by Sara Seale
“Hullo, Emily,” she said in a changed voice. “That new dress is very becoming, but won’t you be cold without a coat?”
“I’ve only come to tell Dane lunch is ready,” Emily said.
“Well, I must be off,” Vanessa wrapped her smart coat snugly about her graceful body. “I’ve a train to catch in a couple of hours. Good-bye, Dane—I’ll be back.”
“Good-bye, and enjoy your parties,” Dane replied. Emily said nothing, neither did she accompany Vanessa to her car.
“The primroses are out,” she said when the sound of the engine had died away.
“Where? I asked Vanessa but she hadn’t noticed.”
“At the top of the steps and all over the place. She must have been standing in them.”
He gave her a quick glance as if he would like to discern the expression on her face.
“She never was observant of little things,” he said, and flung an arm carelessly about Emily’s shoulders.
“That dress feels too thin for winter weather out of doors,” he observed. “What’s it look like that it becomes you so well?”
She moved away from the touch of his hand.
“Oh, it’s just one Vanessa chose for me,” she said evasively. “Bella will bring you up the steps safely, won’t she? I’m going in. I think I am cold, after all.”
CHAPTER SIX
WITH Vanessa’s going the house settled once more into its quiet routine. Emily worked with Dane in the mornings and read to him in the evenings or sat silent in the semidarkness just as before. She had never acquired the habit of switching on lights for her own benefit, and now she had come to enjoy the dimness, dreaming of many things while she watched Dane’s hands in the firelight travelling so delicately over pages of Braille.
Already she had begun to share the compensations of blindness. It ceased to be a miracle that fingers should spell out words as quickly as sight, that touch, scent, and hearing should be so sure and perception so acute. But Dane did not approve of idleness.
“Have you turned on the lights?” he would say, conscious that he had heard no movement from her for some time.
“No. I like the firelight”
“You’re too young to share my darkness. You’ll get mopey,” he said moodily.
“I don’t think so. I like to share, where I can, the life you’re forced to lead.”
“That’s morbid.”
“No—no, Dane, you’re wrong. If one identifies oneself to some extent, one understands better. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
His hands lay still on the book on his knees. Sue could not see his face in the shadows.
“I don’t know,” he said. “When I first approached Louisa Pink I hadn’t any such ideas. Perhaps my motives were muddled. I hadn’t, you see, expected her to send me someone quite like you.”
Emily remembered that interview in Pink’s Employment Agency and laughed.
“She took a gamble on me, I think,” she said. “I wasn’t much of a success, you know, in her normal offers of employment.”
“And are you content?” His voice was suddenly urgent “You don’t feel that somehow you were sold a pup?”
“No, Dane.” Her own voice was soft with reassurance. “I wasn’t, after all, forced into anything.”
“I don’t know,” he said again. “I’ve an idea you were desperately anxious to hold down this job that you didn’t perhaps, fully realize what you were taking on. That young man—it would be a pity if you had jumped into a marriage with me because your first love affair had gone wrong.”
“He no longer matters,” she said. “I’m content, Dane.
“You’re very sweet,” he said, and she thought of Vanessa and her vivid, striking beauty. Were they both, she wondered sadly, putting up with each other because it no longer mattered any more?
“No,” he said with that sudden, disconcerting perception. “You are too young to think along those lines. I shouldn’t have married you.”
“Have you regrets yourself?” she asked, and was unassured when he answered: “Perhaps.”
She remembered Vanessa appearing so unexpectedly in their drawing-room, the tenseness of their bodies in that first moment of meeting, when she had known herself forgotten, and she saw them again at the top of the terrace steps, Vanessa’s passionate pose a she pleaded with him, her hands on his shoulders.
“Well,” she said with a deep sigh, “what’s done cannot be undone, so we’re told. I’ll try to be what you want Dane—if that will satisfy.”
“I think it might,” he said with gentle humor. “But you mustn’t be so resigned, Emily. People will walk on you, if you let them, you know.”
“Including you?”
“Yes, including me,” he said with faint bitterness. “After all, we each of us probably think of what suits us best, don’t we?”
“Yes,” she said, striving for wisdom. “Yes, perhaps we do.”
March came in with the traditional roar. The wind screamed across the moor, battering on the house and isolating them in a little world which resisted the elements.
“I told you what Dartmoor could be like in the winter,” Dane said, but she replied:
“It’s almost spring. The bracken is beginning to unfold and green shoots are coming up everywhere. I like the wind, Dane. It makes me feel secure.”
“Secure?”
“Yes. The warmth inside and the knowledge that one hasn’t got to go out and do battle for existence.”
“What a strange notion,” he said, and added affectionately: “You’ve had a stormy passage, for all your tender years, Emily?”
“Not stormy,” she answered honestly. “Drab—disappointing, perhaps, but I don’t inspire storms.
“Don’t you? And is that an admission of failure?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Women who create disturbance got further than I should, I think.”
“And how far do you want to get?”
“Not very far, perhaps,” she said. “Just to something settled—something worth while.”
“What are you looking like tonight?” he asked suddenly. “No—don’t tell me. My hands acquainted me with your slenderness—too slender, perhaps. You are sitting on the other side of the fire with the light flickering on delicate limbs and the planes and angles of your face. Your eyes are—what color?”
“Grey—too big for my face.”
“And your hair?”
“Brown—not one of those exciting shades, and never very manageable.”
“Alice’s dryad peeping through the frosty branches of an apple tree. You see, I haven’t forgotten.”
She said with sudden anguish:
“You love beauty, don’t you? Perhaps it’s as well you can’t see me, Dane.”
“But I’ve described beauty,” he told her gently. “Alice has a child’s gift for the truth. I shall always see you that way—peeping through frosty branches with a wonder at what you behold.”
The tears would spring to her eyes when he spoke like that and she would not answer. The wind howled round the house and she would feel suddenly desolate, as if life were cheating them both and she, no more than he, was building a false image.
There was one letter from Vanessa which said:
Emily will, of course, read this to you, so I will only say that I’m having a wonderful time and have been to many of our old haunts. What ghosts one raises in going back! I shall be seeing you soon with much to tell of what you are missing. ...
Emily read the letter to him in a light, expressionless voice. He listened gravely, then asked for the letter.
“She still uses the same paper,” he said, fingering the thick, glossy sheets. “Was there any other post of interest?”
“One from Miss Pink asking if she might come next weekend?” said Emily. “Do you want her?”
“Of course. You wrote, if I remember, telling her to come when she wished. Better send a wire.”
So Emily telegraphed and, her thoughts still fu
ll of Vanessa, went to arrange about rooms with Mrs. Pride. It was her first duty as nominal mistress of the house since she had married Dane.
Mrs. Pride looked surprised; guests were unusual at Pennyleat and she made it clear that she held Emily responsible for such changes.
“Mr. Merritt likes to be quiet,” she said reprovingly. “You’ll not be wise, Mrs. Merritt, if you institute weekend parties, if you’ll excuse me saying so.”
“A single elderly lady scarcely constitutes a week-end party,” retorted Emily. “Besides, Miss Pink happens to be an old friend of Mr. Merritt’s.”
“I never heard tell of her,” replied Mrs. Pride repressively. “Well, leave it to me. Miss Alice’s room is good enough, I should suppose.”
“Miss Alice’s room has her things in the cupboards,” said Emily a little sharply. “It won’t hurt you to prepare one of the guest rooms. Mrs. Meeker can do the cleaning.”
“Very well, Mrs. Merritt,” the woman answered, but her eyes said plainly that she did not consider it Emily’s place to give her orders.
Emily helped, herself, in the preparation of Miss Pink’s room. Mrs. Meeker, delighted to gossip while she worked, brought up surreptitious cups of tea from the kitchen and thoroughly enjoyed her morning.
“’Tes a shame these rooms are never used,” she said, polishing with vigor. “But ’twas the same in Mr. Carey’s time, so I believe. Shut hisself up here and saw nobody.”
“Mrs. Pride seems to think Mr. Merritt should do the same,” said Emily, piling blankets on the high old-fashioned bed.
“Well, her’s got used to such ways,” Mrs. Meeker said soothingly. “Still and all, I’m wishful to see this body who sent you here.”
“What do you mean, Mrs. Meeker?”
“Well, bless you, ma’am, the whole village knows you came from that agency in London, same as the others.” Mrs. Meeker beamed approval.
“Oh!” said Emily, nonplussed.
“Not but what we thought Mr. Merritt was looking for a wife, mind you, but that becomes plain now, I reckon,” the woman said cheerfully.
“Does it?” said Emily. Shorty and Mrs. Pride had always known the truth, she supposed, but she had not thought the village knew, too. No wonder Vanessa had regarded her with such amusement.
“There was a time, of course, when ’e and Miss Vanessa—” began Mrs., Meeker reminiscently. “Still—what’s past is past and no harm done. Will I fetch the rug from next door in here, ma’am? Tes brighter than this one, I reckon.”
“Yes, do that, Mrs. Meeker,” said Emily, and went downstairs and into the garden to be alone with her conflicting thoughts.
The winds of early March had dropped, and, in the garden, the evidence of spring was waiting to be noticed. The delicate green shoots of bulbs pierced through the soil and buds were already forming on bush and hedgerow. In the orchard the fruit trees wore a young and tender look. Emily climbed into the tree from where she had first seen Alice, and twined her arms about the branches, fighting back the tears.
Why should she mind? What matter what the village thought? But years ago, when Dane had his sight, he had stayed here, and he and the young Vanessa had made love and the villagers had watched that ardent courtship and, in the end, been disappointed.
She saw Dane coming round the house with Bella. He walked across one lawn, and another, then turned to make a circuit of the orchard, and, as always, she watched him, silently willing him protection as if she were, indeed, Bella watching over his footsteps.
He passed immediately beneath her tree and the thin sunshine fell on his bare head so that she found herself remembering: Black is the color of my true love’s hair... She must have moved, for the bitch looked up with a little whimper and Dane stopped.
“What is it, Bella?” he asked.
The bitch whimpered again and he stretched out a hand to touch the tree and learn the texture and species of the bark.
“Emily—are you up there?” he said sharply.
“Yes,” she said, and knew at once a sense of trespass, remembering his dislike of being observed unknowingly.
But he did not seem annoyed.
“Alice’s tree dyad,” he said. “Come down and I’ll catch you.”
She descended with care into his outstretched arms and he held her there, running his hands up and over her shoulders until they reached her face.
“Were you crying?” he asked, feeling wetness on his fingers.
“Not really. Spring is nearly here, that’s all.”
“Only the very young weep for the spring—or those in love,” he said with faint mockery. “What were you doing up a tree?”
“Thinking.”
“Thoughts that brought tears, evidently. You are too much alone, Emily. It will be a good thing when Alice comes home for the Easter holidays.”
They walked back to the house through the young, springing grass and up the steps where he and Vanessa had stood so close that morning in February.
“She’s very lovely,” sighed Emily, walking among the primroses.
“Who?”
“Vanessa, of course.”
“Yes,” he said, and echoed her sigh. “I used to think her the loveliest creature on earth.”
II
Louisa Pink arrived in time for tea on Friday. Emily drove into Plymouth to meet the train, and, as she stood waiting on the draughty platform, she was struck by the strangeness of welcoming as a guest a woman whom she had always held in awe and to whom she had been accustomed to apply for work. A tremor of nervousness seized her. Would Miss Pink’s sharp eyes see more than they were meant to, or would she merely admit a blunder and return to London dissatisfied with her own machinations? Emily’s clothes might be new and smart, she thought with a sigh, but inside them she was still the same diffident girl whose lack of confidence Miss Pink had always deplored. She remembered then the pound note which had been thrust into her hand in order to buy herself a square meal and gathered courage at the memory of that unexpected kindness.
Miss Pink emerged from the train, as smart and fresh as when she had started. The careful make-up was as faultless as ever and not a grey hair escaped from its immaculate setting under the fashionable little hat. For a moment Emily felt ill-dressed and insignificant, then Miss Pink’s shrewd eyes swept over her and she smiled with evident approval.
“Why, Emily, how nice you look!” she exclaimed, and handed a spare coat to Emily and her suitcase to a porter with her remembered efficiency.
On the drive to Pennycross she chatted easily about the. journey, her fellow passengers and the London weather, then asked suddenly:
“Is it working?”
“My marriage?” said Emily without evasion. “Yes, I think so.”
“Well, you certainly look the better for your change of fortune. Have you forgiven me for not telling you the true state of affairs when I sent you down here?”
“Why didn’t you?” asked Emily curiously. She had often wondered.
Miss Pink sighed.
“I don’t know. There was a curious kind of innocence about you which, perhaps, I thought might have recoiled in fright. Or perhaps I was just gambling on the fact that you might be what Dane was looking for, in which case he could tell you himself. Were you shocked?”
“Shocked? No, I don’t think so. From his point of view I think it seemed quite natural.”
“And from yours?”
“I don’t know. Those first weeks were somehow a little unreal. In the end—well, I was rather desperate, you know.”
“Desperate enough to marry a stranger who was blind.”
“His blindness made it possible,” Emily said gently, and Louisa Pink gave her a quick look.
“H’m ...” she said and glanced with distaste at the bleak, rolling moorland which stretched before them.
“Not my cup of tea,” she shivered. “Do you find it lonely, Emily?”
“Not really. Haven’t you been here before, Miss Pink?”
�
��No. I knew Dane in the old days, though we’ve always kept up, of course. You’d better call me Louisa, by the way. Dane does.”
Emily made no answer. The thought of addressing the slightly alarming deity of Pink’s Employment Agency so familiarly rather shocked her.
“You haven’t altered much, have you?” said Miss Pink with a smile of amusement. “I hope you don’t let Dane walk over you.”
Emily watched the meeting between her husband and her erstwhile agent with interest. It was so rare for him to welcome a stranger under his roof that she had wondered uneasily if he might not have already regretted the invitation. But Louisa greeted him as though she had only seen him yesterday, and Dane received her with a complete lack of embarrassment. They were clearly old and tried friends.
“You look wonderful,” she said. “Seclusion seems to agree with you—or is it really Emily? What a Godforsaken spot to choose, though!”
“You are much too urban for Dartmoor, Louisa!” he mocked. “Besides, one doesn’t choose one’s inheritance. One is merely grateful. Did Emily drive you circumspectly?”
“Very, but I think she’s a circumspect young woman. Your speeding days are over, Dane, and a good thing, too.”
Emily saw Dane’s little quirk of wryness and thought of Vanessa handling the car with such sureness, driving with the dash and brilliance he could appreciate.
“I’m safe but uninspired,” she said, taking her place at the tea-table.
“I trust you are only referring to driving a car,” Miss Pink remarked a little dryly. “Well, Dane, you’ve made a great improvement in Emily since I last saw her.”
Dane’s eyebrows rose.
“Have I?” he asked mildly.
“I was referring to her clothes, of course. I’m glad to see you’re generous.”
“Oh, I see. I think Emily is probably blushing. You will have to be careful of her sensibilities, Louisa.”
Miss Pink looked sharply from one to the other of them, saw Emily’s heightened color, and gave her a reassuring smile.
