by Sara Seale
“Astrea’s name meant something to you, then? She was at the peak of her fame long before you were born.”
“Yes, I suppose so. But my father had records. He used to say she might have been another Flagstadt had her voice not gone so early. My father knew about such things. He was a musician himself.”
His eyebrows rose slightly.
“Indeed? You had, of course, free access to the record library where you worked,” he observed suavely.
“Oh, yes,” she said, sounding surprised, “but the firm didn’t stock much classical stuff. I doubt if there was one of Astrea’s old records among the lot.”
He changed gear a little roughly.
“And yet you knew her?” he said.
Charity smiled, looking out into the frost-encrusted fields and hedges. The quiet countryside was so peaceful after the bustle of London, the blaring records in the music shop, the cramped drabness of the digs which had been her only home. It was difficult to concentrate on what this unexpected and rather hostile stranger was saying. She had a moment’s impression of the eccentric old woman who had swept into the shop, with her dyed hair and jangling charms, turning the place out for some record they did not possess and being subjected to the greasy little manager’s insolence. Charity herself had become embroiled because the name of Astrea had meant something from the past: the loss of her job, the subsequent extraordinary interview in a neighboring teashop, still seemed like a bizarre dream.
“Of course not,” she said. “But I remembered her name from things my father had told me, and—well, there’s still something of the prima donna about her, isn’t there?”
Marc felt an irrational anger rising in him. Was this chit trying to put him in his place?
“I think you should know, Miss Child, that my aunt is given to these sudden whims,” he said. “There is no promise of permanence, or other material benefits—no matter how inviting the proposition may have sounded.”
“Naturally that is understood,” she answered, sounding surprised. “Is Mrs. Stubbs regretting her impulsiveness?”
“Not at the moment, but she will. In case you should imagine that you are first in the field, I had better point out that there have been others—all ready to cash in on my aunt’s gullibility.”
There was no doubt, now, of his hostility. Charity did not yet quite grasp the full extent of his cynical warnings, but she felt the blood begin to mount under her skin.
“I don’t think I quite understand you,” she said, still striving after politeness.
They had reached the crest of a hill and he suddenly pulled into the side of the road and stopped his engine. Beneath them the country dropped into a gentle valley with the lights of the cottages twinkling in the darkness. Beyond, where the road wound steeply up again, lay Cleat House in its isolation, with Astrea, at that very moment, waiting to clasp her newest protégée to her generous bosom,
“We had better understand each other once and for all,” Marc said, turning to face the girl. “Unlike my aunt, I have a considerable experience of the cupidity of human nature, and I’m warning you now that although you may have pulled the wool over her eyes, you won’t pull it over mine. Is that understood?”
She shrank back into her corner of the car and her eyes seemed to stretch more widely still in her white face.
“You—you think I’m exploiting your aunt’s kindness?” she stammered.
“Something like that.”
“But why? It was unconventional, perhaps, accepting a job from a perfect stranger, but—I hadn’t much choice in the circumstances.”
“On your beam ends—that’s what you told her, didn’t you?”
“Not quite. I would have found another job eventually.”
“But this was so much easier? You had, after all, only to flatter her by pretending to remember her name.”
“Don’t you believe I did?”
“No, I’m afraid I don’t. Astrea was at the height of her fame nearly forty years ago.”
There was a little silence, then she asked in a small, quiet voice:
“Are you musical, Mr. Gentle?”
“Not particularly,” he replied, viewing her averted profile with sardonic amusement.
“Then you wouldn’t realize, perhaps, that the great names still live. Caruso, Melba, Clara Butt—all before my time—and yours too, if it comes to that. Why should it seem odd that Astrea’s name is known to me?” She spoke with a composure that annoyed him. He had not been prepared for argument, or for his own uneasy sense of uncertainty.
“Her fame was short-lived,” he answered tersely. “It’s only reasonable to suppose that, except for a lucky break, you would never have heard of her.”
“A lucky break?”
He had lighted a cigarette, and now tossed it, half smoked, through the window.
“Yes,” he said, and knew an irrational desire to shake her. “My aunt invariably announces herself to strangers. It’s only reasonable conjecture that someone in a firm of music publishers, however ill-informed, would have heard of her name. It would appear that yours were the quick wits to make use of the knowledge.”
At last she turned to look at him, and in the bright moonlight he saw her eyes were not brown, or even black, as he had first supposed, but a very dark grey, with the strange untroubled innocence of a child’s, and as he watched, they slowly filled with tears.
“What you’re trying to say is you believe I seized the opportunity and then invented a hard-luck story,” she said quietly.
“Something like that.”
The tears trembled on her lashes, but did not fall, and he was conscious of disappointment. He would have liked to reduce her to tears as he had reduced so many women in the witness-box.
She turned away again.
“Do you live with your aunt, Mr. Gentle?” she enquired politely.
“Not permanently. Why?”
“Only that if you did I think it would be better if I took another job,” she said, and he laughed without amusement.
“It may yet come to that,” he retorted. “I come down most weekends, so I’ll be holding a watching brief. Well, I think we understand each other now, Miss Charity Child. I’ve warned you; the rest is up to you.”
For some strange reason it was only then that he really pierced her composure. Her slender body seemed to shrink into the semblance of a child’s, and when she spoke it was with a cornered child’s defiance.
I think,” she said, “you are the most disagreeable man I’ve ever met! You seem to find my name funny, but you hardly live up to yours, do you? A less gentle person I’ve never known in my life!”
“Well—” he said softly, and his mouth softened in an involuntary smile, “—plain speaking all round! I wondered when I was going to get under your skin. But be warned, my dear—I’m up to most of the tricks of little girls like you.”
“I’m not likely to forget,” she retorted, then added, as he started up his engine: “And I’ll warn you, Mr. Gentle—you can be caught by your own cleverness—never mind the tricks of other people.”
He smiled again, a trifle grimly this time, and putting the car into gear, drove up the steep hill to Cleat House.
To Charity, the joy of the day had gone, for it had held joy, this adventure into the unknown. Astrea’s impetuousness had not seemed strange to her, used as she had been to her father’s often disastrous impulses before he died. Since then life had seemed drab and unrewarding without the color of that beloved personality; the struggle for existence had not been easy, and the offer of a job that would bring some of that color back had sounded heaven-sent. She had liked the odd old prima donna whom nobody remembered, and had sensed some of the loneliness of spirit of the forgotten ones of the earth. It was a shock for which she had been quite unprepared, to be met by this suspicious and unpleasant stranger, and learn what the world might think of her innocent motives.
She sat beside him, fighting back the tears, and after that, everything be
came confused. They stopped at a house with vaguely Gothic proportions, and immediately the door was thrown open and there was Astrea, vast and welcoming, folding her at once in an enveloping embrace as if she was the prodigal returned.
“My dear, dear child ...” she cried extravagantly, “what joy that you are here! Come in, come in ... my home is yours, and you shall be a daughter to me, if you will.”
Even to Charity, the greeting smacked of histrionics, but the warmth could not be denied, and the tears she had been keeping back fell, despite her.
“What!” cried Astrea, her own eyes filling at once. ‘Tears of gratitude, already? What sensitivity—what responsiveness! But Aquarians are highly sensitive. Come, my child, my home awaits you.”
Charity was aware of Marc watching them, his dark face cynical in the sudden flood of light. She could have bitten her tongue out for betraying emotion in front of him, an emotion which he, all too plainly, took to be a histrionic compliment to that of his aunt. She drew away from Astrea’s submerging embrace and sniffed inelegantly, like a child.
“Well,” he observed, closing the front door on the frosty night, “now you have both cried on each other’s shoulder, I trust there is mutual satisfaction. Where shall I put the luggage, Astrea?”
“Roma’s old room, of course. I always put them there.”
Marc’s glance at Charity was grimly amused as he picked up her suitcase.
“You see, Miss Charity Child, you are only one of many,” he said as he began to mount the stairs.
“First,” said Astrea, ignoring him, “you must meet Minnie, then I will show you your room. It is very important that you should get on with Minnie, for she rules our lives here. She used to be my dresser long ago—now she runs the house for me.” She rang a bell and presently a small wizened old woman emerged somewhere from the back regions of the house and stood there, waiting, without saying a word. She was probably younger than her mistress, Charity thought, but her skin was wrinkled and her hair an uncompromising grey. Minnie would never have fought the advancing years with fashionable hair-styles and clothes. She wore what she would have described, herself, as decent black and a small, frilled apron.
“This is Miss Child, of whom I spoke to you,” Astrea said with a vague wave of one heavily ringed hand. “You will make her welcome, I hope, Minnie. The stars are most propitious for her advent among us.”
The little old woman looked at Charity, and her bright, expressionless glance was as unresponsive as Marc’s had been.
“You said tomorrow,” she replied, without proffering any greeting or acknowledgment. “It’ll be short common in the dining room tonight, with Mr. Marc in the house.”
“Don’t be so absurd!” Astrea exclaimed impatiently. “Since when has an extra guest made any difference at Cleat?”
“Since you took to cutting down on the groceries and suchlike,” Minnie replied promptly and, without waiting for further instructions, turned her back and made off for the kitchen.
“Such nonsense!” Astrea boomed in her throaty voice, shepherding Charity upstairs. “Just because, like all old servants, she’s extravagant! Are you a big eater, my dear?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Charity answered, beginning to feel exhausted.
“Good, good. I, myself, am on a diet. Virgo subjects benefit from seed-bearing plants, nuts, and vegetables which grow above ground. We share that with the Gemini types. I must look up the foodstuffs that are ruled by Aquarius so that you can benefit, too.”
Following her hostess or employer—it was not very clear which at present—through the house, Charity hoped the diet prescribed by the stars for her would not also prove to be one of nuts. She enjoyed her food when, as had been rare, she was able to indulge in mild extravagance.
The house seemed filled with ill-assorted furniture, Oriental cabinets of hideous design rubbing shoulders with Georgian and Queen Anne, worthless knick-knacks everywhere, the whole producing a somewhat cosmopolitan air which accorded badly with the solid proportions of the rooms.
“You are admiring my treasures?” Astrea said. “So many souvenirs of my European tours—so many gifts from admirers—a lifetime’s history in all of them.”
Charity privately wondered how anything got dusted, then decided that Astrea could not be fussy as a cloud of dust rose from hangings as they brushed by.
“And here is your own little nest,” Astrea continued, flinging open a door, and Charity exclaimed involuntarily:
“What a charming room!”
It was indeed more than that, she thought, gazing about her with astonished eyes. Unlike the rest of the house, which seemed to be a hotchpotch of taste and style, this room was gracious in design. Each piece of furniture was perfect of its period, bedspread and curtains were of finest brocade and the dressing table laden with crystal bottles and trinket boxes. It was a room which might have been furnished with loving care for a favorite daughter, and Charity, remembering, wondered who Roma was.
But Astrea was already exclaiming in annoyance at the absence of a fire.
“Really, Minnie is becoming impossible!” she said. “No fire to welcome you on a night like this, and no flowers, either!”
“She thought I was coming tomorrow,” Charity reminded her shyly. “Besides, Mrs. Stubbs, I shouldn’t think paid companions expect those sort of attentions.”
“Astrea, my dear child ... you must call me Astrea ...” the older woman replied absently. “And you must not think of yourself in those terms. What is money, when all is said and done?”
Charity was inclined to retort that it could represent considerable importance to the wage-earners of this world, but she said instead,
“You are being so very kind. This lovely room—did it belong to someone dear to you?”
“My spiritual daughter,” Astrea answered dreamily. “Yes, she was very dear to me ...”
“And did she die?” Charity asked softly, her heart going out to someone who was, like herself, bereaved.
“Oh, dear me, no,” Astrea replied briskly. “She married and went to America—not at all the same tiling, is it? You shall take her place, my child. Yes, you are more simpatica than Roma—you shall take her place.”
Charity had an uneasy recollection that there had been others before her, all occupying Roma’s room, all, perhaps, intended for the nebulous role of spiritual daughter, and for a fleeting moment she could sympathize with the blunt misgivings of the disagreeable nephew.
She spoke a little stiffly because she was embarrassed. “I hope I shall give satisfaction,” she said. “You didn’t say what my duties would be.”
“Didn’t I?” answered Astrea vaguely. “Oh, arranging flowers, telephoning, shopping, perhaps—and you will play for me, of course. We will renew the past with music—I might even sing again ... Come, dear child, unpack your things and come downstairs to the music-room—through the hall and straight down the passage to your right. I use it instead of a drawing room, for it expresses my personality. Now, hurry, child. Dinner is at eight o’clock, and Marc likes his glass of sherry first. Did you like him?”
“There was scarcely time to form an opinion,” said Charity guardedly, whose opinion had, indeed, been very forcibly formed in that brief interview.
“That will, of course, be remedied very soon, but don’t expect attentions. He wanted to marry Roma at one time, but now women don’t attract him. So brilliant, you know, and much run after, so I believe, only ...” Astrea had drifted towards the door as she talked and it closed behind her, cutting off her final sentence.
Charity unpacked her few possessions and laid them carefully away in Roma’s lovely drawers and cupboards, remembering her father’s delight in the beautiful things he could never afford. They had lived in cheap lodgings and furnished houses all her life, but he had taught her a secondhand appreciation of beauty and elegance. She was suddenly passionately grateful to Astrea for opening the door, however briefly, on a world which had always been just out of rea
ch.
She found the music-room without much trouble and Marc rose politely from his chair to offer her a glass of sherry. There was, she felt uncomfortably, still hostility beneath the courtesy, and mockery, too. In the bright lights of the music-room she could see him in perspective for the first time, and disliked still further what she saw. He possessed a vague kind of elegance that gave him a fastidious air; the dark, angular face was distinguished in a cold, legal sense, she supposed, but the shrewd eyes would strip you unmercifully, and she knew, by his reputation, how well he could tear a witness’s evidence to shreds. An implacable enemy and an uncomfortable friend, she thought, and wished her first evening at Cleat could have been rid of his presence.
Dinner, when it was served, was, despite Minnie’s threats, ample and well-planned. Astrea ate her nuts with no very great enjoyment, but Marc and Charity did full justice to the fare provided for them. Minnie was clearly an excellent cook.
“Do you permit your companions wine?” Marc asked, having filled his aunt’s and his own glasses, and, although he phrased the question with wry humor, Charity knew he was reminding her that she had no family status in the house.
“Naturally,” Astrea replied. “Charity is a little different from the others, as you can see, dear boy. That little girl from Brighton could never appreciate a good vintage and the one who followed her drank too much. Fill the child’s glass.”
