Ward of Lucifer

by Mary Burchell

  It was, Norma was to learn, the light of keen, brilliant intelligence. Not the warm glow of humanity. But it gave to Justin Yorke in that moment an extreme fascination.

  Though he was seated, it was obvious that he was a tall man. Tall and slender, but with an air of arrogant grace which conveyed an immense impression of power. Power of mind rather than muscle, perhaps. But power.

  He was neither dark nor fair. At least, Norma hardly considered that just as it was impossible to guess at his age. What one specially noticed were the beautiful bones of his faintly ascetic face, the proud carriage of his head and his hands.

  As Norma watched, fascinated, he turned a page of his book. And the movement of that thin, strong, beautiful hand, was a lesson in grace and decision. So absorbed was she, that she would probably have stood there a good while longer, but either she made some slight sound, or her presence impinged on his consciousness by some other means. Because at that moment he raised his head.

  The movement, like all his movements, was unhurried. But, as he looked across the room at her, Norma met the glance of those fine, cold blue eyes with something like a physical shock. She had not thought about his colouring until that moment. Now she knew that she would always be able to summon up the image of her guardian before her imagination simply by recalling the cool, intense blue of his eyes.

  If he were surprised at finding her standing in the doorway, looking at him, he did not show it. He simply held out his hand to her and said: "Come here, my child, and let me see you properly."

  CHAPTER TWO

  NORMA came forward across the room warm, colourful and vital like a gorgeous oil painting suddenly thrust into an exhibition of exquisite water colours, and the man in the chair took her hand and looked at her.

  "I'm Norma," she explained, a little breathlessly. "Yes. Of course." His cool voice seemed to say that she could hardly be anyone else, and that therefore her comment was superfluous and a little foolish.

  She flushed slightly under his critical gaze, and he said calmly: "You are a beautiful child. I'm glad. I can't bear plain things or plain people around me."

  This seemed such an extraordinary thing for a guardian to say as an introductory comment, that Norma blushed more deeply and said, a little self-consciously: "I'm glad if you think I'm pretty."

  "Not pretty." He dismissed the word with a curl of his thin, handsome mouth. "Warmth and colour don't belong to prettiness. You are beautiful, and it will be my business to see that that beauty is developed. It's just as well Janet died when she did. She would have made a shocking mess of grooming you to womanhood."

  Aunt Janet might have been a fly, for all her life or death appeared to interest him, and Norma felt unexpectedly shocked. She had known little of her aunt and had still less reason to remember her with personal warmth. But she had been a near relation of this extraordinary man. How could one dismiss her in this callous manner?

  "Didn't you like Aunt Janet?" she inquired, diffidently but irrepressibly.

  "No ." said Aunt Janet's half-brother without heat.

  "I thought her detestable. Altogether a superfluous person."

  This seemed to dispose of Aunt Janet so completely that Norma relapsed into nonplussed silence.

  Her guardian looked cynically amused.

  "Why? Did you like her?"

  "I didn't know her very well," Norma said slowly. "I don't think she was much interested in me, as a person. But she did represent mean, I belonged to her, as much as I belonged to anyone."

  "But you hardly ever saw her?" "No. Hardly ever."

  He stood up then and she realized that he was, as she had thought, tall and, although curiously graceful for a man, he was an absolutely dominating figure.

  He took her lightly by her round chin, and turned her face to the light, examining her as coolly as if she had indeed been just a painting. For a moment she contrived to meet his cold, appraising gaze. Then she dropped her eyes, and coloured faintly again.

  "Yes," he said, letting her go. "Janet always was a stupid woman. It was just like her to take on a theoretical guardianship, but ignore the fact that her charge was a most unusual looking child, and extract neither profit nor pleasure from the arrangement."

  "She didn't really want to be a guardian at all,"

  explained Norma, a good deal put out.

  "And she let you know that?" "Oh, she never said so in words!" "Just made you feel unwanted?"

  "Well" Norma felt suddenly moved by this strange man's quick appreciation of a fact which she seldom considered but which had given her great pain at various times. "I suppose it's difficult to be pleased about having other people's children dumped on you."

  And then she wondered a little if he felt that too.

  And, unexpectedly, her mouth trembled slightly, and she kept her lashes down, because she did not want to see in his face the same reluctance and distaste for the task of guardianship that she had occasionally seen in Aunt Janet's face.

  Then, incredibly, she felt his hand on her hair that sure, graceful touch which characterized Justin Yorke's every movement and impulse, and his voice said: "Well, my child, I hope you will never feel unwanted again."

  It was so entirely unexpected that, for an astounded moment, Norma was bereft of words. All that she had heard of her guardian recently had combined to create an unsympathetic, inhuman impression. And most of what he himself had said had done little to dispel that impression.

  And now he was speaking to her, touching her with a degree of sympathy and imaginative understanding which she had never known in anyone else.

  She was not a reticient girl and, in an access of feeling which she made no attempt to repress, she threw her arms round him and hid her face against his shoulder.

  She heard him laugh. A soft, cool laugh, not entirely devoid of satisfaction. But his hand was on her hair again, and she was aware that he stroked it lightly.

  "My dear child" The exclamation was one of amused protest, as much as of any real feeling, but he put his arm round her. "I'm afraid Janet must have given you a poor idea of guardians in general, if you are relieved by the slightest show of feeling on my part."

  "Oh, no. No I'm just being silly, I expect." Norma smiled up at him, surprised to find that there were tears on her lashes. "But it's nice and unexpected, somehow to be welcomed like this."

  "Is it?" He looked sarcastically amused. "Well, sit down now and tell me about yourself. Did you have a good journey?"

  "Oh , yes, thank you." Norma sat down in the chair he indicated where she was facing the light and he resumed his own seat, turning it slightly so that he faced her. "Except that I went on to Munley Halt, instead of getting out at Rossingale, where the car was waiting for me."

  "Indeed? Then how did you come from Munley here?"

  "I got a lift. Mr. Cantlin was coming this way in his car, and he brought me."

  "I see." A little to her surprise, he made no comment whatever on Paul Cantlin. Only, his thin mouth took on that slightly scornful curve again. "Then is Jenkins still waiting patiently for you at Rossingdale?"

  "Oh, no. You see, there were some people in my compartment who belonged to Rossingdale. A Mr. and Miss Bawdley and a friend. And we talked together and I told them I was coming to you to Bishop stone. They apparently told Jenkins that I'd gone on to Munley. So he was going on there to fetch me, after he'd brought the evening papers back here. Only I arrived before he could."

  "So you've already made several acquaintances in the district? Paul Cantlin, and Beatrice Bawdley and the ineffable Henry," observed her guardian pleasantly.

  "Y-yes," agreed Norma, feeling he was being unnecessarily hard on Henry.

  "And what did they all tell you about me?"

  Until then, he had been absently examining a curiously engraved paper knife which he had picked up from his desk. But, at that last question, he suddenly looked up and fixed her with a cool, rather frightening gaze.

  "Why, what makes you think they would tell me
anything about you?" Norma knew that, in the full light from the window, her confusion must be patent, but the question was so unexpected that, for the moment, she could only prevaricate.

  He laughed slightly.

  "A certain amount of good judgment with regard to my neighbours," he said dryly. "Besides, you would be more than human if you had not made a few inquiries when you found that they knew me."

  "I didn't ask many questions," Norma said, a little indignantly, as she remembered how much information had been forthcoming without the need of questions.

  "No? But what did you manage to elicit?" Norma hesitated. Then a mischievous smile just flickered across her face.

  "Do you really want to know what they said?"

  "Please."

  "Well, one of them, though I won't tell you which, said you were like Lucifer.

  "Indeed?" He raised his eyebrows in faint amusement. "Before or after the Fall?"

  "Oh, before," Norma said decidedly.

  "But they allowed themselves to anticipate the Fall with pleasurable expectation?"

  Norma thought of the satisfaction with which Pink Roses had referred to just such a possibility, and marvelled a little at her guardian's shrewdness.

  "Was that all that Beatrice Bawdley had to say?" "I didn't say it was Miss Bawdley."

  "My dear Norma" Her guardian laughed with real amusement. "All the people you mentioned are extremely simple and uncomplicated types. Given a remark from anyone of them, one should be able to identify the speaker without much mental effort."

  "Oh," Norma said, and was rather disturbedly silent.

  "Any comparison of young. Cantlin's would be more likely to be drawn from the world of sport or possibly standard fiction of the more popular type," continued her guardian, a little disdainfully. "Classical references would not be in his line at all. And, as for Henry Bawdley, I doubt if he is capable of any comparisons at all, outside his immediate circle of acquaintances."

  "As a matter of fact," Norma said, feeling she must defend poor Henry from the imputation of complete mental incompetence, "it was Mr. Bawdley who first used the expression. He said you were as proud as Lucifer. But Miss Bawdley had to explain who Lucifer was," she added, as an honest afterthought.

  Her guardian laughed a good deal at that.

  "I see that you're very exact, Norma, and have a nice sense of justice," he said a little maliciously. "Are you going to tell me what you yourself contributed to the discussion on Lucifer?"

  "Well, I'm afraid I got rather priggish and said that Lucifer didn't necessarily mean Satan. That it could also mean the shining one."

  "What made you say that?" inquired her guardian, with what seemed to be genuine curiosity.

  "I didn't like them comparing you to Satan," Norma said, colouring a little.

  "But you didn't know anything about me."

  "No. But you were my guardian. I wasn't going to have them say you were like Satan," insisted Norma rather obstinately.

  Justin Yorke glanced at his ward with amused interest.

  "You odd child," he said. And then, as the subdued boom of a dinner gong sounded, he got up. "Come along. You must be ready for your dinner."

  On the whole, Norma was rather glad that they had finished that particular conversation without any further reference to Paul Cantlin.

  In the large, rather oppressively splendid dining room Norman sat facing her guardian at a long table, and thought that this was the only room she had seen so far which was faintly gloomy. The panelling was darker and the windows more heavily leaded, and, as the room faced eastward, most of the evening light had left it some while ago.

  Lighted candles on the table kept actual gloom at bay but, looking at her guardian in the pale radiance of candle-light, Norma thought that he, as well as his surroundings, looked grimmer and colder than in the mellow light of the west drawing-room.

  "Is this the oldest part of the house Mr. Yorke?" she asked, hesitating a little before deciding how to address him.

  "Yes." He accepted the form of address without any demur, evidently having no ideas about being addressed as Uncle Justin, and, indeed, it was difficult to visualize him as anyone's uncle. "Part of the east wing is all that remains of the original building. The rest of the house was a very good bit of restoration carried out in the middle of the last century, and the bathrooms and kitchens are, of course, completely modem."

  "It's a heavenly house, isn't it?" Norma smiled at him, and her dark eyes glowed in the candlelight.

  "You think so?" He smiled slightly in return just a little as though he could not help it. "Yes, it's an attractive place. By no means the finest house in the district, though."

  "Isn't it?" Norma opened her eyes wide. "Which is then?"

  "Munley Court. Sir Richard Inworth's place. You may have noticed it on the left as you drove up from the station."

  But Norma had been too much engrossed in her conversation with Paul Cantlin to notice any houses on the left as she drove up from the station.

  She had the curious impression that her guardian guessed as much, for his smile took on a faintly sardonic tinge as he watched her. But he continued to speak quite coolly about Munley Court.

  "It also is Elizabethan, but on a magnificent scale.

  Bishop stone was only a sort of dower house, and at one time must have fallen into almost complete disuse. But Munley Court has been preserved in perfection. Our family owned it for hundreds of years."

  "And don't we mean you own it now?" Norma thought that Munley Court sounded a very fitting background for her guardian.

  "No," he said coldly, and she wondered in what way she had annoyed him.

  After that, he asked her about her school and she explained that she was in her final year.

  "Let me see you will be eighteen in September, won't you?" Her guardian regarded her thoughtfully.

  "Why, yes!" Norma said, flattered and a little touched that he should actually know, not only her age, but her birthday. Aunt Janet had never interested herself in these details.

  "Would you care to leave school at Christmas?"

  He seemed to think again unlike Aunt Janet that she was entitled to be consulted about her own future.

  "I hadn't thought about leaving before next summer," Norma confessed. "Though if! get through Advanced G.C.E. all right, there is no real need to stay longer than this next term."

  "And you will hear the results in a few weeks' time?" "Yes."

  "Do you think you have done all right?"

  "Yes, if I don't come down too badly in Latin," Norma said ruefully, at which he laughed. "I suppose you're awfully good on Latin and Greek?" she added.

  "Why should you suppose so?" He looked amused.

  "I am a reasonably good classics scholar, as a matter of fact, but I didn't know that it was written all over me."

  "I can't tell you what it is, exactly." Norma studied him with frank interest. "But you give the impression of being very well informed on most things."

  "I really must decline such an intellectual halo," he said dryly, but Norma secretly thought that her description was not far wrong.

  After a moment's reflection, she said: "Do you mean that I may leave school at Christmas if! want to?"

  "I don't see why not. I shall probably be in town during a good part of the winter. It would be quite a convenient opportunity for taking you about and giving you a certain amount of social polish."

  His tone implied that quite a lot of social polish was required in her particular case, but Norma swallowed that, in view of the exciting prospect which his words conjured up.

  "I think I'd like that," she said rather shyly.

  At which he considered her with that faintly ironical smile, and said unexpectedly: "I think I should like it too."

  It was just as they were rising from dinner that a servant came in and said to Norma: "You are wanted on the telephone, miss."

  "I am!" She looked astonished. Then she remembered Paul Cantlin and said: "Oh, yes
, of course. Will you excuse me, please?" She turned to her guardian.

  He nodded. But his penetrating blue eyes rested on her with cold and, she thought, faintly displeased interest. And she knew, as she went out of the room, that he had deduced with complete accuracy, from her tone of voice, that she had at first been surprised, and then had recalled a definite arrangement with pleasure.

  The servant showed her into a small telephone room, and left her there. Norma picked up the receiver and said with rather breathless eagerness: "Hello. This is Norma Lacey speaking."

  "Hello there!" Paul Cantlin's cheerful voice said.

  "You were such a long time that I began to wonder whether the ogre had killed and eaten you, and was going to pretend that you'd never arrived at his castle."

  "Don't be absurd!" Norma laughed. "I was at dinner, and the servant had to fetch me. And, anyway, there isn't any question of an ogre. He's really rather a darling. My guardian, I mean."

  "You must have gone to the wrong house," Paul Cantlin said seriously.

  "Nonsense. I don't believe you really know anything much about my guardian, except some local gossip. He's a terribly nice person. Very kind and understanding, and even bothered about my having a perfectly lovely room of my own, because he thinks young things ought to be indulged a bit. He's sarcastic, of course, but in a very worldly, charming way and Are you there?"

  "Oh, yes. I'm still here." "You don't say anything." "No. I'm thinking so hard." "About what?"

  "Why, all the nice things you're saying about your guardian, of course. I was just wondering how the heck Justin Yorke managed to get all that over in two or three hours. Or, alternatively, what his little game is."

  "Don't say things like that, Mr. Cantlin!" "Paul will do nicely."

  "Paul, then. But I can't have you hinting nasty things about my guardian. There must be a lot of spiteful and ill-informed gossip about him I think, or else he's quite misunderstood, because "