Sara Seale Read online

  "Yes, it's big," Rick said, bringing the car to a stop before the heavy front door, flanked by granite pillars and a long terrace of stone.

  Sol brought in the luggage and Anna followed Rick into a high, vaulted hall. Flags were beneath her feet and the bare stone walls seemed cold and austere. The house held an unnatural silence.

  "Where's Miss Ruth?" Rick asked, frowning.

  "Away with the dog, I shouldn't wonder," Sol replied, dumping Anna's suitcases on the flags.

  "She expected us. She should be here," Rick said, and Sol shrugged his broad shoulders.

  "Well, you know Miss Ruth, maister," he said. "Her wasn't taken with your news. Maybe her still hankers after t'other one."

  "Very likely," Rick replied, "but that's no reason for impoliteness. Find her, Sol, and tell her we've arrived. Come in here, Anna."

  She followed him again into a long, high room, with rush matting covering the floor and easy chairs set about a wide stone fireplace where logs glowed on an open hearth. Cabinets and armoires lined the walls, giving the room a museum-like air, but the fire was welcoming. Even in June, Anna thought, this room would need a fire to provide comfort, and she made for it gratefully, aware of the silence and hostility of the place.

  "Would you like to see your room?" Rick asked, and she became aware of him standing beside the hearth, looking down at her crouched beside the warmth.

  "In a little while," she said. "A fire's so welcoming, don't you think?"

  "I'm sorry my sister isn't here," he replied brusquely. "My grandmother, of course, won't come down until dinner is ready."

  Anna thought nostalgically of the dreary suppers in the hostel. It was already long past the hour at which they would have fed. The light was beginning to go and the shadows at the far end of the room made it seem as if it was stretching endlessly into obscurity.

  "Should I change?" she asked, suddenly aware that she would be taking dinner and not supper at Trevallion, and wondering which of the frocks she had bought for Toby would be most suitable.

  "We don't change," Rick said with a faint smile. "You will find that life at Trevallion is very simple. The house may be big, but we don't live in any sort of grandeur. Would you like a drink?"

  "A drink?" Anna was confused. Toby was the only person

  who had ever bought her drinks. She did not know what to reply should Rick ask what was her choice.

  "A glass of sherry, perhaps," he said, smiling at her hesi-tance, and crossed to one of the armoires which, when opened, seemed to house a multitude of botdes and fine-stemmed glasses. He poured the sherry and handed her a glass.

  "To our engagement," he said a shade sardonically, raising his glass to her. "Don't be put off by my family, will you, Anna?"

  But when Ruth came in a few minutes later, a liver and white spaniel at her heels, Anna felt her heart sink still further. Ruth Peveril had her brother's big nose and dark skin but none of his ease of manner. She was a large young woman, and her corduroy slacks did not flatter her breadth of hip. She came defiantly into the room, her hands in her pockets, her eyes, under a shock of dark hair, as cold and appraising as her brother's.

  "I'm sorry I was out," she said. "How's the leg, Rick?"

  "It might have been more polite had you remained to welcome Anna," Rick replied, ignoring her enquiry. "When I bring my fiancee home for the first time, I expect a little attention."

  "Sorry," she answered gruffly. "Your news was rather unexpected. Where is the girl?"

  Anna was already scrambling to her feet. She did not know whether Ruth had really not seen her in the shadowy room or was still refusing the welcome she had not been there to offer.

  "How do you do?" she said, holding out a hand.

  Ruth advanced into the circle of firelight, keeping her hands in her pockets.

  "Hullo," she said. "Goodness, but you're a poor thing for a Peveril to fancy!"

  "Ruth!" said Rick sharply, but she paid no attention to him. As her eyes flicked over Anna her mouth curved in a disagreeable smile.

  "You'll never fit here," she said. "It was rather unkind of my brother to pick on someone like you, but the Peverils

  aren't kind. You'll discover that. Well, since you're here, we must make the best of you. It won't be for long, I imagine."

  Rick observed quite calmly, "How long Anna stays here is entirely my affair, but I warn you, I'll not put up with your moods and tantrums. You'll be pleasant, if you know how, and you'll be polite, too, what's more."

  "Oh, please-" Anna interposed, now thoroughly embarrassed, but they took no notice of her. They glared at one another, alike yet unlike. Rick's hard face was a little frightening, but it was still a surprise to see his sister's eyes fall before his.

  "You're the boss," she said, but her voice held resentment. "In that case, show Anna her room. She will want to freshen up before dinner."

  "Come on," said Ruth, and Anna followed her unwillingly. Stairs curved from the hall in a graceful semi-circle, and oil lamps in sconces on the walls had now been lighted. They threw eerie shadows on the winding stairs, on the hostile back of the girl going ahead and the dog padding at her heels.

  "You're in here," Ruth said, flinging open a door. "You wouldn't, of course, expect to have Alix's room?"

  "Why should I? I've never met her," retorted Anna, remembering that Rick had already mentioned that name. "You will," said Ruth and closed the door. The room was high and bare, like the rest of the house. The bed seemed vast compared to the one she had occupied in the hostel, and the tall windows, letting in the last of the evening light, were hung with dark, heavy tapestry. A lamp standing on the bedside table was turned low, spreading a soft circle of light, but the dressing-table with its old-fashioned hinged mirrors was almost in darkness.

  Anna attended to her face as best she could. She had never lived with oil lamps before and was afraid to turn up the wick in case she should set fire to something. The house, she supposed, must be built on the headland, for she could hear the sea, the only sound in the silence which seemed to surround them. It was nearly nine o'clock, and although she

  was hungry after her long journey, she dreaded going downstairs and partaking of food with these dark Peverils who had no welcome for her.

  When it became apparent that no one was coming to fetch her, she made her way back to the long room in which she had left Rick. He was still there, drinking sherry, and Ruth was brooding by the window, her dog at her feet. She had changed her slacks for a skirt, but otherwise seemed to have done little to her appearance. Neither brother nor sister was taking the slightest notice of the other.

  "Another sherry, Anna?" Rick said, when he saw her. "I hope you have everything you want upstairs."

  "Yes, thank you," Anna replied, declining the sherry with a shake of the head. "I don't understand about lamps, though, I'm afraid. I didn't like to turn mine up."

  "Why couldn't you have shown her?" he demanded of his sister. "You must know that people from towns aren't used to lamps."

  Ruth shrugged but made no reply and the door opened suddenly to admit old Mrs. Peveril.

  She looked to Anna like a witch, advancing slowly down the length of the room, for she had the Peveril beaky nose and large frame, but she was very bent and leaned heavily on a long ebony stick, the skirt of her black, old-fashioned dress trailing behind her. Her white hair should have been piled high in the grand manner, but was, instead, screwed in-differently into a tight bun. Jewels flashed in her ears.

  "Well, Rick," she said, "has the treatment done its job?"

  "I think so, Gran," he replied. "The limp is hardly noticeable. Are you well, yourself?"

  "I'm always well. Age and arthritis don't improve with the years, but both are legacies we have to put up with. Where is this young woman?"

  Anna stepped forward a little nervously. The room was lamplit now, but it was disconcerting the way the female Peverils failed to notice her. She thought Rick's eyes were a trifle malicious as he made the introducti
on.

  "This is Anna Crewe, Gran," he said smoothly. "She has not, as yet, a very high opinion of Trevallion, I'm afraid."

  The old lady stopped and looked at Anna. Had she been straight and upright like her grandchildren, she would have dwarfed Anna. As it was, their faces met at much the same level.

  "This is your fiancee?" Mrs. Peveril said with somewhat grim surprise, and Ruth laughed.

  "You may well have your doubts, Gran," she said. "Not the choice you would expect a Peveril to make, is she?"

  "Be quiet, Ruth." The old lady's dry voice was suddenly like the crack of a whip. "And shut that dog up before we go in to dinner. You know I don't allow animals in the dining-room."

  Anna was surprised to see the girl obey. She had begun to think that these Peverils must perpetually defy each other. She was conscious now of Mrs. Peveril's gaze, and aware, with a slight sense of shock, that the eyes in that old, wrinkled face were the eyes of a girl, dark, clear, and unbelievably brilliant.

  "So you're Rick's choice, are you?" she said. "Well, well ... you always had a sense of humour, hadn't you, Rick?"

  "Anna might be forgiven for taking that amiss, Grand," he said calmly. "Have you no welcome for her? She got little enough from Ruth."

  "Anyone living under our roof has my welcome or they wouldn't be here," she said ambiguously. "How old are you, child?"

  "Nineteen," said Anna.

  "Nineteen! My poor Rick, you're going out of your class!" "Do you think so? But you, like Ruth, are perhaps prejudiced."

  "At my age, I've learnt wisdom. I should have thought at yours you might have, too."

  "Wisdom isn't a monopoly of the old," he replied. "Neither has it the same meaning for any two people."

  "You think not? Possibly Miss Crewe has yet to learn the meaning."

  R:ck finished his sherry and put down the glass.

  "Are you trying to tell Anna already that she's unwise to marry into our family?" he asked gendy, but his grandmother barely glanced at him. Her eyes were still on Anna, probing, assessing, and finally discarding.

  "Poor child," she said, suddenly moving away. "I think you've been tricked—as we all have. Well, Anne Crewe, enjoy Trevallion if you can. When we all get to know each other better you'll most likely come to my way of thinking. Dinner should be ready, Rick. Shall we go in?"

  It was an uncomfortable meal for Anna. She sat silently, picking her food and listening to talk which had little meaning for her. Rick at one end of the vast refectory table and his grandmother at the other, although separated by so much length and space, appeared to find no difficulty in conversing. Ruth sitting opposite, see behind the heavy candelabrum, seemed sullen and uninterested. Mrs. Peveril ignored her just as she was ignoring Anna, but it did not do, Anna discovered, to dissociate oneself from what was being said, for very occasionally Mrs. Peveril would ask a sudden question of her and her unexpected attention was more disconcerting than her indifference.

  Anna amused herself by observing the room, wondering if the dark portraits represented past Peverils, and if the piled-up, old-fashioned silver on chest and sideboard was loot handed down by the smuggling ancestors. She was surprised to see that Sol waited on them, almost unrecognizable in a starched white coat but otherwise without the hallmarks of the well-trained servant. Every so often Rick would ask him a question and he would join quite naturally in the conversation until old Mrs. Peveril frowned him into the background.

  It was when the dessert had been put on the table and Sol had retired that Mrs. Peveril asked suddenly:

  "Have you heard from Alix?"

  Rick went on peeling an apple.

  "No, why should I?" he said.

  "I thought she might have acquainted you with her plans."

  "Why on earth should she? I haven't seen Alix for

  years."

  Mrs. Peveril sat cracking nuts with much skill and precision. The jewels from her ringed fingers caught the light, but a magnificent diamond sunburst which she wore at her throat sent out shafts of fire.

  "You'll see her soon—very likely tomorrow," she replied calmly. "She's here."

  Rick looked up then, the shining coil of apple skin slipping unnoticed to the floor.

  " Here!" he exclaimed. "In Merrynporth, do you mean?"

  "No," said his grandmother. "She's at Trevallion. I've let her have the old cowman's cottage for the summer. After all, we have no cows now. I must say she's made it very charming."

  Rick brought his fist down on the table with such force that Anna jumped.

  "What devil's brew are you cooking up now, Gran?" he demanded harshly. "I'll not have these schemes and plots going on behind my back."

  "There's been no scheming," said Mrs. Peveril, cracking the last nut and laying down the nut-crackers. "Alix has fallen on hard times, that's all. When she wanted to come back, the least I could do was to offer her a roof for a while. I didn't think, in the circumstances, it would be suitable to have her staying here."

  Rick's face was dark with anger.

  "Is it any more suitable that she should be housed in the cowman's cottage a stone's throw away?" he said. "You hadn't my permission to let the cottage. You must tell her to go."

  "Tell her yourself," said Ruth. "I bet you won't."

  "Shut up!" he snapped, without looking at her. "Gran, you had no right to lease her the cottage and you know it. What are you up to?"

  Mrs. Peveril's nose looked suddenly very prominent in the candlelight, and for a moment she straightened her bent back.

  "All these years I've had the right," she replied haughtily. "In your father's time, in your grandfather's, it was I who ruled Trevallion."

  He pushed back his chair.

  "But this is in my time, and you've never ruled me, Gran," he said quite pleasandy.

  For a moment it seemed as if she would retort fiercely, then she became aware of Anna, pale and alarmed, looking from one to the other of them, and of Ruth, silent again, but enjoying every moment.

  "We are forgetting your fiancee," she said, rising to her feet with difficulty and reaching for her stick. "As Ruth suggests, if you want Alix to go you must tell her so yourself. I will not take back hospitality that has already been offered and accepted. I shall go to my rooms now. Goodnight, Miss Crewe. Don't let our family arguments upset you. You will hear plenty of them."

  Rick escorted her to the door and across the hall to the stairs. Ruth looked at Anna through the spreading branches of the candelabrum and smiled mockingly, reminiscent of her brother.

  "No, don't let us upset you, Anna," she said. "You have to be made of strong stuff to stomach the Peverils, you know. I'm going out with my dog now so I'll leave you to Rick. Goodnight."

  "Goodnight," said Anna faintly, and went on sitting at the abandoned dinner table, apprehensively awaiting Rick's return.

  CHAPTER III

  Anna went to bed that night longing for her ugly, poky room at the hostel. She thought of Toby and the little miracle which had changed her life for a few short weeks and wept disconsolately in her high, unfamiliar bed at Trevallion.

  Rick had added nothing to ease her discomfort when he had come back to the dining-room and found her sitting there alone in the candlelight.

  "I'm sorry you should have been subjected to one of our family squabbles on your first night here, Anna," he said. "This fresh complication is altogether damnable."

  She looked up at him under her lashes. His anger with his grandmother had been disproportionate, she thought, unless the fact of the unknown Alix's presence nearby could still upset him.

  "Perhaps she won't stay long," she said, trying to be reassuring if that was what he wanted, and watched the sardonic lines of his face tighten into hardness.

  "She will stay just as long as it suits Gran to play games with all of us," he said. "Well, what do you think of us?"

  She moved uneasily, very conscious of his piercing regard.

  "It's too early to form an opinion, don't you think?" she answered
evasively. "I clearly don't please your grandmother and your sister on first acquaintance."

  "You don't need to pay any attention to Ruth's manners," he said. "She hasn't had much of a life, I suppose, and she's always worshipped Alix. Women shouldn't remain at home, nursing adolescent crushes and devoting all their attention to a dog."

  "That's rather cruel," Anna said. "Perhaps for some women, that's all they have."

  He stood looking down at her, observing absendy how the

  candlelight lent a silver sheen to her hair and a frail delicacy to her small, pointed face.

  "It's true," he said abruptly, "you aren't made of the stuff to fashion Peveril material. Gran and my sister can't be blamed for looking at you askance."

  "Am I so alien, then?" she asked.

  "Yes, to one of my family, but that had a certain charm for me when I suggested the arrangement, you know." "You wanted to score off them?"

  "Not exactly. 1 think I wanted to cause surprise as well as annoyance, and I've certainly done that."

  "I don't care," said Anna, lifting her chin, "to be used as a kind of joke against your family."

  He idly picked a nut from a silver bowl and cracked it carelessly and expertly between his strong teeth.

  "You will find that you are no joke to my family," he said with a touch of irony.

  "To you, then, perhaps?"

  He smiled but made no direct answer.

  "What are you complaining of, anyhow?" he said. "You've saved your silly little pride and earned yourself a pleasant summer's holiday. You didn't have to come."

  "I'm not complaining," Anna replied, feeling suddenly very tired. "In any case, the arrangement isn't for ever."

  "Nothing's for ever."

  "Nothing?"

  "Nothing. Old loves, old ties, even marriages have to face the inevitability of time to snuff out the glory." "That's very bitter."

  "Bitter? Life can be bitter. One has no right, perhaps, to expect anything else."

  She shivered. What was it about these Peverils, she wondered, that made them snatch and scrap and deny life's gifts?