by Sara Seale
Emily was silent. She was used to being snubbed by employers who seldom credited their paid help with personal feelings, but in this case the rebuke came hard. For the first time she wondered what Miss Pink’s other two applicants had been like, and if they, like herself, had been doubtful of measuring up to a blind employer’s demands?
They finished their breakfast in silence. The bitch Bella, who lay by her master’s chair, had taken no exception to Emily’s presence, but her eyes had continued to watch, just as they had last night. The silence and the watchful dog began to worry her and she fidgeted.
“You are too young,” said Dane abruptly.
Emily’s pointed chin rose to meet the challenge.
“Too young for what?” she demanded boldly.
He smiled.
“For matters outside your comprehension, perhaps. What’s making you nervous?”
“The dog watches me,” she said.
“She’s the only one of us who can," he said gently. “You’ll get used to her.”
Emily gathered her lost courage together.
“Mr. Merritt,” she said firmly, “if I’m to be here a month, I would like to know what my duties are. When do you like to give dictation?”
He tossed his napkin on to the table and leaned back in his chair.
“When the spirit moves me,” he replied indifferently. “There is no great hurry for the book’s completion.”
“What are you writing?” she asked.
“A thesis on the effect of nitro-glycerine compounds in relation to cardiac diseases,” he replied, and lifted one eyebrow quizzically. “Not very inspiring from the lay point of view, is it?”
“If it means a new cure—very inspiring,” she said doggedly.
“You have a little knowledge of such things?”
“None at all, but one doesn’t have to understand for one’s imagination to be fired.”
“How unusual—or have you just practised the right approach to a prospective employer? Well, we’ll try you out this morning. Shorty will show you where my study is. I’ll expect you at ten-thirty.”
She felt herself dismissed and rose uncertainly, making her excuses. There was nearly an hour before he would require her services, and she went into the garden to explore. Someone had already swept the front steps clear of snow but everywhere else it lay in unbroken beauty, clinging to shrubs and trellis-work that bordered sweeping lawns, and making a shining tunnel of the double clipped yew hedge which formed a winding walk through the grounds.
Emily ran into the tunnel with childlike excitement, feeling the snow cold and light on her face as she brushed by, lost for the moment in a forgotten enchantment. She had lived most of her life in a London suburb, but there had been days spent in the country and she remembered one such day as this with her lovely mother running in the snow, and herself a wonder-struck child tongue-tied with so much beauty.
“Poor mite!” her mother had laughed, holding a little round muff to her glowing face. “Your nose is like a cherry. I’m afraid you’re going to be plain, after all, my poor sweet.”
Her father, laughing, had said:
“One beauty in the family is quite; enough, my darling. Emily was born to be a foil, that’s all.”
She had been too young to understand then, but she had known they were laughing not with her but at her and years later their words came back to taunt her. For ever after snow had been a symbol of beauty to Emily, bound up with a heartache which found no explanation.
She came out at the other end of the tunnel and was confronted by the wall which, as she had thought, circled the whole estate and had no break.
“It’s like a prison,” she thought and shivered, and she knew then that Dane Merritt had shut himself and his blindness away in isolation, afraid of the compassion of others just as she, now, was afraid of the tolerance of the Tims and the Rosemarys of her own little world.
“Oh, dear! How silly he is, running away from life,” she sighed, and never thought that the same could be said of her.
She was late for her appointment. Shorty had to come out on to the terrace to shout for her and Dane, already seated behind a large desk with his back to the light, was tapping impatiently on the arm of his chair.
“I don’t expect to be kept waiting,” he said brusquely. “You’re ten minutes late.”
“I’m sorry,” she said breathlessly. “I was in the garden. You should have seen how lovely that yew hedge is in the snow-like a fairy tunnel.”
Immediately she blushed, scarlet, and as if he was aware of her embarrassment he observed dryly:
“Don’t let an innocent reference to my blindness cover you with confusion. I assure you that tactful avoidance of the subject is much more irritating. Now, if you’re ready, perhaps we might get started.”
He dictated for a couple of hours and after the first ten minutes or so she lost her nervousness and found she could keep up with him with reasonable speed. It was dull work on the whole, too technical and, at time, too intricate to make much sense to her. Once he paused to observe a shade sardonically:
“It’s scarcely firing your imagination, despite your brave boast, is it?” and when she read the morning’s work back to him, stumbling over the pronunciation of unfamiliar words and phrases, he remarked that her education had been sadly neglected.
“Such chemistry as we did at school was very elementary, I’m afraid,” she retorted, and he smiled.
“Very probably. One doesn’t look for budding research chemists among little girls, as a rule. We’ll stop now, I think, for a glass of sherry.”
There were glasses and a decanter set out on a small table at his elbow and he turned his chair a little sideways. With the light behind him she had so little impression that he was blind, that it was not until she watched his hands feeling delicately but surely for the glasses that she remembered that he could not see.
“Let me do it,” she said instinctively, jumping to her feet, and was appalled when his hand jerked at her sudden movement and one of the glasses went crashing to the floor.
“Sit down!” he ordered, so harshly that she felt her mouth go dry. “I am by no means helpless and I dislike intensely the unnecessary attentions of well-meaning persons.”
Emily sat down, tears of mortification springing to her eyes. Bella, under the desk, had risen protectively at the sound of his breaking glass, but she lay down again, her eyes fixed distrustfully upon Emily who watched helplessly while Dane filled the glasses a little too full.
“Sorry,” he said, handing her one across the desk. “Afraid I’ve slopped it.”
She did not want the sherry but hardly liked to refuse. She sat on the edge of her chair in silence, sipping the pale, dry wine without enjoyment, and presently he said:
“Sorry if I barked at you. You’re probably a nicely brought up girl who was taught to consider elderly people and invalids.”
His voice still had a bitter sound and she said unhappily: “Yes, I suppose I was. But in any case, to be of help is surely a natural instinct.”
He sighed.
“Very probably, but the afflicted are touchy, you know. It takes a long time to rehabilitate oneself ... years of achieve a semblance of normality ... if one ever does. Always it’s the little things that find one out ... the small, everyday occurrences which we all take for granted...” He seemed to be explaining to himself as much as to her, she thought, watching him slowly twist his glass of sherry this way and that, feeling with sensitive fingers the familiar cutting of bowl and stem.
“At the same time,” she argued, made bold because she knew he could not see her discomforted face, “there’s no need to deny privileges to others on account of pride.”
“Pride!” For a moment his lingers tightened on the stem of his glass. “Well, perhaps you might call it that—it’s the thing that keeps you going at your worst times, I suppose. You’re a nice child, Emily. Louisa didn’t do so badly, after all. Alice comes home the day after tomorr
ow. You’ll stay till the end of the holidays, I hope.”
“Of course. Will you know then—if you want to keep me, Mr. Merritt?”
He swallowed the rest of the sherry and pushed back his chair.
“Oh, yes,” he replied with an odd little twist to his lips. “The ultimate decision is more likely to rest with you. Now, fetch me Bella’s harness from the hall, will you? It’s time for our walk before lunch.”
She fetched the strange-looking contraption which lay on a chest by the door and watched him fit it on the bitch. He did not ask her to accompany them and she stood in the doorway to see them set out. Dane’s hand on the leather handle attached to the harness was light and sure and the bitch waited, looking up at him eagerly, her plumy tail waving in anticipation.
“Forward...” said Dane softly, and the pair went assuredly down the steps and turned across the white expanse of lawn.
As Emily watched them she felt her throat constrict, not in pity, but with an emotion too new and unfamiliar to be explained. When they were out of sight, she slowly shut the door and went upstairs.
CHAPTER THREE
EMILY awoke with a certain apprehension on the day that Alice was to return from school. She had, so far, made little impression on the members of Dane’s household. Mrs. Pride, the cook-housekeeper, had been in old Mr. Carey’s service for nearly twenty years and had remained to look after Dane, preferring a constantly changing succession of daily help from the village of Pennycross to another woman living in the house. Like Shorty she was London bred, and also like Shorty, she was unfriendly and obstructive unless she was dealing directly with her employer. Emily wondered if the little girl, too, would look her up and down and tender bare civility because she must. At first she had welcomed the thought of the child, for Dane made her nervous. She found it increasingly difficult to refrain from offering help when he fumbled for some object which was within her own reach, and she could not get used to meeting him in the dark, moving with uncanny assurance from room to room. On the second evening he blundered into an armchair, and, cursing roundly, demanded to know who had moved it.
“I did,” said Emily, unaware at that time of the importance of studying the exact arrangement of everything in the house. “I dropped something behind it.”
“Kindly remember in future that no piece of furniture is allowed to be altered here,” he said sharply. “If you must move something, observe the angle with intelligence and put it back exactly as you find it. Understand?”
She felt inordinately to blame, just as when at meals she absently forgot to return a salt cellar or butter dish to the exact spot where he expected to find it. Her embarrassment was not lightened by the expression on Shorty’s face as he would ostentatiously replace the missing object.
In fee evenings she would sit with Dane in the firelit library, watching his thin sensitive fingers swiftly tracing out Braille, not liking to turn on the light in order that she might read herself. When she fidgeted, he would look up with a frown and ask her impatiently if she had no occupation, and when she enquired timidly if she might turn on the light, he exclaimed with what she realized must be very natural irritation:
“Good heavens, child! Can’t you help yourself? There’s no reason for you to sit in darkness, because for me there’s no difference, between night and day.”
“I’m sorry,” she said nervously. “I’m afraid I irritate you.”
He smiled then and replied with unexpected gentleness:
“No, I irritate myself. When one is handicapped one dislikes to be thought abnormal.”
The day that Alice was to return to Pennyleat was bright and crystal clear. There had been no more snow but fee countryside lay white and sparkling in the sunlight. Shorty had gone into Plymouth to meet the train, and Emily, whose suggestion of accompanying him had met with little favour, had gone out into the garden to await his return. She did not want to meet this strange child for the first time under the little cockney’s scornful eye.
As on that first morning, she walked with delight through the tunnelled yew hedge, still crisp with frozen snow, and slid wife scant regard for wet garments down the steep, banked terrace which led to a little orchard. There the old fruit trees were a miracle of beauty, their twisted branches a shining tracery of slender icicles, so that Emily was reminded of the little trees of glass and crystal which cost so much in the china departments of the big London stores. One in particular had a natural seat in its spreading branches, inviting to any child, and she scrambled into it, feeling the ice break under her hands as she swung herself on to the dipping bough.
There was something magical and escapist about climbing a tree, she thought, transported at once to those rare occasions of her childhood. You were hidden and secure from those who walked as mortals on the ground; the airy kingdom was yours for as long as you chose. She remembered saying something of the sort to Tim in the days when there had been joy in sharing absurdities, but he had raised a puckish eyebrow and observed with rather bored amusement:
“I’ve never been attracted by whimsical children of nature, my sweet. Why don’t you take a leaf out of your friend Rosemary’s book and smarten up a bit?”
She had tried to follow his advice, but she had none of Rosemary’s confidence, nor, she suspected now, the requisite guile necessary to hold on to young men like Tim. She often wondered what had become of them both.
A voice spoke suddenly immediately beneath her. “What are you doing up there?” it said.
Emily looked down. A plain little girl stood under the tree staring up at her. Her snub nose was like a cherry in her small, pinched face, and Emily was vividly reminded of herself at the same age.
“Hullo!” she said. “Are you Alice?”
“Of course. And you’re Miss Emily Moon, I suppose.” The child spoke sedately and with an odd indifference, but her eyes were faintly surprised.
“Wait a moment and I’ll come down,” said Emily, aware that for a secretary-cum-holiday governess, she could scarcely appear very dignified, but Alice said quickly:
“No, don’t come down—not for a minute. You’re not a bit like I thought you’d be.”
They stared at each other in silence. Emily could not know that to the child, her face framed in the branches’ frosty tracery had a strangeness that came near to beauty. To Alice, Emily did not seem like any of the grown-ups she had ever known; snow slung to her ruffled hair, and her eyes, wide and enquiring, held a clarity that was instantly recognized as belonging to childhood.
“Can I come down now?” asked Emily, beginning to feel awkward under such critical scrutiny.
“Yes,” said Alice, and stood, politely waiting, while Emily slid to the ground with more haste than grace.
“Is this your special tree?” Emily asked, wondering if the little girl’s unblinking stare perhaps held resentment.
“Oh, no,” said Alice indifferently. “I never climb trees.”
“Don’t you? If I’d had a garden like this at your age I would have spent half my time up trees.”
“Would you?”
Alice’s voice, though polite, was slightly incredulous, and Emily felt foolish.
“Well, now, have you seen your guardian yet?” she asked, feeling that in some way she was responsible for the niceties of Alice’s homecoming.
“No,” the child said, without interest. “He’ll send for me when he’s ready.”
“Then you’d better get unpacked,” Emily said, made a little uneasy by the chilly-sounding relationship between Dane and his ward. “Shall I help you?”
“If you like,” Alice replied with that same polite indifference, and they made their way in silence back to the house.
Alice’s bedroom, though comfortable enough, was like any guest-room of a well-appointed house. The pictures had never been chosen for a child and no toys or favorite books awaited her return. Clothes hung neatly in the cupboards, ready to be exchanged for the school uniform, but otherwise there was no evidence that
the room was ever occupied by a child.
“Where do you keep your things?” asked Emily, remembering that she had never come across a schoolroom in the house.
“They are all here,” Alice replied, unpacking her trunk with methodical neatness. “Mrs. Pride looks after them while I’m at school.”
“I meant toys and books and games and things. Haven’t you got a playroom of your own?”
“Not really. There’s a little room at the end of the passage that I’m allowed to use. It used to be Uncle Ben Carey’s dressing-room.”
“But when he was alive, wasn’t there somewhere—”
“Oh, no,” said Alice serenely. “Mam’zelle and I used the library for lessons, and if Uncle Ben wanted it we used the dining-room.”
“But had you nowhere of your own to play?” persisted Emily. Even in her father’s small suburban house there had been an attic given over to her.
“There weren’t any children to play with,” replied Alice, as if that entirely explained everything.
Emily sat watching her broodingly while she changed her frock and brushed out her hair with a calm precision that seemed utterly unchildlike, and reflected that Alice must have had a lonelier childhood than she, herself. The old man had adopted her and then forgotten her, and Dane, however he had reacted to the unexpected legacy of a ward, had probably been wise in sending her to school.
“Are you glad to be home for the holidays?” she asked, feeling at a loss with such odd composure.
“Oh, yes. Do you think the snow will last for Christmas?”
“I don’t know. There’s nearly another fortnight yet. Would you like snow for Christmas?”
“It would be seasonable,” said Alice, and Emily regarded her in a rather helpless silence.
With the discarding of her school uniform she looked a little like her namesake in Lewis Carroll’s immortal work. Her long fair hair was held off her forehead by a velvet band, and there was a neatness about her full, plain skirt and flat-heeled slippers which was reminiscent of Tenniel’s drawings. Suddenly she smiled, and the plainness of her small face was redeemed by a shy expectancy.
