Master of Melincourt

by Susan Barrie

  And for the first time Tina was almost painfully polite ... and she didn’t even argue when sent to bed a full quarter of an hour before her usual time.

  Edwina sent her to bed because her politeness unnerved her ... and Tina seemed perfectly happy to go.

  CHAPTER IV

  WHEN Edwina went in to tuck her up she was lying with her eyes, wearing an extraordinarily gloating expression, gleaming at her over the top of the sheet. She reminded Edwina that her uncle was leaving early in the morning—before breakfast, in fact—so they wouldn’t see him again until his return.

  For a devoted niece her relish at this prospect seemed a trifle uncanny.

  Edwina put out her light and went to her own room. She sat in a chair near her window and watched the stars brighten over the park, and she thought what a pity it was that Tina, who was such a curiously tough slip of a thing, was not more responsive to friendly overtures, and being motherless was not keener to enlist the sympathies of a member of her own sex who was not, after all, such a great number of years older than herself.

  Edwina, when she arrived at Melincourt, had been eager to make the acquaintance of her new charge, but almost from the very first moment she had been rebuffed. Tina had looked at her with those bright, black boot-button eyes of hers, and their expression had said plainly that she was not going to like Miss Sands. She was not going to make the smallest effort to like Miss Sands, and however much the latter might go out of her way to attempt to please her, and however genuinely anxious she was that they should be on excellent terms with one another, the junior partner in this relationship was not going to make it at all easy. She was, in fact, going to make it as difficult as she knew how, and for no better reason than that she objected to anyone who came between her and her uncle, and largely as a result of his somewhat unwise method of handling her since she became not only his niece but his ward she had developed a possessive attitude towards him that boded ill for any future wife that he possessed ... Unless she, too, could succeed in arousing the same passionate attachment and could fill some empty space in the child’s heart that was badly in need of filling.

  Edwina, watching the stars growing brighter one moment and all but disappearing the next, while the extensive grounds that surrounded the old grey house called Melincourt slumbered in the hush of the night, and the rolling fields and woods beyond were equally silent although possibly alive with a form of life that didn’t dare to show its face in the daytime, wondered that the uncle didn’t feel more uneasy than he plainly did feel with so much unfair responsibility thrust on him.

  It was quite obvious that he was extremely attached to Tina, and he hadn’t hesitated to take her on his travels with him ... but it was just possible that he was already becoming aware that this was no light responsibility he had incurred. The fact that he had few illusions about the child’s capacity for being awkward proved that.

  “I hope you know how to defend yourself,” he had said to Edwina... and she had had the feeling that he was not as easy in his mind as he might have been about going off and leaving them for a fortnight.

  The following day Tina was so meek and submissive that Edwina could hardly believe she was the same child, and the day following that her conduct was exemplary, and she didn’t once say or do anything that justified a rebuke. Edwina began to feel extraordinarily hopeful ... extraordinarily, considering the doubts she had experienced only a short while before. She made up her mind that during this fortnight, while the master of the place was absent, and there was every opportunity to get to know one another, there should be a certain amount of latitude where lessons and the daily routine was concerned, and in a sense it should be a kind of holiday period for them both, with the accent on diversion rather than application and disciplinary exercises.

  After all, an eight-year-old could only absorb so much, and it was wonderful weather, and Tina needed more colour in her cheeks rather than more information to be dubiously stored away somewhere inside her head. She was bright enough in her way, could read well and was uncannily good at supplying the correct answers to reasonably difficult arithmetical problems. Her uncle had never treated her as if she was a child first and foremost, and everything that was said to her had to be suitable for childish ears. He had discussed subjects with her that it might have been wiser not to discuss, and delivered himself of opinions in her hearing that had affected her outlook on many things she would not normally be expected to know anything at all about.

  So it could be truthfully said of her that she was precocious, and her advanced knowledge of certain aspects of daily life must have shocked at least one of her governesses. In Edwina’s opinion she was rather like a tight little ball of wool that needed unwinding ... and therefore she had no conscience about announcing a curtailment of the daily lessons, and substituting a picnic or two, and some interesting walks that at least had the benefit of increasing Tina’s knowledge of natural history, and appeared to arouse a latent desire to know more about bird-lore, and the other winged creatures that fluttered about in the early summer sunshine.

  It had been a hard winter and a cold spring, but now that the month of roses was at hand the days could not have been more golden and perfect. From dawn to dusk there were clear skies and so much sunshine that Edwina took advantage of her employer’s absence to wear cotton frocks, and even sun-tops, although she wouldn’t have dreamed of wearing anything but a neat, semi-type of uniform in the day time, at least, when he was at home. Tina, too, appeared in scanty cotton outfits, and the two of them looked as bright as butterflies when they took to the road with their picnic baskets and all the other impedimenta the housekeeper deemed essential for an enjoyable day in the open.

  In this way a week passed, and during that week Jervis Errol telephoned on two occasions to find out whether all was well at Melincourt. Edwina received the impression that he half expected her to report some near disaster each time he telephoned, and the relief in his voice when she was able to assure him that all was well was easily detectable.

  She told him that she was taking advantage of the fine weather to get Tina out of doors as much as possible, and he approved wholeheartedly.

  “Splendid,” he said. “Run wild like a couple of gipsies, and perhaps Tina will be so exhausted when I get back that she won’t have the energy to pester me.”

  It was hardly a laudable attitude on the part of a guardian, but Edwina took it that he was thinking both of Tina and himself, and that was sufficiently laudable on the part of a guardian who hadn’t had much opportunity to turn his back on an unwanted responsibility to excuse him in her eyes.

  They didn’t exactly take his advice and run wild like gipsies, but during the second week of his absence the pattern of the first week was repeated, and as day followed day and their relationship improved Edwina flattered herself that she had taken the right line with Tina, and if only her uncle’s return did not upset things they might in time become quite good friends... at least sufficiently so for Tina to suffer her as her more or less constant companion.

  Two days before Errol was due to return—accompanied by a small party of friends—Tina insisted on being allowed to visit her pony before they went indoors for tea. They had had a wonderful long day in the garden, and by this time they each were as brown as berries, Edwina was thinking longingly of a quick, refreshing bath before their high tea in the schoolroom, and a complete change of clothes because she was hot and sticky and not, she was afraid, particularly presentable, but Tina insisted on taking the long way round via the stables, and once there she declined absolutely to budge another inch until she had been permitted to say good-night, as she phrased it, to Mothball, her pony.

  The stable yard was deserted at that hour, the groom and his assistant were away having their tea and preparing for the evening ahead of them—in the case of the groom’s assistant this meant meeting a local young woman and going dancing somewhere—and the occupants of the stable block had already received their final feed and be
en shut in for the night. Tina knew perfectly that this was not the hour when she was encouraged to visit Mothball, but all day she had been a little perverse, and perhaps as the result of too much sun she was developing an obstinate attitude, and inclined to resent any curb upon her will ... much as she had resented it (only in a much more truculent way) when Edwina first arrived to act the part of her governess.

  “I know how to open the door,” she said, jumping up to prove her point. Mothball had a stall on his own not very far away from Errol’s grey, and Edwina felt her spine prickle with nervousness as the powerful animal showed its displeasure at the intrusion by stamping about in the limited space allowed to it and thrusting its head over the partition and surveying them with quite a wicked gleam in its eyes.

  Or it looked like a wicked gleam to Edwina.

  She urged Tina to hurry and have her few words with Mothball, while remaining several feet away on the other side of the half-door that had been wrenched open by Tina, and the child at first seemed inclined to obey her. She fondled the chestnut ears of her special pet, and explained why it was that she didn’t happen to have any sugar on her person, and then glanced up at her uncle’s grey and addressed it also. For answer it threw up its head and whinnied penetratingly, and Tina stood on tiptoe again and patted its muzzle.

  She called to Edwina to come and pat it too, but Edwina simply had not got the courage. She called to Tina to come out and accompany her back to the house for tea, but the child’s eyes had grown thoughtful, and she tried a coaxing note to induce Edwina to join her in the stall.

  “I think you’re very silly,” she said, “to be afraid of horses. Mothball certainly won’t hurt you, and Marquis isn’t really as fierce as he looks. Come inside for just a minute and lift me up so that I can really pat him. Uncle Jervis always does that when he’s here.”

  But still Edwina hesitated.

  “I’d rather not...” But she knew she was appearing cowardly in front of the child, and since Tina was such a scrap of a thing it did look as if she was hardly fit to companion her when she declined to do such a simple thing as lift her up to caress her uncle’s mount ... an animal she knew very well as it was not a recent acquisition of the Melincourt stables.

  “Oh, very well,” she said, as Tina shot her a bright-eyed look of contempt, and although it demanded quite an effort on her part she stepped inside the stable and prepared to oblige Tina.

  She just had time to take note of the fact that the Melincourt stables were unexpectedly palatial, and over each stall there was an electric light bulb, and the whole place was clinically clean and the colourful horse-blankets that draped the tops of the stalls were smarter than her last year’s winter coat, when Tina somehow managed to slip past her without her realising it, and it was the bang of the stable door and the sudden half light that filled her with realisation that she had been shut in.

  Accidentally, of course, at first she thought ... until Tina’s gleeful voice reached her through the woodwork, and the child made it plain that it was no accident.

  “If you’re going to ride with me you’ve got to stop being frightened of horses,” she called. “I don’t like people who’re frightened of horses. I don’t really like you, although I don’t hate you as much as I did!”

  “Tina!” Edwina banged on the door that was latched from outside, and for one moment she thought the sheer horror of her position was going to cause her to faint. She actually felt the blood leaving her head, and her legs growing weak as if they would refuse to support her, and then when she realised that if she did anything so silly as faint in such a predicament Mothball, whose stall she was sharing, would almost certainly stamp all over her, she made a clutching movement at the door, rested her head against it, and somehow the world steadied.

  From outside Tina kept up a lively flow of advice for some time.

  “You’ll be perfectly all right if you don’t make a scene, and in any case Mothball won’t hurt you. But Marquis won’t like it if you start screaming, or anything like that ... and he might break down the partition. I advise you not to do anything he won’t like, and I wouldn’t let him see you’re afraid of him because he won’t like that, either. Just talk to him, be nice to him, and he’ll be all right, and so will you!”

  “Tina!” Edwina tried not to sound frenzied as she beat at the door. “Let me out! You must! You must...!”

  “I will in about half an hour. I’ll come back and let you out.”

  “No, now ... please, Tina!” Her voice sounded faint. “I really am horribly frightened...”

  “I know. That’s why you’ve got to stay there.”

  “But it won’t do any good keeping me shut up in here. For one thing, I don’t like being shut in anywhere.”

  “You mean you’ve got claustra—claustrophobia ...?” She got it out at last, and she sounded triumphant as well as amused. “You didn’t know I knew long words like that, did you? But I know all sorts of words ... all sorts of things. I don’t really need people like you to teach me! I’m going to make Uncle Jervis send you away! Now I’m going to get my tea.”

  “You’ll be asked questions ... Mrs. Blythe will want to know where I am...”

  “I’ll tell her you’re not feeling very well and you’ve gone to your room. I’ll tell her you don’t want to be disturbed!”

  Marquis made a violent, plunging movement in the stall next door, and the whole of the stable block seemed to shake. Mothball, who had been nuzzling her quietly from behind, was plainly as badly startled as Edwina was, and let out a nervous little whinny.

  Tina called clearly:

  “In half an hour ... I’ll be back in half an hour! And if you promise not to complain about me I’ll let you out!”

  Edwina once again felt as if much of the strength was leaving her body. It was very warm inside the stable building, despite the air-conditioning and cooling apparatus that was later pointed out to her, and despite the impeccable cleanliness smelled strongly of horseflesh. Edwina stood leaning up against the door that she was unable to open and felt the perspiration breaking out on her brow, and in a matter of seconds it was running down her face. She wiped it away with the back of her hand, and on the other side of the partition Marquis plunged again, and then the handsome grey put its head over the partition and snorted at her.

  She wondered whether it was inviting her to touch it, but she knew that she didn’t dare. For one thing its lips were curling back from its splendid teeth in such a way that even if it wasn’t actually expressing a fiendish dislike of her she gathered that it sensed her fear.

  Horses were like dogs. They knew when you were afraid of them, and hadn’t the least idea how to handle them. And although she knew perfectly how to handle dogs—some dogs—this was actually the first time in her life that she had been within inches of a graceful creature like Mothball, and feet of such a terrifying monster as Marquis.

  It seemed to her that hours passed while she was shut up inside such cramped quarters. The light faded, and although through the barred windows she could see stars and the edge of the roof on the opposite side of the courtyard she could see nothing else. Apart from Marquis’s angry stamping and snorting there were no other sounds, and Mothball was too light and airy a creature to make any sound. Every now and again it came close to Edwina and pressed up against her, and she was so thankful that it interposed its bulk between her and the partition on the other side of which the grey refused to be quiet for longer than a few seconds at a time that her fingers went out automatically to caress it. She began to understand perfectly that Tina could be fond of it, even violently fond. And she knew that if ever she was released from her place of confinement: her affection for Mothball would be greater than anything the child could bestow on it.

  She longed to sit down, but from that point of view Mothball’s presence in the stall was a disadvantage, for she feared that if she sat on the ground the pony might well trample all over her in the dark. And besides, she was too much afraid of
Marquis to leave the support of the door, even though it refused to open and let her free.

  Inside her head her thoughts became a confused jumble, and she wondered whether, if ever, Tina would remember her promise and come and release her. She wondered what she was doing inside the house, and what Mrs. Blythe the housekeeper thought of her continued absence, and whether she believed that she was shut inside her room and not wishing to be disturbed.

  She wondered whether Tina could possibly have forgotten her, or whether it was deliberate cruelty on her part keeping her where she was ... whether she intended to keep her there all night, and if so what kind of a surprise was in store for the stable hand who eventually found her.

  By that time her hair would probably have turned white—especially if Marquis continued his occasional assaults on the partition that separated them—and she might not be entirely in her right mind. She was very cold by this time, and her teeth would be chattering, and she might be inclined to foam at the mouth, and her eyes would almost certainly be wild and staring.

  And another almost certainly, her legs would have given way under her, and she would be found lying on the hard stone floor.

  At last ... at long, long last, footsteps came across the yard, someone whistled tunelessly, and the stable door was thrust open. She heard a voice exclaim: “Holy Moses! But it can’t be...” And then, with so much concern in the voice that it was like a warm blanket wrapped round her, “Are you all right, Miss Sands? What in the world are you doing here? How did you manage to get yourself shut in?” He was kneeling beside her on the hard ground, Bennett, the man who was in charge of the stables, and his horny hands were doing their best to help her to her feet. She was so stiff that she clung to him.