The Truant Spirit (20 page)

Sabina was silent, remembering. Tante, too, had been one of those women of no consequence, and, if she was to be believed, the final cause of the separation.

He seemed to sense an unwillingness in her to agree and said with a certain harshness:

“You owe nothing to Lucille Faivre, my dear. She adopted you for what she could get out of the arrangement, cheated you of money that was rightfully yours on the sale of the furniture, and is now prepared to barter you to a stranger of doubtful reputation for her own ends. Wake up, Sabina! If the old loyalties are too strong, or you too weak to resist, then say so now and I’ll leave you alone.”

She coloured hotly at his words, but she suddenly sat up straight against his shoulder and her eyes were clear and steady.

“You’re right, of course, and perhaps I’ve always known it,” she said. “I’m not weak, Brock, once I understand. I’ve

just not been allowed to grow up.”

He took her face between his hands and kissed her with tenderness.

“Forgive me if I seem rough with you sometimes, child,” he said. “You must teach me tolerance.”

Her lips this time remained passive under his while she wondered if there was anything she might teach him, whether tolerance of an untutored mind, or the love which he had not declared in so many words.

“Bunny will tell you I’ve taken an unfair advantage,” he said, impatient at her silence. “Are you ready to help me bridge the years between us and not resent what I’ve been?”

“I don’t know what you’ve been, Brock. I only know I love you,” she said.

“Bless you for that!” he murmured and stooped to put on her shoes for her, saying they must be getting back.

The coat he had brought was an old one of Bunny’s and it reached to her ankles, making her look absurd and very young. He surveyed her, laughing, then tucked an arm through hers and turned for home.

‘Madame Jouvez—is she part of the business to which you must attend?” Sabina asked once.

“Very likely, but you should be grateful I didn’t allow her to come here. You and she wouldn’t care about each other, I fancy,” he replied with amusement. “Jeanne is a charming, determined young widow and knows exactly what she wants.” “A widow?”

“Yes—does that alarm you? Will you inquire about the ladies in my past if we marry, Sabina?”

“No,” she said.

They walked in silence and Brock, who was limping badly, asked her as they reached the rectory what she had been thinking about.

“I was wondering if you really
can
cook that Spanish dish with the extraordinary name,” she said with the inconsequence that could both delight and exasperate him.

“Arroz Paella alla Valenciana?” he laughed. “Yes, I really can. One day, my chicken, you shall have that cooking lesson you were so anxious for the other night. Now run upstairs and make yourself presentable before Bunny catches you. She wouldn’t approve of bare legs in March or a torn skirt.”

Sabina went slowly upstairs to her room and sat on the bed, staring at Brock’s mountains. Kanchenjunga ... Everest ... and the cool peaks of the Alps ... Could she compete with them, she wondered ... could she fulfill a want so dimly understood?

Had he not scooped her up carelessly because just now he needed her?

She sighed, then rested her cheek in the curve of her hand, smiling gratefully. Was it not enough to have found sanctuary, to have found affection and that first miraculous stirring of the heart?

She lay down on the bed for a moment because a great lassitude had claimed her and was almost instantly asleep.

CHAPTER EIGHT

WHEN she came downstairs for luncheon she felt shy at sitting down again with Brock and Bunny after the events of the morning, but both of them were as usual. If Brock had already spoken to Bunny she gave no sign of being the recipient of romantic confidences and Brock himself seemed preoccupied with his coming departure.

Sabina knew an unreasoning disappointment, and as the day went on she began to wonder if she had imagined the whole thing. Only when Brock asked her with abrupt reminder if she had written her letters was she brought back to reality, but he looked impatient when she answered in the negative and told her sharply that she had better do so at once.

“Unless,” he said, “you’ve thought better of it and are reluctant to give up the comforts of the Chateau Berger, after all.”

“No,” she replied, ignoring the mockery, “but I thought — well, perhaps I was beginning to think you hadn’t been serious.”

“Because I didn’t lead you home to Bunny in triumphant glory? There’s time enough for that when other matters are settled.”

“Yes—yes, I see.”

“You don’t see at all, my poor innocent,” he said, ruffling her hair. “Perhaps you should meet the egregious M. Bergerac before deciding. He might have charms for you, after all, and certainly he has riches.”

‘Tante was the one who wanted riches, not me,” Sabina said, wishing he would stop talking in this vein now that he knew how she felt about him.

“She won’t be as unworldly as you are, my dear,” he retorted. “You don’t know anything about me, or even what I do for a living.”

“You’ve never told me. What do you do for a living?”

“That can wait,” he said with his old arrogance. “Run along and write those letters.”

She did so dutifully, sitting at Bunny’s little
escritoire
and sucking her pen like an ill-prepared schoolgirl. It was difficult to compose a suitable epistle to a man one had never met and who had not, to all intents and purposes, made a formal offer of marriage.

“What shall I say?” she asked Brock, who was selecting books for the journey from Bunny’s shelves.

“What? Oh, just say ‘Dear Sir, I must regretfully decline the honour you may be thinking of doing me in the matter of marriage. Yours truly ... ’ ”

She laughed, but, as once before, she wanted to hit him, too. It was unfair and unkind to put all the onus on her, she thought, and made a large blot on the clean paper and had to start again.

At last the letters were written and Willie Washer took them to toe post on his way home. Sabina saw Brock regarding her with a lifted eyebrow.

“Are you experiencing those well-known doubts at having burnt your boats?” he asked.

She got up from the desk, stretching her arms above her head to ease her aching back.

“No,” she said. “The doubts will probably come with Tante’s reply.”

He laughed, but not unkindly.

“I think this must be the first time you’ve made a major decision for yourself,” he said.

“No,” she said again. “The first time was when I ran away and left my purse and luggage in the train.”

“So it was. The whole thing looks like fate—or Providence, as Bunny would say.”

“Brock—” She stood with her back to him, fingering the
armoire,
and watching the fitful reflection of firelight in its polished surface, “why do you want to marry me?”

“Why do you suppose?”

“Well, it could be that you, like M. Bergerac, need a wife, or it could be just wanting something that’s promised to someone else.”

“You haven’t a very flattering opinion of the two men in your life, have you?”

“I don’t know Rene Bergerac and I don’t understand you,” she said, and suddenly felt his hands on her shoulders.

“In other words, you’re finding me an unsatisfactory sort of lover, aren’t you?” he said.

A lover ... strangely enough she had never thought of him as that, but as he drew her head back against his breast she knew that was what she wanted him to be.

“When I come back, we’ll talk of such things,” he said. “Till then have faith and patience and go on loving me if you will, for that will warm me.”

It was a curious thing to say, she thought, and remembered that the business which was taking him away had something to do with Madame Jouvez.

“Have you, too, to become—disentangled?” she asked. She could not see his face but thought he smiled above her head.

“If you’re thinking of Jeanne, the part she has played in my life carries no ties,” he said ambiguously. “Perhaps I want to bid my old love farewell.”

“The mountains—you are going to the mountains?” she said, and then wondered if after all he was perhaps speaking of Jeanne Jouvez.

“Perhaps,” he said and dropped a light kiss on the top of her head. “Stop speculating, my child; your guesses are probably all wrong.”

“I’m not really curious,” she said, and he let her go.

“No,” he said with tenderness, “you’re the most incurious young woman it’s ever been my fortune to meet. Perhaps that’s half your charm.”

She turned to him swiftly, but Bunny was bringing in the tea-tray and in a moment the afternoon was just like any other with the three of them making casual conversation while the lamplight reflected in the late vicar’s ugly Victorian silver. Too soon it was supper-time, and afterwards Sabina helped Bunny wash up while Brock went upstairs to pack.

“You look tired, my dear,” Bunny said when they had finished. “I should go early to bed after your adventures of the morning.”

It was the first reference she had made to the day’s unexpected happenings, and even now she might only be alluding to Sabina’s cut forehead and scratched legs.

“Not yet,” Sabina said, listening for sounds of Brock’s return from upstairs, but Bunny was used to nursery procrastination and only replied with a smile:

“It would be advisable if you want to be up early tomorrow to say good-bye to Brock.”

Obediently Sabina went. She hoped she might meet Brock on the stairs and be kissed good night, but only her own shadow marched solitary before her in the light of her candle, and although she called good night as she passed his door, he could not have heard, for he made no answer.

She wakened early and was reminded of the morning the robin had died as she dressed quickly in the chill half-light, but hurry though she did, there was little time for more than the fleeting impressions of departure; the village taxi at the door, Bunny hovering in the cold hall with last-minute reminders of articles which might have been forgotten in the packing, and Brock in a dark lounge suit which Sabina had not seen before.

“Look after the child,” he said as he kissed Bunny goodbye, but Sabina he did not kiss, and under the watching eyes of Bunny and the taxi-driver, she did not care to make the first advances.

“Good-bye,” she said; “give my love to the mountains.” He was unfamiliar in his well-tailored clothes and although he smiled at her he was a stranger again.

“Au revoir,”
he replied. “Good-bye has a final sound. No running away before I get back, mind, Sabina. Next time you will be punished.”

She watched him limp to the taxi and get in, and the next minute he was gone; to that destination of which she had no knowledge, to the mountains, perhaps; perhaps to Jeanne Jouvez.

“Shut the door, dear,” said Bunny prosaically. “These early mornings are very chilly still, and the house gets cold quickly before the fires are lighted.”

“It’s like the morning the robin died,” Sabina said, shutting the door, and Bunny smiled.

“That,” she replied with prim reproof, “is an exaggeration. There is no snow and Brock has not met with any mishap. He is merely catching a train.”

Sabina laughed and gave her a quick hug.

“Dear Bunny,” she said affectionately, “you have a wonderful gift for reducing things to their proper level. Let me light the fires for you. Mrs. Cheadle’s sure to be late again.”

“Well, perhaps just the parlour fire to warm it up for breakfast,” Bunny said. “As we are all down early I shall take the opportunity to have a thorough spring-clean of the bedrooms. You shall help me.”

Sabina did plenty of helping the next few days. Bunny, she supposed, held the old idea that busy hands curbed wandering thoughts, but sometimes she longed to sit idle and dream or walk on the moor with just her reflections for company. Even out of doors a mild routine was set for her, and she helped Willie in the garden or accompanied Bunny on her selfimposed rounds to her husband’s old parishioners.

“Of course, Mrs. Weymouth, the new rector’s wife, has first call in these matters and I have to be careful not to tread on her toes, but the old people like to be remembered,” Bunny would say, and Sabina had her first taste of the parochial life which had been kept well in the background during Brock’s visit.

Mrs. Weymouth, it soon became apparent, did not take kindly to Bunny’s gentle interference and probably despised her. The Reverend Cyril was not a Cornishman and, explained Bunny, less in harmony with the village than her late husband. There were the ever-recurring problems of poor Willie Washer’s fitness to look after the graves, and Mrs. Cheadle’s preference for working at the old rectory rather than the new one. Sabina became soothed by the small, unimportant saga as she was with Willie’s undemanding company in the garden.

Often he was morose and seemed to blanket what intelligence he had with a deliberate stupidity, but sometimes he was gay, remembering old rhymes and capering joyously while he chanted them. Sabina was often surprised by the strange odds and ends of knowledge he possessed. She liked to sit on an upturned wheelbarrow while Willie pounded the hard, unbroken soil with his hoe, saying: