Sara Seale Read online

  "I suppose it seems strange to you that someone should want to take your sister out to dinner," she said with a small edge to her voice. "Ruth can be very attractive when she takes trouble."

  "So I observed last night. Are you meddling, Anna?" "Meddling?"

  "You seem to have rather biased views on the Peverils and their way of life."

  "I'm not a meddler," said Anna stiffly. "But I don't see why Ruth shouldn't enjoy herself just because-"

  "Just because what?"

  "Nothing. You'd better ask her yourself." Rick rose to leave the table.

  "I shall do nothing of the sort," he remarked calmly. "Ruth is old enough to choose her own pleasures, which is, perhaps, more than can be said of you. Come and walk in the garden."

  She followed him obediendy. It was a relief that he had not immediately voiced his grandmother's views on David Evans' unsuitability, but she wished that now she might continue with Birdie's lessons in piquet, or even make her excuses and go to bed.

  She walked with Rick through the dew-drenched garden. The light had nearly gone from the sky, and moths ditted through the dusk, brushing her cheek as she walked. In that strange half-light, Rick seemed different again. He said little, but his eyes were gentle as he turned to smile at her or hold back a branch which barred her passage.

  They walked across the wasteland and Anna wondered if he had come this way hoping to see Alix. There were no lights in the cottage. Rick passed it without a glance and almost at once they were on the cliffs, with the sea washing gently below them and the lights of Merrynporth twinkling from the distance.

  "How lovely it is," Anna said, watching the last long streak of light fade into the horizon.

  "Yes," he answered. "I never get tired of this bit of coast. In the winter it can be wild and cruel, but always beautiful. We get wrecks to this day, and even that has a curious, savage beauty."

  "With lives being lost?"

  "Oh, the coastguards are pretty efficient. Very few lives are lost—only the ship breaking up on the rocks—someone's heartache, I suppose."

  Blow the wind southerly . . . thought Anna, and shivered.

  "In the bad old days, of course, the tinners would be swarming out to the wreck for plunder." Rick said, staring out to sea.

  "Peverils were among the tinners then, weren't they?"

  "I believe so. We came of a rascally lot, but then so do most of today's respectable Cornish folk. Does that give you cause to draw back?"

  "Of course not! I daresay my forebears were hanged for stealing sheep or burnt as witches, or something."

  "Burnt as witches!" His laugh was low and suddenly full of tenderness, and he turned her gently round to face him. "There are no witches in your family, I don't mind betting, unless they were the kind who did magic with unicorns."

  She could barely see his face in the fading darkness, but his hands were warm on her shoulders, and she knew that for that moment at least he was idled with gendeness for her, gendeness and an unspoken question.

  "Unicorns?" she asked, because in the sudden magic of the evening it seemed quite natural to talk of unicorns.

  "Don't you know the old legend?" he said. "In mediaeval times if you wanted to catch a unicorn you put out a chaste maiden as bait. Sooner or later the unicorn would come along and lay his head trustfully in the maiden's lap."

  "Why?"

  "Your guess is as good as mine. I think you might have been use for bait, Anna. Any hard-bitten unicorn would lay his head trustfudy in your lap."

  It was nearly dark now. A little breeze blew off the sea, stirring Anna's hair and the thin, pale stuff of her frock. Rick had her hands now held against his breast and all at once his grip tightened.

  "I want things to work out for us," he said with sudden urgency. "I know we started off on the wrong foot—or I did —I know there's a big difference in our ages. Can we learn to understand each other, Anna? Can you be content with me, here at Trevallion?"

  She lifted her face for his kiss. When he spoke like that, when he held her hands against his breast and she felt the living warmth coming from him, she knew that whatever he might feel for her she would be content with him always.

  CHAPTER IX

  Next day Anna went down to the shore and sat by one of the rocks, dabbling her feet in a pool. Even here the heat was already intense. The rocks seemed to ding back a warmth that was fierce and rather uncomfortable. Anna looked up at the towering red cliffs and remembered the sweetness of the evening, the breeze that had stirred her hair, the hot smell of gorse intermingled with those other scents, wild country scents, and the tang of the sea, salt and fresh and, to her, still new and exciting. Only last night Rick had held her to him and told her that absurd legend about the unicorn and her bones had melted within her and she could believe, in that strange moment of unison, that he had some fond regard for her.

  A plane flew in over the sea, a tiny speck in the sky, and she looked up, remembering Toby. Poor Toby, she thought, with sudden understanding, realizing nearly too late that love and marriage could not spring from an evening's folly and a young girl's infatuation. Had Toby, reflected Anne, idly picking the hot seaweed from the rock, not been in the same nursing home as Rick, she would never have found herself at Trevallion and committed to joining her life with a stranger's; had Ruth been bolder she would not have been frustrated and lonely; had Alix not married Guy Brook—Anna drew her feet angrily out of the water and stretched her toes on the rock to dry them. What was the use, she thought impatiently, of imagining what might have been? Life was here and now, to be made the best of, whatever the difficulties.

  When she got back to the house at lunch-time, she was surprised to find old Mrs. Peveril downstairs.

  "Are you feeling more rested?" she asked with a trace of anxiety, remembering how frad the old lady had seemed after the party.

  "Don't talk to me as though I ought to be bed-ridden!"

  Mrs. Peveril snapped in quite her old manner. "I've no doubt it was convenient to have me out of the way yesterday, but I hear what's going on just the same."

  Anna thought it wisest to remain silent, but Mrs. Peveril fixed her with that bright, youthful gaze and said sharply:

  "Well, what have you to say for yourself? "

  Anna combed her fingers nervously through her fine hair, feeling the small drops of moisture at her temples. The walk back from the shore had been trying in the noonday heat. She wanted to go upstairs and sponge her face in cold water, and she wanted still more to avoid this unexpected encounter with the old lady.

  "I'm sorry," she said, "if I've offended in any way. What has upset you, Mrs. Peveril?"

  "Ruth's upset me, of course, and you've been egging her on."

  "Oh!"

  It was too much, thought Anna indignantly. Why couldn't they let the unfortunate girl alone instead of treating her as if she were an inexperienced schoolroom miss still in her teens?

  "I haven't egged Ruth on to anything you could disapprove of," she said. "David Evans took her out to dinner in Merrynporth yesterday evening, that's all."

  "That's all!" Mrs. Peveril exclaimed. "Do you realize they were seen in Merrynporth behaving like a couple of trippers, or worse, making love—if you like to call it that—in the public shelters on the quay?"

  "Who told you that?" asked Anna quickly. "Not Rick, I'm sure."

  "Of course it wasn't Rick. Alix happened to be in Merrynporth herself last night and saw them."

  "Oh, Alix!" said Anna, and felt suddenly angry. How dared Alix come to Trevallion making mischief because she had been rebuffed herself? Anna remembered her at breakfast, entering by the front door because she wished to avoid Anna and Ruth on the terrace, running to Mrs. Peveril to make

  trouble for one member of the family because she could not, herself, have another.

  "She did right to tell me," Mrs. Peveril said sharply. "We are well known in Merrynporth. I don't care to have my granddaughter talked about."

  "I don't suppose,"
said Anna carefully, "there was any cause for the sort of talk you mean. David is an extremely nice young man and hardly likely to compromise Ruth in a place where they both are known—or himself, either, if it comes to that."

  "You're very bold, miss," Mrs. Peveril observed, looking down her beaky nose. "Don't think that because you are going to marry my grandson you have the right to meddle in our affairs."

  "That would never occur to me," Anna replied. "But I certainly think Ruth is entitled to lead her own life. After all, she's not a child."

  "H'm . . ." Mrs. Peveril observed. "I'll give you this, Anna—for all your missish ways you've got spirit. Well, how you and Rick choose to disport yourselves is your affair, but understand this—I will not have any granddaughter of mine behaving like a shop-girl with the local vet. If the dog is merely an excuse to get the young man out here on some pretext or other, then the dog must go. Ruth should know better, at her age, than to set her cap at any man who gives her a civil word. I've told her this, and now I'm telling you, so I trust there willbe no further trouble."

  Anna escaped then and fled upstairs to bathe her face and brush the tangles from her hair. Her angry thoughts were full of Alix; Alix whom Ruth loved and admired, making mischief and exaggerating in order to enjoy some small, petty revenge on the Peverils.

  It was difficult to know what to do with the rest of the afternoon. The tide would be wrong for bathing, and, in any case, Anna felt too exhausted for the trip to the shore. She spent the afternoon under the cedar on the lawn, stretched in a deck

  chair, waiting for the moment when Sol would bring the tea. It was Rebecca who brought tea however, and Anna remembered this was Sol's evening out

  "Is Mrs. Peveril coming down?" Anna asked.

  "Nay. . . ." Rebecca's dark, hostile gaze dwelt for a moment on Anna's face. "Mrs. Peveril don't come down till dinner, as you well know."

  "She was down for lunch," said Anna irritably, aware of the woman's dislike for her.

  "Maybe," said Rebecca censoriously. "When there's things need doing, the missus is always around. Will I pour your tea, miss?"

  "No, thank you," said Anna, and the woman went back to the house, her tray held like a shield before her. Ruth did not appear, but Birdie came, chattering of the pigs and the topiary. Anna waited on him dutifully and was touched and a little ashamed when he said suddenly:

  "I've been thinking, Anna—when Rick and you are married, you won't want me around."

  "What do you mean, Birdie?" she said. "You've always been part of Trevallion. You don't want to go, do you?"

  "No ... no ..." He sounded suddenly distressed. "But —well, you and Rick won't want somebody always here when you're first married. I'd thought-"

  "Birdie dear," Anna interrupted gently, "we couldn't do without you. We've told you so already. You've lived at Trevallion for years. Do you think Rick would turn you out, now?"

  "No," he said, looking vague, "I don't suppose he would. But-—Anna, I've always wanted a little place of my own. Everyone's been very kind, but I'd like a little place of my own. I thought, when Alix had gone, I might have the cowman's cottage. I would do my work here just the same, but —well, a place of one's own is different, isn't it?"

  "Yes," said Anna softly, "quite different. Why haven't you asked for the cottage before?"

  "Oh, I don't know. Things have been as they are for so

  long—I haven't, you see, any money to pay rent. I—I do the chores here for my keep."

  Anna looked at the little man, at his beaky, Peveril nose, his receding chin and the apologetic look in his mild, dark eyes.

  "If you had the cottage," she said gently, "you could work off the rent by what you do here."

  "Yes!" he said with unwonted enthusiasm, then his face fell.

  "But I would have no money for food. Cousin Maud—she's very generous as things are—I don't know how it would be if I had the cottage and had to fend for myself."

  "Have you never asked Rick?" she said. "After all, it's he who really owns the place."

  "No," said Birdie, looking surprised. "No, I never have. Cousin Maud has always seemed the head of the house, you know, even when her son was alive. I suppose it really all belongs to Rick."

  "Yes," said Anna. "I think Mrs. Peveril has had too long a run."

  "Dear me!" said Birdie, looking confused. "I'd never even thought—of course, Rick has been head of the house since his father died. Dear mel"

  He went away soon after that, back to the piggeries, or the topiary, wherever his interests lay at the moment Anna sat on under the cedar tree, nibbling biscuits and drink cups of tea, wondering how the Peverils had managed to exist all this time, Birdie and Ruth with their subservience to family claims, Rick, head of the house and, apparently, insensible of the needs of his relations.

  When Rebecca had taken away the tea-things, Anna sat on under the cedar, thinking over the past few days and the future, too, when she and Rick would be married and Trevallion would, in a sense, be hers, just as it had always been old Mrs. Peveril's. Nobody came. Ruth, she supposed, was sulking in her room, Mrs. Peveril showing her displeasure by retiring until dinner-time, and Rick was still at the quarry. Anna's temples still throbbed. Even in the shade of the cedar tree, the

  heat of the day penetrated to dampen the forehead and make the lightest of clothes stick to the body. The midges were gathering, as they did most evenings, hovering in little clouds under the branches of the tree. Soon they would start biting, thought Anna dispiritedly, and went into the house to have a bath before dinner.

  She put on the coral chiffon frock bought for those special occasions with Toby. It was not a night for dressing up, but she had never worn the frock and it seemed sad that it should not have an airing. She had bought it to match her mother's corals, but remembering Rick's strictures of the night before, put on the pearls instead. They were beautiful, she thought, regarding her reflection in the mirror; they lay against her softly tanned skin, smooth, creamy and translucent. She wondered how many Peverils had worn them. How many times they, too, had gazed into a mirror and admired the sheen of the pearls against their own fair flesh.

  Her hair was long enough to turn up now, and because of the heat, and remembering Rick's aversion to pony-tails, she twisted it on top of her head, securing it there with pins and a twist of ribbon. How odd, she thought, gazing at her reflection, I look like one of those characterless miniatures of Victorian misses.

  When she came downstairs, Rick was already home. He had drinks set out on the terrace and his eyes turned thought-fudy on Anna as she came out into the evening sunlight.

  "How charming!" he said. "I like your hair that way, Anna. Why have I never seen this dress before?"

  "There's been no occasion to wear it," she answered. "I only put it on tonight because it's been so hot and my other things looked crushed. Was it unbearable at the quarry, Rick?"

  "Pretty stinking. It's worse for the men, though, hewing out rock in the full heat of the sun."

  "Yes, I suppose so. You've never taken me to the quarry."

  "We will be married, I think, about the middle of September," he said, as if he were continuing an interrupted discus-

  sion. "I can take time off from the quarry then. Where would you like to go for a honeymoon?"

  She did not know what to answer. She had not got as far as thinking of honeymooning with Rick and all it would imply.

  "Does the idea dismay you?" he asked, observing the colour deepen under her skin.

  "No," she said quickly, "no, of course not. I—I don't know, Rick. I've never been abroad—or anywhere much."

  "Then you'd better leave it to me," he said. "Where's Ruth?"

  "I don't know. She—well, there's been a little unpleasantness. Mrs. Peveril hauled her over the coals about last night's episode. I haven't seen her all the afternoon."

  He frowned.

  "How did Grand know? I didn't tell her anything."

  "But Alix did. She saw them in Merrynporth
, apparently."

  "Oh!" he frowned. "I'm sorry about last night, Anna. I should have known better than to get the poor girl on the raw. But Ruth is so—so—well, I supose she makes me savage with that eternal assumption that we've all got it in for her."

  Anna watched him over the rim of her tall glass. His dark face was set and hard, the beaky nose arrogant as she always remembered it, but there was apology in his eyes, and a plea for understanding.

  "I think you have, in a way," she said gently. "I mean, your grandmother—and even you—have always taken her for granted. Ruth's an unhappy, rather frustrated person, I think."

  The softness went out of his eyes.

  "Trying to reform us all, Anna?" he said mockingly. "We've got along very well at Trevallion for a long time, you know."

  "You may have!" she retorted. "But Ruth is a woman. She wants, I imagine, more than the crusts and crumbs you and Mrs. Peveril choose to throw her."

  "Really?" said Rick coolly, his eyebrows shooting up, but

  at that moment his grandmother came out on to the terrace and the subject was abandoned.

  "Well, Rick," she said, taking the chair he pulled out for her, "are we going to have a storm?"

  "I shouldn't think so, Grand. The glass seems pretty steady."

  "It's been very hot. Anna, my dear, that's a pretty colour but it makes you look washed out. Do you feel quite well?"

  "Yes, thank you, Mrs. Peveril," Anna replied, feeling at once that the coral chiffon, so expensive, so yearned after at the time, was unbecoming. "It's been so hot today." And, she would have liked to add, there had also been exhausting family disturbances.

  "Yes, of course," said Mrs. Peveril, and her eyes dwelt on Anna for a moment, plainly conveying that she knew what the girl was thinking.

  Rick replenished his glass and seemed suddenly moody. The heat of the day still hung over the lawns and the wasteland in a shimmering haze, and the evening insects had gathered to plague them.

  "It would be better indoors," Mrs. Peveril observed, watching the midges dance in a shaft of sunlight penetrating through the branches of the cedar tree, but they continued to sit on, and presently Birdie joined them, mopping his forehead with a large bandana handkerchief and remarking that it was the hottest summer he had known at Trevallion.