Charity Child

by Sara Seale

  Astrea’s sagging features held a sudden radiance. Her hair was dishevelled and her make-up carelessly applied, but, for a moment, Charity saw her as she must have been in her heyday.

  “Ah!” she said. “Such fetes ... such adulation ... and so soon to end.”

  “People who remember you will not have forgotten,” Charity said softly, and her eyes were bright with sudden tears. It was, to her, both pathetic and a little frightening, this living again in the reflected youth of others.

  Astrea swooped upon her, clasping her in an emotional embrace.

  “You are sent to comfort me, my little Ganymede,” she said. “You will be my own lost youth.”

  “I seem to remember you said the same sort of thing to Roma,” Marc observed with gentle irony, and Charity sent him a look of intense dislike.

  “It’s unkind to remind people of ill-considered statements,” she said severely, and Astrea laughed, the fleeting look of wonder vanishing.

  “My statements are never ill-considered,” she said grandly. “Minnie, remove the tea-things if nobody wants any more. I shall go to my room until dinner time.”

  She swept from the room in Minnie’s wake, and Charity stood fingering the broken twists of icing sugar which littered the table and wondered what to do next.

  “You don’t approve of me, do you?” Marc said suddenly.

  She kept her eyes on the sugar pieces, piling them together in a neat little heap.

  “I think you go out of your way to make people feel uncomfortable,” she answered.

  “You think I should have played up to my aunt’s histrionics—as you did?”

  She wheeled suddenly to face him, and her eyes were clear and grave and troubled.

  “That wasn’t a moment of histrionics,” she said. “They were sharing something out of the past, she and Minnie; and Minnie saw her as she must once have been.”

  He observed her curiously, noticing, for perhaps the first time, the sensitivity of her young mouth, the clear directness of her eyes.

  “Don’t let her submerge you, Charity Child,” he said softly, “Astrea is as inconsequent as the wind and—you’re a new toy.”

  “I thought,” she said, “that you were more concerned that she shouldn’t be exploited.”

  He stood regarding her reflectively, his hands thrust into his trouser pockets, and the light cast misleading shadows on the angles of his dark face.

  “Very true,” he replied. “But you puzzle me a little. I haven’t made up my mind about you.”

  She flushed, flinging up her head, and he noticed that her long throat looked young and somehow defenceless.

  “But I, Mr. Gentle,” she retorted with a spurt of temper, “made up mine about you very quickly. 1 think you are detestable!”

  His slow smile mocked her.

  “I shouldn’t let it worry you,” he said.

  “Worry me!”

  “No, of course it wouldn’t. Well, it will be interesting to see how you make out—the last, I hope, of my aunt’s many mistakes. But watch your step, Charity Child, watch your step,” he said, and turned, without further ado, and walked out of the room.

  The week that followed brought comfort to Charity and a strange new sense of belonging. Not since her father had died had she known the interest and affection of another human being.

  Astrea’s path crossing hers had seemed like a portent. It had never occurred to her to doubt either the old prima donna’s identity or her good faith. She had journeyed to Cleat filled with trust in the future and only that very disagreeable Marc Gentle had shaken her belief in her good fortune. It was not pleasant to be reminded of his suspicions of her intentions, or his careless hints that his aunt’s impulses could prove fickle, but once rid of his presence, she thrust these thoughts behind her. He did not come down to Cleat every weekend by any means, Astrea informed her, adding, vaguely, that he had changed a good deal since Roma had married.

  As the days went by Charity picked up the threads of the quiet life at Cleat with surprising ease. Astrea’s whirlwind changes of mood could be bewildering and sometimes a little alarming, but her evident pleasure in the girl’s company offered a balm to which she found quick response. Charity was, perhaps, too young to heed Marc’s light-hearted warning that she, herself, constituted a new toy; she knew only delight in performing services, running errands, and listening to endless and highly-colored tales of the past. Even Minnie unbent sufficiently to underline accounts of her mistress’s successes, although she would not permit familiarities, and was quick to put Charity in her place should she appear too contented with her lot “Don’t you be too sure of yourself, young miss,” she said. “Easy come, easy go, that’s how it’s been these past few years, and not all of ‘em out for what they could get, I’m bound to admit. Milady takes fancies and tires of ‘em. Seems she can’t settle down since Miss Roma went.”

  “But marriage shouldn’t alter affections,” Charity said, and Minnie pulled down her mouth, sniffing scornfully.

  “Ah, but ‘twas Mr. Marc she was meant to wed,” she replied. “Not but what that wouldn’t have worked, to my way of thinking, but Madam had her heart set on it.”

  “Well, I can understand her disappointment,” Charity said, and the old woman sniffed again.

  “One’s as like as the other, each wanting her own way,” she said obscurely, “though Miss Roma never had the heart m’lady’s got. Money, money, money! Well, she’s got it now, and small good will all those Yankee dollars do her, I shouldn’t wonder.”

  Charity pondered sometimes on the character of the unknown girl whose room she occupied and whose presence could still be felt in the house. Minnie had probably been jealous, she thought, and wondered idly how seriously the fastidious Mr. Gentle’s feelings had been engaged.

  She quickly became used to Astrea’s idiosyncrasies; her meanness with the household bills when visitors were not expected, her alternating fads, her solemn preoccupation with signs and portents. Each morning Charity had to read aloud the stars’ predictions in the many newspapers Astrea took for the purpose, and inevitably she would exclaim: “Arrant rubbish! Astrology is a science, and not intended for the masses who want to know their luck.” But she took her daily press seriously enough to become upset and indecisive when, as often happened, one newspaper’s forecast completely contradicted another’s.

  The house itself was unattractive, with its pretentious turrets and gables and the mock-Gothic design which lad presumably gladdened the heart of the late Mr. Albert Stubbs, but the surrounding country was beautiful. A town-dweller all her life, Charity loved the freedom of the downs, with the wide vistas, the grazing sheep, and the dewponds. She took long walks when Astrea did not require her, enjoying the spring of turf beneath her feet and the smell of the sea on the wind.

  In the evenings there was music. Astrea owned a fine collection of operatic recordings, many of which she had recorded herself. It must be strange and a little heartbreaking, Charity thought, to hear one’s own voice after nearly forty years, soaring effortlessly in its prime, and know that same voice to be lost forever. Often Astrea wept, whether with regret or simple emotion it was hard to know; then she would launch into one of her many anecdotes; quarrels with other artists, contempt for more successful rivals, scandals, and the fabulous gala nights when the audience went wild and the horses were taken from the prima donna’s carriage and she was pulled to her lodgings by her fervent admirers.

  “But horses and carriages were surely longer ago than that,” Charity protested once, and received a disapproving frown.

  “I may have become confused,” said Astrea shortly. “But no—in Russia there were drotskies, and in Vienna Weighs, or perhaps it was the other way round. It makes no matter. That was an age of gracious living, my child.”

  Charity did some quick mental arithmetic which brought her to the roaring ‘twenties and the gracious living of bottle parties and the Charleston, Eton crops, flat chests, and the screaming Bright Young
Things. She smiled with affectionate tolerance, but did not interrupt again. Indeed, however much Astrea romanced or exaggerated, Charity was an enthralled listener. She would sit at Astrea’s feet in the firelight, and, for her, the evenings became an Arabian Nights entertainment. Never in her life had she known anyone with such a vivid personality or felt herself to be part of an era only to be read of in books and journals.

  In those early days they were a delightful counterpart to one another, for Astrea had never known such an avid listener, or one so ready to worship at a forgotten shrine. The others had flattered her at first but had soon wearied of events which had happened before they were born, but this child sat with her great eyes filled with wonder, ready to laugh or weep at her bidding.

  “You are, indeed, my spiritual daughter,” she exclaimed on one occasion. “Our stars have met, dear Ganymede, and you, I think, must be a small projection of myself. I shall leave you my money—yes, I shall leave you poor Stubbs’ fortune. I will ring my lawyers tomorrow.”

  Charity, though startled, did not take this pronouncement very seriously. Astrea, she thought shrewdly, was the kind of woman who enjoyed making grand gestures and was probably always changing her will.

  “That’s most kind of you,” she replied politely, “but you should talk it over with your nephew when he comes at the weekend. He wouldn’t, I’m sure, hear of such a thing—a stranger whom you hardly know.”

  “Marc has no jurisdiction over my affairs,” retorted Astrea, stung, as always, by any hint of opposition. “Besides, he’s not coming this weekend.”

  “Not?” Charity’s spirits rose at once. She had not been looking forward to Mr. Marc Gentle’s next visit.

  “Some case pending,” Astrea said vaguely. “He’ll be working in chambers. Do you not care for the idea of being my heiress, dear child?”

  Charity scarcely knew what to answer. She did not for a moment think that Astrea intended to ring her lawyers, but the suggestion could not be ignored altogether.

  “You must have other heirs, more close to you,” she said gently. “Your nephew, for instance?”

  “Marc has no need for my money, he makes plenty of his own,” Astrea answered impatiently. “He will, of course, as my only living relative, come in for a nice little legacy, but that will by no means account for it all. Stubbs was a rich man—all those sausages, you know—so unromantic, but necessary, I suppose. I cannot bear to eat sausages for that reason, though Minnie likes them. Roma would have had my money had she married Marc.”

  Charity frowned.

  “You don’t think, do you, that the—the money may have come between them?” she said tentatively.

  Astrea leaned forward to smooth away the frown with loving fingers.

  “Perhaps,” she said. “Marc admitted as much, but Roma, when she couldn’t get him on her own terms, ran off with this American tycoon old enough to be her grandfather, and now he’s dead and she has the dollars. No need for me to make a will in her favor.”

  “Is she not a relation, then?” Charity asked, wondering if Roma, like herself, had been one of the several companions.

  “Not in blood, perhaps,” Astrea replied dreamily. “In the spirit, I had thought—but no, our stars crossed. She is a Gemini, and they are notoriously uncertain and superficial and lazy at their lowest level. Roma’s salvation would have been marriage with Marc, as I frequently told them both. He was born under Libra, you know, and that is the ideal harmonious partnership for Gemini subjects. You cannot go against the stars.”

  Charity sighed. How much havoc could a person of Astrea’s temperament unwittingly create for others? she wondered. She had not liked Marc Gentle to any degree, but when she went up to bed that night she had the curiosity to look up the meaning of his sign in the pile of little books on the planets which Astrea had insisted on providing her with for study.

  Libra, the Scales, she read with disgust. How appropriate and how chilly-sounding were all the attributes listed; logic, balance, detachment, love of justice ... she was not surprised to read that Librans form few real friendships.

  Two weekends went by before Marc came to Cleat again, and when he did arrive he looked tired and on edge. Work had continued to pile up, he said; he had seldom left his chambers until late at night, and then worked on into the small hours at his flat and for most of the weekend. “You should eat fruit and drink milk,” his aunt told him sweepingly. “Librans should rule out all sugar, starch and heavy intoxicants.”

  He grinned at her tolerantly and helped himself to sherry.

  “You shouldn’t supply the intoxicants, in that case,” he retorted. “How is the new companion shaping?”

  “Oh, ideal, my dear boy, ideal! All those ridiculous forebodings of yours—quite wrong, of course. Why, she even told me I should consult you before changing my will.”

  He looked up sharply and his eyes narrowed.

  “Astrea, you’re not persisting in that folly, are you?” he said.

  “What folly, dear boy?”

  “You know very well. You’ve now suggested this absurd notion to the girl, I gather.”

  “Naturally. We have become very close. She has a most amazing gift for drawing my innermost thoughts from me.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” he countered dryly.

  “And a born listener, my dear. Young, ignorant in many ways, as is only to be expected, but so gentle ... so simpatico ...”

  “I’ll bet she is!”

  Astrea paused in her vague wanderings about the room and looked at her nephew with gathering petulance.

  “Why have you taken against the child—a girl you know nothing about?” she asked.

  He sipped his sherry thoughtfully. It was so like Astrea to explode her bombshells without thought to the propitiousness of the moment, he reflected wryly. He was in no mood to do battle with her after a gruelling three weeks of legal work.

  “I haven’t taken against her, as you put it,” he answered a little wearily. “I can only point out, as I have on other occasions, that it’s unwise to rush into these things without due consideration. Your lawyers will give you the same advice if you are foolish enough to consult them.”

  “I’ve already done so,” she replied regally. “I have an appointment with old Mr. Fenimore for one day next week, and if you get in first and try to interfere, as you did once before, Cleat will not remain open house to you, Marc.”

  It was an old threat and empty with much repetition. She was, he knew, too fond of him to close the door in his face for long, but she was also a woman who thrived on opposition, and he had no wish to aggravate the situation. He must, he saw, tackle the girl. A few brutal home truths should put the fear of God into her.

  “Fenimore can be trusted to look after your interests without my intervention,” he said mildly.

  “He cannot refuse to draw up a fresh will for me.”

  “No, he can’t do that, but he can institute discreet enquiries and scare this little fortune-hunter off if you won’t listen to sense.”

  “Really, Marc, you talk of the girl as if she were a trickster, a—a sort of confidence crook!” she exclaimed. “It’s tragic that a successful career at the Bar has only made you think the worst of your fellow creatures.”

  “Rather inevitable, I’m afraid, when one is a criminal lawyer.”

  “Charity is not like that. She was honest enough, as I told you, to suggest I consulted you, knowing you’re a lawyer.”

  “Very astute of her,” he murmured.

  “I might even,” announced his aunt triumphantly, “adopt her. Yes, that’s what I’ll do if there’s any more trouble. I’ll adopt her legally. She’s still under age, so that would be much the best course.”

  It was an unfortunate moment for Charity to have to make her entrance before they all went in to dinner. She had been long enough at Cleat House now to feel at her ease, even in renewing acquaintance with a man who had so plainly resented her, and she bore no one ill-will for long. Charity had
a simple approach to life. She did not feel she would ever like Marc Gentle, but she could see his objection to his aunt’s being exploited by strangers, and she was prepared to efface herself as much as possible during his visit. But as she shook hands with him, she was aware immediately of a fresh antagonism and her own dislike leapt instantly to meet it.

  “Dear, dear Ganymede,” Astrea said effusively, enveloping the girl in an extravagant embrace, largely, Charity suspected, to annoy her nephew. They had been having words, she thought unhappily, and, judging by the behavior of both, the argument had concerned herself.

  Astrea was at her most provocative throughout the meal, bestowing unwelcome attentions upon Charity while she ignored Marc with pointed displeasure. Really, thought Charity helplessly, she’s like a child! It was evident that Marc shared her sentiments, for he failed with admirable calm to respond to her jibes, and, although obviously very tired, made an effort to keep some small talk flowing to bridge the awkward gaps in the evening.

  Back in the music-room Astrea demanded that Charity should play some old arias for her as if they were still alone, but Charity privately thought her employer had had things her own way for too long. It was a little hard on the disagreeable Mr. Gentle that he should continue to be subjected to such childishness when he looked as tired as he did. She made an excuse that she had mending to do, and went early to bed.

  Whatever the reason for Astrea’s behavior, by the next morning her mood had entirely changed. She was full of attentions towards her nephew, and, having bade him with earnest solicitude to rest and relax and do nothing, promptly insisted that he should drive her in to Brighton on one of her exhausting shopping sprees.