Master of Melincourt

by Susan Barrie

  She coloured furiously again.

  “If you think I’m capable of doing a thing like that you must have a very low opinion of me, Mr. Errol,” she accused him in great indignation.

  Jervis Errol shook his head. He walked back to his chair at the scarred schoolroom table and sat down again, facing her. His expression was more or less unreadable, and his eyes almost detached.

  “I want you to give me your account of what happened on the night Tina locked you up in the stables,” he ordered quietly. “I want you to give me a completely unvarnished, but nevertheless absolutely true account of what occurred. Whether or not you did anything to merit punitive treatment... always supposing Tina had the right to administer it ... doesn’t matter. You mustn’t digress, or attempt to defend my niece, but just tell me the truth.”

  He leant his elbows on the table, rested his chin on his linked hands, and waited for her to begin.

  Edwina told him exactly what took place. She tried hard to soften her experience, but the fact that she spent several hours locked up in a state of abject fear, as a result of her instinctive mistrust of horses, and during the latter part of her incarceration, in the dark, was not easy to soften. He gathered from her choice of words that after a time she arrived at the conclusion that neither of her two stable companions, Mothball or Marquis, were in a position to do her any harm—Mothball because she was a very friendly small animal, Marquis because he was in another stall. But apart from everything else she had a claustrophobic dislike of being locked in anywhere, and she assured him—or tried to assure him—that the worst part of the experience was knowing that she couldn’t get out. That really did deprive her of the power to think rationally.

  Errol continued to watch her so closely that she began to feel acutely embarrassed. There was neither sympathy nor a large amount of understanding in his look—indeed, she was very much afraid that after this disclosure he would hold her in a form of very real contempt—and a curious rigidity about the set of his mouth filled her with apprehension lest he there and then announced a series of punishments for Tina.

  But he did nothing of the kind.

  “What if Bennett hadn’t let you out when he did?” he enquired. “What kind of condition do you think you would have been in by morning?”

  “I—I don’t know.” But she was so sure that she would have been white-haired that her conviction was given away by her eyes.

  He nodded.

  “Yes, I see,” he said. “It was lucky for you—lucky for Tina!—that Bennett did let you out. However, I still don’t understand why you didn’t get in touch with me and leave. No one would have expected you to remain after what took place.”

  She made a rather helpless gesture with her hands and shoulders.

  “I didn’t want to leave ... at least, I don’t think it seriously crossed my mind that it would be sensible to do so, and I couldn’t have walked out on the child until you returned. In any case, she—she was very sorry.”

  “You comfort me,” he observed.

  “Oh, I really mean it!” She wondered how she could possibly convince him, since he looked so hard and unapproachable all at once. “I think, as a matter of fact, that when she couldn’t leave the house to unlock me she was terribly upset, and if Bennett hadn’t let me out I think she, too, would have been in an awful state by morning. She was so relieved to see me when I got back to the house that her whole attitude towards me underwent a complete and radical change from that very moment, and only tonight she gave me to understand that she no longer disliked me at all. In fact, she-—she rather likes me.”

  “Kind of her, I’m sure,” he observed in the same dry tone that he had used before. Then he picked up a pen from the pen-holder in front of him and started to play with the nib. “Do you wish me to understand that you are not contemplating handing in your notice?”

  Edwina nodded her head.

  “Nothing of the kind. If—if you wish me to stay on I will stay, but I do realise that, from your point of view, and possibly from Tina’s, I’m not an ideal companion for your niece. I’m still terrified of horses, and she wants someone to ride with her. Nothing will ever induce me to learn to ride!”

  To her surprise he smiled.

  “I could teach you to ride in no time at all,” he assured her.

  She looked alarmed.

  “Do you mean that, if I stay, you’ll insist on giving me lessons in riding?”

  His smile broadened, and in the dark blue depths of his eyes a spark of amusement showed up plainly.

  “Well, I’m not feudal enough to insist, but I may do my utmost to try to persuade you. You haven’t yet come up against my powers of persuasiveness, so if you really are prepared to stay on here I wouldn’t bet on it that you won’t be sitting astride a horse before many weeks are out. At the moment I’ve got some visitors on my hands, but once I’m free of them—”

  “How long will they be staying?” she enquired apprehensively.

  She saw his white teeth gleaming at her.

  “A week ... just a little longer, perhaps. And that will give me time to find you a suitable mount.”

  “I don’t want a suitable mount.”

  She actually felt as if the hairs were rising on the back of her neck, and he once more went across to her and stood looking down at her with a strange, considering expression in his eyes. He stood with his hands in his pockets, as if he felt sorely tempted to touch the discoloration on her forehead again, and was striving hard not to do so, and she looked up at him nervously.

  “Do you really want me to remain, Mr. Errol?”

  “I do,” he assured her with emphasis.

  “Even though I’m ... not perhaps the ideal companion for Tina?”

  “I think you are the ideal companion.”

  She thanked him with her eyes. All at once the warm brown depths seemed to glow as if by some magical process they had come alight. Her magnolia-pale skin became overlaid with one of her peculiarly attractive flushes.

  “Thank you, Mr. Errol,” she returned. “If you really believe that I’ll do my best to prove you right. I might even—I say might!—agree to let you teach me to ride! And I’ll certainly make an effort to understand Tina a little more... if,” she concluded, “you promise you won’t punish her for what she did the other night!”

  His answer to this request took some time to be thought out, and while he was doing so he paced up and down the room, with its shabby well-used furniture and attempts at brightness in the form of new floral curtains and a bowl of flowers which Edwina herself had arranged only that morning, and his black brows were very bent, and his whole expression brooding.

  But at the end of five minutes he returned to her, and he spoke briefly but to the point.

  “Very well, I won’t punish her this time.”

  Edwina beamed up at him happily.

  “And there won’t ever be another time, because Tina, I’m sure, has learned her lesson. She knows very well that if you send me away I might be replaced by someone she can like even less.”

  “If I send you away she’ll go to school.”

  Edwina made a little movement with her hands in her lap.

  “Well, one day, of course she’ll have to be sent away to school I think a child like Tina will benefit from the disciplined life of a boarding-school ... provided, of course, that it’s well run, and the sort of place where she can settle down. But she’s too young, yet, to be sent away to school.”

  “So you’ll stay and look after her?”

  “Until someone else can take over from me.”

  “You said just now that she might take exception to ‘someone else.’ ”

  Edwina looked uncomfortable ... particularly as she couldn’t help calling to mind the little scene on the terrace earlier in the evening.

  “I wasn’t really thinking of someone else whom you might employ,” she admitted. “I was thinking—”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, Tina needs a mother.
”

  “So you’ve said before,” he remarked.

  “I think she needs to feel absolutely secure and wanted.”

  “She’s perfectly well aware that I want her. I don’t know quite why, but I’m devoted to the scrap.”

  “I know.” She smiled up at him. “And, as a matter of fact,” she heard herself adding impulsively, “I’m growing quite fond of her myself.”

  “Despite the fact that she locked you up in the stables?”

  “Despite that. Perhaps because of it. Locking me up in the stables frightened her so much that she began to see me in a new light. I’m sure she wishes now that she’d never thought of doing anything of the kind.”

  “I sincerely hope she does.”

  He spoke forcefully, but there was a wryness in his smile just the same.

  “Well, if you can forgive her, I can. But I’ll have a talk with her just the same. Knowing what took place while I was away I simply can’t ignore it, but I promise I won’t lock her up in her own room and keep her on a diet of bread and water for the next few days. It might be the best thing for her, but I shan’t do it.”

  Edwina rose hurriedly and thanked him.

  “I know you can’t. You are almost too good to her in a way,” she told him impulsively.

  “And you allow yourself to be pushed around and won’t allow any action to be taken against her.”

  “I was a coward, and she knew it. She traded on that.”

  “If you have any other weaknesses you mustn’t let her know about them,” he cautioned her, half seriously, half humorously. “You have already had experience of what she can do.”

  They walked together over to the schoolroom door, and he opened it for her. Then he held out his hand.

  “Thank you for being so forbearing, Edwina,” he said very quietly indeed as his fingers closed firmly about hers. “You’re not a coward, you know. I think you were very plucky on the whole. Bennett said you were in very bad shape when he opened the stable door and found you. It took pluck, after that experience, to stay on here ... and it was very noble of you not to complain.”

  Edwina was not entirely certain that he meant what he said, but she found her way to her own room in an unusual state of mental agitation and just a degree of purely temporary exultation because he apparently approved of her, and an unusual tingling in her fingers seemed to communicate itself to her right arm and thence to some previously undisturbed spot deep at the heart of her being ... which was a sufficiently strange experience in itself to set her wondering.

  It was the first time in her life that a man’s fingers had gripped hers quite so closely, and it was certainly the first time that a significant look in a man’s dark blue, thickly lashed eyes had had the effect of temporarily scattering her wits.

  Of course, she could have imagined the look ... but she certainly hadn’t imagined the handclasp.

  She had been too taken aback to say good-night to him, but in addition to saying good-night to her he had added: “Sleep well, Edwina. You’ve a clear conscience, no emotional entanglements, apparently, so you should sleep very well indeed!”

  As she undressed rather slowly and got into bed Edwina wondered about the emotional entanglements. She had more than a suspicion that she was being caught up in a web that was not entirely devoid of some form of emotion.

  The next day she and Tina spent the morning on their own, but in the afternoon Tina was invited to accompany her uncle and Miss Fleming on a short drive, which included a visit to Marsha’s grandmother, who lived in the vicinity.

  Tina returned from the excursion looking distinctly thoughtful, and when Edwina taxed her on her thoughtfulness she said something about no longer being quite sure what she wanted, and Marsha’s grandmother seeming to be very sure about what was going to happen.

  “She kept teasing Marsha about the ring she was wearing,” the child admitted, a disturbed look in her eyes. “She asked if it was an engagement ring, and Marsha said ‘No’ ... but she would probably be wearing an engagement ring before very long. Does that mean, do you think,” Tina demanded of Edwina, “that my uncle will be giving her an engagement ring very soon?”

  Edwina looked blank.

  “How would I know?” she counter-questioned. “And, in any case,” she added quietly, “it’s what you want, isn’t it?”

  Tina didn’t answer immediately, but she went round the room touching books and papers and absent mindedly altering the position of semi-fixtures before she blurted out:

  “I—I don’t know.”

  “But it’s what you did want.”

  Tina turned and looked at her in a disturbed way. “Yes, I did, didn’t I? I wanted Uncle Jervis to get married as quickly as possible and bring Marsha back here to live. But now I’m not—not so sure.”

  “Silly child,” Edwina said gently, encompassing her slight shoulders with an arm, “you can’t change your mind in such a short space of time about anything as important as that. Just because Miss Fleming was a bit irritable with you when she arrived it doesn’t mean she isn’t every bit as fond of you as she was, and the fact that she took you with her on a visit to her grandmother to-day means that she was trying to make up for hurting you. She’s probably very sorry that she was so sharp-tongued with you yesterday.”

  “You think so?”

  But there was nothing in Tina’s expression that conveyed an impression of relief.

  “Of course. And in any case, if your uncle’s going to marry her—”

  “Do you think he’s going to marry her?”

  “My dear child—” Edwina was somewhat taken aback by the direct question—“I wouldn’t even presume to hazard a guess. I know little about your uncle, and absolutely nothing about Miss Fleming.”

  “Do you like her?”

  “I’ve had no opportunity to find out whether I like or dislike her.”

  But the next day Marsha made her way up to the schoolroom about the middle of the morning, and said brightly that she thought it was far too fine a day for Tina to be confined indoors. It was much more important that she should be out in the sunshine, and she looked towards Tina as if expecting her to leap at her and hug her for putting forward such a brilliant suggestion, but Tina did nothing of the kind. She sat at the schoolroom table making large blots on a page of one of her exercise books and surrounding them with tiny dots, and from the look of concentration on her face she was wholly absorbed in what she was doing.

  Marsha frowned quickly and looked impatient. “Tina!” she exclaimed. “I’ve suggested to Miss Sands that she lets you off lessons for to-day, and your uncle and I will take you out with us. We’re going out to lunch where there are several children—all, like you, in the charge of a governess—and I’m sure you’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  “Not particularly,” Tina answered, looking up at her with indifferent eyes.

  Marsha bit her delicate pink underlip.

  “But surely you don’t want to remain cooped up here on such a lovely day?” she demanded. “Apart from anything else it isn’t good for you.”

  “I’d rather go for a walk with Edwina,” Tina explained. “She’s fun to go for a walk with because she knows so much about birds and things, and she’s already said that we’ll go for a really long walk this afternoon.”

  “But surely you’d rather go for a drive than a walk?”

  “No.”

  Marsha turned away. Edwina could tell from her sudden, heightened colour that she was annoyed, and she was also afraid that Tina had not been particularly tactful in the way she had refused her invitation.

  That night the two of them were invited downstairs for dinner, and although Edwina was certain it was far too late for the child to be up, let alone to partake of a particularly lavish meal, her objections were overridden by Miss Fleming. With tightened lips she informed Edwina that, before her advent, Tina had always stayed up for dinner with her uncle, particularly when she herself was a visitor to the house, and to-night it wa
s her particular wish that the child should be present.

  “After all,” she said, once more walking into the schoolroom at the very moment that the schoolroom table was being set for a light and nourishing repast that would have ensured Tina getting to bed at a reasonable hour, and enjoying a restful night after the right amount of exercise during the daytime, “I do happen to know Tina very well indeed, and I’m hoping that our relationship will be even closer in the future.” She looked meaningly at Tina, and asked her softly to run away to her bedroom for a short while because she wished to talk to Miss Sands without interruption, and although Tina obeyed her it was not without a lingering backward look at the fruit salad on the table, and the special flavoured junket that the cook had created especially for her.

  Miss Fleming cast a jaundiced look at the junket and said she believed in young people being reared as adults from the word ‘go,’ and nowadays parents were much more broadminded about that sort of thing. The days when children were banished to nurseries and seen occasionally but heard very seldom were no more, and she was wholeheartedly thankful. She had been a ‘banished to the nursery child’ herself, and she felt very strongly on the subject.

  Edwina, who agreed with her up to a point, watched her walking up and down the floor of the schoolroom, and waited for whatever it was that was coming. She observed that Marsha Fleming was looking quite determined, as if her mind was made up about something that was important to her ... and now that the opportunity was hers she was determined to get whatever it was off her chest.

  She picked up a dessert-spoon and examined it casually for a moment, and then looked Edwina full in the eye.

  “Miss Sands,” she said, “I want you to be clear about Tina’s future. She will not much longer be the motherless, spoiled child that she is now.” Her classically cut lips curved with a certain dry amusement as well as a touch of wryness. “Oh, I’m willing to admit that Jervis spoils her abominably, and as a result of his handling she is not all that she should be. Her clothes are not right, and in some ways she is far too adult. She can be very impertinent...” No doubt she was referring, Edwina thought, to Tina’s refusal to accompany her uncle and his most favoured guest on an afternoon excursion. “I have even known her be downright rude on occasion, and Jervis has simply stood by and laughed at her as if he thought her behaviour amusing rather than atrocious! I told him long ago that he was well on the way to ruining the child, but it didn’t seem to make much impression. Men are like that ... particularly strong-willed, essentially masculine men like Mr. Errol, who look upon the opposite sex as fragile beyond belief, and get great pleasure out of humouring them all along the line.”