Garth of Tregillis (11 page)

The vast dining room was empty, so was the smaller dining-room in which I had lunched with Paul Newsom on the previous day.

As I wandered past the door of the library, it was ajar. I pushed it wider—to find myself once more abruptly in Garth Seaton’s presence.

He was seated at a table littered with papers in one of the wide window embrasures. ‘Yes, Miss Westall?’ His voice held a question.

He was demanding to know what I meant by interrupting him and for the moment I was taken aback and hovered uncertainly in the doorway.

‘You’re looking for someone—Mrs. Kinnefer,

perhaps?’

His tone of barely restrained impatience stiffened my backbone. ‘Not Mrs. Kinnefer,’ I replied, drawing myself up. ‘It’s you I want to speak to.’

He put down the pen he had been holding and sat back in his chair. ‘In that case you’d better come in, hadn’t you,’ he said dryly, ‘or do you intend to conduct the interview from the doorway?’

Feeling a little deflated by this reception, I traversed the big room under his gaze and seated myself in the chair he indicated.

Now I was facing him across the great wide table. The air this gave of my being like one supplicating some favour from a powerful dictator annoyed me intensely. Nor did his opening words assuage my ruffled feelings.

‘You have a problem of immense complexity, I assume, when you feel you must see me personally. Nothing that Mrs. Kinnefer or Paul Newsom could solve! Usually between them they’re able to unravel the more simple dilemmas of those at Tregillis. People as a rule come to me only as a last resort demanding the wisdom of Solomon,’ he said, fixing me with an eye in which there was no merriment in spite of a certain conventional lightness in his words.

I could feel myself flush. ‘I shouldn’t have troubled you if Mrs.

Kinnefer or Paul Newsom would have done!’ I answered angrily.

‘The reason I wanted to see you is because I am quite at sea about my duties here.’

‘So you are quite at sea, and this in spite of the admirable list of qualifications in your letter of application! You surprise me!’

‘I don’t mean that I’m at sea about what or how I’m to teach,’ I burst out angrily. ‘I merely want to know
whom
I’m to teach.’

‘Whom?’ His eyebrows rose. ‘Let me see, there was an advertisement in the papers. I had Paul Newsom put it in if I recollect correctly. “Tutor (male or female) for—” ’

‘For a young French boy,’ I interrupted. ‘One child, in fact!

And now I find there are to be two children.’

‘Do you find two children past your strength?’ he asked coldly,

‘especially as Melinda speaks excellent English already, with a wide vocabulary—not all of it polite, unfortunately! Or do you.

feel that for two children your salary is not adequate? That, however, can be arranged.’

‘Two children are not beyond my capacities,’ I retorted. ‘I should be very pleased to teach two
ordinary
children. Melinda, however, is in a totally different category.’

He regarded me in silence for a moment. ‘Yes, Melinda is an unusual child, I have to admit,’ he conceded slowly.

I was taken aback by his yielding the point so readily. I had not expected any justice from this man and now that he agreed with me I felt as if the ground had been taken from under my feet.

However, this did not make me like him any the better and when he said, ‘You feel you cannot—or perhaps I should say,’ he amended, seeing my angry expression, ‘you do not see your way to accepting Melinda as a pupil?’

‘What sort of results am I to get from my teaching of Emile, who is intelligent and docile, if Melinda is to be present, disrupting the lessons?’ I demanded.

He was silent for a long moment, his eyes going to the great beds of peony roses beyond the lawns stretching before the wide windows. ‘Very well, I accept the impossibility of your position. I shall give orders that Melinda is not to be present at Emile’s lessons.’

The interview was over, I realized. There was nothing left for me but to stand up and leave the library. But the unexpectedness of my victory gave me a curious feeling of dissatisfaction. The capacity to see my point had been the last thing I had expected of him. As I hesitated he added with what was, for him, a touch of graciousness, ‘You are too young and inexperienced to deal with such a little monster as Melinda. No one can control that child except myself and as soon as my back is turned she gets up to all sorts of mischief. As for the governesses I’ve engaged for her!

None of them lasted more than a few weeks. However, she seems to be getting on better at school, I’m glad to say. And if only we can survive during the summer holidays, all may yet be well.’

Hi’s tone was cold and contemptuous and while he was speaking there came vividly before my mind the picture of Melinda at lunch on the previous day. She had daydreamed of crewing for him. They would win a race together. She would keep house for him when she was grown up. In her childish way, Melinda loved and hoped to win his approval—which seemed to mean so much to everyone at Tregillis.

Suddenly I wished I had not protested against Melinda’s presence at the lessons. I cast about in my mind for some way of telling him that I had changed my mind and was now prepared to take on Melinda too, but could find no way of doing so without making myself completely ridiculous. Instead, I said coldly,

‘Perhaps Melinda wouldn’t be so difficult and impatient of control if she felt she were loved and regarded with approval as a person.’

‘Am I to take it then that you lay Melinda’s misdemeanours at my door?’ he asked sardonically.

‘It’s no accident that she is obedient to you!’ I replied hotly.

‘The fact is that she hero-worships you and would do anything to win your approval.’

‘Perhaps!’ he said sardonically, ‘but she has a curious way of showing her devotion. It seems that during my absence she has been getting up to such pranks as frightening the staff at night in their quarters—a section of the house which she had no right to be in—and that it’s a wonder we have any staff at the moment. No, I’m afraid what Melinda needs is more of the companionship of children of her own age. Children usually stand no nonsense from one another and originally I own I had great hopes that society of Emile would work wonders for her. However, now that I’m better acquainted with the boy, I don’t see any hope of Melinda’s reformation from that quarter, for a more namby-pamby little prig than Emile it would be hard to find. If Melinda errs in being too positive, Emile swings decidedly to the negative as far as character is concerned ’

So he was contemptuous not only of Melinda but also of Emile, I thought angrily. In fact, was there anyone whom he respected?

His statement of the previous evening came back vividly to my mind, and I felt a wave of humiliation as I remembered it was this man I had begged to treat me with the same consideration ‘as if I were not in his employ.’ It was now only too clear that he had spoken the truth when he had replied that he respected no one, in his employ or out of it.

I would not repeat that mistake, I promised myself. I would not beg for myself—or for Melinda or Emile. My pleas for a more lenient attitude towards the children would fall on deaf ears, I felt sure.

‘When am I to begin my duties?’ I asked with a coldness that matched his own.

I was so certain that he would say I must begin immediately that I was quite taken aback when he replied, ‘Not for a day or two, apparently! According to Mrs. Kinnefer, who is a motherly soul, Emile is exhausted by his journey. It seems he was very sick on the Channel Ferry and must be allowed to rest for a day or so before he’s fit for the rigours of education.’

‘Oh!’ I found myself at a loss and without stopping to think, I said impulsively, ‘Then what am I to do for the next few days?’

He took up his pen and leaning back in his chair regarded me with boredom. ‘I’m sure you will be able to find ways of occupying your time if you really try. The moors spread for miles around. You ride, perhaps? If so, we could find you a suitable mount.’

Immediately I was struck by his assumption that I rode so badly that a special horse must be found for me —a particularly docile animal, was the implication. And I longed to be able to tell him, yes, that I rode—and like the wind too; that no animal was too headstrong for me to control; that I had cups for riding—as I had cups

for

swimming.

With

the

remembrance

of

this

accomplishment, I burst out impulsively, ‘No, I don’t ride, but I do swim, I should enjoy that.’

‘And where do you think you’re to swim?’ he asked.

‘In the cove, perhaps,’ I replied, slightly confused. ‘It’s so near to the house. It would be the most convenient place, I assume.’

‘Not unless you want to be drowned during your first few days here,’ he replied. ‘It’s obvious that you know nothing of our Cornish shores or you wouldn’t suggest such a thing.’

He had suggested binding a specially docile horse for me had I ridden, I thought angrily. Now he was suggesting something similar in connection with my swimming. Perhaps he thought that an especially safe cove would have to be found before I could venture into its waters.

‘But I swim well,’ I protested. ‘I’m no amateur. I have cups at home won for swimming and diving.’

The moment I had said the words I regretted them. His expression didn’t alter, but a gleam of amusement shone unmistakably in his eyes. ‘This is interesting, Miss Westall,’ he said with a note of mock enthusiasm in his voice. ‘And what, may I ask, did you win these cups for? I remember a couple of years ago a young lady made an attempt on the Channel, but I can’t recollect the name at the moment.’

My cups were won, not for anything as strenuous as Channel swimming, as no doubt he guessed. They had been won for races in the local swimming baths and for various exhibition dives.

That he had the true picture was made only too plain as he asked, ‘You took up swimming quite early in life, no doubt? At school, perhaps? And won cups?’

I nodded. Yes, I had won the prize for the breaststroke at school and a bronze medal in the competition for the swallow dive. Later I had won a race, doing the crawl. In all I had quite a collection of cups—none of them for exploits that he would consider of any moment, I realized.

‘My own special interest is underwater swimming,’ he went on smoothly, ‘and fishing with the harpoon. I even interested myself in the salvage of an eighteenth-century copper-bottom that was wrecked in our waters—a highly dangerous occupation, as perhaps you may have heard—and even I find that the cross-currents in Tregillis Cove are more than I can manage. On one occasion I was carried out for some distance and it was only by the merest chance that I was able to beat my way back.’

His expression, ‘Even I find that the cross-currents in Tregillis Cove more than I can manage,’ irritated me. After all, if I
were
swept away, it was my own business, I was thinking rebelliously.

Certainly
this
man would not lament should I be foolish enough to drown myself.

My attitude must have been clearly expressed in my face, for he suddenly flung down his pen on the giant blotter before him on the desk and leaning forward said with emphasis, ‘You mustn’t swim in Tregillis Cove, Miss Westall. And that is not a suggestion, it’s a command.’

‘What?’ I gasped. Suddenly I had risen to my feet and was confronting him across the desk. For a moment I was too angry to find suitable words to express my indignation. Then I burst out,

‘How dare you? Who do you think you are, to give me orders? I’ll swim when and where I wish, and if I’m drowned that’s my concern.’

Slowly he rose to his feet and his towering height gave him the advantage as he replied coolly, ‘You shall not swim in Tregillis Cove—not while you’re here as Emile’s tutor—and if you find this condition intolerable you’re free to leave now if you wish.’

So he was presenting me with an ultimatum! I was breathing hard as I faced him, but the fact that his great height forced me to glare upwards towards his impassive face placed me at a disadvantage, and I knew that much as I longed to accept his challenge I could not withdraw from Tregillis now—not before I had carried out the task I had assigned to myself. After all, my true motive in coming had not been to teach Emile, nor was it my business to patch things up between Melinda and her uncle, nor was it so very important that I should swim in the Cove. I had come to this house because Diana’s diary had contained certain suspicions against this man and his way of inheriting Tregillis from her father. Now that I was certain that everything she had thought of him was very likely indeed, I knew I couldn’t leave without attempting to discover the truth. If I wanted to stay on I should have to climb down.

I did so, but I found capitulation bitter and when eventually I left the library I felt that if ever I could make Garth Seaton suffer for his high-handed manner towards me it would give me the greatest pleasure to do so.

I went out into the garden and made my way to the cove in which I had seen Verity on the previous day and after a while I began to simmer down.