Sara Seale Read online

  "You're tired," he said, suddenly observing her pinched face. "It was a long journey and we were very late with dinner. You'd better go to bed."

  She got to her feet obediendy and a little thankfully. She

  had no wish to prolong this unfamiliar tete-a-tete with Rick Peveril. He accompanied her to her room to show her how to manipulate the lamp and stood for a moment, looking round the room. One of the new nylon nightdresses she had bought for Toby lay across the bed, a pretty, frivolous affair of frills and ribbons. Rick picked it up.

  "New," he remarked. "Was it bought for the young airman?"

  She felt the tears sting her eyelids and snatched the nightdress from him.

  "It can hardly concern you, can it, Mr. Peveril?" she retorted angrily.

  He sighed.

  "You really must try to remember to call me Rick," he observed patientiy. "Goodnight, Anna. I hope we all make a pleasant impression on you tomorrow."

  But when the morrow came it seemed that none of them was making much effort to produce a pleasant impression. Anna found it difficult to find topics of conversation which would interest any of them. Ruth ignored her, Rick seemed preoccupied, and old Mrs. Peveril kept to her rooms until tea-time. It had been another grey day and a persistent drizzle had kept Anna indoors. At lunch she met Birdie, that distant relation of whom Rick had spoken and who had been absent last night. He was a thin, elderly little man whose name seemed to suit him. He had the beaky Peveril nose, but in him it merely dwarfed his other features, giving him the appearance of a crow that was moulting. His bright, beady eyes and sparse, grizzled black hair added to the illusion. He greeted Anna with slight surprise and asked her where she was staying.

  "Here," said Rick, the corners of his mouth lifting in a quirk of amusement. "Anna and I have just got engaged. Didn't they tell you?"

  "Oh, yes, yes, I believe it was mentioned," Birdie murmured vaguely, and perched a pair of pince-nez crookedly on his nose in order to observe Anna more closely.

  "Dear me!" he said, looking rather bewildered. "She's not at all like Alix, is she?"

  "No," said Rick a trifle grimly, "she isn't at all like Alix."

  "What a pity," Birdie said, then, concentrating fussily on the food which had been set before him, appeared to forget Anna's existence for the rest of the meal.

  Rick proposed driving over to the quarry after lunch to see how things had fared during his absence. He did not suggest that Anna should accompany him and frowned when she asked a little forlornly when he would be back. It had already been a long morning.

  "In time for a late tea," he said. "If you can't amuse yourself, Anna, there's a wireless set in the den. Gran won't have one in the general living-rooms."

  "Where is the den?" she asked, not because she particularly wanted to listen to the radio but because he seemed impatient that she had nothing with which to occupy herself.

  "Hasn't Ruth shown you where all the rooms are?" he exclaimed, and immediately raised his voice, shouting for his sister.

  She came unwillingly, an old mackintosh slung round her shoulders and a dog lead in her hands.

  "What do you want?" she demanded ungraciously. "I'm just going out with Ranger."

  "Then you'll postpone it till you've done your duty as hostess," he replied crisply. "Why haven't you shown Anna over the house?"

  Ruth sent Anna a look of dislike under her heavily marked brows.

  "I naturally thought you'd prefer to do that yourself," she retorted. "Birdie and I have kept out of the way all the morning, trying to be tactful. Lovers expect to have some privacy, don't they?"

  For a moment Anna thought Rick would precipitate another quarrel, but he only said:

  "You know very well that Birdie works with the pigs in

  the morning. Far from keeping out of the way he scarcely seemed prepared for Anna's visit at all. Show her where everything is, please, and answer any questions she wants to ask. I'd be off now."

  As the front door closed behind him, Ruth flung her mackintosh across a chest in the hall and the lead after it. The dog, Ranger, knowing himself to be cheated of a walk, tucked down his tail and sat gazing at his mistress with melancholy drooping ears and eyes.

  "Poor old man ... poor boy ..." the girl said softly, and Anna, seeing the unconscious tenderness in her face as she spoke to her dog, said shyly:

  "Never mind now if you want to go out. I can find my way round the house if you'll warn me where I mustn't trespass."

  "And have Brother Rick pitch into me when he comes home? Not likely! Why didn't he show you round himself?" "I suppose he didn't think of it."

  "You're not a very matey couple, I must say," observed Ruth sourly.

  "Would you call the Peverils matey as a family?" Anna retorted, and the older girl glanced at her with faint surprise.

  "Possibly not," she replied. "Well, we'd better make a start."

  They went from room to room; the long living-room where they had all met last night, the dining-room, chilly and forbidding, the table still uncleared, the little morning-room where they had breakfasted, a stiff, old-fashioned drawing-room, clearly never used, a smoking-room, redolent of past masculine Peverils, and the den, containing not only the radio but an upright piano, a multitude of books and worn easy chairs.

  Ruth did not offer to show her the kitchen quarters or acquaint her with the servants, which as far as Anna could gather consisted of Sol and his wife and a couple of daily girls from the village. The spaniel, which had followed them from room to room, began to whine, and Ruth shrugged

  herself into her mackintosh.

  "Why don't you go for a walk?" she asked impatiently, "though I suppose you never go out in London if it rains."

  Anna smiled faindy, thinking of the many wet journeys to and from the office.

  "I'll come for a walk with you if you like," she said, trying to be friendly.

  "Good God, no!" Ruth exclaimed rudely. "When Ranger and I take exercise we don't potter around. You'd be cooked in the first quarter of an hour. Besides, I shall look in on Alix." She called to her dog and went out, slamming the front door behind her.

  Anna wandered disconsolately through the empty rooms. She wanted to fit into this new life that was so totally un-familiar to her, but it was not going to be easy battling with such open hostility. She could not say to Ruth: "Don't worry, I have no desire to marry your brother." She could not say to Rick: "This isn't what I'd bargained for." She had made a pact with him. However unpleasant, however disappointing, she must see it through to the end.

  Sol brought tea to the long living room which appeared to be the room most used when the family were together. Old Mrs. Peveril took her place with some ceremony in her favourite high-backed chair behind the tea-table, and Ruth, returned from her walk, sprawled by the fire, her legs in their wet slacks thrust out before her. Birdie sidled into the room and stood by the table waiting to hand round plates and cups of tea. Except for Rick the party seemed to be complete.

  Last night, perhaps, Mrs. Peveril had dressed for formality. Today she wore a serge skirt with a dipping hem-line and an old, faded cardigan buttoned high, but the sunburst still sparkled on her meagre breast and her old, dried hands were laden with rings. They were dull and needed cleaning, for she never took them off.

  Anna looked from one to the other of them and felt more dispirited than ever. Was it to be like this, day after day, she

  wondered? Mrs. Peveril's deep voice made her jump.

  "And what have you done with yourself today, Miss Crewe?"

  "Nothing," said Anna nervously. "I mean, it's been wet. Won't you please call me Anna?"

  "A little rain hurts no one," said the old lady, ignoring Anna's request. "If you mean to marry into a Cornish family, you will have to come to terms with west-country weather. Ruth, that dog smells. Take it out of here."

  "He's only drying out," said Ruth, tossing the spaniel a piece of scone.

  "You heard me." Mrs. Peveril's voice held the hint of
a lash that was becoming familiar to Anna and she watched the girl seize the dog by the scruff of its neck and drag it from the room without further protest

  Ruth must be nearly thirty, if not more, she thought, yet when that tone of voice was used, she obeyed her grandmother and even her brother, like a reprimanded child.

  "Ranger seems a handsome dog," Anna said tentatively, when Ruth came back. "Is he very well bred?"

  "Five champions in his pedigree," Ruth replied, and for the moment her face lit up with a warm inner glow. She could be good-looking, Anna thought, if she would take a little more trouble with herself.

  "How very grand," she said. "Tell me who they are."

  Ruth's face closed again behind its habitual sulky mask.

  "You'd be none the wiser if I did," she said brusquely. "What do you know about pedigree dogs?"

  Rick came into the room and helped himself to splits and Cornish cream while his grandmother poured out his tea. He answered her enquiries about the quarry briefly and sat staring broodingly at Anna who looked so plainly ill at ease, eating and drinking in silence and seeming so alien among the others.

  "Have you had a dull day, Anna? " he asked suddenly, and spoke gently because he was still remembering.

  "Oh, no," she replied a little nervously. "It was wet, you

  see so I didn't go out, but Ruth showed me the house."

  "And what did you think of it?" "It's very big," she said, as she had the night before, and added politely: "I liked the nurseries."

  "Did you? When Gran married into this family they were well filled. My grandfather was one of nine children, most of them younger than he. The Peveril who built the house planned for posterity, you know."

  "What became of them all?" Anna asked, aware that old Mrs. Peveril's mouth had set in grim lines, although she appeared not to be listening.

  "Some died or were killed in wars, others emigrated," replied Rick carelessly. "There are hardly any of us left now."

  "There's Alix," said Ruth belligerently, and her grandmother frowned.

  "Alix is a distant connection, as I was, myself," she said coldly. "If you must wear trousers, Ruth my dear, try to dispose your legs more elegantly and not emulate a man."

  Anna saw the girl turn a dull, unbecoming red as she tried to shift her position, and when Rick suggested that tomorrow evening she might drive Anna round to view the country, she replied with a rough rudeness she had not dared use to her grandmother:

  "Do it yourself. I shall be busy."

  Rick's eyebrows lifted.

  "So, for the matter of that, shall I," he replied. "What, might one ask, is going to occupy you to the exclusion of our guest?"

  "The vet's coming," said Ruth and, for no apparent reason, coloured again.

  "David Evans? Is anything wrong with the pigs?"

  "No, as matter of fact it's Ranger."

  Rick observed her with lazy indolence.

  "There didn't look to be much wrong with him when I last saw him," he remarked, and his sister avoided his eyes and snapped defiantly:

  "He's off his feed."

  Rick shrugged. Mrs. Peveril pursed her thin lips, and Ruth continued to look embarrassed.

  Anna knew a moment's compassion for the girl. Snubbed by both her brother and her grandmother, there seemed to be a certain excuse for her ungracious manner.

  "I'm sorry Ranger isn't well," Anna said sympathetically, but wished she had not spoken when Ruth turned on her and told her to mind her own business.

  "You needn't be ruder than you can help," observed Rick coldly, and Anna felt her own colour rising. They were an impossible family, she thought indignantly. Could they do nothing but bite and bicker over the smallest thing? Only Birdie, perched like a crow on a hard chair, seemed never to join in the family squabbles, and that was because, Anna reflected, sighing, he took little or no interest in what was going on around him. She became aware of Rick's eyes on her sardonic and faindy mocking.

  "No, we're not very nice, are we, Anna?" he said, but before she could think of a reply, the door opened and a husky voice enquired:

  "Am I too late for tea?"

  The change in all of them was astonishing. Ruth sprang out of her chair, her face eager, ardent, with a strange, fleeting touch of beauty; old Mrs. Peveril lifted her head, her eyes alight with pleasure, and Rick rose slowly to his feet, an expression of angry hunger in his dark face. Even Birdie's attention was attracted and he stood up too, looking expectant and, at the same time, faintly embarrassed.

  "Alix—you've come!" Ruth cried, moving clumsily across the room to greet the newcomer.

  Anna thought she would always remember her first sight of Alix Brook. She stood in the doorway, surveying them all with a calm detachment, and the room became suddenly warm and alive with her presence. It would always be impossible, Anna thought, to remember what she wore, for one was only conscious of a dark, passionate beauty, of a body

  finely balanced, of a strange vitality which was apparent even when she did not speak.

  "Of course I came," she said, thrusting Ruth gently aside and advancing slowly into the room. "I wanted to offer my felicitations to the bride-to-be."

  "Alix ... my dear ..." Mrs. Peveril said, and held out her hands.

  The girl crossed over to her with swift grace and kissed her.

  "Dear Gran," she said in that deep, husky voice, "how are you? And Birdie?" Her eyes went casually to Rick across the room. "Rick, it's been a long time, hasn't it? Is this your new fiancee?"

  "That is Miss Anna Crewe," Mrs. Peveril observed dis-couragingly, and Anna rose uncertainly to her feet.

  At closer quarters she could see the family likeness. Alix's hair, coarse and black, sprang back from her forehead with vibrant casualness, her skin was dark and her eyes that steely grey which made such a vivid contrast, but in her the Peveril nose was not beaky, but beautiful and straight and perfectly balanced. She was, thought Anna, conscious that beside Alix she must look pale and negative and fragile in the wrong sense, a personality not easily forgotten or put aside, and she wondered how Rick could be content to let her go.

  Alix's mouth curled with ironic amusement, very reminiscent of Rick's, and she said softly:

  "But, Rick, are you cradle-snatching? Anna—may I call you that?—welcome to Trevallion. I feel I can welcome you, you know, for Trevallion has been my home for so long. I hope you will find us to your liking."

  It was graciously said, but Anna could not feel that it was really meant. Alix, like Mrs. Peveril and Ruth, had no real welcome for her.

  "Thank you," she answered sedately enough. "I am looking forward to getting to know you all. Are you staying for long?"

  "That will depend on your fiance'. Gran said I might have

  the cowman's cottage for a time, but, of course, the matter really rests with Rick."

  "You will stay, I've no doubt, as long as it suits you, Alix," Rick said. "I had, as you probably know, not been consulted about the arrangement."

  "Rick, you can't-" began Ruth indignantly, but Mrs.

  Peveril silenced her with a wave of the hand.

  "You are my guest, if difficulties should arise, Alix," she said. "I'm quite willing to pay the small rent my grandson will get from the cottage."

  "It's all very tricky—very tricky," murmured Birdie, looking upset.

  "Not at all," Rick countered smoothly. "We don't, any of us, require rent from Alix in the circumstances. If she likes to stay here for a time, all well and good."

  "It wasn't what you said last night," began Ruth defensively, but was silenced by a look from her grandmother.

  "This must all be a little embarrassing for you," Alix said, turning back to Anna, "but, you see, I'm practically one of the family. It's natural for me to return to Trevallion, even though I must lease the cowman's cottage. Thank you, Rick, for your offer, but I prefer to pay rent for it."

  "As you like," he said, and his eyes on her were hard and unyielding. "Now, if you'll all excuse me, I'
ll take a walk round the garden. Would you like to come, Anna? The rain's stopped, and Birdie's topiary is quite worth seeing."

  Anna went with him, not because she wished to, but because she knew the others wanted to talk. Birdie followed them out, anxious to see the effects of his efforts on a stranger.

  The topiary fascinated Anna, who had never seen one before. Birdie was skilled in the shaping of animals and birds and his face lit up at her exclamations of amazement.

  "You approve?" he said, rubbing his thin hands together. "You have no idea the time it takes to get perfection. The

  yew hedge is very fine, of course, very fine indeed, which makes one's task easier."

  "I think it's wonderful, Mr.-" began Anna, and remembered, with a blush, that she did not know his surname.

  "I'm a Peveril, too, but call me Birdie," he said, beaming happily at her. "Everyone has always called me Birdie—I'm like a bird, you know. Do you like pigs, Miss Anna?"

  "I've never known any," Anna said gently, liking the little man for his enthusiasm and humble pleasure in her appreciation. "And if I'm to call you Birdie, you must call me Anna."

  "I would like to," he said. "I would like to very much. Would you care to come and see the pigs? They are Sol's really, but I do a great deal of work with them."

  "Not now, Birdie," Rick said. "You can show Anna the pigs tomorrow while I'm at the quarry."

  "Of course ... of course. . . ." Birdie suddenly knew himself to be guilty of trespass. He blinked at them both, not knowing how best to make himself scarce, and finally dived through the topiary, leaving them alone.

  "Poor Birdie," said Rick. "He never has known whether he's de trop or not."

  "But he wasn't, was he?" Anna returned calmly. "You didn't particularly want to be alone with me."

  "How do you know?"

  "We haven't that kind of arrangement, have we?"

  "I think," he said, brushing raindrops off the tail of one of the odd birds fashioned from the yew hedge, "we shall have to give the family a little more for its money."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Well, we're scarcely the accepted conception of a newly engaged couple, are we? Gran's eyes are very sharp, as I once told you, and Alix's, I imagine, are even sharper. We should create a semblance of affection and felicity, don't you think?"