Sara Seale Page 5

  The topiary enclosed a little square of grass. In that seclusion, hemmed in by the strange shapes of animals and birds, Rick seemed to take on another personality. He was no longer the stranger with whom she had made a thoughtless bargain

  in a moment of weakness, but a man who might expect more of her than she had been prepared to give.

  "You didn't," she said, "make any suggestion that our—our arrangement should go any further than a formal engagement?"

  "I didn't think of it, I suppose," he replied. "I hadn't, of course, bargained for having Alix on the premises."

  "I'm not prepared," she said, lifting her chin, "to play at being in love with you to satisfy her."

  "I haven't asked that of you, yet," he retorted, and his eyes were suddenly very cold. "But a little interest—a little desire for my company upon occasion, shall we say, wouldn't come amiss."

  "I've only been here a day," said Anna, backing away from him. "And if it comes to that, you haven't shown much enthusiasm for my company."

  "True," he replied, observing her with a more conscious eye. "We must mend our ways in the future. What do you think of Alix?" He had turned and begun to lead the way out of the topiary which bore a faint likeness to a maze.

  "I found her very beautiful," said Anna simply.

  "Beaute du diable."

  "I've never known quite what that means, but, in a way, it seems to describe her."

  "More than you think," Rick observed grimly. "Alix is a Peveril in the sense that my grandmother is, but possessing rather more ammunition."

  "Why are you bitter?" she asked. "You and she would seem to me to be well matched."

  "Perhaps we are too much alike," said Rick, turning to wait for her to catch up. "The Peverils have intermarried for so long that our type has become stamped."

  "Well," said Anna, joining him at the steps which led up to the long terrace, "perhaps when you've finished scoring off your grandmother, you'll have a change of heart."

  "Do you think I'm trying to score off Gran?" He sounded amused.

  She was suddenly hesitant. She had, after all, only known Rick a little while, and his family for twenty-four hours. He had not brought her here to criticize or offer opinions of her own.

  "Whatever it is you are doing, Mr. Peveril, it is none of my concern," she said, trying to sound indifferent and grown up, and was surprised and alarmed when he caught her by the shoulders, his stick falling to the ground.

  "Will you please remember to call me Rick?" he said with exasperation. "My behaviour may seem odd to you, and that of my family even odder, but, as you've just pointed out, it's none of it your concern. All I expect from you is reasonable co-operation, and if you go on addressing me as Mr. Peveril, I might just as well have left you behind in Kensington."

  "I'm sorry," she said, very still under the pressure of his hands. "I—I don't think you picked the right person when you chose me."

  "Why not? You were glad enough to find a way out of your own absurd folly, weren't you?"

  "Is it absurd to fall in love?"

  "No, but it's foolish to boast about it, unless you're certain, and use it as a means of putting one over on your friends."

  She blinked up at him, chilled by his angry face and the contempt with which he spoke.

  "You don't understand," she protested, not liking even Rick Peveril to think so little of her. "I loved Toby very much. If I enjoyed being as good as my friends, it was only because to them I hadn't been of much account."

  His face softened and he took his hands from her shoulders and thrust them in his pockets.

  "All right, Anna," he said, "I've no more concern with your affairs than you have with mine, I suppose. Well call it a day, shall we? I don't want to tread on your tender feelings for your young man, God knows."

  "I wonder," she said, with one of her direct glances, "if you would understand—tender feelings, Mr.—er—Rick."

  He frowned at her impatiently, observing with surprise that

  she was prepared to argue with him, that in the evening sunlight she looked young and charming and as unlike the familiar dark Peverils as could be imagined.

  "I've been in love, if that's what you mean," he said brusquely. He saw her smile and there was unexpected wisdom in her clear eyes.

  "I don't think there would have been many tender feelings in your sort of love," she said, "and when you were attributing them to me, you were only laughing at me, weren't you?"

  He picked up his stick from where it lay between them.

  "I don't laugh at your misfortune, Anna," he said gravely. "Perhaps being so much older than you I don't take it very seriously, but these things are all a matter of proportion, aren't they? At thirty-six, it's sometimes difficult to remember what one felt at nineteen."

  "Yes, I suppose so."

  They walked on towards the house. Rick said suddenly, as if it worried him slightly:

  "I wonder what you meant when you said that you thought there wouldn't be many tender feelings in my sort of love."

  She walked beside him, her head bent.

  "Perhaps I had no right to say that," she said, "I don't know you, after all."

  "You were thinking of Alix, I suppose."

  "She was the girl you wanted to marry, wasn't she?"

  "Yes."

  He heard her sigh and looked down at the puzzled face beside him.

  "She seems so right for you," she said. "But without the tender feelings?"

  "Now you're laughing at me again," she said. "I think tender feelings aren't part of the Peveril make-up, so why should it matter? She wouldn't want the same qualities that I would."

  They were on the terrace now. A breeze was blowing in from the sea and the scent of thyme and myrtle and the little rock plants beneath their feet seemed suddenly sweet and

  strong. Rick paused again, and stood, leaning on his stick, looking down at her.

  "And what qualities would you want?" he asked.

  But for Anna, the strange interlude was over. She was, once again, the unwelcome guest at Trevallion, the foolish child whose opinions mattered to no one.

  "It's not important," she said, beginning to walk on. "At nineteen, as you would agree, one knows very little. In any case, I'm here for one purpose. I hope, Rick, you know what you're doing."

  "Of all the confounded cheek!" he exclaimed, but she had gone ahead of him and had already entered the house by one of the long windows.

  CHAPTER IV

  By the end of the week summer had come to Trevallion. The rain and the grey skies seemed to vanish overnight and next day there was sunshine and warmth and the promise of hot days to come. Anna eagerly walked the grounds and the wasteland which lay beyond the ha-ha. If you walked far enough, you stood on the cliffs, and the rough path down to the beach was plain and alluring. Anna wore the gay cotton skirts which had been bought for Toby, and left off her stockings because Alix's strong, beautiful legs were always bare and brown.

  Alix. ... It was impossible not be captivated by her. She came and went, as she must have done as a child, careless of time or orthodoxy, poised, beautiful, and still a little bit wild. Trevallion was her home. She might live in the cowman's cottage on Mrs. Peveril's or Rick's bounty, but she belonged to Trevallion. Whatever Rick's feeling in the matter, it was natural to see her swing in at the open windows, mix a cocktail for herself, unasked, or fling herself into a chair, demand-

  ing news of the day. Very soon there would be Ruth sitting at her feet, and Rick, too, making bitter remarks while he found excuses to linger.

  Why did he wish, thought Anna, retiring, herself into obscurity, to hold the old love at a distance, to torture himself with repudiation, while all the time he still wanted her?

  She had slipped, she supposed, into her rightful niche at Trevallion. They were courteous to her as Rick's fiancee; Mrs. Peveril, at last, addressed her by her Christian name, and even Ruth, although her sulky brusqueness semed part of her make-up had ceased to be gratuitously
rude. Anna remembered the day the vet had come and she looked at Ruth with tenderness and compassion. She had disturbed them unwittingly in the stable, and had seen Ruth's unguarded face, her churlishness forgotten as she watched the young man bend over her dog. David Evans was thin and dark and Welsh. He had only been practising in the district for a couple of years and his manner to Ruth was impersonal but not at all deferential. It was plain there was nothing the matter with Ranger, who looked in the pink of condition; even so, the young vet gravely suggested another visit and Ruth, suddenly blushing, was offhand in making a date.

  "He's nice," Anna had said shyly, when Evans had left. "I should think he's clever with animals."

  "Yes, he is," Ruth had replied, and looked at Anna with none of her usual hostility. "But Gran won't accept him. He's a foreigner, you see. Old Trevawn, before him, was a boozy old reprobate with no real heart in his profession, but he was a Cornishman, and that made him part of the landscape."

  "I suppose I'm a foreigner, then," Anna said, learning for the first time that adamant west-country ruling.

  "Of course," said Ruth. "But once you're married to Rick you'll be a Peveril, so it won't count. Don't tell Gran David's coming again—she'll think it a waste of money."

  "I won't," said Anna, and would have liked to say more. It was comforting to find that Ruth, like herself, was vulnerable, that she could find solace in the advent of a veterinary

  surgeon and even make excuses for his presence. But the next moment Ruth had rounded on her.

  "What are you looking so smug about?" she demanded. "Just because you're newly engaged to Rick, don't go running away with ideas, will you?"

  "No," said Anna meekly, and wondered if she had imagined the whole thing.

  She knew her way about the house and grounds now, but she did not feel she was accepted. The two girls who came up from the village each day to help in the house were friendly and easy to talk to, but Sol and his wife, Rebecca, who ran the place between them, treated her with reserve. Sol, despite his close-set eyes and gloomy manner, seemed disposed to be tolerant, but Rebecca, thin-lipped, and forever railing at her husband, made it clearat once to Anna that she, for one, thought nothing of Mr. Rick's choice. Town ways were not for Trevallion, she said, observing with distaste Anna's frail shoes and fine stockings.

  Her ring, always too loose, had a habit of slipping off. Once Alix picked it up, and Anna surprised a curious expression on her face as she stood stroking the carving on the big emerald.

  "A little heavy for you, perhaps," she said, handing it back. "Rick won't be very pleased, you know, if you lose the Peveril emerald."

  "It looks absurd on Anna's hand," said Ruth contemptuously. "You should have worn it, Alix. It's exacdy the right stone for you."

  "It happens to be the family betrothal ring and Anna is engaged to Rick," Mrs. Peveril said. There was rebuke in her voice, but in her bright, youthful eyes Anna read agreement with her granddaughter.

  "Perhaps it would be better if I didn't wear it," Anna said timidly, feeling very conscious that she had no real right to the ring, but Rick, appearing suddenly among them from the terrace, said:

  "Nonsense! We must get it made smaller, that's all." He had come back from the quarry unexpectedly early. Tea

  was finished, but old Mrs. Peveril still sat in her accustomed place behind the array of heavy silver. Alix, vivid in a green dress which matched the emerald, sprawled in the chair which had always been hers, Ruth leaning devotedly against her knees. Anna sat a little apart, looking young and ill at ease, twisting the ring round on her finger.

  "Well, my pretty, what have you been doing with yourself?" Rick asked, and suddenly swooped on her, tilting up her face and kissing her with lingering deliberation.

  Anna felt the colour rush to her cheeks. She was quite unable to answer him.

  "Shy, isn't she?" he remarked to the assembled company, and Anna became aware of their eyes on her, Mrs. Peveril's enquiring, Ruth's surprised, and Alix's with a mixture of amusement and faint malice which she found as disconcerting as Rick's unexpected kiss.

  "I'll be going," Alix said, and got to her feet, slowly stretching her fine, generously proportioned body, aware that Rick's attention had already wandered from Anna.

  "I'll walk back to the cottage with you," said Ruth eagerly, and looked absurdly stricken when Alix observed casually that she preferred to be alone.

  "You can come with me to the topiary, Ruth," said Mrs. Peveril, reaching for her stick. "Heaven knows what Birdie's been perpetrating since I last had a look round."

  All three of them went out together, but Rick did not follow them. They could hear Alix's casual farewells from the terrace and Mrs. Peveril's stick tapping along the flags.

  "Well, Anna, I took you by surprise, I fear," Rick said, standing by the window, his hands in his pockets.

  "Yes, you did," she answered, still conscious of her hot cheeks. "It—that sort of thing—wasn't part of our bargain."

  "I seem to remember telling you a few days ago that we should give the family a run for their money," he replied imperturbably. "What's a kiss, anyway, my dear?"

  She made no reply, but busied herself picking crumbs from

  an empty cake dish. He watched her for a moment, then laughed.

  "How young you look, mopping up crumbs like a child when the party's over," he said. "You'll have to put up with some more of these harmless demonstrations, I'm afraid. Gran and Ruth were already beginning to comment on the fact that we seemed to be a remarkably indifferent couple."

  "You told me," she said, aware that it would never be easy to hold her own with him, "that the Peverils weren't demonstrative."

  "Very likely, but even the Peverils need a little substantiation to the myth of a bride-to-be among them. Next time, try not to look so surprised."

  "You won't deceive Alix," she said, and was conscious at once of his amusement changing to sudden coldness.

  "What Alix chooses to surmise is no concern of either of us," he said. "You are too sensitive to the reactions of others, Anna. Aren't you happy here?"

  She licked the last crumbs off her fingers and pushed the plate away. Now there was nothing with which to occupy her hands while he chose to ask awkward questions.

  "Yes, of course," she said, "only-"

  "Only what?"

  "I don't fit in very well, do I?" "What does that matter?"

  She turned to look at him then and her eyes were angry. No, she thought, it would not matter to him. She was a makeshift, a figurehead with no importance. It could not matter in the least that she had sensibilities which could be alive to dislike or mere indifference.

  "You know," he said softly as if she had spoken aloud, "you have no right to feel cheated. Our bargain was clear and above-board, wasn't it?"

  "Yes," she said, confused, "yes."

  "Then take what offers, my dear. Trevallion can be very pleasant in fine weather, and you have a temporary home,

  whatever you may think of the other inmates." "I'm not critical."

  "Aren't you? Well, that's your own right, of course. The Peverils aren't the salt of the earth, whatever Gran may put over. I've no illusions about us as a family."

  She twisted her hands in her lap, suddenly hating the ring which should have been Alix's. The sun sent a shaft of light through the west window, blinding her to his steady regard and making her feel naked and exposed.

  "I think," she said, blinking into the disconcerting sunlight, "you none of you have true ideas about each other."

  "Really? Perhaps you'd care to explain."

  "I can't explain what I don't really know. I haven't been here much more than a week. But it seems to me you—you all live within yourselves. You don't, I think, care very much about each other."

  He leaned against the window-sill, watching her sitting there in the sunlight. She seemed suddenly prim with the wide belt circling a waist that was absurdly slender, her hands folded in her lap, the Peveril emerald catching the ligh
t and looking quite incongruous.

  "Now, that's very interesting," he said with a mocking inflection. "I'd no idea you'd weighed us all up so expertly. And Alix—what do you deduce about her?"

  She looked down at her hands.

  "I wouldn't know about Alix," she said. "I don't really know about any of you. Didn't Alix ever wear this ring?"

  "No," he answered shortly. "Our engagement was never official."

  "I'm glad," she said, still looking down at her hands. "That the ring wasn't once hers, I mean."

  By July the hot weather seemed settled. Ruth and Anna had breakfast on the terrace where both could watch the morning mist clear, revealing, one by one, the lawns, the topiary, even the wasteland beyond the ha-ha, made beautiful in the changing light. At first, breakfast alone with Ruth had been a trial

  to be borne with patience but little pleasure. Mrs. Peveril kept to her own rooms until tea-time and Rick had already gone to the quarry. Sometimes Birdie would linger over a final cup of coffee, talking vaguely but kindly to Anna before he went about his daily chores in the garden and piggeries, but for the most part it was Ruth who was left to bear her company, and, in those early days, Ruth had been hostile and casual and barely civil. But here, on the terrace, she seemed different. She lounged dispiritedly in her eternal slacks, throwing bits to her dog, but her eyes, like Anna's, were often on the distant horizon, and then her face was purged of its habitual resentment and Anna would have liked to ask what she thought about.

  "Are you taken aback by the beauty of each morning?" she once asked shyly. "Or is it so familiar that you don't notice?"

  "What a funny thing to ask," Ruth answered, looking at her with faint interest. "I suppose, when you've lived in a place all your life, you rather take it for granted. Does Trevallion seem beautiful to you, Anna?"

  "Yes, on mornings like this. You see, I've never had this sort of life, so I can't quite take it for granted."

  "I suppose not. What made Rick fall for you? You aren't a Peveril type, you know."