle of an alleyway.

  “To school! But I’m nearly seventeen!”

  “Have you forgotten all you told me about leaving school too early?”

  The rhododendrons almost met above their heads, shutting out the sky, and she could scarcely see his face.

  “No,” she said, “but it’s different now, and anyway there isn’t any money.”

  “I think there is,” he replied a little grimly. “If Belle is living here rent free she scarcely needs your father’s little sum set aside for your education. Leave it to me.”

  “Yes, Cousin Craig,” she said meekly and walked beside him in silence.

  As they came out on to the lawn she saw the house, dim in the growing darkness, its lighted windows offering welcome.

  “There will be holidays here, won’t there?” she asked on a note of doubt.

  “Naturally.”

  “I—I don’t mean to take your kindness for granted,” she said shyly. “It’s just that—when you’re my age you have to do what’s arranged for you.”

  “Yes, that must be cramping.”

  “Not cramping but very—beholden to strangers.”

  After a little pause he said:

  “Charity has more meanings than one, you know.”

  “Yes. I suppose so. Cousin Craig—I know you’re being kind for Belle’s sake, but thank you—thank you very much for including me.”

  He did not seem like a stranger in the darkness and with the unthinking impulse of a child she flung her arms round him and laid her cheek for a moment against his breast.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, almost immediately withdrawing. “Belle doesn’t like demonstrations, but I don’t always remember.”

  “Doesn’t she?” For a moment his voice had a curious ring, but when he next spoke, it was with his usual abrupt manner.

  “Go straight to bed, will you, please, Tina? I want to have a talk with Belle. Good night.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I

  LONG after, looking back on that surprising year, Tina understood many things which puzzled her at the time, but now with the approach of autumn and a school wardrobe to be gathered together at such short notice there was little to do but become a child again and accept whatever was ordained.

  She shopped with Belle in Truro and spent long hours in the workroom at Tremawvan while Brownie fitted and pinned and grumbled crossly at the extra work.

  Belle was in the best of moods.

  “You see?” she said to Tina. “I told you I’d get my way. Rich Cousin Craig’s mercenary conscience must have pricked him at the end.”

  “I don’t think—” began Tina but stopped. It was not wise to disabuse Belle of her chosen ideas and quite useless to venture the opinion that Cousin Craig’s conscience had probably been quite clear.

  “Can we afford all this?” she asked doubtfully as Belle bought lavishly and without her usual regard to economy where Tina was concerned.

  “Oh, yes. We haven’t hotel bills now,” Belle said, and thought with pleasurable enjoyment that as Craig was footing the bills there was no need to spare his pocket.

  There was little remaining of the money which Clement Linden had left, she had told her cousin when he put forward his proposition. They had been living on capital since his death and there was certainly not enough to pay for a year’s expensive schooling and all it would involve. Could Tina not attend a cheap day school in the nearest town?

  “No,” said Craig shortly, “she could not. Very well, Belle, since you’ve always considered the Pentreaths owed you something I’ll discharge the debt this way. I’ll be responsible for Tina’s school fees and her clothes and any extras within reason on one condition—that she never knows the money is coming from me.”

  “How curious not to want recognition for your magnanimity,” said Belle with her irritating drawl.

  “Do you think so? Oddly enough the child has an objection to being beholden to strangers.”

  “Yes, she never took very kindly to you in the first place, I’m afraid.”

  He gave her a level look.

  “You didn’t give me very good press in the first place, did you, Belle? Now, please understand Tina’s to know nothing about my part in this.”

  Belle laughed.

  “Oh, I don’t mind taking the credit, only it seems a little hard, don’t you think, that the Pentreath debt is all going to benefit my unappreciative little stepdaughter?”

  “Hardly. If it wasn’t for Tina’s schooling you would scarcely be making your home at Tremawvan.”

  She shot him an amused look.

  “Oh, I see. Tina has become a mission. Because you were cheated in your own youth you want to work it out this way. Or are you really very complex, Craig, and choose this method of discharging a debt to your own flesh and blood?”

  “I owe you no debt, Belle,” he said a little wearily, “but if I can offer you a home until things are better I’m quite prepared to do it. After all, you married the man of your choice and did without Pentreath consideration while it suited you.”

  “Your father wouldn’t have had me in the house and you know it,” she retorted.

  That hard look of steel came back to his eyes.

  “Let it be clearly understood that if you are to live here for the next year you had better forget about your grudge against the Pentreaths, and your insolence, too,” he said harshly.

  “Insolence?” Her eyebrows went up.

  “Your contempt is insolent. You have the same blood in your veins. You shouldn’t despise it.”

  She lowered her eyes and when she next spoke her voice had lost its arrogance.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I forget sometimes that you are different to the others. I’m not ungrateful for your generosity, Craig, and after all, I have foisted Tina on you. Please try to understand that things aren’t always easy and—well, you have so much, haven’t you?”

  “So much and perhaps, so little,” he replied enigmatically, but at the swift, inquiring look she gave him from under her lashes, he smiled with polite denial. “No doubt the same can be said of most of us. I hope the next year will be happier for you, Belle.”

  And after that?” she asked with soft speculation.

  His face told her nothing.

  “Shall we leave that until the time comes?” he replied and went away to his study to write letters.

  At last Tina was ready. Brownie had sewn on the final name tapes, her trunk was packed and her new uniform laid out to wear tomorrow. It was strange, she thought, slipping away to the little temple before dinner to take a last look at her garden, how mixed she felt at the sudden resumption of her childhood. It was, she thought, as if she was playing a part and was a grown-up returning to school for a whim. She was not adult yet, but neither was she the authentic schoolgirl steeped in a tradition of games and work and rules and girlish attachments. Would she ever get back, she wondered, or would she find herself a fish out of water fitting into school life no more successfully than she had done in Belle’s changing hotels?

  The evening was like any other, except that now it was getting too chilly for coffee on the t
errace. They sat in the big living-room, Belle with a magazine, Brownie with her sewing and Craig smoking his pipe and staring abstractedly into space. The clocks ticked noisily and Tina realized she would not hear them again for months, or smell the scent of burning applewood or watch Brownie’s needle flashing so assuredly in the lamplight.

  “It’s my last evening,” she said suddenly and loudly.

  Belle did not look up from her magazine.

  “Yes, dear, we know,” she said absently.

  Brownie looked up from her sewing to nod across the room.

  “There’s always a last evening and a last time, too,” she said.

  “But there’s a difference, isn’t there—between those and other times, I mean?” Tina addressed Brownie but she was aware suddenly that Craig was watching her. His face in the lamplight was dark and withdrawn and before the appraising glance he levelled at her, her own eyes fell.

  “Of course,” she faltered, “it isn’t very important going back to school.”

  “Not important at all,” said Belle briskly. “I hope, Tina, you aren’t going to treat us all to the schoolgirl’s farewell.”

  “If you go into my study, Tina, you’ll find an anthology of verse on my desk with your name in it,” said Craig unexpectedly. “Take it up to pack tonight.”

  “I’ve put my good-luck present in your room,” remarked Brownie. “A needlework case which I doubt me you’ll use with any skill.”

  Tina’s eyes grew bright with surprised gratitude.

  “Oh, thank you ... thank you both so very much,” she stammered and darted out of the room, across the silent hall and down the short corridor to Craig’s study, that room she must never enter without permission.

  When she returned, Brownie was already folding up her work and Craig had knocked out his pipe for the night.

  “Better go to bed, Tina,” Belle said, glancing at the clock. “You’ve got an early start in the morning so I won’t disturb you when I come up. Good night.”

  Tina stood looking down at her stepmother. Zachary was to drive her into Truro and put her on the London train and she realized with an inexplicable sense of nostalgia that she would not see Belle again until Christmas.

  “Couldn’t you come to Truro too—just to see me off?” she pleaded and Belle laughed.

  “Darling! At crack of dawn? Surely you know me better than that! Now say goodnight and go and get your beauty sleep or you won’t be up in time, yourself.”

  Tina stooped to kiss her and at the last moment gave her a thoughtless hug.

  “For heaven’s sake be careful!” Belle exclaimed. “You’re pulling my hair down.”

  She gave the girl a quick kiss and returned to her magazine.

  It seemed very early when Tina was called, but Brownie was up, attending to last-minute details of luggage and seeing that Tina swallowed tea and toast to her satisfaction.

  “Now, you’ll get breakfast on the train and mind you go right through it,” she said. “And don’t speak to any strangers until your school teacher meets you in London.”

  “Yes, Brownie. Is that the car? Zachary’s early, isn’t he?”

  “Craig’s taking you,” Brownie said.

  “Cousin Craig?” Tina’s eyes widened. “But I thought—”

  “Well, Zachary’s most likely busy. Get along with you now and don’t keep him waiting.”

  Tina kissed her gratefully in farewell, the lump suddenly gone from her throat. Belle might still be asleep and unheeding but it made all the difference that Cousin Craig was waiting to drive her to Truro and that he had risen early to do so.

  She thought he regarded her with a certain puzzled amusement as she got into the Lancia beside him, then she remembered the school uniform she was wearing

  “‘It does seem queer, doesn’t it?” she said, folding her hands neatly in her lap

  “It changes you,” he said, remembering how she had looked that evening in the temple in her new, charming frock which in the half light had made her seem almost a woman.

  “Only outside,” she replied. “Sometimes I think I’m too old to go back again.”

  “You won’t go back in that sense,” he said unexpectedly. “At worse you may have rather fun being with them but not of them.”

  They were travelling swiftly between the high banks still topped by the morning mist, and she gave him a quick, appreciative look.

  “Then you do understand?” she said, and he smiled.

  “Oh, yes. You’re not a schoolgirl in the ordinary sense, Tina, but all the same I think you’ll still find the value of those things you were trying to explain to me that afternoon.”

  “You know,” she said, surprised as always to find him so easy to talk to, “I don’t suppose I will be a shining light in the school after all this time. I mean, my standard of work must be miles behind my age, and I was never much good at games. I wonder if that hateful Janice Tilbury is still there. She used to crib people’s exercises and always be top of her form.”

  He grinned.

  “I detect a fourth form flavor already in that remark.”

  “Fourth form—that’s probably where I’ll find myself,” she answered ruefully, then she laughed. “But when I get there I think I’ll be grateful to you, Cousin Craig, for making me go.”

  “Wasn’t it what you wanted?”

  “Y-es, but the summer was so settled that I began to feel differently.”

  “You’ve been happy at Tremawvan, then?”

  “Yes. I think so,” she said cautiously and he frowned.

  “You’re always very reserved with your answers, aren’t you, Tina? School will be a good thing. You shouldn’t, at your age, have to walk round simple emotions with so much caution.”

  “I’ve had to learn caution,” she replied without thinking, and saw his mouth tighten.

  “Cousin Craig. I didn’t mean—” She began a little wretchedly, but he gave her a brief smile which put an end to her explanation and drove in silence for most of the way. She was too conversant with life’s lessons as taught by Belle, he thought impatiently. If, for no other reason, it was a good thing that she should get away for a year and develop a protective skin.

  At the station she experienced the embarrassed melancholy of such departures. Craig was preoccupied with porters, and the exact location of the dining-car, and she stood unhappily on the platform trying not to get in the way until he told her to get into her carriage.

  “You’ve got enough money, haven’t you?” he asked, handing over her ticket. “If you need anything during the term write and let me know and I’ll see that Belle sends it.”

  “Thank you,” she said dutifully, and stood at the window looking at him and remembering that first meeting, when he, the dark stranger, had entered her life with violence.

  “It was very nice of you to drive me here instead of Zachary,” she said shyly. “Thank you, Cousin Craig.”

  The aquiline pirate’s face on a level with her own was the face she remembered above a bright silk handkerchief, the dark Pentreath performing a trifling service for a stranger.

  ‘We shall miss you,” he said politely, and before she could reply the guard’s whistle sounded and the train began to move.

  “Good-bye ...” she called, hanging out of the window, and he lifted a hand in salute and turned immediately to walk back along the platform.

  II

  It was a confused year with shifting values, Tina discovered, not sure at first if she liked the experiment. Adjustment did not come easily after months of living on the fringes of an adult world, and she was, as she had feared, sadly behind in the standard of work.

  Often she was reminded of Craig’s suggestion that she might have fun being with it but not of it, and found it partially true. She made few friends that counted, for the girls in her form for the first couple of terms were younger than she. Nevertheless she was grateful for the unconscious widening of development which she knew to be there, and grateful, too, that when
the time came she could slip from the adolescent to the adult world without having to cross again that confusing no-man’s-land of immaturity.

  She wrote weekly to Belle but got scanty letters in reply. There was no news, she said. The bad weather did not improve Brownie’s rheumatism or her temper. Craig was busy and the days were very boring. Craig himself did not write and Tremawvan seemed so remote and far away that it was no surprise when towards the end of term Belle asked if it would be possible for Tina to spend the Christmas holidays with a school friend. There would be nothing to amuse her at Tremawvan, she said, the maids were down with influenza and Craig did not want to be bothered with extra arrangements for Christmas.

  Tina felt chilled by the letter. Belle had been right, then. He did not want to be troubled with her and it sounded as if Christmas was a festival that had little meaning for the Pentreaths. She spent the holidays at another girl’s home, envious of the family celebrations which she could share yet not be part of and the presents which were sent from Tremawvan seemed impersonal and a matter of form. She was glad when term began again and she could lose herself in the familiar routine of school.

  It was in March that Craig wrote to her himself, a brief, rather formal little note saying that he expected her back for the Easter holidays and hoped that this time she had not made other arrangements. The letter puzzled her. His long silence had given her no indication that he took any interest in her progress, but now he sounded displeased, as if the decision not to return for Christmas had been of her own making. She answered as briefly that she would naturally do what he or Belle wished, and as the term drew to a close she began to look forward to the return to Cornwall.

  As she took her seat in the train she was reminded of that first long journey which had ended with her getting out at the wrong station. This time that would not happen. She was travelling by an earlier train and Zachary was to meet her with the red Morris, but even so she was filled with the same sense of expectancy which carried with it a faint distrust at what she might find in the house of a stranger.