The Truant Spirit (9 page)

CHAPTER FOUR

SABINA took a mischievous delight in acquainting Marthe of her aunt’s decision, but she was unprepared for the torrent of abuse she received in return.

“Ha!” the woman exclaimed when she had finished reading Tante’s letter to be convinced with her own eyes that Sabina was speaking the truth. “And why is there no mention of M. Brockman?”

“Why should there be?” asked Sabina with surprise. “Tante doesn’t know him.”

“And Madame
la gouvernante
took pains to make no mention of him herself! Do you think, mam’zelle, that if Madame, your aunt, knew of this man’s presence here, and of the fashion in which you met, she would permit for one moment that you should stay? No, my cabbage, Madame would never risk the influence of a man such as he on the very

eve of your betrothal to another.”

Sabina grinned. Sometimes, she thought, Marthe talked exactly like a penny dreadful.

“You can make yourself easy,” she said. “It makes no difference to Mr. Brockman whether I stay or go—he told me so himself. As you’re always telling me, Marthe, I don’t charm strange men very readily.”

“As for that,” Marthe retorted negligently, “it makes no matter if a man has the
ennui
—and what else would any man have staying in this house with its draughts and its graves and an imbecile boy and the so proper English
chatelaine?
You are young—you are promised to another—these things are sufficient when the hours are long and no other attractions offer.”

“You’re hardly very flattering,” said Sabina, going a little pink.

“No, because you are a fool and do not understand men as I do. That old maid in the next room is no better, for she suffers too from girlish dreams, and because she is too old she is willing that you shall amuse him for her.” Sabina looked at the woman with profound distaste. The flat, sallow face, and the hairs on the upper lip had always had a faint repulsion for her, but never before had she understood the native coarseness which was so near the surface.

“You are disgusting,” she said with disdain. “I can’t conceive how Tante has put up with you all these years.”

“Because,” said Marthe with contemptuous enjoyment, “I work for nothing when money is short, and because Madame knows well that she is not so very different herself. The veneer, oh yes, the
chic,
the grand manner when it suits, but Lucille Faivre was not so very different before she became Madame Lamb.”

Sabina raised a hand as if she would strike her.

“What are you suggesting?” she demanded. “You will speak with respect of my aunt, whatever your private feelings. It is not for you to excuse your own faults by blaming an employer who has kept you in comfort for years.”

“Comfort!” Marthe spat, and Sabina’s eyes became cold.

“Oh, yes, Marthe, even in the cheap hotels you saw to it that you had comfort. Only I went without,” she said.

The woman lowered her eyes, and when she next spoke there was more civility in her voice.

“You are growing up, mam’zelle,” she said. “Or is it that already M. Brockman’s influence shows? That is the way he talks—assuming the role of
grand seigneur
of which he knows nothing. And I—Marthe? Does Madame expect me to stay in this place, too?”

“She didn’t mention you, as you saw for yourself. It would be better, I expect, if you returned to London.” “And expose you to a danger of which Madame knows nothing, and for which she would never forgive me? Oh, no, mam’zelle, not before I receive a reply to my own letter; for, look you, I have explained to Madame circumstances which that other one did not see fit to mention.”

“You are very much afraid for your pickings, aren’t you?” Sabina said, surprised by her own perspicacity.

“Pickings?”

“What you, as well as Tante, hope to make out of my marriage.”

“Now, my cabbage, you are talking nonsense.” Marthe was suddenly ingratiating, as Sabina had often known her be with Tante. “It is of you we think and your future—”

“And M. Bergerac of his house.”

“He has a right to it, mam’zelle—you could not afford to live in one corner of it by yourself.”

Sabina felt suddenly tired and her pleasure in the day’s happenings was utterly quenched. It was very likely, she thought, that when Tante had read Marthe’s interpretation of the situation, a telegram would follow immediately cancelling her letter.

“You must do as you think fit,” she said wearily. “Until I hear differently from Tante I shall remain where I am.”

“You will hear, my child—you will hear very soon,” said Marthe complacently, and tucking her fat chin into her bosom settled at once by the fire for sleep.

Bunny, next door, had heard most of the conversation, and her face was white as Brock came into the room by the garden door.

“That woman is vile, obscene ...” she told him, and recounted most of what she had overheard. “The child was admirable in her replies, but it is wrong that she should have been exposed so long to that filthy mind. Whatever Lucille Faivre’s failings, she is the only relative Sabina has, and for the girl’s sake should be decently whitewashed.”

Brock’s eyes were hard as flints.

“If the woman makes trouble for you—” he began, and she smiled a little shakily.

“Her insults don’t hurt me,” she said. “It’s the trouble she may make for others.”

“For Bergerac?” For a moment the old mockery was back.

“At the moment my concern is more for Sabina,” she replied with something like the familiar reproof.

“The woman knows little of the old affair or she would have talked before,” he said. “Lucille, no doubt, has taken good care to keep forgotten facts to herself. But I won’t have you upset, Bunny. If the offer of your hospitality is going to rebound on yourself, then both she and the girl can go tomorrow.”

“No, no,” she said. “Having overheard that little exchange, I am more than ever anxious to keep the girl until—”

“Until she marries her elderly
roue
?”

“Until something can be resolved one way or the other,” she retorted stubbornly.

Brock smiled, but he was not smiling when he woke Marthe in the next room and told her curtly that she could pack her bags.

“But monsieur, I cannot leave before Madame gives me instructions,” she whined, resolving to take it out of Sabina, who, she could only suppose, had run to him with complaints.

“Then I will telegraph Madame this evening,” he replied.

“You
will telegraph?” she repeated, her small eyes narrowing.

“On Mrs. Fennell's behalf, naturally. She does not care to have you under her roof any longer in the circumstances. It is not Mademoiselle who repeated your conversation. It was overheard by Mrs. Fennell.”

A dull colour stained her flat cheekbones.

“It is easy to see that you and Madame have misled Mademoiselle—and Madame Lamb, also,” she said with a return to insolence.

“You will keep a civil tongue in your head,” he returned sharply. “I know your kind, Marthe—grasping, loyal when it suits you for what you can get out of a bargain, but with no real consideration for anyone other than Marthe Dupont. You doubtless have your uses for Madame Lamb but you have none at all for me, or for Madame your hostess. You may stay the night since it is getting late, but you will have your things packed in readiness. The reply to my telegram will be here before morning.”

The whole conversation had been conducted in French and, for the second time since meeting him, she was shocked into silence and the instinctive knowledge that for all her disparagement he was someone to be reckoned with. He did not wait for any argument, nor, clearly, did he expect it. She pulled the black wool shawl more tightly about her shoulders and shuffled upstairs to do her packing.

Sabina was much subdued by Marthe’s uncompromising attitude. She knew nothing of Brock’s intervention, but if she had it would have made little difference. It seemed only too probable that Marthe had made the most of a very nebulous situation and Tante, with the Bergerac money almost within her grasp, would take no chances.

She went out to the garden, avoiding the little graveyard, which she was not yet used to as part of the rectory s attractions, and came upon Willie Washer tending a compost heap. He did not see her and was capering about on the graves chanting:

Hinty, minty cutry, corn,

Apple seed and apple thorn Wire, briar, timber lock,

Three geese in a flock.
. .

She drew nearer, careful to make no noise, fascinated by this new version of the singing rhymes she had known in childhood. Willie’s gentle face when he thought he was unobserved had a strange aliveness, and his ungainly limbs only the awkward uncoordination of a very young child’s.
One flew east, and one flew west,

One flew over the cuckoo’s nest
. . .

He saw her and stopped suddenly, shuffling back to his compost heap with a guilty hunch of the shoulders.

“I don’t know that one, Willie. Is there any more?” Sabina asked, and he grunted something unintelligible.

“There’s a French counting-out rhyme I know,” she said. “Would you like to hear it?” He made no reply, and she began softly:

Un, deux, trois, j’irai dans les bois.

Quatre, cinque, six, chercher des cerises,

Sept, huit, neuf, dans mon panier neuf. . .

“It sounds funny, doesn’t it?”

His attention was captured and he turned his back on the compost heap.

“Maister Brock sometimes talks like that,” he said slowly. “Yes, he speaks French, I know, though I don’t think he’d bother himself much about silly rhymes.”

“Silly Willie ... Silly Willie Washer ...” he muttered to himself suddenly, and Sabina knew he must have been taunted with that remark sometime or another.

“No, Willie, you’re
not, ”
she said with warmth, “and you knock anyone down who says so!”

He grinned, revealing a broken tooth in an otherwise perfect mouth.

“I
do,” he said, suddenly delighted. “I goes for’m every time they says it. You’m kind, missy—like Maister Brock—” He advanced and touched her gingerly. “You’m not much more than a little maid, neither. Willie’ll tell ’e some more rhymes some day or t’other.”

“Thank you, Willie,” she said, shy because she felt that he had made a definite concession. “I’m only afraid I may not stay very long.”

“You stay, m’dear,” he said with the soothing assurance of a much older person. “Old rectory don’t see much life now, and me, I like the daid lying quiet over yonder.”

She shivered. The strange affinity of the simple-minded boy with the dead was chilling, or perhaps the afternoon was growing cold.

“I’d like to stay,” she said gently, but he had gone back to his compost heap and forgotten her, and she returned indoors.

Tante’s reply came late that night. It was a long, extravagant telegram but quite clear.

Tell Marthe her letter is received and understood. She should take a holiday at once. I will communicate with her at the old address when I need her. Money will follow if required. My felicitations to my little Sabina for whom my heart is impatient until we meet again.

Marthe, who had been summoned from her room, stood at the foot of the stairs with the telegram in her hands.

“But Madame is mad!” she exclaimed, and sounded really bewildered. “She cannot know what she is doing.”

“You think not?” said Brock politely.

Bunny had seen the surprise on Sabina’s face at the concluding message in her aunt’s telegram and his lips tightened. Lucille Faivre was playing a game which she, at least, understood very well, and she said quietly: “Madame’s instructions seem quite clear. Are you packed, Marthe? There is an early train to London in the morning. Mr. Brockman

will drive you to the station.”

“But I do not understand.”

“You would like a holiday, would you not? You have friends to go to?”

“Naturally—and it is not that I have any wish to remain here, you understand, Madame. I do not care for the country or the inconveniences of old houses.”

“In that case,” said Bunny with finality, “Madame’s wishes should coincide with your own. You will be ready to leave by seven-thirty tomorrow, please.”

“Mademoiselle ...”

Sabina felt pity for the woman’s bewilderment. She herself could not understand this sudden amiability on the part of her aunt. The lamplight distorted their four shadows to grotesque shapes, and, standing in the dim, cold hall of this strange house, she experienced a little stab of distrust.

“Perhaps it would be better if I went, too,” she said and saw Brock’s ironical gaze travel slowly to her face.

“Without seeing Penruthan?” he asked, and she averted her eyes. In the recent happenings of the past few days she had almost forgotten Penruthan.

“Don’t you want to stay?” Bunny said more gently, and Sabina turned with relief from Brock’s uncomfortable gaze. Bunny was familiar and kind in a forgotten nursery fashion, and she had been to a great deal of trouble to secure this little holiday for her.