7/29/2019 150312629 Lucy Lamb Doctor s Wife Sara Seale http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/150312629-lucy-lamb-doctor-s-wife-sara-seale 1/179 LUCY LAMB, DOCTOR’S WIFE Sara Seale It was a tremendous step for Lucy to leave her work in the children’s wards of St. Minver’s Hospital and marry the famous surgeon, Bartlemy Travers. Many a woman envied Lucy her marriage to this attractive doctor, who had a romantic hint of past tragedy to heighten his fascination. But Lucy knew that she came to Polvane, his big house beside the Cornish sea, as an unloved wife, haunted always by the ghost of her lovely predecessor, and wanted by nobody but one small motherless boy. Could she hope for any change in their relationship?
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7/29/2019 150312629 Lucy Lamb Doctor s Wife Sara Seale
It was a tremendous step for Lucy to leave her work in the children’s wards of St. Minver’s
Hospital and marry the famous surgeon, Bartlemy Travers. Many a woman envied Lucy her
marriage to this attractive doctor, who had a romantic hint of past tragedy to heighten his
fascination.
But Lucy knew that she came to Polvane, his big house beside the Cornish sea, as an unloved
wife, haunted always by the ghost of her lovely predecessor, and wanted by nobody but onesmall motherless boy. Could she hope for any change in their relationship?
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“I WON’T employ you, my dear, but I’m prepared to marry you,” Bartlemy Travers had said so
surprisingly to Lucy that chill spring morning on the moors, and here she was, only a few days
later, standing beside him in the dark little church, timidly making her responses, watched by
strangers.
The church was cold and depressingly empty. Two young doctors from the hospital acted as
witnesses, and Matron, unfamiliar out of uniform, sat alone on the left side of the nave, a courtesyto the bride who had no one to support her.
With my body I thee worship... that could have been true, Lucy thought, with a quick, startled
glance at the still, tall man beside her. His dark profile, etched sharply against the crude stained
glass of a window, had the same compelling attraction which it had held for her years ago upon
that one brief meeting which he had long since forgotten, the mouth a little forbidding, the cold
blue of the eyes hidden now as he looked down at his strong surgeon’s hands. What was he
thinking, she wondered, hearing those words which, for him, could have no meaning. Did he
remember only his small son for whose sake he was marrying again? Was he regretting, too late,
that curious decision to marry her rather than adopt Matron’s suggestion of employing her as
nursery governess, or did he simply remember, with bitterness and heartache, these first vows
pledged to a woman to whom he had given everything?
... to have and. to hold from this day forward ... that spelled security, freedom from want, freedom
from loneliness, a sense of belonging that in all her short life little Lucy Lamb had never known ...
in sickness and in health, till death us do part ... the finality of those words should have comforted
instead of bringing home their terrible emptiness for Lucy made her utter a small, involuntary
sound, and he glanced down at her briefly, his thick black brows meeting in a frown. The chill in
his penetrating gaze was the familiar chill of indifference, but the hand he placed over hers was
warm and reassuring and he gave her a faint, infinitesimal smile.
The ceremony went on, and on, as she listened to the droning, uninterested voice of theclergyman, Lucy’s attention wandered again. As the crowded sequence of a dream fills only
seconds, so she reviewed the past few weeks; the post of companion to old Miss Heap with her
cats and her fads and her mania for economy; the few hours off which were filled with voluntary
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And finally, she had suggested Lucy in lieu of the tutor she felt the boy was too young for.
There had, from the first, existed a curious bond between Mary Morgan, Matron of St. Minver’s
Hospital in the quiet little Cornish town of the same name, and Lucy Lamb, the out-of-date bit of
flotsam who was content to eke out her living by acting as companion to an ill-tempered old
woman. To Lucy, Matron ’s tolerance had been merely a gracious gesture to be accepted withgratitude and a certain respect, but to Mary Morgan, Lucy was a reminder of her own youth when
she had been unwanted and a slave to her family until she had broken away and taken up
nursing as a profession. Mary now had her position at St. Minver’s, respected, and sometimes
feared, by probationer and nurse alike, but in Lucy she saw the ghost of herself, a ghost that in
these days of working efficiency had no place in the struggle for life.
“Would you like the post, should Mr. Travers offer it to you?” she asked Lucy, and was, for a
moment, disturbed by the look which briefly transfigured the girl’s thin face to a semblance of
fleeting beauty.
“Oh, yes, Matron,” Lucy said, clasping her hands to her slender breasts. “I love Pierre ... he—he
is the only being in all my life who has needed me.”
Sentimental nonsense, Matron had thought impatiently. Still there was something about Lucy
Lamb; on her visiting days with picture-books and toys, the children’s ward echoed to the
childish chant of Baa baa black sheep, have you any wool ... They all loved her and Pierre had
made her his own special property, the only person in all his seven years who had won his
strange little heart. But all the same, Bart had proved obdurate; instead, here he was marrying
the girl, committing them both to a nameless future, sacrificing her, as Mary Morgan believed he
would sacrifice anything, to the welfare of his only son...
The ring was being slipped over Lucy’s finger. She felt the strength of his touch as he eased it
over the knuckle; he had set the seal on their union, the visible and outward sign that she now
belonged to him, however empty the bargain...
“A business proposition, of course,” he had said that day on the moors. “As you may have
guessed, I have little interest in women.” He had selected and lighted a cigarette with care, not
offering one to Lucy, and leaned back against a shoulder of rock, blowing smoke lazily between
them, waiting for her to speak.
“Wouldn’t it,” she asked carefully, avoiding his eyes, “be simpler to employ me for Pierre?”
“Not at all,” he replied equably. “My staff wouldn’t tolerate a female employee—never have but
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my wife would be a different matter. Besides, think of the security—for you a job for life, for Pierre
a stepmother—someone who couldn’t be whisked away at the whim of his father.”
“You make it sound very cold-blooded,” she said, and he blew another cloud of smoke between
them.
“A business proposition should be cold-blooded,” he retorted, and his eyes crinkled at the
corners in sudden wry amusement. “Think of yourself, Lucy Lamb. You have no future, no
prospects, and are, I understand, heart-whole. Marriage with me would be a better proposition
than a possible union with some insecure little clerk, and, in time, we might grow quite fond of
each other.”
“I’ve never heard such a thing in all my life!” cried Lucy, outraged. “You, I would think, have no
f-fondness left in you, and—and how do you know I would marry a clerk, anyway?”
He threw the half-smoked cigarette away and placed a hand over hers; the hard lines of his
face had softened to an unexpected tenderness. The wind blowing across the moor carried a
tang of the sea, and she was immediately reminded of that other occasion, six years ago, the
occasion he did not remember. His black hair, she noticed with faint surprise, had minute flecks
of white in it as it stirred in the breeze. He would, she thought irrelevantly, look very distinguished
when he was decisively grey at the temples.
“Dear Lucy,” he said softly, his fingers caressing hers. “I’ve been clumsy, haven’t I? But you’re
wrong about fondness, you know. There’s a little left in all of us, I think, no matter how life treats
us. I was only trying to be honest in explaining—rather badly, evidently—that my deeper
affections have long since been laid aside. Could you put up with me, do you think—for Pierre’s
sake?” She looked down at the hand resting so lightly on hers, at the strong fingers and well-
shaped nails. He had once been a good lover, she thought with surprise, dominant, perhaps, but
kind and sensitive to the loved one’s demands. She was aware again of that old attraction and
knew in the, as yet, unexplored regions of her own emotions that had things been different she
could have learned to love this man.
“I don’t know,” she said uncertainly, and tried to pull away, but his hands tightened on hers,
holding her there.
“Baba ... isn’t that Pierre’s name for you? Baa baa black sheep, come in out of the cold. There’sa nice warm fold waiting for you ... won’t you share it with Pierre?”
“And you?” she asked shyly, aware of temptation and a ridiculous desire to comfort him as he
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“Do you always drive like this?” she enquired politely, and he slackened his pace at once.
“I’m well acquainted with these roads,” he replied. “Can you drive a car, Lucy?”
“No.”
“One of these days I must teach you.”
Not if I can help it, thought Lucy with alarm, but deemed it wisest to hold her peace.
The country grew wilder and the mist thicker. The sea, she knew, lay somewhere beyond the
ragged horizon of the moor, and for the first time she wondered what her new home would be
like. She knew nothing of Bart’s private life save that he had shut himself up with his son in the
house on the headland which once he had shared with his young wife. He had no life now apartfrom his work, Matron had said, and Lucy shivered, thinking of the boy whose early childhood
must have known so little love and laughter.
“Cold?” asked Bart, seeing the shiver.
“No. Does Pierre know I’m coming?”
“No. I didn’t want a disappointment for him if you should change your mind at the last minute.”
There was a touch of irony in his voice and she glanced at him sharply.
“You gave me little chance to do that with your special licence and everything,” she retorted,
and caught for a moment the sudden bitter grimness of his expression.
“No, I wasn’t taking risks for either of us,” he said. “It didn’t occur to you, Lucy, that I, too, might
have had second thoughts?”
“Did you?” she asked with humility. It was, when all was said and done, unlikely that Bartlemy
Travers, rich and already high up in his profession, should choose on impulse to marry little Lucy
Lamb and not have doubts.
His hand rested for a moment on her knee with the same firm assurance with which his touch
had rallied her in the church.
“No,” he said, and his smile was oddly gentle, “I may have taken advantage of your youth in
rushing you to a decision, but at least I will see that you have no cause to regret it. How old did
you say you were, Lucy?”
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“Twenty ... and I’m nearly thirty-seven ... an unfair advantage, would you say?”
“I don’t think so. When you’re left to earn your own living at a tender age, you grow up quickly.”
“Do you? You don’t seem very old to me, but for Pierre that will be an advantage.”
She forced herself to think of the boy, for with every mile left behind them she was
experiencing the beginnings of panic. What did she know of this stranger who was now her
husband? How would she measure up in the eyes of the unknown servants who had so
devotedly served the first Mrs. Bartlemy Travers?
He did not speak again until he turned the car between stone gates, which rose suddenly out
of the mist, and into a short drive flanked with giant rhododendrons. The flowers were nearly in
full bloom and the unexpected riot of color made Lucy exclaim in wonder; crimson, purple,
flamingo pink, snowy white, they glowed like jewels in that grey, rain-washed countryside.
“How beautiful!” Lucy cried. “And how gigantic they are!”
“Yes, they’re quite a sight,” he answered carelessly. “Vegetation takes on a tropical growth inCornwall, you know, but there are few flowers in the garden.”
His remark had a quenching sound as though he were reproving her for her enthusiasm, and
when the house came in sight it looked grey and drab after that splendid splash of color. The
slim, fluted pillars which supported the high porch lent an air of outdated elegance, but there was
no welcome in the uncompromising granite and slate of walls and roof, the tall, blind windows,
many of them shuttered. So this was Polvane, the house that was to her home from now on. As
the car came to a standstill before the closed front door, Lucy could hear the sound of the Atlantic
breakers thundering against the foot of the cliffs, a sound that was to be the constant background
of her life at Polvane.
Bart was frowning as he flung open the door and strode into the house shouting for his
servants, and to Lucy, following him, his voice seemed to echo through an empty house. The
high hall was dark with the gathering shadows of late afternoon and doors stood open on silent
empty rooms; it seemed scarcely possible that anyone could live here.
“Gaston! ... Smithers!” Bart called again, and pulled impatiently at an old-fashioned, heavily
tassled bell-rope. The clamor of the bell echoed strangely through the silent house. Presently an
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altercation could be heard in some unspecified part of the house, and a door at the back of the
hall opened to admit two incongruous figures, a short fat man in a chef’s high hat and a tall thin
individual clothed decorously in correct but lugubrious black.
“Why wasn’t one of you here to meet me?” Bart demanded irritably. “You knew the time we
should be expected.”
“Pardon, m’sieur. I prepare the special dinner,” the Frenchman said, and Lucy wondered if she
imagined the faint irony in his tone. His companion said nothing until, avoiding Lucy’s eye, he
enquired if there would be luggage.
“Naturally there is luggage,” snapped Bart impatiently, adding with slight sarcasm, “Had I by
any chance omitted to inform you both that I would be returning with your new mistress? Lucy, I
must present to you Gaston Dupont who cooks for this household and Smithers who fulfils what
other domestic functions are necessary. You will, I hope, excuse their apparent lack of manners.”
Lucy came hesitantly forward, not knowing what to do. She was embarrassed by the little
scene and sought desperately for something to say which would put the two servants at their
ease, but as she advanced uncertainly, half holding out her hand, she realized that it was she
who needed to be put at ease. The two men made no attempt to meet her halfway but, ignoring
her outstretched hand, remained where they were, inclining their heads without speaking. Shesaw the quick look of tolerant contempt in the Frenchman’s eyes as he observed her more
closely and the raised, faintly insolent eyebrows of Smithers.
Lucy’s chin went up.
“How do you do? I hope we shall come to understand each other very quickly,” she said clearly
and politely, and became aware that Bart was watching her with a faint, appreciative grin.
“May I see Pierre, please?” she asked, turning to him.
“Master Pierre has gone to bed,” Smithers informed her as he crossed the hall to take the
luggage from the car.
“At five o’clock?” exclaimed Lucy with surprise.
The fat little Frenchman became suddenly voluble. A little migraine, he explained with plump,
waving hands, a touch of la grippe, perhaps ... it would be best if madame delayed the meeting
until tomorrow.
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Lucy could understand why he did not care to use the drawing-room, which was furnished after
the style of the French Second Empire, with frail gilt chairs, lavishly designed cabinets filled with
elegant china and a wealth of small occasional tables dotted about the fine Aubusson carpet.
There was even a grand piano, its ivory wood painted with flowers and scrolls. The room had an
air, undoubtedly, but little comfort, land in spite of the fire and the drawn curtains it held the
empty coldness of disuse.
Lucy threaded her way carefully among the little tables to the fire and her startled eyes went to
a great bare patch above the mantelshelf where once a picture had hung. The colors of the
Empire paper had not yet faded to the mellowness of the rest of the walls, and the blind, empty
space seemed a mild affront in so much studied elegance.
She turned quickly, aware that Bart was watching her. His expression was a curious mixture of
mockery and bitterness, but he made no comment, and Lucy knew, as if he had told her, that a
portrait of his first wife had hung in that empty space, that the room had been hers and Lucy
herself had no place there.
She took off her coat, folding it carefully over the back of a chair, not knowing what to say to
him, and when he did not speak she turned to a long scrolled wall-mirror to tidy her hair. Theroom was reflected dimly behind her and she wondered how often the dead Marcelle had
admired her lovely reflection and known the elegant background to be perfect for her.
Lucy’s own reflection stared back at her and, for perhaps the first time, she studied her face
with critical curiosity. It was a small, wedge-shaped face with a gentle mouth and wide, enquiring
eyes; light brown hair curved softly into her slender neck, but was too fine and soft to dress in
any but the simplest of styles. An unsatisfactory face, thought Lucy, with disappointment; too
pale, too thin, too much space between the eyes, and a forehead which curved with undue
prominence like the forehead of a very young child.
She was aware that Bart had come up behind her and stood now, both hands on her
shoulders, looking over her head. His eyes were faintly amused.
“Are you vain, Lucy?” he asked, and she answered with solemn conscientiousness:
“No. I was thinking I had a discouraging sort of face. Negative, somehow.”
“Do you think so? I find it rather charming. Those eyes have always seemed somehow familiar,
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“What did that ‘oh’ mean?” he asked. “Do you prefer to keep the door between us locked?”
She blinked a little nervously, unsure of him in this mood.
“There’s scarcely , any need, is there?” she answered gravely. “Ours is just a—just a marriage
of convenience, isn’t it?”
He gave her a long, puzzled look, as if he had only just now realized he had committed himself
for better or worse.
“You’re either very innocent or very trusting,” was all he said, and he went through the door
between their two rooms, leaving her standing there.
She wandered curiously about the room, opening and shutting drawers and cupboards, finding
where her belongings had been put, and disliking very much the thought of Smithers’ prying
hands going through her possessions. It would be instantly clear to him, and subsequently to
Gaston, that the new Mrs. Travers had arrived with no trousseau and that such clothes as she
had were both cheap and shabby.
She had bought one new dress which, as a concession to her own romantic ideas of such an
occasion, she had intended to be married in, but the weather and prudence had decided her at
the last moment against wearing it. She put it on now, a pretty confection of ribbons and flounces
more suited to the warm summer days ahead than this chilly spring evening, but it was her
wedding day; tonight she would be dining for the first time alone with her husband and although
this was merely a marriage of make-believe there should be something to remember.
When she went downstairs again, the drawing-room door was firmly shut, but that into thelibrary stood open, and Bart was standing with his back to a blazing fire, a glass of sherry in his
hand.
“Charming,” he observed, surveying Lucy’s new frock with a lifted eyebrow, “but you look like a
little girl. Are you sure you’re really twenty years old?”
“Oh, yes,” said Lucy sedately. “I’ve been earning my living for nearly four years.”
“Companion to old ladies?”
“That sort of thing. I wasn’t trained for anything, you see. My aunt—the one who brought me up
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“And now you’ve found one. Tell me about yourself, Lucy Baa-lamb.”
He handed her a glass of sherry and she sat down by the fire with her feet neatly together like
the little girl he had called her.
“There’s nothing to tell,” she said. He knew about the aunt who had died when she was
sixteen, leaving her penniless and totally unfitted to make a life for herself. There was nothing
about her that could possibly interest him.
“Nothing?” he asked.
The sherry warmed her and loosened her tongue.
“Well, just one thing, perhaps. We’ve met before.”
“You and I? When, for heaven’s sake?”
“Six years ago. You pulled me out of the sea, but I never knew your name. I was fourteen.”
His eyes were suddenly on her, shrewd and penetrating. “Good lord, of course!” he exclaimed.“I knew I’d seen those eyes before! You were a skinny little schoolgirl being baited by a bunch of
brats.”
She could hear them now, their voices shrill above the screaming of the gulls.
“Ba-a ... ba-a ..” they had taunted her. “Silly little sheep, afraid to swim!”
She could not swim, but at fourteen and older than the rest of them, would not admit it. The
green swell of the heaving water had frightened her dreadfully, but the jeers of the children had
scared her more.
“You saved my life, but you were very rude to me,” she told Bart. “You said it was silly and
vainglorious to take a dare, and if the other children had called me a silly sheep they were
probably right.”
“Dear me!” said Bart mildly. “It doesn’t sound as if I was very gallant.”
“No, you weren’t. I annoyed you.”
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LUCY slept fitfully in the big bed, unfamiliar and a little intimidating with its many heaped pillows
and the heavy drapery from the high half-tester shutting her into solitude. She tossed restlessly,
listening to the sound of the breakers, and in the small hours she heard Bart return, and lay
watching a thin thread of light appear under the door which divided their rooms. She had an
impulse to call to him, to seek a child’s assurance for this, her first night under his roof, but she
remembered him saying: “This is scarcely a honeymoon ... we can hardly afford to be
sentimental...” and turned her back to that heartening glow of light. She might be Bart’s wife, butfor him she was no more than a convenience, a whim to satisfy his son...
She awoke from a troubled sleep to find Smithers drawing back the curtains. A breakfast tray
had been set beside the bed. Lucy struggled up, rubbing the sleep from her eyes, and the man
turned and regarded her curiously.
“Can I fetch you your bed-jacket, madam?” he asked.
“I—I haven’t got one,” Lucy replied, aware of failing, at least in the servant’s eyes. There had
been no use or occasion for such frivolities as bed jackets in her life with old Miss Heap.
“I’ll make do with that cardigan, please,” she said with sudden firmness. She was not going to
be despised or pitied by Smithers for her very evident lack of a trousseau.
He helped her on with the cardigan and she buttoned it high with clumsy fingers, wishing he
would go away.
“Shall I pour your coffee, madam?” he asked with such an exaggerated imitation of the perfect
manservant that she was sure he was putting on an act for her benefit.
“No, thank you,” she said, and wondered if he made the beds and did the rooms, since no
women were employed in the house.
She saw his eyes roving round the room and he suddenly advanced upon the dressing-table
and ran a finger over its polished surface, making fussy little clicking noises with his tongue.
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“Smitch?” The word was new to Lucy. “It—it flared last night. I don’t understand oil lamps very
well. Has it done any damage?”
“Smuts!” Smithers pronounced severely. “Smuts all over my dressing-table. An hour’s work it
will mean, an hour’s work.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry. I—I’ll clear them up “ said Lucy, feeling like a chidden child.
“Certainly not, that is my province,” he replied haughtily, then proceeded to explain in the
earnest tones of a governess exactly how an oil lamp should be adjusted.
He was a strange creature, Lucy thought uneasily, sparse and lugubrious, with an over-developed Adam’s apple and a habit of cracking his finger-joints which might become as nerve-
racking as the sound of breakers. She wondered idly where Bart had found him and what
particular virtue he possessed to remain so long in one employment.
“I see,” she said meekly when he had finished his homily, then asked if Bart was down, and
almost at once wished she had not. Bart might already have gone into St. Minver to his
consulting-rooms, or the hospital and it would seem strange that she was not acquainted with her
husband’s movements.
Smithers’ gloomy features took on the semblance of a smile.
“The master is with Master Pierre,” he said, and for a moment he was human. Pierre, the little
boy for whose sake she had consented to marry and come here to this isolated house, was loved
by Smithers, and by Gaston, too.
“How is he—the little boy?” she asked eagerly, and saw the manservant’s face crumple into
unfamiliar lines. It was an odd face, she thought, lined and sallow, with sparse hair plastered
carefully over a bald patch. Last night he had seemed resentful, insolent almost, but this morning
there was a certain forced humanity in him.
“Master Pierre is well, provided he is not excited,” he said repressively, and Lucy knew that she
had presumed. “We hope—the chef and I—that you will not spoil him—madam.”
“Spoil him?” The deliberation over the last word had not been lost on Lucy, and the warmth
which she had hoped to convey to Bart’s servant was quenched.
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“Master Pierre has not been very much spoilt in the sense you mean,” she said shortly, and saw
the man’s eyebrows lift in surprise.
“Will that be all, madam?” he enquired, back in his role of the perfect manservant.
“Yes, thank you.”
It was ludicrous, Lucy thought when he had gone. They were resentful, clearly, he and Gaston,
at her invasion of their masculine household, and after last night they must know that Bart had not
married her because he loved her, for had he not left her on the wedding day to dine alone, to go
to bed alone in a strange house which held no welcome?
She ate breakfast, listening to the rain which still beat upon the windows, wondering about the
future, already regretting the impulse which had committed her to so much sad uncertainty. Wouldit not have been better, she thought forlornly, to stay with the Miss Heaps of this world until that
mythical insecure little clerk of whom Bart had spoken so disparagingly had, perhaps, turned up
to claim her?
Presently there was a knock on her door and she called “Come in,” with no great enthusiasm for
the reappearance of Smithers, but when the door opened it was Bart who stood there, and,
beside him, the hesitant, mystified figure of a small boy.
“You see, Pierre—I really did have a surprise for you,” Bart said, and Pierre, his great black
eyes glowing rounder and rounder with wonder, flung himself with a shout on to Lucy’s bed.
“Baba! “ he cried. “Baba—my Baba—you’re really here!” Lucy caught him in her arms, and for
the moment it was a perfect reunion. She felt the boy’s arms cling about her neck and
remembered those days in the hospital when only she could pacify him, and her eyes were wet
as she rested her cheek against his round black head. She was aware that Bart still stood in the
doorway, watching them both with a faintly wry expression, then he abruptly closed the door
behind him and came and stood at the foot of the bed.
The boy was nuzzling into her shoulder, proclaiming his delight in an excited mixture of French,
and English. She saw the curious look of sadness on Bart’s face and gently pushed the child
away.
“Don’t you say thank you for your surprise?” she said.
“Is she to stay for always, Papa?” the boy asked, his gaze returning to his father.
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and unpredictable, but there was a certain comfort in the old slacks and the tweed jacket patched
with leather at the elbows.
“No,” she said inattentively, “I won’t run round in circles.”
He glanced at her with amusement.
“What were you thinking of?”
“Your old clothes. They make you seem more human.”
“I’m sorry if my inhuman qualities have been uppermost during our brief acquaintance,” he
observed dryly. “Well, I’ll leave you to get up now. When you’re dressed I’ll be happy to take you
round the house, no doubt escorted by my son.”
He left the room as abruptly as he had entered it, and she could hear his brisk step growing
fainter and fainter on the polished boards of the corridor outside.
II
When she was dressed Lucy went downstairs. Smithers was in the hall, polishing the floor. He
had exchanged his more formal attire for dungarees and an open-necked shirt and seemed also
to have changed his personality. He dabbed and rubbed with fussy, feminine gestures and made
little clicking sounds of annoyance at each fresh mark he found.
“Wet weather makes a lot of extra work, doesn’t it?” Lucy said, trying to think of some
pleasantry.
“I’m most put out—my beautiful floor that I spent ever so long on yesterday! I’m most put out,”
he replied.
Rather at a loss, she began to make some suitable reply when Pierre came running out of the
library and seized her by the hand.
“In here, in here!” he shouted. “We start with the lib’ry because it’s Papa’s room.”
“Pierre has a tour of the house all mapped out,” Bart said, rising from the big desk where hehad been checking through a pile of papers. As he did so he removed a pair of horn-rimmed
glasses from his nose and Lucy discovered that she had learnt one more small thing about him.
She had not known that he wore glasses for close work.
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By daylight the room revealed a shabbiness which had not been apparent in the soft light of
the lamps, but it was a comfortable shabbiness which spoke of use and familiarity. The many
books which lined the walls had been much read, the deep chairs well used, but the three or four
fine Persian carpets which covered the floor had the distinction of the wear of centuries, the
colors muted but glowing with the delicate silken sheen of the threads which had been woven
into such intricate patterns.
“You know something about Persian carpets?” Bart said, observing her interest.
“Not really, but Miss Heap had a rather beautiful one and she taught me how to tell a Bokhara
from a Kashan. The cats had ruined hers, of course.”
“How unfortunate. And who is Miss Heap?”
“My last employer. But you knew.”
“Of course. How stupid of me.” His lips twitched a little at the corners. “Well, your present
employer has no cats. Shall we move on to the next exhibit?”
They walked from room to room, drawing-room, dining-room and small breakfast-room, Pierre
running ahead. There was a flower-room opening on to the garden, gaily painted, with frivolous,flouncy curtains draping the windows, and shelves stacked high with bowls and vases and tall
pottery urns of strange color and design. It was a charming little room, Lucy thought, and
remembered with disappointment that Bart had said there were few flowers in the garden. She
saw him watching her with a curious expression, and at once she knew this had been Marcelle’s
special pleasure. She had stood here among her pretty fripperies, arranging flowers, sure of her
beauty in such gracious occupation, sure, too, of her husband’s love and admiration as he
leaned, perhaps, in the doorway, watching her.
Lucy closed the door softly. There had been flowers in the gardens at Polvane then, she
thought, well-tended borders, color and scent, and the house had been full of them where now
bowls and vases were stacked on their shelves and shut away, forgotten.
“Now,” said Pierre, pulling at her hand, “we go to see Gaston, yes?”
The kitchen was vast, with a floor of flagstones and a range so big that it seemed to have been
designed for the needs of a regiment rather than those of a family. Was it Marcelle or Gaston.
Lucy wondered, who had introduced such a Gallic flavor to this part of the house? Strings of
onions and drying herbs hung in the cavernous alcove which housed the range, saucepans,
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probably Smithers’ natural mode of speech when off duty, ungrammatical and faintly cockney.
“Baba!” screamed Pierre from the bed, flinging wide both arms, and adding impatiently, “You
can go now, Smithy.”
“I hope you’ll say thank you to Smithers for the story,” Lucy said, coming into the room. The man
had got to his feet and Lucy wanted to laugh as he stood there, smoothing his hair and adjusting
his collar, trying to slip back into his more familiar role of manservant. He really was a most
extraordinary person, she thought.
“Thank you, Smithy,” Pierre said indifferently. “Baba, come here. Sit close to me and sing me to
sleep. No one has ever sung me to sleep.”
“Had your dear mother not been taken, she would have done so, Master Pierre. She had abeautiful voice, fit for opera, so they say,” Smithers pronounced piously, and sending Lucy a look
of acute dislike, left the room.
“Oh dear, I’m afraid he doesn’t like me at all,” said Lucy, trying to laugh.
“It doesn’t matter, he likes only me,” Pierre said with kindly complaisance. “Sing to me, Baba.”
“I can’t sing—not properly,” she protested.
‘Try.”
She searched her memory for half-forgotten songs of childhood, but could remember only the
folk gongs of her adult years, so she sang him The Turtle Dove, that plaintive air from Dorset
which always seemed to spring the most readily to her tongue.
“Oh! don’t you see the turtle dove
Sitting under yonder tree,
Lamenting for her own true love?
And I will mourn for thee, my dear,
And I will mourn for thee.”
“The tune is triste,” Pierre murmured sleepily. “The words are a little triste, too ... you have a
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What manner of man had he been when he had shared his first wife’s bedroom and mingled his
intimate possessions with hers? She viewed, with relief, the comparative comfort of her own
room, the welcoming fire, the scattered belongings that were familiar and homely, already
softening the impersonality of a strange room.
Bart had told her that she was to buy what she needed. Well, she thought, she would do so.
Smithers should no longer sniff at the meagreness of her wardrobe, and she, perhaps, with
possessions she had never been able to afford, would blossom in stature and confidence.
She dressed carefully, choosing judiciously from her few outmoded frocks, and spent a long
time brushing her soft fine hair until it shone and seemed to take kindly to the shape of her head,
curving over her ears into delicate fronds. I’m not bad, she thought, gazing at her reflection which,
in the lamplight, was one she was not accustomed to, and she began to wonder, a little
nervously, how the evening would unravel. She would dine with Bart by candlelight, as, last
night, she had dined alone, and tonight the formality of damask and old silver and fine glass
would be warmed by a certain intimacy. She would sit at his table and be proud, however empty
the sensation might be, that she was his wife.
She must have sat dreaming longer than she had thought, for the distant sound of the gong
brought her hastily to her feet. She blew out the lamp and ran quickly down the graceful, curving
staircase, thinking, as she ran, how often the lovely, and loved Marcelle must have done thesame, only she would have made an entrance, trailing down those gracious stairs, aware that,
however late, everyone would wait for her.
Smithers still stood by the gong.
“The master regrets that he has been called out, madam,” he said with lugubrious pleasure.
“Would you care for a glass of sherry before dinner?”
She was brought to an instant standstill in her hurried flight across the hall and felt the blood
ebbing from her face. Not again, she thought helplessly, and knew her disappointment to be
disproportionate. Smithers watched her with interest, his human curiosity only just hidden by his
professional impassiveness.
“No, thank you,” she replied, raising her chin. “I will go straight in to dinner.”
So for the second time Lucy dined alone at the foot of that long mahogany table which seemed
to stretch into the shadows, and went, alone, to bed to lie listening to the breakers and the
ceaseless rain on the windows. But this time she did not hear Bart return. Sleep, took her, and the
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sound of the rain and the distant sea mingled with her dreams and she slept with the tears still
wet on her cheeks.
CHAPTER THREE
I
WHEN Lucy awoke the next morning, the sun was shining. It poured into the room as Smithers
drew the curtains, and even the sound of the breakers seemed less insistent
“How lovely,” said Lucy, stretching luxuriously. “And how different it makes everything seem,
doesn’t it?”
“I suppose so,” said Smithers repressively. “But in this part of the world, bad weather is the rule,rather than the exception. You’ll get used to it, madam.”
“Oh! Yes, I suppose I will,” said Lucy, feeling discouraged. “Was Mr. Travers late last night?”
“I really couldn’t say, madam.” The servant’s eyes closed in mild reproof. “He has gone into St.
Minver as usual. He did not wish to disturb you. He will be back, I understand, in time for dinner.”
“Oh!” said Lucy again, and wriggled her arms into the old cardigan which must soon be
replaced with the bed-jacket Smithers seemed to think so important. “Well, I shall be able to get
out into the garden. I haven’t seen the garden yet. Are there really no flowers, Smithers?”
He thrust his hand into the breast of his jacket as if about to make a set speech.
“None since she was taken,” he said in a reverent voice. “When she was alive, ah, then—then
she would stand in her little flower-room surrounded with blossoms, and she the fairest flower of
them all. It was the prettiest sight to see her. She would place a blossom here, a blossom there—”
he made ridiculous motions of arranging flowers—“and she would laugh and sing little French
songs, and now it’s all gone.”
“Yes, well—it sounds a charming picture,” Lucy said, wriggling her toes, torn between
embarrassment and a desire to laugh. “I must persuade Mr. Travers to restock the gardens. I like
flowers, too.”
“That he never will do,” said Smithers, shaking his head. “Ask Abel.”
“Abel? Who’s he?”
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“Abel’s been gardener here for thirty years or more. He set great store by young Mrs. Travers—
the first Mrs. Travers, I should say. Will you be lunching with Master Pierre and Mr. Bond in the
morning-room, or alone in the dining-room?”
“With Master Pierre, of course. What time does Mr. Bond come?”
“At nine-thirty. He will be here any minute.”
Lucy began pouring coffee into her cup, splashing it clumsily.
“I must get up earlier,” she said. “I’m not used to breakfast in bed.”
“Indeed madam?” said Smithers with raised eyebrows, and left the room.
Lucy crunched toast and marmalade with angry impatience. He was absurd and a mountebank,
of course; still, these deliberate allusions to the dead Marcelle were disturbing. Bart himself had
scarcely mentioned her, but her presence could be felt in the house, in the flower-room, in the
drawing-room which nobody used, and most sharply of all, in that great blank space over the
mantelpiece, more eloquent than any portrait could have been. Seven years ... does one never
forget? she wondered.
“It’s unhealthy!” said Lucy aloud, and bounced out of bed. “The house is a shrine—no wonder
the child is strange!”
When she was dressed she leaned out of a window to have her first sight of the garden and
saw Pierre trotting beside a young man who was strolling across one of the smooth lawns. He
was tall and slight with an odd, unconscious grace in his movements, and the morning sunlight
turned his thick fair hair to pure gold. He was laughing, and every so often the boy looked up into
his face and laughed too.
Lucy made her way downstairs with a lifting heart. She did not know quite what she had
expected of the unknown tutor, but not this, not youth and laughter and the impression that, like
herself, he was still outside the claims and demands of Polvane.
She went through the flower-room in to the garden, leaving the door open, and presently she
saw them skirting the terrace on their way back to the house. She began to walk across the grass,calling to Pierre, who gave a shout of delight and ran to meet her.
“Did you sleep well, my poppet?” she asked as he flung his arms about her knees.
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“Perhaps I’ve never known it,” she said. “It gives a pattern, I think, a sense of security.”
He glanced at her curiously. Was that why she had married Bart, he wondered? There had
been gossip and speculation, naturally, at his sudden marriage. He had been prepared for a
capable governess type who might soon endanger his own job, but he had not been prepared for
Lucy with her long legs and l ittle-girl politeness. Where on earth had Bart picked her up, and what
had induced either to marry the other?
“Pierre took a fancy to me,” she said, as answering his thoughts. “My—my husband would do
anything for the boy, as I expect you know.”
He gave her a sharp glance. Did she realize the extent of her own admission, he wonderedwryly. She met his look with one of enquiring simplicity from those curiously widely spaced eyes,
and he knew that if that had indeed been Bart’s reason for marrying her, she would accept it as
perfectly natural.
“I must see the rhododendrons in sunlight,” she said as they came round to the drive. “I’ve never
known any so high or magnificent before. On Tuesday it was misty.”
“Your wedding day,” he said with the desire to hurt her a little, to extract, perhaps, another
admission. It had been common knowledge among the servants that Bartlemy Travers’ second
marriage would be no love match. But she only replied “Yes,” quite simply, and reached up to
touch one of the giant blooms above her head. The flowers were still heavy with yesterday’s rain
and a shower of bright drops fell on her upturned face, making her laugh and blink her eyes.
“You make a very charming picture, Mrs. Travers,” he said. It was an old chestnut, he knew, but
she turned to him with shy pleasure.
“So you think so?” she said, and he smiled on discovering so easily that compliments had not
often come her way.
They walked down the short avenue with the spreading rhododendrons almost meeting
overhead, and soon the house came into view, its slate and stone ugly in Lucy’s eyes.
“You don’t like your home?” Paul asked, observing her expression.
She turned startled eyes to his.
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“I hadn’t thought of it as that,” she said. “I must try to like it, mustn’t I?”
“It might be as well in the circumstances,” he answered dryly, and she laughed.
“You must think me very naive.”
It was exactly what he did think, but there was a quality about her which intrigued him, too.
Provided she offered no threat to his own security she might prove a pleasant diversion from an
occupation he was finding tedious.
“Pierre, run up to the schoolroom and start getting out your lesson books,” he said to the boy.
He wanted to show the rest of the garden to Lucy alone.
“No,” said Pierre firmly, “I shall stay with Baba.”
“You’ll have plenty of time to be with your stepmother after lessons. Run along, now.”
“She is not a stepmother—they are wicked. She’s my Baba, and now that she is here I do not
need you any more, Paul. I shall speak to Papa,” the child said, and his voice was a ludicrous
echo of his father.
Lucy interposed quickly, “That’s rude, Pierre,” but she saw the tutor’s expression change to one
of annoyance and he said sharply:
“Go indoors at once when you’re told, or it will be I who will be speaking to Papa.”
The boy’s eyes went uncertainly to Lucy and his lower lip quivered. It was clear that he was
unused to being addressed in such terms by his tutor.
“Run along, poppet,” Lucy said gently. She did not want to be left alone with Paul Bond, but she
felt obliged to uphold his authority. The child at once obeyed her, and Paul gave a short laugh.
“I can see I shall have to abdicate,” he said. “Until now it was poor Bart who found himself at
loggerheads with his son and I who poured oil on troubled waters. Have you any idea that he
means to dispense with my services now he has married again?”
He stood looking at her under frowning brows, and his mouth, which was so fashioned for indulgence and laughter, was twisted into a grimace of discontent.
“No, I’m quite sure he hasn’t,” Lucy said quickly. “In fact we were speaking of you only
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“Well, I’m a servant of a different kind, perhaps. Still, never mind that. No doubt the feminine
touch will be good for us all.”
“Do you think so?” she asked doubtfully. He saw the faint clouding of those wide, enquiring
eyes, the uncertainty in the gentle mouth, and his ill humor vanished. Poor kid, he thought, she
couldn’t know what she had taken on. She was naive and unsophisticated and anxious to please.
With the right handling she could be an ally rather than an enemy.
“Of course I think so,” he said lightly. “Polvane has needed a woman for a long time. Bart let his
first wife’s death throw him right off balance, but now—may I say without offence, Mrs. Travers, I
consider he has made a very charming second choice?”
It was gracefully spoken and Lucy knew a little glow of gratitude.
“Thank you,” she said gravely, then asked if she might be shown the rest of the garden.
He took her round to the other side of the house where more well-kept grass intersected with
paths and neat, dwarf hedges of yew spread to a small plantation of flowering shrubs. Beyond
she could see a rough stone wall which marked the boundary to Polvane, and beyond this again,
the coarse, bleached grass of the headland and the great arc of sky which met the sea’s horizon.
The breeze was sharp and laden with salt, and the sound of the breakers, thundering on the cliffs
below, mingled with the harsh cries of the gulls overhead.
They came upon an old man turning the soil in a bed that once must have been a herbaceous
border. He paused to lean on his spade, and watch them, and as they approached he muttered:
“Youth ... youth ... ‘tes going back a brave little way.”
“Have you met Abel, Mrs. Travers?” Paul asked, and when she shook her head, he continued,“This is the new Mrs. Travers, Abel. She seems distressed that there are no flowers growing at
Polvane.”
“Flowers?” The old man straightened up, observing Lucy with sharp dark eyes which, for all his
age, had retained their brightness. He was dark-complexioned, like so many Cornishmen who
have Spanish blood in their veins, and his face was lined and weathered from years of exposure
to the Atlantic gales.
“The mistress liked flowers, but they won’t grow proper here,” he said. “This was a border that
nursed plants well once, but what’s the use any more?”
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“Could you not try again, Abel?” Lucy asked, and he frowned at her discouragingly.
“Maister had ‘em dug up seven years ago,” he said. “ ’Twasn’t no good to nobody, see? You ’m
the new mistress, you say? You’m but a maid, m’dear.”
“We all have to grow up,” she said. “Couldn’t we grow flowers again, Abel?”
“I dunno,” he said, staring at her. “When I sees you and Mr. Paul coming across the grass to me,
I says to myself ‘Youth,’ I says. I don’t know about they flowers.”
“You keep it all very beautifully,” said Lucy, feeling a little uneasy. “You’ve been here a long
time, I understand.”
“Thirty, year. Old maister and mistress was alive then. Mrs. Travers, she liked fine vegetables,but Mr. Bart’s lady wanted flowers—but she weren’t like you, m’dear, a little maid blown in from
nowhere.”
“Is that how I seem to you, Abel?”
“No offence, ma’am,” he said apologetically. “But maister’s marriage was sudden-like. Us
thought—that is, if you’ll excuse me, ma’am—I’d expected an older lady.”
“I’m sorry if you’re disappointed,” Lucy said, “but we still might try growing flowers again,
mightn’t we?”
“Maybe,” he rejoined, and began digging again, taking no further notice of them.
“He liked you,” Paul said as they made their way back to the house.
“Then he’s the first one,” Lucy said, and Paul paused to take her hands and swing her round to
face him.
“Fit in to the life of Polvane and you’ll have no cause for regrets,” he said. “They are all
frightened of you—Smithers, Gaston, Abel perhaps—even myself. Don’t make changes.”
She drew her hands gently away from his. For a fleeting instant she preferred the hostility of the
servants to his ready assumption of advice.
“I wouldn’t dream of making changes without my husband’s sanction,” she said gravely. “Thank
you for showing me the garden, Mr. Bond. Hadn’t you better be going in to Pierre?”
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“Not tonight, my poppet. Your father expects us in the l ibrary,” she said. “Tomorrow, perhaps.”
“He undressed himself, madam,” Smithers observed with a withering look at Lucy. “There is no
need for you to see him into bed. I make sure that his teeth are brushed and his prayers said.”
“But you must have plenty of other things to do,” Lucy protested. “I can at least relieve you of
one chore.”
“I do not consider a little child a chore,” said Smithers with sanctimonious awfulness, and
shepherded Pierre from the room.
“If you could see your face, Lucy!” said Paul, giving way to helpless laughter.
“That is a most extraordinary person,” Lucy said. “One minute he’s the perfect butler, another he’s Mrs. Mopp, and other times he makes speeches like a very bad ham actor.”
“But that’s what he is—or rather that’s what he wanted to be. Don’t you know about Smithers?”
She shook her head. “He was one of the orderlies at St. Minver’s Hospital years ago—that’s
where Bart found him. He had tried the stage but, I imagine, found he was no good and had to be
content with amateur theatricals in his spare time—still does, I believe. When Bart brought him
here he found he was able to switch his personality into any role he wanted to play provided he
did his job, so, you see, that’s the explanation of Smithers, whose name is really Smith. He’s
peculiar, but harmless.”
“Oh,” cried Lucy, beginning to laugh herself, “poor Smithers! I won’t ever mind him again! Oh,
Paul—this is a very odd household!”
He thought how charming she looked with her small nose wrinkled in laughter and the soft hair
falling over her forehead in disarray. In her brief skirt and highnecked jersey she looked no morethan a schoolgirl. “How old are you, Lucy?” he asked impulsively.
“Twenty. And, you?”
“Twenty-six, eleven years younger than Bert. It’s rather monstrous.”
“What is?”
“The difference between his age and yours. What was he thinking of, for, heaven’s sake?”
“Of his son, as I imagine you’ve already guessed.”
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“Run along and get ready for dinner,” he said, and his voice was suddenly dry. “Tonight we ’ll
have that twice postponed evening together and retire to bed like a respectable married couple.”
III
Dinner, however, was scarcely a sparkling success. Bart sat silent and preoccupied at the
head of the long table, drinking his wine abstractedly, frowning a little when Lucy declined to
have her own glass filled. Was he, she wondered, searching vainly for a topic of conversation,
just as she was, and finding his mind a blank? She had a frightening vision of their future; a vista
of endless meals together, two strangers who had nothing to say to each other, with Smithers in
the background making an uneasy third.
“You’re not eating, Lucy,” Bart said abruptly, and she became guiltily aware that he had
already finished and was waiting for her. She gobbled her food like a greedy child, aware that
Smithers was hovering disapprovingly to snatch away her plate, and in her haste she knocked
over a wine glass.
“Don’t choke yourself,” said Bart mildly. “Smithers, give Mrs. Travers half a glass of wine.”
“No, thank you,” she said nervously, but the wine had already been poured and she did not like
it.
He saw the small grimace of distaste as she took a sip and said with a touch of impatience:
“You must learn to appreciate good wine, my dear, it’s the natural accomplishment to good
food. No Frenchman would dream of not marrying the two.”
It seemed to Lucy as If the ghost of Marcelle leaned over her shoulder, sharing that glass of
wine, taking it finally from her and gently pushing her from the place she had usurped at Bart’stable. It was of her that he had been thinking, of course, throughout that silent meal, and Lucy
knew that if the occasion was strange for her, it also was strange for him, the first meal shared in
that house with another woman for seven years.
She was unaware that she was gazing at him a little distractedly over the rim of her glass and
that her eyes seemed wide and troubled in the candlelight, making him move uneasily.
“Don’t finish it if you really dislike it,” he said kindly, and she put the glass down carefully
beside her.
“It isn’t that—” she began, but could not, after all, voice her thoughts. Smithers was out of the
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room fetching the next course, but it was not possible to express a more intimate opinion.
“What is it, then? Am I proving a dull host?”
That, of course, was what he was and always would be; her host and never her husband.
“Oh, no,” she said. “Tell me about some of your cases, Bart. I’m very ignorant about
orthopaedic surgery.”
“Bones,” he said, smiling at her brave attempt to make conversation. “I don’t think you would
find it a very interesting subject.”
Smithers came back into the room and they both fell silent again. It was a relief when the meal
ended and they repaired to the library for coffee, but Lucy wondered how the rest of the eveningcould possibly be spent. She must, she knew, be an unwarrantable intrusion on his privacy, a
guest in his house who should find an excuse to go to her room as soon as the meal was
finished.
“Are you going to work?” she asked with a glance at the pile of correspondence on his desk.
“Not tonight, I think,” he replied, stirring his coffee lazily. “You seem nervous, Lucy.”
“Not exactly nervous,” she said, “but—but I think you’re finding all this a little awkward, aren’t
you?”
“Are you?”
“Yes, I suppose so. I hadn’t realized, you see—I mean I—I just don’t want to be in the way.”
He passed her his cup for some more coffee and said a little wearily, “Look, my dear, I think we
had better get things clear. I’ve married you and you have the rights of mistress of this house.
You mustn’t feel in the way, neither must you be too humble. I won’t, I’m afraid, be much of a
companion for you, but the security of my home is yours and anything I can do to make life easy
for you, well, you have only to ask.”
“Thank you,” she said, handing him back his replenished coffee cup. “I’m humble, you know,
only in the sense of feeling inadequate. You didn’t want to marry me, did you?”
“I would hardly have done so if I’d had objections, would I?” he replied with a lift of the
eyebrows.
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“No,” she said, restraining an impulse to reach up and touch the dark cheek so close to hers. “I
knew what I was doing.”
“I wonder. Well, it’s too late for doubts now, isn’t it? We must both make the best of our
bargain.”
“You talk,” said Lucy bleakly, “as if it were you who was having the doubts.”
“Only on your behalf.” He straightened up and stood looking down at her. She seemed very
small to him, curled up in the big chair. Until he had seen her with Paul that afternoon he had not
appreciated either her youth or her individuality. “Try to bear with me, my dear. I’m away from
home a good deal and Paul can be trusted to brighten the days for you.”
She glanced at him under her lashes. Was he deliberately relying on his cousin to provide thecompanionship which he felt himself unable to offer, or did he just not care?
“As you pointed out to him earlier, there’s no need for him to remain here in the afternoons,”
she said.
“True, but I think I hurt his feelings all the same. Paul can be touchy, and it ’s a break for him to
get away from the old aunt in Merrynporth. She brought him up and spoilt him abominably and
now he’s saddled with her.”
“What is she like?” Lucy asked curiously.
Paul had not mentioned that he lived with an aunt; he had not, in fact, given her any indication
of his background.
“I haven’t seen her for years,” Bart answered carelessly. “One of those foolish, clinging women,
I’ve always imagined, the kind a young man of Paul’s type has difficulty in breaking away from.”
“What will he do when Pierre is old enough for school?” said Lucy, and saw the little irritable
crease come and go between his eyebrows.
“That’s a long way off,” he answered shortly. “He can, if necessary, be educated at home until
he’s ready for his public, school.”
She was immediately diverted from her mild interest in Paul’s affairs.
“But you’ll send him to a preparatory school first, surely?” she said.
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“I feel so useless,” she told Paul. “Besides, they resent me.”
“Are they rude?”
“N-no, but they make me feel they have secret thoughts going on behind their blank faces.”
“Haven’t we all? Cheer up, Lucy—most girls would be delighted to have no chores to do in
these servantless days.”
“I suppose so, only—well, one does like to be more than just a figurehead in one’s own house.”
He looked at her shrewdly then and asked softly, “Are you only a figurehead?”
“With the servants, I meant,” she said quickly, and felt furious with herself when he replied
suavely,
“But naturally. Who else could you have meant?”
He had a disconcerting habit of catching her unawares, or perhaps it was merely that she was
unguarded in her speech, but it was difficult not to be natural, shut up for long hours at a time, withsomeone who was gay and charming and of one’s own generation.
“Is that why you married Bart—to play at housekeeping and being the lady of the manor?” he
asked lightly, and she frowned upon him fiercely, hoping it would remind him that although their
acquaintance had ripened with the swift growth of propinquity, he was still her husband’s
employee.
“No good!” he said with his quick, disarming grin. “You aren’t cut out for haughty displeasure,
Lucy Locket, and you mustn’t mind if I’m curious. You and the great Bartlemy Travers don t seem
at all suited at first glance.” She looked at him sharply. It was the first time she had heard him refer
to Bart with the hint of a sneer, and she did not like it.
“Your opinion on the point is hardly important, is it?” she retorted coolly, and he made a small
grimace.
“You’re so right, of course,” he replied with a conciliatory smile, but his bold eyes ran over her
with a glint of hidden amusement.
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kept her firmly in her room. The late Mrs. Travers, he told her reproachfully, would never have
dreamed of appearing for breakfast at the hour the master took it, but Lucy privately thought that
he and Gaston conspired to keep her upstairs in order to avoid any interference in the running of
the house. The two servants, she discovered, indulged in periodic quarrels. Gaston would
gesticulate and give vent to a flood of Gallic invective and Smithers would reply in kind according
to whatever role he fancied himself in at the moment. At first, alarmed by the disturbance, Lucyhad tried to intervene, when they promptly banded together against her. They were, she found
later, excellent friends and merely considered she was spoil ing their amusement in trying to make
peace.
“Tell me,” she asked Paul, “did this sort of thing go on in Marcelle’s time?”
“She would have encouraged it, I don’t doubt,” he replied, looking amused. “I imagine she and
Gaston, at any rate, found Polvane pretty dull.”
“Did they not entertain, even then?”
“Oh, yes, I believe so, but the neighborhood can’t have been exactly inspiring to a torch singer
from a French cabaret.”
“Torch singer?” repeated Lucy, wrinkling her forehead.
“Yes, didn’t you know? She sang in various nightclubs in Paris before Bart married her, and led
a pretty gay life, so one deduces.”
“She must,” said Lucy simply, “have loved him very much to give i t all up.”
“Well, that’s a point of view,” he said cocking an eyebrow at her. “I never knew her, of course. I
was barely twenty when she died.”
The picture of Marcelle was becoming clearer, and with it, the measure of her husband’s
desolation at her death. He would, thought Lucy, bear a disproportionate sense of guilt in that he
had, unwittingly, been responsible. She could understand his dislike of the drawing-room with its
collection of china and bric-a-brac, the stiff Empire furniture and the painted piano she had
brought from France, and she wondered, sometimes, what had become of the portrait which had
hung over the mantelpiece. Did it lie, forgotten, in some cellar or attic, or had it been sold to a
collector who could never be haunted by a face he had not known?
Sometimes, when she sat alone with Bart in the evenings, Lucy would be tempted to speak of
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He leaned back again in his chair, folding his arms across his chest.
“Perhaps,” he said. “Or perhaps I’m realizing that I haven’t been very fair to you.”
She tucked her feet under her, carefully spreading the full skirt of one of the new frocks, and he
smiled at the gesture. She looked very young with a ribbon tied round her hair accentuating the
childish curve of her forehead.
“That’s nonsense,” she said with surprising severity, “I think you only say these things because
you don’t know how to talk to me.”
“What do you mean?” he exclaimed, sounding quite startled.
“Well, you don’t do you?” she continued bravely. “I’m a—a sort of necessary appendage. I don’tknow how to talk to you, either.”
“Good gracious me!” he said, running a nervous hand over his black head. “I assure you I don’t
think of you as an appendage, necessary or otherwise.”
“Don’t you, Bart? How do you think of me, then?”
“I really don’t know.” He sounded irritable and she slipped to the floor beside his chair. It was
always easier to talk to him in the firelight before the lamps were lit.
“Couldn’t you take us out on Sunday—just you and me and Pierre?” she said. “Paul’s not here
at week-ends. It’s the only time you have for getting to know your son.”
“And you, too, are you thinking?”
“Perhaps. You told me that if we are to live together we must learn to know one another.”
“So I did. You’re thinking, I suppose, I haven’t done much about it.”
“You’ve been very busy,” she said, and he leaned forward suddenly and cupped her chin in his
hand, tilting up her face.
“You’re a good child—a charming child. We must see what can be done about Sundays,” hesaid, but when the first Sunday came he had either forgotten or did not care to remember, and so
it was the next week-end and the next.
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“A-ha ... madame has temperament,” he said approvingly, and brandished a soup ladle under
Smithers’ nose. “Alors, Smeety, Allez-vous en! See to the shutter and I will make more bouillon...”
He drove Smithers before him back to the kitchen quarters and almost before the door closed,
Lucy heard him say:
“Tiens! Not so bad, la petite, hein?”
“Blimey!” said Smithers, cracking his finger-joints. “‘Oo does she think she is?”
Who, indeed, thought Lucy forlornly, her little spurt of temper, or perhaps it was only bravado,
deserting her suddenly; Lucy Lamb, neither flesh; fowl, nor good red herring. She went slowly
upstairs and tiptoed into Pierre’s room, but the boy was asleep, and she softly closed the door,
thankful that a possible scene had been averted.
She stood in the corridor wondering what to do with her afternoon, and the sound of the
swinging shutter was louder up here. It must belong to one of the upstairs rooms and she had
better find out which for herself, for Smithers, unless reminded again, would be sure to forget. She
began a systematic inspection of the rooms, remembering how Bart had flung open doors that
first day at Polvane and how many of them there were, empty, untenanted rooms, all with their
shutters firmly closed. She located the noise at once when she came to the other wing of the
house. It came from behind the door which Bart had passed without comment and never opened.
She had supposed the room to be some kind of store-room and had never had the curiosity to
explore on her own. The handle did not yield to her touch like the other doors, but there was a key
in the lock and she turned It. The recalcitrant shutter was here, certainly; she could see it
swinging against one of the windows, but she did not immediately go to fasten it, but stood on the
threshold looking about her in amazement.
This was no store-room. Even in the dim light occasioned by the shuttered windows, Lucy could
see that it was a bedroom, lavishly appointed and with every mark of ownership. Toilet
accessories stood on the dressing-table, cut glass jars and bottles, delicately fashioned brushes;
the bed was turned down and a little pair of feathered mules stood in readiness beside it.
Her discovery was so strange, so unexpected, that for a moment Lucy thought she must have
walked into one of Pierre’s fairy tales. She opened all the shutters to bring the room to life in
daylight and stood wide-eyed at what she saw. Pale carpet and satin drapes and a vast Empirebed with scrolls and elaborate adornments of gilt, and on the pillow a richly embroidered night-
dress case with the initials of M.T. Marcelle ’s ... this must have been the room she had shared
with Bart, the room he had omitted to show her, and just for a moment Lucy felt sickened. It was
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Breakfasting with him the next morning, she realized with surprise that it was the first time she
had partaken of that particular meal of the day with him, and he behaved a s she imagined all
husbands must, engrossed in the morning paper while he let his coffee get cold. Lucy poured it
away and filled the cup again and he looked up in some surprise at seeing her and asked why
she was down so early.
“You offered me a li ft in to St. Minver—remember?” she said, and he removed the glasses from
his nose with a rueful grin.
“So I did,” he said. “You were to find yourself something in the shops.”
“I don’t really need anything,” she said. “You’ve been very generous as it is.”
“It’s a husband’s duty to clothe his wife,” he told her severely. “And haven’t you found out yet,Lucy Baa-lamb, that the things you don’t need are the most fun to buy?”
“I didn’t,” Lucy said meekly, “think husbands understood that point of view.”
“Didn’t you, now? Well, perhaps you have something to learn as well as I.”
She smiled, taking simple pleasure in waiting on him, pouring his coffee, passing him toast and
marmalade, glad that there was no Smithers seeing attentively to his needs. Smithers had not yet
forgiven her for being the innocent cause of Bart’s fresh and uncompromising instructions
concerning the late mistress’s bed-room, and he still treated Lucy with offended dignity.
“It’s rather pleasant being waited on by you, Lucy,” Bart observed, but when she told him she
would be glad to do so every morning, he only frowned and retorted that most days there was no
time for chatter over the breakfast table.
He had little to say, either, as he drove at his usual breakneck speed into St. Minver. Lucy
would have liked to idle along the lanes this bright April morning, but Bart never had time or
inclination for dalliance, and he dropped her now in the town’s centre and drove away to his
consulting-rooms.
She stood for a moment in the little grey square feeling rather lost. It would have been nice, she
thought wistfully, to have had a date for coffee with a girl friend and exchange news and look in
shop windows together, but Miss Heap had not encouraged friendships and Lucy knew no one
in the town.
“Why, Lucy! Lucy Lamb—or should I now address you as Mrs. Travers?” a voice exclaimed,
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and it took Lucy a moment to realize that the elderly woman who had stopped her was the
matron of the hospital. The only time Lucy ever remembered seeing Mary Morgan out of uniform
was at her wedding, nearly two months ago.
“How do you do, Matron?” she said, and suddenly knew an aching desire to hear news of the
children’s ward, to experience even at second hand the warmth and welcome of the ward andremember the shrill young voices chanting: “Baa baa black sheep, have you any wool ?”
“How are they all—the children?” she asked eagerly. “I suppose they are all a fresh lot, now.
Did the little girl with mastoids have to stay long? And how did the boy with the amputation
manage his artificial limb?”
Matron smiled, but her shrewd, rather tired eyes had unspoken questions of their own. She had
often, in the last two months, spared a thought for little Lucy Lamb and wondered how that
marriage was faring.
“You should come to see us, Lucy. You ’ll always have the freedom of the children’s ward. We
miss you,” she said.
“Do you—do you really?” Lucy sounded so surprised—and so highly gratified, too, that Mary
Morgan laughed.
“Indeed we do,” she said. “You have a way with children. Few of my more experienced nursing
staff can soothe a frightened child as you could. And now what of your favorite patient—little
Pierre?”
“He’s wonderful,” Lucy replied. “Quite strong again and much less nervy and temperamental,
but Bart will have told you, of course.”
“Your slant might be more accurate than his. These able medical men can often be very blind
when it comes to their own kith and kin, you know. Let’s go in here and have a cup of coffee,”
Matron said, and Lucy, in some surprise, followed her into a li ttle cafe.
Mary Morgan, although she could put the fear of God into her underlings, was an adept at
drawing individuals out. Lucy talked and the morning slipped away; tables filled up and emptied
again, but still they sat on in the bow window that over-looked the High Street, and Matron
watched the passers-by and did not appear to be listening very carefully.
“And what of you, Lucy? How are you making out with the distinguished Bartlemy Travers?”
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she asked suddenly, and Lucy replied vaguely, stammering a little and leaving broken little
sentences to hang unfinished in the air.
Mary sighed sharply. She had always had a weakness for Lucy with her enquiring eyes and
gentle mouth and her unconscious plea that life should be good to her, and, watching the
stippled sunlight in the street, she was reminded of other springs, when she, like Lucy, had
hoped for much and been passed by.
“You’re not already regretting your hasty action, then?” she asked with a smile. “It was hasty,
you know.”
“But I thought, at the time, you approved, Matron.”
“Oh, yes, I approved, in the rather peculiar circumstances, but things don’t always work out aswe hope, you know. Perhaps you were too young, too inexperienced, and yet those very
qualities—” Mary broke off, leaving the sentence as unfinished as Lucy’s own.
“Bart should take you out more—introduce you to people,” she said briskly. “The doctor’s wives
are full of curiosity, you know. They would like to call.”
“Oh, no!” Lucy exclaimed with more honesty than tact. “He doesn’t want other women at
Polvane. He’s had no need for any social life, he says, and I—well, I’ve never known it.”
“Nonsense!” Mary said impatiently. “No one should be as self-sufficient as that. Get him to bring
you to the Hospital Ball on the first of May. It’s an annual affair, you know, and anyone connected
with the hospital is expected to put in an appearance.”
“I can’t,” said Lucy, looking a little dazed, “imagine Bart dancing.”
“Can’t you? Well, you don’t have to dance—just be gracious for an hour or so and then retire,
like royalty.”
Lucy flushed a little at the acid dryness in Matron’s voice, but her eyes were suddenly bright
and expectant.
“Oh, do you think —?” she began like a child with a vision of an almost unbelievable treat in
store, and Mary’s tired eyes softened. Once, long ago, she had looked like that, but the vision
had melted away in her too-eager grasp.
“Ask him,” she said, gathering up her handbag and shopping basket. “Look at him as you’re
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“What a child you are!” he exclaimed. “I’ve had the tickets for weeks. I take them as a matter of
course each year.”
“But you never meant to go?”
For a moment his eyes were grave and a little accusing, reminding her, perhaps, of the reason,
then he replied evasively:
“I hadn’t thought about it, but I think, perhaps, I owe you a concession, as things are.”
Her face lit up.
“Then you will take me?”
“Yes, but if you ever come wasting my time again with frivolous demands, you’ll quite likely get
a different answer,” he said severely, and rang his bell for his next patient to be shown in.
For Lucy the small victory took on an absurd importance. She chattered to Paul, and even to
Bart, about the dress she would buy, admitted to both that it was the first grand occasion she had
ever attended and asked endless questions as to whom she was likely to meet! Paul, as always,
was an obliging listener, but Bart would sometimes answer tersely, and, remembering that the
last time he had probably graced this annual affair it had been to show off the lovely Marcelle,
her own pleasure became dimmed. Would not all these people who had known the first Mrs.
Travers quiz her and marvel at Bartlemy Travers’ second choice, or did they already know that
he had only re-married for the sake of his son, and so be a li ttle pitying?
She spent many of these bright spring days in the garden, planning with old Abel the flowers
which Bart had said she might grow, and an odd friendship slowly ripened between them. Lucy
felt at home with the old man as she never did with Smithers or Gaston and, although he saidlittle, she felt he liked her. He would teach her, as he had already taught Pierre, the old Cornish
rhymes of his own boyhood, churning couplets, skipping songs, counting games and charms to
ensure good luck for almost everything.
“Do you know a charm for wedlock?” she asked him once, and he looked at her with the bright
glance he had given her that very first morning.
“No call for that, m’dear, you’ve wed to maister of Polvane, see?” he said, as if that fact were a
charm in itself, and perhaps it was, thought Lucy, for, with the coming of spring it was easy to
believe in miracles and she would be grateful, she knew, for very little.
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“Sounds a bit involved,” he observed, but he did not smile. “Lucy—have I cheated you?”
“Cheated me? How?”
“By tying you up in a loveless marriage.”
She closed the book gently, letting it lie in her lap and did not look at him.
“No, Bart,” she said. “And—and perhaps there are several ways of loving.”
“Perhaps there are. Sometimes you trouble me, you know.”
“Why?”
“Perhaps because you haven’t turned out quite what I expected.”
“But what did you expect?” she asked serenely. “You married me because for some reason you
didn’t want to employ me for Pierre. You told me so yourself.”
“Damn it, Lucy, you make me sound a cold-blooded monster!” he exclaimed angrily. She saidnothing, and he recognized the fleeting look of apprehension which came into her eyes when he
snapped at her.
“Sorry,” he said. “You’re quite right, of course. What are you wearing tomorrow night?”
“White,” she answered, looking surprised, for he seldom expressed much interest in her
clothes.
He got up abruptly from his desk and crossed the room to a small safe in the wall. She watched
while he opened it and saw him extract a flat jeweller’s case from among several others.
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despite her disappointment at Bart’s absence, Lucy found her excitement mounting as she
dressed for the dance with elaborate care. It was, after all, the first grand occasion in a life which
had been starved of normal gaieties, and she was wearing a dress which no working girl could
ever have afforded. She had had to call upon Paul to zip her up the back, but had pushed him out
instantly, saying that he must not look yet. She twisted, now, in wonder before the old-fashioned
pier-glass in her room, marvelling at the miracle of frothy billowing lace, the little nipped-in waistand stiffly boned bodice, and Bart’s pearls, creamy against the whiteness of her skin. I really
don’t, she told herself with satisfaction, look like old Miss Heap’s companion, or anyone else’s,
and for the first time she made the descent down the gracious, curving staircase without the ghost
of Marcelle to haunt her.
Paul was already waiting in the hall, and as he looked up at her, he gave a low whistle.
“My! Is this something, or isn’t it! Stay where you are, Lucy—we must have an audience for this,”
he exclaimed, and shouted for Gaston and Smithers. They came and stood side by side gazing
up at her. Gaston burst into explosive ejaculations of admiration and even Smithers cracked his
finger-joints one after another, his Adam’s apple jerking up and down with emotion.
Lucy slowly descended the stairs and stood revolving, so that they could admire every aspect of
the frock.
“Will I do?” she asked them anxiously, and, just for tonight, she forgot their latent hostility and
their unspoken comparisons with the dead Marcelle.
“But Madame is enchanting—ravissante! Is it not a marvel what a good gown will do?” cried
Gaston naively, but his bright little eyes held the unstinting appreciation of his race.
“I would never have believed it!” Smithers exclaimed with unflattering honesty, but even his
eyes held a grudging admiration and he could not resist fingering the folds of Lucy’s skirt with
inquisitive fingers.
“Well, we make a handsome couple, wouldn’t you say, Gaston?” Paul said jauntily. “Give them
something to talk about in St. Minver, for a change, eh?”
“No doubt, m’sieur,” Gaston replied politely, and Lucy realized, in some surprise, that the
Frenchman did not care for Pierre’s young tutor.
“Well, do you think we should be going?” she said a little awkwardly, but there came loud
shrieks from the landing above and Pierre came racing down the stairs in his pyjamas.
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direction. “A pleasant evening, madame—helas that m’sieur should be chopping up the patient
—that has not much gaiety, hein?”
Paul seemed a little sulky as they drove into St. Minver, but Lucy was scarcely aware of it. She
had been admired and the May night was full of stars. She became aware, for the first time, of the
beauty of the moor by moonlight and, for no logical reason, had a desire to be in another county
and knit a left garter about a right-legged stocking.
The dance was held in the town’s principal hotel, and as Paul parked the car, his good humor
returned. He was well aware of his own good looks, and he was going to enjoy a lavish evening
at his cousin’s expense and the mild sensation he would undoubtedly cause in acting escort to
the bride no one had yet seen. He was soon aware, if Lucy was not, of the discreet stares and
whispers which followed them through the evening. After seven years’ eccentric seclusion,
Bart’s sudden re-marriage had been a nine days’ wonder, no doubt, and after tonight, Paul
thought with pleasure, the old trouts would have something fresh to gossip about. It was really
rather stupid, though highly typical of the great Bartlemy Travers, not to have put in an
appearance, just for the look of things.
For Lucy, after the initial nervousness that so many curious eyes inspired in her, the evening
was sheer delight. Paul was a charming and attentive escort, and even when her inexperienced
feet trod on his toes, he rallied her with outrageous compliments. He introduced her to no oneand she scarcely realized he was flirting with her with practised skill, and his open admiration,
like the unaccustomed champagne, went a little to her head.
Mary Morgan, dowdy but authoritatively impressive in purple crepe, came over to sit at their
table for a short while. She spoke to Paul with civility but no liking, and made it plain, without
actually saying so, that since Lucy’s husband was unable to accompany her, she should have
stayed at home. She left them shortly, aware that she had merely added to the young man’s
amusement and spoilt Lucy’s innocent enjoyment, but she was angry with Bart. The consultant
from Bristol had been late arriving, but the operation, she knew for a fact, had been postponed
until the morning. He should have put in an appearance for the look of things, or at least not to
have deputed that good-looking, worthless young cousin of his to take his place upon an
occasion so closely connected with his hospital. It was, she thought, with annoyance, making it
rather too patently clear that his second marriage was one of convenience and his wife a little
nobody he had picked up at random. But as she looked across to Lucy’s table, Mary sighed with
fresh irritation. The child did not look a nobody in that exquisite frock, with her slender limbs and
the delicate bones of her flushed, eager face. She looked what she was supposed to be, a young
bride of whom any man might be proud, and she could see the same thought in the eyes of
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“That’s very charming of you. Hasn’t Paul been a good deputy?” He spoke lightly, but his
glance still travelled over her curiously.
“He’s been delightful,” she replied quickly, “but after all, it’s really your party.”
He stood there, smiling down at her with one quizzical eyebrow raised. The tail coat, the
carnation, the discreet opulence of links and studs all added to his air of distinction, thought Paul
resentfully in the background. He looked just what he was, a successful man at the top of his
profession, commanding as his right, respect, and, from many, admiration.
They were still standing when the band started playing again and, with a smile, Bart invited her
to dance.
“I haven’t performed for years, so you’ll have to make allowances for me,” he said as he put an
arm round her.
“And I,” said Lucy, “have hardly danced at all. I shall probably tread on your toes.”
“Then that makes two of us,” he replied, and swung her on to the floor.
At first she was nervous, but he was skilled, more skilled than Paul, she realized, and hedirected her where he willed. For a fleeting instant she compared herself with the unknown
Marcelle who would, of course, have danced beautifully, then she gave herself up to the
unfamiliar pleasure of being held close to her husband, to feel the tightening pressure of his
hand on her bare flesh.
“I don’t know you tonight, Lucy Baa-lamb,” he said, looking down at her. “You are rather
ravishing in that white bridal gown, do you know that?”
“I haven’t really thanked you for the dress,” she replied with some confusion, “and for the loan
of your beautiful pearls.”
“They’re a gift, not a loan,” he said quietly.
“Oh, no!”
“Oh, yes! They become you very well. Have you met any of this crowd yet?”
“No, only Matron. I think she was a little annoyed.”
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“She was indeed,” he countered dryly. “I’ve already had a piece of her mind! When this dance
is over I’ll introduce you to some of the more respectable members of my fraternity.”
The rest of the evening passed like a dream for Lucy, and she felt indeed that at any minute the
clock would strike twelve and she find herself in rags, though it must already be long past
midnight. She could not remember the names of the people she met, only the eyes of the women
flirting with Bart and the pleasing, if staid, compliments of, the men bestowed on herself.
When they finally got back to their table, it was to find Paul gone and a hastily scrawled note
for Bart saying he would go straight home and pick up his clothes tomorrow.
“Oh, dear!” said Lucy, her tender heart distressed that after all his kindness he should feel
neglected. “He gave me such a happy evening, too.”
“Did he, indeed?” Bart said, making a spill of Paul’s note and lighting a cigarette with it. “I’m
told the uninitiated took you both for a honeymoon couple. Paul was evidently very obvious with
his attentions.”
“Was he?” she said, looking surprised. “Yes, perhaps he was, but he was only being kind.”
His eyebrows rose and he lazily blew a cloud of smoke between them.
“You don’t look, tonight, like a young woman to whom a man would feel impelled to be kind,”
he observed. “You’ve had quite a success, Lucy. Now, I suppose, we’ll have all these well-
meaning wives calling and arranging parties for us.”
She looked at him doubtfully.
“But you wouldn’t care for that?”
“No, not at all.”
“Then I shouldn’t, either. Pierre fills my days.”
He smiled and touched her hand with affection.
“Dear Lucy,” he said softly, “you’re resolved to stick to your side of the bargain, aren’t you?Well, we shall have to see. In the meantime, this sounds to me like the last dance. Come along.”
It was still like a dream, driving home in the starlight. Bart drove with his usual recklessness,
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but at the headland turn to Polvane he paused and let his engine idle. The smell of the sea came
sharply on the night air, and only the sound of the rolling breakers broke the stillness.
“What a night!” he said. “Is there something in the May Day ghosts, do you suppose?”
“I don’t know,” she answered sleepily. “I only know that, for me, this has been a wonderful
evening.”
They drove on, and Lucy remembered the splendor of the rhododendrons when first she had
come to Polvane. Now the giant flowers were withering and only the dark, glossy leaves made a
tunnel over their heads, but soon, she thought, the flowers that Abel had planted would blossom
and there would be something of her own to bring into the house.
Upstairs, in her room, the fire had been kept in and a thermos stood on the table by the bedand a plate of sandwiches. A routine matter in a well-ordered household, she supposed, but she
liked to think that Gaston or Smithers had thought of her. She kicked off her shoes, twirled
happily round the room without them, and began to wrestle with the zip fastener of her frock.
“Bart!” she called, still under the spell of the evening. He opened the door between their rooms.
“What is it?”
“Will you un-zip me, please?”
He watched her peeling off her stockings as if he had not been there, and, picking up the
discarded shoes, set them, meticulously, side by side.
“Who zipped you into this contraption?” he asked, his fingers feeling for the catch.
“Paul.”
“Paul?”
“I couldn’t bear the thought of Smithers’ fingers—silly, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” he said, and ran the zip fastener down with a gesture which could hardly be
called gentle.
“Thank you,” she said, and turned to face him, holding the dress to her shoulders.
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“My lovely evening, the frock and the pearls and—for coming yourself, after all.”
She looked very small in the big bed with her arms stretched above her head; he could see a
small pulse beating in the hollow at her throat.
“If it pleased you, then I’m glad,” he said a little formally, and she suddenly stretched out her
arms to him.
“Will you—will you kiss me goodnight, Bart?” she asked. “You—you’ve never kissed me—not
that I’ve expected you to,” she added hurriedly.
“Why not? I married you, didn’t I?” he replied, and bent over the bed.
His eyes might be cold but his lips were warm against hers. In some unchartered fashion, sheknew again, that the moment could be of her making, but she had no knowledge, no certainty, to
turn him from that other dead love.
“Thank you,” she said, resisting the desire to touch him. “Could you—could we—make it a
habit, do you suppose—like tucking Pierre in for the night?”
“I don’t see why not,” he replied with a strange expression. “Goodnight, Lucy, and sleep well.”
He was gone, and the door closed between them. She blew out her lamp and, almost
immediately, fell asleep.
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BART had left to perform the operation which had been postponed the night before, long before
Lucy was awake the next morning. She propped herself up on her pillows and blinked happily at
the bright light of a May morning which Smithers let into the room as he drew the curtains. “Did
you enjoy the ball , madam?” he asked in his most cultured voice.
“It was wonderful,” she said, stretching her arms lazily above her head. “Mr. Travers came after
all, you know.”
“Of course.” She glanced at him uncertainly. He was, really, a very strange creature.
“Gaston and I—we didn’t care to see you going off with young Mr. Paul,” he said. “You looked, if
I may say so, just like a bride in that beautiful gown. Mr. Paul did not return?”
“No,” said Lucy absently. “He’s picking up his clothes this morning—oh, I’d forgotten, it’s
Saturday. He won’t be here till Monday, then.”
“No madam,” Smithers said, and his lined, sallow face looked pleased.
Suddenly, for Lucy, he was no longer Bart’s manservant, resentful and critical of her actions. He
was a fellow human being, peculiar, possibly, but as vulnerable and unsure as herself.
“Smithy—” she began impulsively, then coloured and looked abashed—“I beg your pardon—
Smithers. It’s easy to get into Pierre’s ways.”
His old face creased in a hundred wrinkles, and she realized that it was the first time she had
seen him really smile.
“I would esteem it an honour if you care to address me as Smithy,” he said grandly, then,
cracking his finger-joints with sudden violent agitation, added in quite a different tone of voice
and forgetting his grammar: “I would like to say, miss—madam—Gaston and me find you veryeasy, which we did not expect, and if we give offence when you first come, we’re sorry for it. The
first Mrs. Travers was such a very different lady, you see.”
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“I hope you don’t mean to be as rude as you sound,” she said quietly. “And I certainly have no
wish to make trouble for you, but Pierre’s welfare is as much my concern as yours, and his
father’s too.”
“Of course. That’s why he married you, wasn’t it?” Paul retorted, but even as he spoke his
angry eyes held the ashamed acknowledgement that he had said the unforgivable thing.
“You’d better go home for the rest of the day. I’ll explain to Bart that I gave you the afternoon off.
Come along, Pierre; you shall rest on your bed while I read you a story,” Lucy said, and led the
child out of the room.
Upstairs Pierre burst into’ tears, and it took her much time and skill to soothe him. Garbledaccounts of past disciplinary measures came out between sobs, and Lucy, troubled and
dismayed, wondered how much she should believe. A child tended to twist and exaggerate the
truth, and Pierre was an excitable small boy whose mixed blood fed a precious imagination. Like
most children, he was apt to revile whoever found disfavour with him at the moment, and it was
possible he was quick enough to see that his beloved Baba’s sympathies lay with his father and
not with his tutor.
“But Pierre, Paul has never punished you cruelly,” she said, trying to arrive at something
concrete.
“Non, non, non, non, non!” he protested in exact imitation of Gaston. “It is Papa he say will do
that. He will beat me, perhaps, or lock me in a dark room, should I displease him, so I keep out of
his way like Paul say and then he does not tell Papa when I am naughty.”
For a moment Lucy felt as she had on discovering Marcelle’s room, a quick revulsion from the
abnormal, the emotionally unbalanced. A child, surely, would not invent such a tortuous
misrepresentation, and for Paul, would that not have been the easiest way out? In using the
child’s father as a perpetual threat, he ensured his own position as ally and go-between.
“Listen, Pierre,” she said gravely. “Never hesitate to ask your father anything. You know, now,
you have no reason to be afraid of him.”
“Yes, Baba.”
“These tales of beatings and dark rooms—Paul was teasing you. Your father has been sad that
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both, said he would collect the clothes he had left on Friday and take himself off.
Bart pulled up a basket chair beside hers and enquired for Pierre.
“I’ve brought his present,” he said. “He’d better have it before he goes to bed and get the
excitement over.”
“He’ll be coming down for tea,” Lucy said nervously, and hoped the boy would not see fit to
recount the lunchtime quarrel to his father.
She wished Bart would come right out with whatever he was thinking. The memory of last night
and his tentative suggestions in the moonlight seemed very far behind them.
He was regarding her thoughtfully.
“I brought you a present, too, but on second thoughts, I don’t think I’ll give it to you just yet,” he
said.
For an instant her embarrassment was lost in surprise and pleasure. He had never given her
anything personal except the unexpected gift of his mother’s pearls.
“Show me,” she begged like an expectant child, but the expression in his eyes suddenly
chilled her.
“No,” he said, “it’s not the moment. You seem very nervous, Lucy. Have there been—upsets in
the day’s routine?”
“Well, yes, a little,” she admitted, thankful that she could offer some explanation of what he
clearly thought was odd behaviour on her part. “Pierre talked too much about the picnic and his
new-found discovery of Papa, and Paul was a little short with him. We had tears, of course, but
your son’s devotion to you remains unshaken.”
Lucy knew she was speaking with bright unnaturalness and she thought that Bart’s quick ear,
trained to listen for the nuances in a patient’s voice, could hear it, but all he said was:
“I’m glad to know that. I think I’ll go and find him,” and she watched him go into the house,
feeling a little hurt. She would have liked to witness the child’s pleasure and response. Theshadows were lengthening on the grass now, grotesque shapes of buttress and gable, and the
pointing fingers of conifer. It was too cold, as yet, for sitting long out of doors, but Lucy stayed
where she was, the day’s events springing back to her mind, and she realized, with a small
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“There is one very great difference,” he hit back, his eyes no longer hiding their anger. “You
happen to be my wife and, for what it’s worth, the keeper of my good name.”
“You should have thought of that when you asked me to marry you,” she replied with valiant
defiance. “I’m still your employee and have a right to my own life.”
“Is that what Paul tells you?”
“Paul?”
“For God’s sake, Lucy, do you think I’m blind?” he ‘snapped convulsively. “I come straight from
the hospital with Mary Morgan’s well-meaning warnings fresh in my mind and find my tutor with
his head buried in my wife’s lap! You even had the temerity to tell me I wasn’t expected!”
She sat there, her hands folded helplessly in her lap, the colour draining from her face. It had
not occurred to her that he could be jealous or that the surprise discovery that such an emotion
still existed in him could throw him temporarily off-balance.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “You—you’ve got things all wrong.”
He sat for a moment, watching her, and, slowly, the anger died in him. She looked like a
stricken child, there in the candlelight, her bent head accentuating the slender line of her neck
from nape to shoulder and the delicate curves of her forehead. She was a little less than half his
age, he thought with a revulsion of feeling that made him slightly ashamed, and all her life she
had been bullied into subjection by the Miss Heaps of this world, and now, himself.
“I’m sorry, Lucy,” he said wearily. “I have no right to demand more than goodwill from you, and
that you have given me, It’s not your fault if Paul, poor fellow, should lose his head a little. He
hasn’t got much guts, I’m afraid, but fate hasn’t been too kind to him. Forget my stupidity, willyou? Paul, like yourself, hasn’t had much experience of life.”
She looked up, and he saw the tears on her lashes.
“Might it be better if he found another job?” she asked, remembering her own newly-awakened
doubts, but he only gave a quizzical little quirk of one eyebrow, completely in control of himself
again.
“Sack poor Paul?” he exclaimed with tolerant amusement, and Lucy saw, to her bewilderment,
that whatever notions he had cherished on the subject of his cousin’s behavior, he could
scarcely have taken the matter as seriously as he had led her to suppose. “We couldn’t do that to
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She followed him into the library, wondering what he could have bought for her, and wondering
with a lifting heart, if his impulse to give her something had any significance. It was only
yesterday that he had made an appeal for her tolerance should the need arise, an appeal which
she only half understood, and had been too shy or too ignorant to follow up.
He had bought her a ring, a very perfect pearl set with small diamonds, and as she beheld it,
Lucy’s simple heart was convinced of its message. Rings meant only one thing in her
conclusions, and she looked at Bart speechlessly, searching for the words which would tell him
that she accepted and understood his token.
Before she had time to phrase the words adequately, however, he said with a quick frown:
“I hope you’re not superstitious about pearls. St. Minver doesn’t offer a great selection in
precious stones, but Mary Morgan thought this would match up with your necklace.”
“Matron? Did she help you choose it?”
“She suggested it, as a matter of fact. The other women at the dance had remarked on your
pearls, apparently, also on the fact that you wore no engagement ring. It was remiss of me to
have forgotten the symbol of our—er—courtship.”
To Lucy it was like a dash of cold water. It was Matron who had criticized Paul and decreed
that the doctors’ wives should call; it was Matron who had chosen the ring and even ordered Bart
to buy it because its absence led to speculation. The ring was a token of respectability and a
well-lined purse and nothing more.
“Thank you,” she said colourlessly. “Thank you very much indeed. No I’m not superstitious.”
But she was, she thought unhappily, remembering Abel ’s injunctions about charms, and didshe not curtsey to the new moon, refrain from walking under ladders, and recite the rhyme about
the braggarty worm each time she walked on the moor because she was afraid of address? It
was well known that pearls meant tears...
“You don’t sound very pleased,” Bart observed a little sharply. “We can change it, if you don’t
like it.”
“I wouldn’t want to do that,” she said gently, “but I—I wish you had thought of it yourself.”
He frowned.
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be the admiring audience Pierre is expecting at his bath time tonight, or he’ll think I’ve forgotten
my promise. Goodnight, Paul.”
II
He had been particularly gentle with her for the rest of the evening, and sometimes she had
caught him watching her with an expression that was oddly compassionate, as if he, like Paul,
knew that she was fighting a losing battle with a ghost, and was sorry. She replied absently to
his observations, for her mind was still full of Paul and the disquieting aspects of the self he had
revealed to her. She could not, she thought, bear to see him each day and resume that light-
hearted companionship, knowing what he was, yet she guessed from experience that if he
wished to he could even now charm her back to a semblance of friendship and almost make her
believe that she had exaggerated much of what had passed between them; and she desired,
above all else to keep from Bart knowledge that would prove hurtful.
She went early to bed, drugged by her own weariness of spirit, but when she was between the
sheets she could not sleep, but lay listening to the sound of the breakers and watching a patch of
moonlight creep slowly across the ceiling. She heard Bart come up late and move about his
room, but he did not knock on her door, thinking, no doubt, that she was asleep. Somewhere in
the house a clock struck two with the light, silvery chimes that had now become as familiar as
the sound of the sea, and Lucy experienced a terrible sense of desolation, as if the world, andeven her Maker, had forgotten her, and she gave way to a sudden violent fit of weeping because
only in tears could she find relief.
She did not hear the door from Bart’s room open, and it was the flickering light of his candle
that told her he was standing by the bed.
“Lucy ... Lucy ... don’t cry, my dear...” he said and set the candlestick on a table and sat down
beside her. But she could only continue to weep, the great tearing sobs that had aroused him,
and presently he gathered her into his arms and held her against him without speaking any
more.
She rested her head against his breast and peace flowed into her. He was, in that moment, the
father she had never known, the friend she had never had, the man she would love, no matter
that he had nothing to give in return.
“Better?” he said when she was quieter.
“Yes,” she said. “Don’t go.”
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“There are some things in life one has no wish to forget, even if it were possible. One day,
Lucy, I’ll tell you the story of Marcelle, and then perhaps you’ll understand me better.”
“Why not now?” she said, trying to cling to this moment of intimacy because tomorrow it might
be gone, but he laughed with the familiar note of dismissal for trivial requests, and the moment
had already passed.
“At three o’clock in the morning!” he exclaimed as the same silvery chimes announced the
hour. “No my dear, you’ll be worn out in the morning as it is. Now, shall I give you a sedative, or
will you sleep?”
“I think I shall sleep,” she said, and already her eyes felt drowsy.
“Well, I’ll leave the door open between us, so if you want me you have only to call. Goodnight,Lucy Baa-lamb—or rather, good morning.”
He bent over the bed to kiss her and brushed a finger along her wet lashes with a gesture that
was oddly comforting. She watched the light of his candle dwindle and recede as he went back
to his room, leaving the door open. For a while the glow remained as he settled himself in bed,
and then it too was gone, as he snuffed the candle, and Lucy slept.
She hardly saw him during the next few days, for a sudden pressure of work kept him busy
until late at night. In a sense she was glad, for she felt he might have regretted that brief letting
down of the barriers between them. It was not his fault that she had come to love him, and she
must, she thought, never embarrass him by making demands with which he had no wish to
comply. She should have known when she married him, she told herself sadly, that she was
making a foolhardy bargain, for it was, perhaps, inevitable that she should have fallen in love
with him, the unknown hero of her adolescence and the only man she had ever known
intimately.
Paul returned to Polvane after three days, and however he had spent the time away, he had
clearly determined to ignore those recent passages between himself and Lucy. He was as she
first remembered him, the amusing companion of her solitary hours, with the added suggestion
that although she had hurt him he forgave her because, for him, she was someone rather rare
and special. It was, thought Lucy, easier that way. She did not want her doubts and suspicions
forced into the open again, neither was it her nature to believe ill of someone who, like herself,had done battle with a world which had no place for the weak and unskilled. As the days went
on and Bart’s absences grew longer, and June continued with weeping skies and the promise of
summer unfulfilled, she was grateful for Paul’s presence and the comforting admiration she read
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The doctor’s wives began to call, and Lucy dutifully returned their visits. In this way she
became further acquainted with the aspects of her husband’s first marriage. They had none of
them particularly liked Marcelle, it seemed, for she had made it plain that they bored her, but her
beauty was exceptional and her husband had been head over heels in love. It was quite a
shock, they said, when dear Mr. Travers married again, for everyone had thought him
inconsolable, shutting himself away with that odd little boy, and cutting himself off entirely from
any sort of social life. They gushed over Lucy, patronized her a little, and went away satisfied
that dear Mr. Travers had chosen such a gentle little nonentity as his second wife.
“They’ll like you because they can feel smug and superior,” Paul told her with a grin. “I imagine
the lovely Marcelle rather had the medical fraternity by the short hairs—certainly few of the
women liked her. It’s said to be a great gift of success to be tolerated by your own sex, Lucy. Bart
should be grateful to you.”
He won’t care one way or the other,” Lucy retorted. “I imagine the wife of Bartlemy Travers
would be accepted automatically—in this district, at any rate.”
“How perspicacious of you, my sweet, and a trifle cynical, perhaps. Still, it must help to be liked
for one’s own sake, as well as one’s husband’s.” His light glance flickered over her. How naiveshe was, he reflected a shade contemptuously, how sickeningly content to occupy what position
Bart saw fit to thrust upon her.
Pressure of work made dinner engagements impossible at present, so Lucy attended dull tea
parties, at some of which she met Mary Morgan. She had taken an unreasoning aversion to
Matron, who had pushed Bart into marrying her, and even suggested and supervised the buying
of her engagement ring. She felt uneasy under the older women’s shrewd, questioning eyes,
and took interest and a genuine desire to help as interference.
“You know, my dear, you ’re going the wrong way about things,” Mary said when on one
occasion they were left together to wait at her bus stop.
“I don’t understand,” Lucy replied nervously. For her, Matron was still the person who could
induce a feeling of guilt by a raised eyebrow and a certain intonation.
“I dare say not. You’re young and inexperienced and are married to a man quite outside your
normal ken,” Mary said, aware, even as she spoke, that Bart would not thank her for interfering in
his private affairs.
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It became clear at once to Lucy that Matron must have carried out her intention of speaking to
Bart, for his manner subtly altered. He was meticulously courteous to her at all times, but that
very politeness seemed to point to a coldness he made no attempt to hide. She could not ask
him for an explanation of behaviour which was, in itself, impeccable, and he did not hint, evenindirectly, at what had passed between himself and Mary Morgan.
It did not seem possible that this could be the same man who, not so long ago, had taken Lucy
in his arms and brought her peace and comfort and a flicker of hope for the future. The door
between their bedrooms remained closed night after night, and she did not have the courage to
open it herself and call to him. At the end of a day he did not enquire how she had spent her
time, and he seldom mentioned his cousin except in relation to Pierre’s studies.
She knew that Paul was aware of their altered circumstances, although the two men were
seldom in the house at the same time, and sometimes she surprised a look of satisfaction in the
tutor’s blue eyes, as if he knew the cause without being told and drew pleasure from the
conclusions he formed.
The wet days of June continued with depressing monotony. Lucy woke each morning to the
sound of the rain on the windows and Smithers would lugubriously report on another bad day.They were confined a great deal to the house, and Pierre became restless and fractious, or
perhaps, with the quickness of children, he sensed the unhappiness in Lucy and the fresh
preoccupation of his father with matters in which he had no place.
“I wish you could spare more time for him,” Lucy told her husband. “I—I’m so afraid you will
lose all you have gained.”
“Is that so much?” he returned coldly, and his eyes were grave and a little forbidding.
“I thought so.”
‘The boy has you—and Paul. It should suffice.”
“That wasn’t what you used to think,” she retorted, hoping to force him into some sort of
explanation, or even accusation, but he only replied with apparent indifference:
“I thought a great many things at one time, Lucy. I haven’t, I’ve come to the conclusion, a gift for
feeing in touch with my fellows. It’s no doubt a quality that exists in the unprejudiced findings
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“It’s easy enough to be strong and able when you have money and a total disregard for the
feelings of others,” Paul said sourly, swallowing his drink and reaching for Lucy’s glass.
“You’ve always resented him because he’s had what you haven’t, haven’t you, Paul?” she
said, and because her heart was tender, and she herself had been deprived of so much, she
could still feel compassion for him.
“What chance have I ever had—bad health, a poor education, and helpless Aunt Minnie round
my neck for the rest of her days.”
“Helpless? She’s not an invalid, is she?”
“Not physically, as yet, but she’s the clinging, dependent sort with the brain of a hen, as I’ve
often told you. She’ll be the shawl and hot-water-bottle type before very long.”
“Poor Paul,” she said softly, already forgetting her own troubles in those of another. He was not
a very admirable character in many ways, she supposed, but circumstances were, perhaps,
against him.
“Well, my problems don’t help to solve yours, do they?” he said patting her hand
encouragingly. There was still a great deal more that lie wanted to find out. Did that old bag of a
matron really make mischief for you?”
“I don’t know. She gave me a little talking to a while ago and said she was going to speak to
Bart, too. It’s ever since then he’s been so—so unapproachable.”
“Why don’t you ask him?”
“Bart will never tell me anything unless he wants to. Besides—there was something Matron
had misunderstood and—and, I suppose, I’m afraid to know if he has misunderstood, too.”
“The handsome young tutor making hay while the sun shone and, perhaps, getting some
response?” he said with a satisfied gleam of amusement, and she gave him a troubled look.
“How did you know?” she asked, and he flung back his yellow head and laughed.
“Because, my poor innocent, I’ve been doing my best to create just that impression,” he replied,with devastating frankness. “It was a way of getting my own back, since you, my dear Lucy, have
been so successful in weaning Pierre’s affections away from me.”
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“I was right, then,” said Lucy wearily. “You had been encouraging the boy’s aversion for his
father. Why—why, Paul?”
He watched her with that bright, flickering glance, seeing the tiredness in her face and the
disappointment. She had wanted, he realized with surprise, to keep some illusions about him, or
perhaps it was just that her rather irritating goodness of heart merely wished to protect her
husband from knowledge.
“I doubt if you’d understand,” he replied glibly. He could not shock her now; she had known too
much, instinctively, already. “Perhaps it gave me that sense of power we’ve been talking about—
taking something away from someone who had so much.”
“Pierre was all he had left—all he cared about,” she said accusingly.
“Well, that’s as may be. Then you came along and I thought it would be fun to put a spoke in
that wheel, too.”
“Fun! Are you a monster, Paul? ” Lucy cried, but even as she spoke she saw him for what he
was; no monster, only a little boy who likes to pull the wings off flies.
“You never played up to me Lucy,” he said with the complaining disappointment of a child.
“When Bart brought you here and I saw you weren’t the sort of female to get one given the push, I
thought we could have some fun. It would have been so much more sensible to encourage me to
make love to you, in the circumstances. Bart may be content with his celibate couch, but you
won’t be.”
“You—you’re impossible!” she exclaimed, springing to her feet.
“Yes, I am, aren’t I?” he agreed with a return of his old impudence. His moods, she saw, wereas facile and inconsistent as quicksilver. The Pauls of this world never grew up. Their minds,
instead of maturing, merely became warped with age. There was no cure for the complete
egocentric.
“I think you should look for another job.” she said.
“You mean you’l l get me thrown out, after all?”
“No, the move must come from you. Bart will help in any way he can. I know he feels he’s kept
you too long here in leading strings.”
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rooms to dispel the cheerless gloom of the wet summer day, or perhaps the change was simply in
herself. She had been content for too long to regulate her moods to Bart’s, and she remembered
him telling her angrily, once, not to be so self-effacing. Well the day’s mischief was done, but it
was in the open at last. Paul would be leaving soon, and she ... she must cease to be Lucy Lamb,
an English miss who ate things off trays and could not find her way into a man’s desires, let alone
his affections.
On an impulse she slipped out into the rain and picked a little bunch of the mignonette Abel had
sown for her and, arranging it with loving care, set it on Bart’s dressing table. It would greet him
when he returned and he would perhaps, think to open the door between their rooms and thank
her.
When she had bathed Pierre and tucked him up for the night, she lingered in her own room,
inspecting her wardrobe for garments of seduction. There were depressingly few, for the
trousseau she had bought at Bart’s bidding had not included extravagant frivolities that might be
deemed unnecessary, and she wished now that she had been more lavish in her expenditure.
Lucy sighed, wondering how other brides knew, by instinct, the way to their husbands’ desires.
Scent ... yes, she had that ... make-up, which she had always considered looked silly in bed and
came off on the pillow case, and, yes, there was one transparent nightgown she had never worn,
with a little lace jacket that added chic but little covering. She caught a glimpse of herself in the
mirror and was surprised to find she was blushing. It was rather shocking, perhaps, this
deliberate search after seduction, and she was relieved to hear the gang summoning her down to
the special meal Gaston had prepared.
After dinner she was restless and decided to wash her hair so that everything about her should
smell clean and fragrant, but it was a mistake, she decided, trying to dry it in front of the fire, a
panic-stricken eye on the clock; the pins and net slowed up the process, and there was still fresh
make-up to be applied. In the end she took the pins out in desperation and shook the hair free,hoping that the damp ends would not dry straight. She splashed scent on too lavishly so that she
was obliged to open a window to disperse the heavy perfume, and that made the fire smoke.
“Really!” exclaimed Lucy in exasperation to her flushed face in the mirror, “the path to seduction
is fraught with difficulties! How do other people manage?”
But when, at last, her toilet was complete, and she had time to think and feel, her confidence
began to ebb away. Also she had drunk more wine than usual at dinner to give her courage, and
felt a little lightheaded. It was nearly eleven o’clock and no one stirred about the house now. He
might not notice the flowers ... he might be very late ... he might not come at all ... Upon that
dismaying thought she heard the sound of his car and, later, the faint thud of the front door
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“Why not? I’m fully aware by now that I’d no business to marry you on the terms of our
agreement. Mary Morgan has pointed out to me, and indeed I can see myself, that you are a
healthy young woman with every right to expect fulfilment in a normal marriage. I have only
myself to blame if my wife looks elsewhere for satisfaction, haven’t I? All the same, man is an
unreasonable animal. You married me, Lucy, and I don ’t choose to share my possessions. That,
of course, is an entirely selfish point of view, as my young cousin himself pointed out.”
“You can’t,” said Lucy doggedly, “share what you’ve never possessed—or wanted.”
“Yes, there’s something in that, perhaps. Well, how do you suggest we solve this tangle?”
She shook her head, dumbly. Not again would she offer herself to be rejected so plainly and
cruelly.
He sat down on the bed and leaned across her, supporting his weight on one hand. His voice
when he next spoke was still measured and rather precise, but the coolness had gone from his
eyes.
“I’m quite prepared to make love to you, Lucy,” he said. “Did you suppose that I was entirely
devoid of natural passions?”
“You’ve led me to believe so.”
“Yes, I suppose I have, but jealousy, it appears, can flare up when you least expect it.”
“Jealous—you!”
“Strange, isn’t it? I thought I had buried all such emotions with Marcelle, but—” his voice
suddenly deepened and became harsh with anger which Lucy had not realized had been held incheck until now—“jealousy, bitterness, desire, even, need have nothing to do with love. Are you
prepared to accept me for what I am?”
“I know you don’t love me. I know I would just be second best,” Lucy replied, in a whisper.
“Oh, you’d do very well,” he answered, and suddenly caught her by the shoulders, bringing her
face close to his. “You have your own brand of attraction, you know—so white, so soft, so sweet
—isn’t that what your song says? Well, Lucy, you’ve asked for it, you must take the
consequences.”
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He began kissing her, fiercely, demandingly, and his hands bruised her flesh. It was as if she
had never known him; the cold, self-contained facade behind which he had dwelt was stripped
from him like a protective skin, leaving a man starved too long of passion, hungry in his
demands—and a stranger to the consideration love would have brought. Lucy lay, unresisting, in
his arms, weeping a little because not like this had she wanted him to take her, in anger and
bitterness, all tenderness buried in a dead woman’s grave. Suddenly he turned his head into thewarm hollow between her breasts with a strange gesture of repudiation and, as suddenly, let her
go.
He sat there for a moment, not speaking, while he hid the trembling of his hands in the pockets
of his dressing-gown. Lucy, shaken and bewildered, lay and watched him. Presently he touched
her wet lashes with a still unsteady finger and brushed away the tears.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I wanted to hurt you, I suppose, but I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“I wasn’t frightened,” she said, wondering if she had failed him again in her inexperience. “I’m—
I’m willing to learn, Bart.”
His smile was stiff and automatic.
“I’ve never believed in rape, my dear, even when it’s legalized, by marriage,” he said. “I must
apologize for the exhibition. These hints and rumors have been festering in me for weeks, I
suppose. Try to sleep now, Lucy, and in the future— lock the door between us.”
When he had gone, she lay exhausted, and still weeping. Lock the door between us, he had
said, but he had already done this, himself, with his doubts and suspicions and the implied
assurance that in the future she should not fear demands from him. Outside, the rain still fell, as if
the skies, too, wept for her and the predestined failure of this foolish marriage. She turned her
bruised mouth into the coolness of her pillow and, with a little hopeless sigh, fell asleep.
II
It was still raining when she came downstairs the next morning, and it seemed that the
disaffection of the night had spread to the rest of the house. Gaston and Smithers were having
one of their violent quarrels in the kitchen, Paul had failed to arrive for the morning lessons, and
Pierre, incensed at being ignored by everyone, was banging loudly on the gong to attract
attention.
“For goodness’ sake!” exclaimed Lucy, in no mood for tantrums so early in the day. “Pierre, go
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that made the place a home, and at Gaston himself, watching her with the kindly eye of an old-
fashioned nanny.
“Gaston—” she said tentatively—“I—I’m not very experienced in l’amour .” It was of course, a
ridiculous statement to make to one’s cook, and not very dignified, but he beamed on her
approvingly, satisfied that she had admitted him to her confidence and they could now be
friends.
“L’amour ... what is it?” he exclaimed with Gallic tolerance. “A few moments when the blood
runs hot and the reason is, perhaps, blinded? In France we do things better—a sensible
marriage, respect, mutual tolerance, and children—many children. Madame will know in time.”
It was a very odd conversation, thought Lucy in surprise, but her heart warmed to the little
French chef who could lay salve so delicately upon her sore spirit.
“I must go or I’ll miss my bus,” she said a little awkwardly, and he at once turned a tactful back
and busied himself with the pots and pans of his calling.
“Ah, yes, you go to find M’sieur Paul,” he said. “It is permitted to say, perhaps, madame, that
m’sieur’s services are no longer necessary here, now that you can care for the little one
yourself?”
Had the servants had Paul sized up all along? Lucy wondered, and remembered how, some
time ago, she had realized that they neither of them cared for the tutor.
“Yes, I think so too, Gaston, but Mr. Travers doesn’t,” she said.
“These matters arrange themselves,” he replied comfortably. “M’sieur—M’sieur Travers, that is
—is a clever surgeon, but clever men do not always understand the simplicities of life, madame.They judge by themselves, and for m’sieur the realities have been dead for a long time.”
“You are thinking of the first Mrs. Travers?” Lucy asked a little sadly, and he smiled and
shrugged.
“Non, non, non, non, non!” he exclaimed. “There has been much confusion, and much trust
placed in wrong directions, I think—but madame must hurry—the bus, she will not wait.”
Lucy sat in the little country bus, watching the rain-washed landscape slip by. On last night her
mind still refused to dwell, but with Paul she would do battle and end for ever the treachery and
spite of many months. Gaston’s wisdom had strengthened her own, and, whatever might result
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between herself and Bart, one canker should at least be removed.
She found her way through the steep, winding streets of Merrynporth to the little terrace where
she knew Paul lived with his aunt. The house was small and neat and rather charming, and the
terrace presented none of the seedy poverty which she had first supposed was the reason for his
reluctance to take her to his home.
For a moment when the front door was opened, Lucy thought she must have come to the
wrong house. The woman who stood there was tall and vigorous-looking, with a large, loose
figure which carelessly supported her plain, sensible tweeds. Her face had the strong,
uncompromising lines of a woman of character, and her eyes, as blue as Paul ’s, looked out with
a clear directness of purpose.
“I’ve come to see Mr. Paul Bond,” Lucy said uncertainly, and the woman replied with a swift
flicker of recognition:
“I’m afraid he’s not in, but won’t you come inside, out of the rain, Mrs. Travers? I’m Paul’s aunt.”
“You—you aren’t Aunt Minnie!” Lucy exclaimed, and, before she could stop herself, began to
laugh. Faced with the reality of Paul’s poor Aunt Minnie, the fabric of his evasions and pleas for
pity fell to pieces.
If Aunt Minnie thought her laughter odd and rather rude, she made no comment, and stood
aside to allow Lucy to enter, but there was a little quirk of amusement at the corners of her firm
mouth as she bade her guest be seated.
“How did you, know me?” Lucy asked.
“I’ve seen you with Paul, who usually hustled you into the nearest tea-shop when he spottedme,” Aunt Minnie replied. “I used to wonder if you really had such an aversion to meeting me as
he made out.”
“Oh, no!” cried Lucy, horrified. “I wanted to call on you, but he always put me off.”
“Well, I should have known. What sort of person did my rather untruthful nephew make me out
to be?”
“Clinging ... foolish ... shawls and hot-water-bottles ... a liability that hindered him from doing a
man’s job. That’s why I laughed. I didn’t mean to be rude.”
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“Dear me!” Paul’s aunt observed mildly. “And is that what your husband thinks too?”
“Yes, I’m afraid it is. Bart’s always made allowance for Paul because of his upbringing. But
how was it you never met?”
“Oh, we did. Bart must have got us confused, my sister and I. We didn’t live in Merrynporth in
those days. My sister was Paul’s mother and answered very well to the description of Aunt
Minnie. Poor Carrie spoiled and pampered him all her life, and when she died, well, I just took
over.”
“But you—you wouldn’t have kept him tied to your apron strings.”
“My dear girl, quite the contrary, but it was too late by that time. For my sister’s sake—and
another reason I’ve made a home for Paul and supported him between jobs. Paul is weak, likepoor Carrie, and I was weak, too, when I didn’t push him out of the nest to fend for himself. I shall
pay for that weakness for the rest of my life, and it serves me right.”
Lucy’s eyes were wide with surprise and sudden understanding.
“And there’s nothing wrong with his heart, is there?” she said, and Aunt Minnie made a small
grimace of distaste.
“Has that been another of his tales?” she said. “My sister, I believe, encouraged him to think he
was delicate, but he’s as strong as I am. He managed, somehow, to wangle out of doing his
National Service, but that, I felt, was between him and his own conscience. I never knew the
details. Now, my dear, what message shall I give him? He ’s not going to be best pleased that
you and I have met, judging by the yarns he has spun you.”
Lucy looked at her gravely.
“A great deal of mischief and harm has been done,” she said. “There are things I must get
straight with Paul, and—and I think you should know that I am going to try to persuade my
husband to dismiss him. His—usefulness at Polvane was really over some time ago.”
The older woman gave her a long, steady look, then sighed a little.
“Of course,” she said. “That is understood. One hears many different rumors, you know, and I
wouldn’t care to think that any serious harm had come about on Paul’s account. You are so
much younger than your husband that, forgive me, you may have gone the wrong way about
things at the beginning.”
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“Stay there while I fetch you some brandy,” he said. “Later on I’ll give you a sedative and put
you to bed.”
The brandy warmed her and made her a little drowsy. It was pleasant to watch the evening
light fade and listen to the sound of the breakers which had once worried her so much. She had
no wish to ask her husband what had passed between Paul and himself; he would tell her when
he was ready, and, when he was ready, he would make amends for the violence of last night.
“It must be past tea-time,” she said, aware that the day had become disorganized. “Pierre
should be having his bath.”
“Smithers is seeing to Pierre. I’ve said we’re not to be disturbed for the next hour. Lucy — doyou remember I promised you once I would tell you the story of Marcelle?” His voice was
suddenly a little strained and she shook her head in protest. She did not want Marcelle’s gay
ghost intruding on this moment. She wanted to pretend for a little while that Bart was hers;
tomorrow, the next day, she would face reality again.
His eyes were suddenly tender as he watched her face. She was so small, so valiant in her
attempts to come to terms with the bargain they had made.
“My story is not going to hurt you,” he told her, gently. “I only want to go away with one aspect
of our misunderstandings—cleared up between us. The rest must wait till later.”
“Must you go?” she asked, knowing it to be a foolish question.
“I’m afraid so, only for a couple of nights to Bristol. While I’m gone, I want you to remember
what I’m going to tell you. It may—I hope it may—make a difference.”
She tucked her feet under her and settled down to listen like a good child who has been
promised a story. The firelight flickered on her face, but his was in shadow.
“I had been asked by the World Health Organization to give a paper at a conference in Paris,
when I met her. I was the British representative for orthopaedic surgery, which was considered
quite a feather in my cap at the time— I was under thirty in those days—and it may have
impressed her a little,” he began. “You’ve probably been told she sang in cafes and cabarets—a
precarious existence when your talent is mediocre, which hers was. I became infatuated with her
like many other men, and, perhaps, because I wanted to marry her, she took me a little more
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seriously than the others. I wasn’t the kind, you see, to indulge in a casual affaire, more’s the pity.
The more she laughed at my serious intentions, the more determined I became to make her my
wife. I never really knew her background and I don’t suppose I would have cared anyhow. She
was beautiful and amusing and the first woman ever to stir me.”
His voice had become harsher and more abrupt as he spoke, and he paused now to fill and
light a pipe as if he found the telling of his story both painful and difficult.
“Well, in the end she took me. Work was becoming uncertain for her, I had money and an
assured position, and for some reason she wanted British nationality. She made it quite plain
that I was, for her, an escape, refuge, what you will; she was very French in her attitude to an
Englishman’s notion of love. Anyway, we married, and I brought her and Gaston to England. I
was very conscious that Polvane might bore her, though for me it was the home I had loved ever
since I could remember, and at first when I spent recklessly to gratify her smallest whim, l think
she was happy. Then she found she was going to have a child.”
There was a little silence while he sat considering the past, and Lucy held her breath, waiting
for what might come. It hurt her immeasurably that he had known from the beginning that he was
being used as a convenience and had been willing to accept such second-best.
“From that moment,” he went on, and now he spoke with a calm matter-of-factness as if hewere recounting one of his case histories, “our life became unbearable. Marcelle had never
wanted children and she blamed me every hour of the day and night for her condition. My own
passion had, I suppose, considerably cooled by then, but I think it was when I discovered she
was trying to get rid of the child that my emotions became completely sterile.
“I saw her then for exactly what she was, and I knew that once the child was born she would
leave me. We lived out the months of waiting and no one, I think, outside the household,
guessed at the true state of affairs. It was hardest for her, I suppose, for I had my work and she
had only the canker of resentment at the gradual distortion of her beauty. Gaston could manage
her, for he was fond of her and probably understood her temperament, and poor Smithers, who is
loyalty itself to anyone he serves, must have got a certain amount of kick out of the scenes and
dramas, I imagine. They have neither of them spoken of it to me since. The night Pierre was born
I had been called away—” The harshness was back in his voice and Lucy could see the
knuckles of his hands gleam suddenly white beneath the skin. “She fell—I’ve never known
whether by accident or some crazy notion of causing a still-born child. She was dying when I
was recalled and she cursed me to the end. That’s all.”
The tears were running down Lucy’s cheeks, but she did not know that she wept. All those
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“You’ve grown up quite a bit, little Lucy Lamb. I was right, after all, in urging Bart to what many
people considered to be an act of folly.”
Lucy raised startled eyes to her and saw the humanity which lay behind the shrewdness in
Mary’s.
“You mean his marriage? But that was for Pierre’s sake,” she stammered.
“Not so far as I was concerned,” Matron retorted with amusement. “I believed that his being
forced into a relationship with a thoroughly nice, unspoilt young woman who wouldn’t ask too
much of life would pave the way for nature. Don’t look so shocked Lucy. No man of your
husband’s temperament should go celibate through life on account of an old tragedy, besides—I
don’t believe he ever loved that woman. She was selfish to the core.”
“Well !” said Lucy, then threw back her head and laughed, and Mary observed with an odd
tenderness the long, delicate lines of the girl’s neck and throat, the youth and spontaneity in her
laughter.
“Poor Bart!” said Lucy. “How little he knew of your schemings—I wouldn’t have dared!”
“Because,” Mary replied with a twinkle, “you held him in awe like my silly young nurses who
can only admire from a respectful distance. Now you must do a little scheming yourself, if you
haven’t already. You are in love with him, I hope?”
Lucy’s gentle mouth curved in a slow smile but, although she did not answer, she no longer
resented the older woman’s outspokenness, and Mary called abruptly for her bill and insisted on
paying for both their teas.
“Well, I must be getting back to the hospital. It’s supposed to be my afternoon off, but there’salways something to attend to,” she said prosaically, and Lucy got politely to her feet.
“Please come and see us soon,” she said shyly. “I would like—I would like one of Bart’s oldest
friends to be mine, too.”
Matron’s eyes were soft.
“Would you, Lucy? That’s very charming of you,” she said, and, gathering up her parcels, made
her way out of the shop leaving Lucy alone.
II
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The second day was as warm and cloudless as the first, and Pierre, waking in a holiday mood,
was once more insistent that this time they should picnic in Gannet Cove. Lucy gave in, chiding
herself for her unreasoning reluctance to visit the place again. Today Bart would be coming
home, and she would follow Abel’s advice and make a wish at the Corn Rock against his return.
Since it was a little way to walk, she took Pierre’s old push-chair to relieve her of the luncheon
basket and save the boy’s short legs when he got tired. They set out singing and shouting with
happy abandon, and Abel watched them into the distance, one eye on the sky.
“Ar! Storm before nightfall, thought ’twouldn’t last,” he muttered to himself, and went off to his
potting-shed.
The tide was out and Lucy and the child paddled in the pools and built sand-castles and, whenthey were tired, lay down together in the shade of a rock. It was really a very pleasant little cove,
Lucy thought contentedly; after lunch she would effect her pilgrimage to the Corn Rock and make
her wish. They lingered pleasurably over Gaston’s excellent provisions, and afterwards Pierre
curled up in the shade and fell asleep.
Lucy looked down at him with tender eyes. He was so small, so strangely beautiful, she
thought, and, aside from his black hair, so unlike his father. He had his mother’s beauty, she
supposed, and, sighing a little, left him there asleep and walked across the wet sands to the Corn
Rock.
She touched the rock with solemn hands and wished passionately for the children Bart might
give her, and just as li ttle feathery clouds began to drift across the flawless sky, so her happiness
became .unaccountably dimmed; what certainty had she that she could measure up to his
demands; what courage would be needed to give a love which could not be told and receive only
affectionate tolerance in return? Had he not said, himself, that night when he would have taken
her in bitterness and anger, that desire need have nothing to do with love? For a man things were
different, but for a woman the need for love was instinctive and inherent.
Lucy leaned against the Corn Rock, shaken suddenly with tears. The solitariness of the granite
cliffs and the waiting, cruel ocean pressed down on her spirit, and her strange dislike of Gannet
Cove returned to plague her. She turned to run back to Pierre and say they must be going, and
noticed how much nearer the water line was. The tide had turned and was coming in.
There was no sign of the boy, and Lucy began to pack up the luncheon basket He was hiding,
of course, a favourite game of his when her back was turned. In a little while she must go and
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look for him and express great surprise and pretend alarm at his disappearance.
Her alarm, however, became real when she could find no trace of him. The small inlets and
hollows in the cliffs were empty of life, and she began to call, trying to keep the anxiety from her
voice. At last she got an answering shout which held glee that he had fooled her, and presently
she saw him peering at her round a raised platform of rock which jutted out into the sea.
“You did not know about the caves, yes?” he shouted as she ran to meet him. “Come, I will
show you.”
“Oh, not now, poppet,” she protested. “I’ve no idea what the time is and I think we should be
going.”
“Papa must buy you a watch,” he said, and continued firmly, “But now you must see the caves.?They are quite famous and have sticklebacks hanging on the roof.”
“Sticklebacks? Oh, you mean stalactites,” she laughed, and climbed up after him into the
opening above the rock. She could not cheat him of his surprise, besides which caves had
always fascinated her. She and those other children had never found the Gannet Caves all those
years ago.
“Look! Look!” Pierre shouted, pointing to all the marvels he had discovered for himself. “There
are hundreds of eaves all leading out of each other and they come out on the other side.”
“The other side of what?”
“I do not know, but it does not matter. We will not walk so far. Is it not wonderful, Baba?”
The caves were certainly worth exploring, she thought, gazing in wonder at the phosphorescent
stalactites which lit the place with a dim, eerie light. She followed in Pierre’s wake, going from
one cave to another, and became caught up in a spirit of adventure. They sang and shouted,
delighting in the echoes that came back to them, and Pierre chanted Abel’s charm for snake-bite
in case there were adders which swam in the dark little pools they encountered. He was still
singing as they approached the mouth of the first cave on the return journey.
“Underneath a hazlin mote
Lies a braggarty worm with speckled throat—”
He broke off at Lucy’s startled exclamation and looked with astonishment at the changed scene
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before them. The sun and the sands had vanished, and all round them a heaving mass of water
boiled with angry implacabili ty. “What has happened?” Pierre cried.
“The tide has come up,” Lucy said, and remembered Bart saying: “Gannet Cove is harmless
enough if you remember the currents and the tides.”
“Do the caves fill at high water?” she asked, and the boy drew back at the sharpness of alarm
which she could not keep out of her voice.
“I do not know,” he said. “Baba—you are afraid?”
“No, of course not,” she said quickly.
The stretch of water between them and the remaining bit of beach where the path led up thecliffs looked alarmingly wide, but it could not yet be very deep, she thought. She could wade and
carry the boy to, the safety of dry land. “Come along, poppet, we’ll have to get wet. If the water’s
too deep for you I’ll carry you.”
“No!” he said, running back into the cave, and at that moment the storm which Abel had
foreseen broke over them.
It was not, Lucy supposed, very severe, but the sudden deluge of rain turned the sea into a
frightening whirlpool of foam-flecked water, and the lightning was incessant.
“Pierre! We must go while we can!” she shouted, but he was already out of earshot and she
remembered that he was frightened of storms. She found him cowering by one of the many pools
which answered her question as to whether the caves filled at high water, and she gathered him
into her arms for comfort.
“Listen, darling, you said the caves came out on the other side. Are you sure? she asked.
“I think so—I do not really know,” he whispered, beginning to cry.
“Well, we’d better find out,” she said, and took him by the hand.
It seemed that they walked endlessly, slipping and scrambling over rough places, cutting their
knees on stalagmites and barnacles, and when at last they reached the last cave there wasnothing but rock. If there had ever been another entrance, the sea’s slow shifting of rock and
granite had blocked it long ago.
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up the little ‘un, and you not more than a little ‘un yourself.”
There were blankets and oilskins in the boat. One of the men saw to Pierre, wrapping him up
and stowing him away in the stern where he sat, blinking sleepily at his rescuers, but Bart, after a
brief, cursory inspection of his son, devoted his whole attention to Lucy. His face, as he bent over
her, was grey and the skin taught against his bones. He looked as she imagined he had looked
when the dying Marcelle had cursed him for the birth of her child.
“How is it you are here?” she asked, reaching up a hand to him.
“I got back earlier than I had hoped,” he said, and gave her a wan smile. “Do I always have to
come home to unexpected shocks, Lucy Baa-lamb?”
“We were exploring the caves,” she said apologetically. “I never knew the tide could come in soquickly. “I told you Gannet Cove hadn’t finished with me.”
“So you did. Well, we’ll steer clear of the place in future. If it hadn’t been for the chap who found
Pierre’s push-cart at the top of the cliffs—” He broke off, as she snuggled against him, lulled by
the rocking of the boat and the strength and warmth of his arm about her.
“I didn’t know how high the water could get, but I thought it couldn’t get higher than me and
Pierre would be safe,” she said.
“Of all crazy, quixotic things!” he exclaimed, and his voice was unsteady.
“But he was all you cared about,” she said plaintively. “He was why I’m here.”
His hands were gentle on the wet head pressed against him.
“Don’t talk, my lamb,” he said. “Everything can be explained in the morning.”
“Like everything will be better tomorrow?” she said, and there was a pinched look of pain about
her mouth.
“Yes, everything will be better tomorrow,” he said. “Now rest, my dearest, we’ll be home soon.”
Afterwards, Lucy remembered very little about the rest of the journey, except that it was she whoheld Bart’s attention, and not his son. His car was waiting on the jetty and he carried her there,
with Pierre trotting cheerfully behind. At Polvane there was unusual bustle, with Smithers
sweeping the boy off to hot baths and, doubtless, an orgy of story-telling, while Gaston appeared
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braggarty worm with speckled throat; nine double is he…’ ”
“There are no snakes in the tester, my silly lamb. Hold my hand and go to sleep again.”
She slipped a hand into his and knew comfort.
“Do you remember the charm in that book of yours about lying in another county and knitting
the left garter about the right-legged stocking? I can’t remember it; This knot I knit to know the
thing I know not yet ... how does it go on?”
He thought she was wandering and his fingers felt automatically for her pulse.
“Don’t worry about it now,” he said, and she replied with sudden urgency:
“But it’s very important ... you say the charm and then sleep and dream of the husband you’ll
get ... only, of course I have a husband already, haven’t I?”
“Yes,” he said, and saw with surprise in the lamplight that her eyes were clear and no longer
bright with fever, and he remembered now that she had read out the absurd jingle to him the
night he had given her his mother’s pearls.
“Do you go a lot on charms, funny one?” he asked, because it seemed better to let her talk.
“I don’t know,” she answered seriously. “Abel thinks they’re important. He told me to touch the
Corn Rock in Gannet Cove and I did, but I expect it wasn’t much good.”
And what does the Corn Rock represent?”
“Fertility. You wish for children. There! Now I’ve told my wish and it will never come true!”
“Do you want children, Lucy? Yes, you told me you did. You ’d do better to consult your
husband on that issue, and not a rock.”
“Yes,” she said, and gave a little sigh and slept again. He watched her tenderly, absorbing
every angle of her sleeping face, the gentle mouth, the delicate veins which lent a blue shadow
to her eyelids, the endearing curves of the forehead so much like a young child’s. He had
chosen her so lightly, he thought with humility, and had expected, because she had nobackground of her own, that the home and protection he offered should suffice, like the bone one
might carelessly fling to a stray dog.
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He must have moved abruptly, for she opened her eyes and lay blinking up at him in the
lamplight.
“Pierre is safe, isn’t he?” she asked, looking anxious.
“Quite safe. Shut your eyes again.”
“I thought you looked worried.”
“And why shouldn’t I look worried about my wife?”
“You’ve never thought of me as that,” she said. “Not worried exactly, perhaps—kind of
remorseful.”
“Well, perhaps I have cause,” he said gravely, and she turned her face into the pillow, away
from the light.
“You needn’t be, Bart—dear Bart,” she said. “You can’t help it that I love you.”
“You love me?”
“I’m afraid so, but it—it needn’t embarrass you. I had to tell you because that night when I—tried to make you understand, you thought I’d been turned down by Paul. I—I would never have
offered you second-best, Bart.”
“Yet you were prepared to accept second-best from me.”
“That was different. You had given your love long ago. I would have been content with what
was left over.”
He turned her face gently back to the light again, and she felt his fingers tremble slightly as
they touched her.
“But you know the true story of my first marriage, now,” he said. “Doesn’t that show you that you
could be wrong, too?”
She gave a little sigh.
“Yes,” she said, “but it was too late.”
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“But madame is merveilleuse!” he exclaimed with gratifying astonishment. “And to think that
only yesterday you drown holding up the little one!”
“But I didn’t drown—I don’t suppose the water would ever have reached high enough,” she
laughed “Where are my shoes, Gaston, and where is Pierre?”
“Your shoes, I find them, and Pierre he has gone for another peecneec with Smeety, for the fine
weather she will not last long, so Abel say.”
“Gone for a picnic with Smithy! How very queer,” Lucy said, looking quite startled, and the little
Frenchman beamed upon her, holding out the missing sandals.
“It was m’sieur’s orders,” he said demurely. “He does not, he say, want to be bothered with a
child just now.”
“Not want to be bothered with his son—when this is the first free day he’s had for weeks?” Lucy
exclaimed incredulously.
Gaston’s eyes twinkled.
“Enfin, he has more important matters to consider, perhaps. He tell me to say he wait for you in
the garden, when you are ready.”
She took the sandals from him absently, but did not put them on. Dangling them by their straps,
she went slowly into the hall and out through the flower-room. Her mouth felt a little dry. She did
not see Bart where he sat waiting in a bend of the terrace, and he watched her tentative
excursion on to the lawn and the quick glance she cast about as if uncertain what to do next. She
looked very young in a full-skirted white frock he had not seen before, and she swung a pair of
scarlet sandals while her bare feet sketched an involuntary dancing step in the wet grass. Hewatched for a moment longer, unwilling to relinquish the pleasure of observing her unseen, then
he got to his feet.
“Lucy!” he called softly.
She spun round and he could see her small breasts rise in the quick little breath she took, and
then something in the way he stood waiting for her, in the invitation of his outstretched hands,
perhaps, must have banished her uncertainty, for she dropped her sandals on the grass and ran
across the lawn and straight into his arms.
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