The Truant Spirit (14 page)

“You had Bunny,” she said, remembering that his parents had been separated, but he replied with a touch of dryness:

“Bunny was the governess. She had very proper ideas of what was her place. We came to know each other at a much later date.”

She was silent, recognising with surprise a childhood much akin to her own. Did a ghost of the lonely little boy still hide behind that indifferent facade, she wondered? Could he be reached by tenderness or had he dwelt so long with his cold loves, the mountains, that he no more desired a bosom to weep upon when he was tired?

“What were you thinking?” he asked, watching the betrayal of her thoughts in the face she had turned to the strengthening morning light, but she could not say these things to him yet. Their acquaintance was still no more than that, and he too arrogant to permit trespass.

“I was thinking—” she began, searching for words, “I—I was remembering that I had meant to take some tea to Bunny as a surprise.”

His smile was a little sceptical, but he only fetched another cup and saucer and poured out some fresh tea.

“Here you are,” he said. “Then you’d better go and get dressed, and I’ll do likewise. Mrs. Cheadle will be here soon to do the fires, unless they’re snowed up in the village.”

“Do you think they might be?” Sabina asked, standing there in her long blue robe, Bunny’s cup in her hands.

“No, of course not,” he replied, exasperated by such a literal question, then he smiled.

“Were you thinking we wouldn’t get to Penruthan? he said as if he were rallying a child. “It takes more snow than this to make the roads impassable, my dear.”

She remembered that he had promised to take her to see Penruthan today, but she no longer wanted to be reminded of the house which bound her to an unknown man.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “About going to Penruthan, I mean. I can see it another time.”

His eyebrows rose, but he made no comment, and she went out of the kitchen, holding the cup of tea carefully in one hand while she hitched up her trailing robe in the other.

Bunny was sympathetic about the death of the robin, but like Brock, she did not encourage sentiment.

“It would have died anyhow, I fear. This weather takes toll of many birds,” she said.

“That’s what Brock said, but he fed it through the night and kept it warm even though he knew it would die. Don’t you

think that’s strange?”

“I’ve no doubt it was for your sake.”

“Mine?”

“He thought you would grieve. He told me last night that it would be kinder to put the little thing out of its misery.”

“Oh!” said Sabina and reflected on what a contradictory person he was, doing his best to keep the bird alive until morning to save her disappointment, but insisting, later on, upon driving her to Penruthan although he knew she was reluctant to go. But when breakfast was finished and he suggested that she got dressed for the drive, she had no ready excuse, since only yesterday she had been so eager, and indeed her blood clamoured to be out in the snow and the sunshine.

“Couldn’t we go for a walk, instead?” she asked lamely when he had brought the car round to the door, but his grin was unsympathetic.

“I’m not much of a walker these days with this stiff leg of mine,” he said. “Don’t you want to see your inheritance by daylight? It’s worth a visit, I assure you.”

“Yes, of course,” she agreed hurriedly, aware that his insistence was not entirely on her account. But when the steep moorland road had taken them over the crest of the moor and Brock turned the car between a pair of massive broken gates, she forgot her strange reluctance and caught her breath sharply.

“I told you it was worth a visit,” said Brock.

CHAPTER SIX

PENRUTHAN rose majestic and beautiful from its snowy terraces. Even to Sabina’s untrained eye, the house had gracious proportions, and the icicles which hung sparkling from cornice and window gave it the look of a fairy-tale palace. The grounds had fallen into decay, she supposed, remembering the broken steps and balustrade of the other night, but all neglect was hidden and the worn grace of plinth and pillar borrowed fresh beauty from the snow.

“It’s lovely,” Sabina sighed, feasting her eyes, “and somehow not quite real.”

“Snow lends most things a magic touch,” Brock replied, watching her eyes grow bright with wonder. “Penruthan, stripped of its disguise, is in a bad state of repair. Here’s the

key. Take a look round inside but have a care for crumbling floorboards.”

He handed her a great iron key with elaborate scrolling, and she hesitated.

“I don’t feel I should. It seems like trespassing,” she said.

“On your own property? Don’t be so foolish.”

“Aren’t you coming, too?”

“No. Isn’t that what you wanted—to see Penruthan for the first time alone?”

She thought she detected a faint taunt in his words and she walked to the massive door between the two tall pillars which formed a porch, and scooped the frozen snow from the keyhole. But she could not turn the key and had to call to Brock.

The door swung inwards slowly under his hands and she saw a great hall soaring to the roof, its dimness cut by a ray of sunlight slanting from a window out of her vision. Motes danced like a cloud of midges in the light and the smell of ancient things filled the emptiness.

“Come with me,” she said.

“Afraid of ghosts?” he mocked, but he followed her into the house and left the door open behind them.

Sabina stood in the centre of the hall, feeling small and insignificant, not knowing where to begin. Open doors gave vistas of high, dim rooms, and a wide staircase of stone with heavily carved balustrades led to a gallery and the rooms beyond.

“It’s so
big,”
Sabina kept repeating. “Who could ever live here in these days?”

“No one probably, unless they were prepared to turn the place into a school or—a hotel.”

“Yes, I can see Tante’s point. But even if it hadn’t been entailed, one would have had a job to sell it, I should think.”

“But the Bergeracs would still have been your best market, I presume.”

She glanced up at his dark face and felt a passing pity for Tante, cheated from the start in offering her niece a home; poor Tante with her gaiety and her love of good things, forever tormented by a source of revenue which could not be realised.

“Well, aren’t you going to make a start on your tour of inspection?” Brock’s voice was impatient and she went into

the first room she came to.

It was, she supposed, a kind of salon, for its proportions seemed vast and the parquet floor was made for dancing. An old grand piano still stood in splendid isolation, its worn, shabby case painted and scrolled in the Empire style.

“The future ballroom of the Bergerac English branch, perhaps?” observed Brock, and she felt he was laughing at her.

They went from room to room, Brock’s dragging footsteps loud on the polished floors. He seemed to know his way about the house and surprised her with knowledge about the original uses of many of the rooms.

“Have you been here before?” she asked him, and he replied carelessly:

“Oh, yes. Most people in these parts have wandered round the place since it’s been empty. Penruthan used to be one of the show houses of the Duchy, you know.”

“I suppose it was. I’d no idea it was so grand. Madame Bergerac’s own family must have been rich too.”

“On the contrary, they were rather poor, and only lived in one wing,” he said. “I believe the house has always been a bit of a white elephant. It would have saved a lot of trouble if old Rene Bergerac had been allowed to do what he wanted.”

The rooms led one from another in gracious sequence. Some were shuttered, and Brock would undo the bolts to let in the daylight, dislodging dust and cobwebs as he did so. The rooms were empty for the most part, with a stale, piercing cold and the indescribable flavour of gentle decay, but in others there was still furniture, chairs of faded damask, and old presses, pocked with worm.

“I never knew there was furniture,” Sabina said, opening an empty cabinet to inspect a dead spider inside. “I wonder why these things were left here.”

“Not worth a dealer’s trouble, perhaps,” Brock answered carelessly. “This room is rather charming, Sabina, and it has a secret cupboard which should appeal.”

He showed her how the spring operated in the worm-eaten panelling, but her interest was no more than polite. She had seen an
armoire
which seemed to be a replica of the one which Bunny had in her living-room.

“Look, Brock,” she said; “it’s the same, surely?”

“The same as what?” he asked, but his voice was absent.

“The
armoire
Bunny has. You told me it was made by someone famous. There can’t be many like it, can there?”

“It was one of a pair,” he said and she looked at him inquiringly.

“You mean Bunny’s
armoire
came from Penruthan?”

He looked annoyed, as if he had not meant her to know.

"It was bought for her by a friend when the stuff was sold,” he said shortly. “The other one must have got missed, or else your aunt didn’t know the value of a Boulle.”

“Tante? You mean
Tante
was selling things from Pen-ruthan?”

“Well, she couldn’t sell the house, could she? Not very much was left here, but there was some valuable stuff. Have you no banking account, Sabina, where such proceeds would be lodged?”

Her clear eyes widened with a look of strain. “No,” she replied, “I thought Penruthan was just an empty house. Tante never discussed these things.”

“But the contents, as well as the house, were yours,” he said gently. “There should be a nice little cache stowed away for you somewhere.”

“If Tante sold things without telling me, then it was only to help with the expense I must have been to her,” she said coldly.

Her coat had a little collar of cheap fur which Marthe herself would have scorned, but it framed her face with delicate softness in the dim light, and her cheekbones, stained with sudden colour, stood out sharply against the pale confusion of her hair. Brock made a move towards her but at the altered expression in his face she turned suddenly to run and put a foot straight through the rotten boards he had warned her of.

She cried out with the sudden pain and his arms were round her at once, dragging her back from the treacherous woodwork.

“I never knew anyone with such an instinct for running away,” he said, holding her closely. “Did you think I was going to assault you—or something equally silly?”

“I ... I don’t know,” she whispered, ashamed and conscious of her quickening blood at the same time.

But his face altered again as he looked down at her, and he put a hand behind her head, forcing it back, and very

deliberately kissed her.

“It seems you were right,” he said softly. “Now what have you to say?”

She had not struggled; she did not struggle now but stood staring up at him, her lips a little parted and the colour flooding her face. She had nothing to say at all.

The silence of the house settled about them and the faint, protesting creaks of the rotting floor-boards were clearly audible.

“Is that the first time you’ve been kissed? he asked, and when she did not reply, let her go abruptly and turned away. “Well,” he said with a return to his old manner, “you can chalk it up as a preparation for M. Bergerac. Have you had enough of this mausoleum or do you want to see upstairs?”

“No,” she said suddenly hating Penruthan and all it stood for, “I’d like to go.”

It was a relief, she felt, to get out into the sunlight and see the shadows on the snow and the clear sky overhead. Penruthan should go back to the Bergeracs, but she herself would never live here to be reminded of the happenings of today.

She was very silent as they drove home and Brock apparently had no inclination to put her at her ease. For him, of course, such incidents were a commonplace. Had Bunny not warned her that he had an eye for an elegant woman? But no one, thought Sabina ruefully, could describe her as that, and she remembered more sombrely Marthe’s prediction that when a man is bored he will amuse himself with anyone that offers ...

On the high ground it was beginning to thaw where the sun lay hottest, and the icy road seemed more slippery, or else Brock was driving with less regard for caution. Several times Sabina felt the car skid and as they rounded a bend on the hill which led down to Truan, a flock of sheep crossed the road, looking dirty and draggled against the snow.

“Look out!” Sabina cried and instinctively pulled at his arm. He braked too suddenly at the same moment and the car turned in a sharp skid, circled twice and finished up with two wheels in the snow-filled ditch beyond the edge of the moor.

“Get out!” snapped Brock, leaning across her to tug at the door. For a moment the car rocked as if it would turn over completely, then the wheels stuck and Sabina slid out at an angle into a drift of snow.

Brock beside her pulled her out with no gentle grip. “Haven’t you been taught never to interfere with the driver?” he demanded furiously. “You might have landed up in a worse mess, or at best killed a few of those damned sheep.”