The Dark Stranger

by Sara Seale

  He smiled, the rare, charming smile which transformed his face to gentleness.

  “Perhaps I want to build a hedge round the cuckoo,” he said and her eyes widened and brightened with shy surprise.

  “To hold on to the spring? But, Craig, I—I can’t be important to you in that way.”

  “Why not? How can you know what’s important to a Pentreath? We aren’t all mercenary and unperceptive, you know.”

  “Oh, I never thought that you—” Her high forehead creased in anxious perplexity. “Belle said I was to humor you.”

  He looked a little grim.

  “Did she indeed? I wonder what she meant by that. Well, Tina, shall we say that in return for your bed and board you will humour me at least in this whim and try and think of Tremawvan as home?”

  She began to cry, softly and without distress and he jumped to his feet with an exclamation.

  “Oh, my dear child, surely it isn’t a matter for tears! It hadn’t occurred to me that you might still dislike me.”

  She began to laugh through her tears.

  “I never disliked you,” she said. “Sometimes you just alarm me a little, that’s all. It wasn’t that, Craig.”

  “What, then?”

  He stood over her, dark and frowning, and she took his outstretched hand and let him pull her up.

  “It was relief,” she said. “The knowledge that after years of uncertainty one can—lay one’s affections somewhere. Don’t you remember I tried to explain to you once about not getting fond of places? It’s no use when you don’t belong.”

  “I see.” He did not sound flattered. “Home is where you belong, you told me. Do you think you do, now?”

  She was unsure of him, afraid she had given the wrong answer.

  “I don t know, she said, “but perhaps it doesn’t matter any more. Craig—” Impulsively she threw her arms round him as she had a year ago, and laid her wet cheek for a moment against his breast.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, drawing away at once. “But you did tell me once that I shouldn’t at my age have to walk round simple emotions with so much caution.”

  “Yes,” he said a little dryly, “I remember perfectly. But don’t abandon caution too early, will you—at least with men you don’t know very well?”

  She felt abashed as if she had not behaved with the decorum proper to her eighteenth birthday. Belle would have been in hearty agreement.

  “No, Cousin—I mean, Craig,” she said aware of confusion at his sudden changes of manner.

  “Well, we’d better go back,” he said impassively. “Brownie, I know, has made squab pie for the occasion and a very magnificent birthday cake. You must do justice to both. Help me pack up the lunch basket.”

  III

  To Tina, in the full realization that she and Belle were no longer guests in Craig’s home, the summer seemed to be a string of golden days designed purely for her pleasure. No longer did Brownie warn her to keep out of rooms which did not concern her. She came and went as she pleased in the kitchen and dairy, and even Craig’s study, although she never trespassed there unasked, was not the jealously guarded stronghold of a year ago.

  “Quite the little daughter of the house, aren’t you, darling?” Belle commented, watching with uncomprehending amusement a flowering which she thought simply silly in the circumstances. “Is it Craig who’s inspiring all this filial affection in you? He would be flattered.”

  “Oh, Belle,” laughed Tina, “I can scarcely look on him as a father. Why, he’s only thirty-five!”

  “When I was your age, thirty-five seemed as old as Methuselah,” Belle said a little shortly. “Don’t go getting funny ideas about our magnanimous home-provider, Tina. I assure you that to Craig you’re just a little girl.”

  “Oh, Belle, how silly! I don’t get ideas of that sort. I’m just grateful.”

  “Well, continue being grateful— at a respectful distance. I have a few plans myself.”

  For a moment Tina’s dear eyes were troubled. She no longer took the casual mention of Belle’s preposterous plans very seriously, but she did not want her to be hurt. That afternoon on Tudy Down, Craig had made his opinion of his cousin uncomfortably plain.

  “Belle, you haven’t become—well, fond of Craig, have you?” she asked.

  Belle yawned. The summer heat made her somnolent and she was bored with the whole conversation.

  “For heaven’s sake don’t go and get into a sentimental mix-up about either of us,” she said impatiently. “I told you before, the Pentreaths marry for sensible reasons and I’m in no danger of becoming fond of my cousin, as you put it. I think he’s a self-righteous bore, if you must know, but one’s got to put up with something. Now, go away and leave me to a peaceful snooze.”

  Tina went out to weed her garden. She was glad to think that Craig was in little danger from Belle’s halfhearted schemes. She would have hurt him very much.

  Brownie was sitting in a deck chair in the shade, her hands idle for once, and Tina said:

  “Come down to the temple with me, Brownie. I’m going to weed my garden and you can sit in the shade of the magnolia.”

  “Never could abide the place,” said Brownie, crossly, but Tina was used to her sharp tongue by now.

  “But it’s lovely,” she coaxed. “The nicest spot in the whole garden. Please come and keep me company. I’ll carry your chair.”

  Grumbling, Brownie nevertheless went with her. She was more bent than she used to be and the knuckles of her hands were beginning to show signs of swelling.

  ‘There!” said Tina triumphantly, setting up the chair under the spreading tree. “Don’t you think it’s beautiful with the magnolia branches twisting in the broken columns of the temple and all the flowers which Zachary has planted tor me. I don’t believe you’ve ever seen my garden!”

  Brownie looked about her slowly before she sat down and something in her puckered brown face made Tina say gently:

  “Do you really not like it? I’ll carry your chair back again if you wish.”

  “No.” Brownie folded her hands and set her feet neatly together in the grass. “Dislikes, whether of people or places, are best got over if possible, as I try and tell myself when that stepmother of yours gets on my nerves. Aye ... it is beautiful ... I haven’t been here for ten years or more.”

  “Ten years!” In the very act of pulling out a weed, Tina, on her knees, looked up, startled.

  “It was about then that Jessie died. You knew, didn’t you, that she had the temple built?”

  “Yes, Craig told me. He said his father never cared for the place either.”

  “But not for that reason,” Brownie said. “Though later, maybe, he came to give it a sentimental value out of a stricken conscience. You see, he never loved her and when Keverne was killed she had nothing left to live for. She just drooped and died.”

  “She had Craig,” said Tina, her eyes accusing.

  “Craig was too like his father. Keverne took after her, even to her gentleness. Zion always said she ruined him, and so he had his own way with Craig’s upbringing. Even so, Keverne was his favorite.”

  Tina sat back on her heels and looked at Brownie angrily.

  “It was an unfair division,” she said. “Why should one son suffer for his parents’ mistakes with the other?”

  “You don’t know that he did,” retorted Brownie. “Craig was the better of the two, you know, and that may be thanks to Zion’s hardness.”

  “No,” said Tina in passionate repudiation. “Hardness is not enough. When you are very young you miss affection if it isn’t there. It is true, Brownie, that the Pentreaths marry for material reasons? Have they really no fondness in them for their womenkind?”

  “Some of them have,” Brownie replied judiciously. “Young Adwen’s brother married against his father’s wishes and went to Canada where I believe he’s very happy, and Ruth, Belle’s mother, was in love with the man she married, but the older Pentreaths—well Zion wanted to better
himself, and have sons with good blood in them to carry on the business, and his Brother, Adwen’s father, married a slut of a farmer’s daughter to spite the rest of them. Keverne would have married Belle only she thought herself too good for the Pentreaths, though she’s one herself, and Craig—well, there’s no telling how he’ll choose when the time comes.”

  Tina shivered in the warm afternoon sun. Was there, she wondered, no tenderness in these Pentreaths? Did they all marry for betterment, or spite, or to acquire a fortune, and would even Craig, when the time was ripe, take what he wanted like his pirate ancestors of old?

  His voice, breaking in on such a turmoil of thought at that moment, sent the hot blood to her face.

  “Why, Brownie, what a surprise to find you here,” he said gently, then his eyes rested on Tina’s face and he smiled a little wryly. “You’re looking at me as if I was an ogre. Has Brownie been giving me a bad character?”

  Without a word, Tina sprang suddenly to her feet and ran out of the clearing.

  “What on earth’s the matter with her?” asked Craig, frowning. “It’s unlike Tina to have no welcome for the returning bread-winner.”

  Brownie got stiffly out of her chair.

  “Oh, I reckon I’ve been gossiping too much,” she said. “This place made me garrulous after all these years and I minded the times when I came here with Jessie and listened to her troubles, poor soul. Is tea ready?”

  “Yes. I came to tell you. Why should mother’s troubles worry Tina?”

  “Well, she got the idea that the Pentreath men are a hard, unscrupulous lot, and in some ways it’s true, Craig. She asked me had they no fondness in them for their womenkind.”

  “I see. I suppose you told her I took after my father.”

  “Ah, well, and so you do in the only way that matters. You’ve inherited his grit and shrewdness without his stubbornness and lack of kindness.”

  “Did you tell her that, too?”

  “No, but she’ll learn it for herself in time, and if it’s important to you.”

  He folded up the deck chair and tucked it under his arm.

  “We’d better go up to the house. Belle’s waiting,” he said and stood aside to allow her to pass.

  Tina liked to explore the narrow cobbled streets of Merrynporth when she got the chance to go alone. She was familiar now with all the steep lanes twisting down the hill to the harbor, the curio shops and the fish bars which sold lobster teas so cheaply, and the models of ships in bottles in the junkshop on the waterfront. There were even penny slot machines which told fortunes, a nostalgic reminder of those hungry lunch hours on the pier. If Zachary had errands to do in the shops or cannery, he would drop her at the top of the town while he completed his business, and if not, she would walk the two miles or so to the Spanish Inn which the Merrynporth bus passed twice a day.

  She chose this method of transport one morning towards the end of August, anxious to find a boat which would take her out to Merrynporth Cove for an hour or so. Craig was still insistent that she should not go alone and she walked down to the harbor looking for a boatman to take her. A blue dinghy with rust-colored sails caught her fancy and she stood admiring it for some time before she became aware of a young fisherman standing watching her.

  “Would you be free—” she began, then stopped and said: “Oh!” rather blankly.

  It was not one of the usual boatmen, but Adwen Pentreath in stained, faded slacks, a fisherman’s knitted cap pulled rakishly over his black head.

  “So it is my indiscreet partner of the spring festival,” he exclaimed. “How charming you’ve become, Miss Clementina Linden.”

  She felt herself blushing with the old, easy betrayal, and stood a little awkwardly, not knowing what to reply.

  “What were you starting to ask me?” he said, his dark eyes running appreciatively over her slender body.

  “I was going to ask you if you were free to take me out in the cove. You see, I mistook you for a boatman,” she said shyly.

  “Well, isn’t that fortunate?” he laughed. “I and my boat are entirely at your service and what’s more it won’t cost you a penny.”

  “You have a boat?” she asked.

  “You’ve just been admiring her. She’s really a very nice little craft.”

  “That one?” Tina pointed to the blue dinghy eagerly. “She lovely. I’ve always wanted to sail, but I’ve never got further than being rowed round the point in a pleasure boat.”

  “Dear me, how unenterprising! Doesn’t my august cousin from the cannery allow you a place in his own boat?”

  His eyes were mocking her and she said sedately:

  “He hasn’t been doing much sailing this summer. He works very hard, you know.”

  He pulled a solemn face.

  “Of course. The guardian of the shekels can’t afford to slack like me. I wouldn’t mind owning his sloop all the same. She’s a honey, but like all things belonging to the rich Pentreaths, not for hoi polloi.”

  Her chin lifted slightly in distaste.

  “I’ve always found your cousin very generous with his possessions,” she said, and his face became charmingly humble.

  “I apologize,” he said quickly. “We’ve never had much more than a bowing acquaintance with the Tremawvan Pentreaths so perhaps I’m naturally prejudiced. Now are you ready for that sail in the cove?”

  “Oh, I don’t think I’d better. I mean—”

  “You mean that the master of Tremawvan has forbidden any dealings with the Pentreaths of Polrame, don’t you?”

  She looked embarrassed.

  “Well, not exactly. He did say I wasn’t to visit Polrame, but he didn’t say I wasn’t to speak to you if we happened to meet.”

  “Well, the old quarrel is with my father, not with me,” he said easily. “So if you don’t set foot in Polrame you’ll be conforming rigidly to the letter of the law. Come on, you’re only young once.”

  She wanted to go badly. The younger Pentreath with his gay, buccaneering looks and his brightly painted boat was a strong temptation after the isolated weeks at Tremawvan. Craig might not approve but he scarcely had the right to forbid an acquaintance with his own cousin.

  “All right, I’ll come,” she said recklessly and laughed with pure delight as he picked her up in one easy movement and carried her through the few feet of water to set her in the boat.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I

  IT was the beginning of a friendship which, to Tina, was all the sweeter because she had found it for herself. She sailed with Adwen, leaning quickly to handle the dinghy, she ate lobster teas with him, and drank cider in the dark little saloon bar of the Spanish Inn. At Tremawvan no one questioned what she did with her time. Belle had never troubled about her, and Craig, working late these evenings, was seldom inquisitive about the happenings of the day. Sometimes Brownie would notice the new brightness in her face and observe a little dryly that it was a change to find a young girl so content with the simple pleasures of the countryside, but only Zachary suspected that Tina’s days were not always spent alone.

  “Best have a care, m’dear,” he said to her one morning “Tongues wag in country places.”

  “But I’m not doing anything wrong,” she protested and he shook his head, observing her with melancholy Cornish reticence.

  “Maybe not, but maister wouldn’t be pleased.”

  For the first time Tina experienced a faint feeling of guilt. She had not tried to keep her meetings with Adwen secret but also she had made no effort to disclose what she was doing.

  “You can tell him if you like, Zachary,” she said a little defiantly. “I’ve nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “Nay, it’s none of my business,” he replied dourly. “But there’s bad blood between Themawvan and Polrame. You’d not want to be the cause of trouble, would you?”

  “Would Craig really mind that we know each other?” she asked Adwen at their next meeting.

  He looked amused.

  “So yo
u haven’t told him? No, I didn’t suppose you had,” he said.

  “But would he mind?”

  “What would it matter if he did? He’s not responsible for you and you’re old enough to choose your own friends.”

  “He’s responsible for giving me a home,” said Tina slowly, “I owe him consideration.”

  His eyes mocked her.

  “Ask his permission then to go sailing with his disreputable cousin and see what he says.”

  “Are you disreputable?”

  “It all depends on your point of view,” he laughed teasingly. “The Pentreaths of Tremawvan were very respectable, my father always told me, a reaction to the good old smuggling days. Now me, I’m the buccaneering type, a gay life and a merry one.”

  She looked at him thoughtfully. All the Pentreaths took what they wanted, Brownie had told her, and Adwen was probably no exception. They were very alike and she did not yet realize that the young man charmed her principally because of his resemblance to his cousin.

  “What was the old quarrel about?” she asked curiously.

  “Well, Dad married without the family approval and sold out his share in the mine at a loss, thanks to Uncle Zion’s cupidity. I believe he led mother a bit of a dance but he got the farm when she died which was all the good the poor soul brought him. He always said Uncle Zion had robbed him over the mine, which was probably true. He was a hard nut to crack from all accounts and Craig takes after him.”

  “They don’t sound very nice, the Pentreaths,” she said with a small grimace and he laughed.

  “Oh, we’re not all bad. My brother, Merryn, who married and went to Canada was a good chap and sent enough home regularly to pay for my education. Keverne was decent though dull, and even Craig is decent in a smug, high-handed fashion.”

  “He’s not smug.”

  His dark eyes were suddenly bright with a mockery which held a touch of malice and for a moment he had a look of Belle.

  “I believe my superior cousin has made an impression,” he said softly. “Have I been putting my foot in it?”