Lucy Lamb Doctor's Wife

by Sara Seale

  Lucy came hesitantly forward, not knowing what to do. She was embarrassed by the little scene and sought desperately for something to say which would put the two servants at their ease, but as she advanced uncertainly, half holding out her hand, she realized that it was she who needed to be put at ease. The two men made no attempt to meet her halfway but, ignoring her outstretched hand, remained where they were, inclining their heads without speaking. She saw the quick look of tolerant contempt in the Frenchman’s eyes as he observed her more closely and the raised, faintly insolent eyebrows of Smithers.

  Lucy’s chin went up.

  “How do you do? I hope we shall come to understand each other very quickly,” she said clearly and politely, and became aware that Bart was watching her with a faint, appreciative grin.

  “May I see Pierre, please?” she asked, turning to him.

  “Master Pierre has gone to bed,” Smithers informed her as he crossed the hall to take the luggage from the car.

  “At five o’clock?” exclaimed Lucy with surprise.

  The fat little Frenchman became suddenly voluble. A little migraine, he explained with plump, waving hands, a touch of la grippe, perhaps ... it would be best if madame delayed the meeting until tomorrow.

  Bart’s eyebrows met in a quick frown.

  “Has he a temperature?” he asked sharply.

  “No, no, m’sieur—just a little difficult, as he sometimes is, you understand. It is nothing.”

  “I would like to go up and see him,” Lucy said. “Which is his room?”

  The cook shot her a look of dislike.

  “He sleeps, madame, it would not be wise,” he said, and Bart held out his hand.

  “You’ll have to put up with my company for this evening,” he said, and there was a touch of mockery in his voice. “It’s our wedding night—remember?”

  Lucy felt herself flushing. The mockery in Bart’s voice was reflected for a moment in his servant’s face. This man knew, just as Bart himself knew, that their marriage was a farce, she thought, and wondered for one wild moment whether he had gone so far as to ask his servants’ permission to bring a new mistress into his house.

  She turned with relief to follow her husband into a room which seemed to combine the offices of library and study alike, a man’s room, square and solid, with worn leather chairs, book-lined walls and a big, ornately carved desk. Lucy sat down on the arm of one of the chairs, feeling suddenly tired, but Bart immediately turned back to the doorway, calling for Smithers.

  “He takes the baggage upstairs. M’sieur desires?” replied the cook’s smooth voice.

  “Why has no fire been lighted?”

  “There is a fire in the drawing-room, m’sieur.”

  “Why? You know quite well I never use that room.” Lucy could imagine the Gallic shrug with which Gaston replied:

  “But tonight is different, perhaps? The salon is for ladies, no?”

  Lucy could see the angry tensing of Bart’s back and the haughty displeasure in the movement with which he flung back his head.

  “Very well, you had better bring tea there. In the meantime, tell Smithers to get a fire going in here at once. Come, Lucy, you must be cold.”

  Lucy could understand why he did not care to use the drawing-room, which was furnished after the style of the French Second Empire, with frail gilt chairs, lavishly designed cabinets filled with elegant china and a wealth of small occasional tables dotted about the fine Aubusson carpet. There was even a grand piano, its ivory wood painted with flowers and scrolls. The room had an air, undoubtedly, but little comfort, land in spite of the fire and the drawn curtains it held the empty coldness of disuse.

  Lucy threaded her way carefully among the little tables to the fire and her startled eyes went to a great bare patch above the mantelshelf where once a picture had hung. The colors of the Empire paper had not yet faded to the mellowness of the rest of the walls, and the blind, empty space seemed a mild affront in so much studied elegance.

  She turned quickly, aware that Bart was watching her. His expression was a curious mixture of mockery and bitterness, but he made no comment, and Lucy knew, as if he had told her, that a portrait of his first wife had hung in that empty space, that the room had been hers and Lucy herself had no place there.

  She took off her coat, folding it carefully over the back of a chair, not knowing what to say to him, and when he did not speak she turned to a long scrolled wall-mirror to tidy her hair. The room was reflected dimly behind her and she wondered how often the dead Marcelle had admired her lovely reflection and known the elegant background to be perfect for her.

  Lucy’s own reflection stared back at her and, for perhaps the first time, she studied her face with critical curiosity. It was a small, wedge-shaped face with a gentle mouth and wide, enquiring eyes; light brown hair curved softly into her slender neck, but was too fine and soft to dress in any but the simplest of styles. An unsatisfactory face, thought Lucy, with disappointment; too pale, too thin, too much space between the eyes, and a forehead which curved with undue prominence like the forehead of a very young child.

  She was aware that Bart had come up behind her and stood now, both hands on her shoulders, looking over her head. His eyes were faintly amused.

  “Are you vain, Lucy?” he asked, and she answered with solemn conscientiousness:

  “No. I was thinking I had a discouraging sort of face. Negative, somehow.”

  “Do you think so? I find it rather charming. Those eyes have always seemed somehow familiar, you know, but Mary Morgan says I’m thinking of a Greuze.”

  “The painter?”

  For an instant she was tempted to remind him of that first meeting long ago, but his attention had already wandered, and although his hands still rested on her shoulders, his eyes looked beyond her reflection to the studied elegance of the room mirrored behind.

  “I—I don’t match the period of this room very well, do I?” she said, trying to make light of the moment, but it had been the wrong thing to say. He frowned and turned away abruptly as if too sharply reminded of that other woman who must have graced the room so perfectly, and observed indifferently, “What does it matter? We won’t be using it after today.”

  III

  When Smithers had placed the tea-tray on a table beside the fire, Lucy sat behind it, gazing unhappily down at the massive silver and delicate china, wretchedly aware of the comparison Bart must already be making. She poured out clumsily, spilling tea into the saucers, and Bart sat moodily opposite her, drinking his tea but eating nothing.

  She said with a sudden childish burst of inconsequence: “Your servants don’t like me. They were determined I shouldn’t see Pierre tonight. I believe he was sent to bed on purpose.”

  He looked across at her with a slight frown. “Now, Lucy, you mustn’t start off with wrong ideas about Smithers and Gaston. They are devoted to the boy,” he said.

  “And jealous of me, quite likely.”

  “Jealous?”

  “They resent my coming here.”

  “Very possibly. Gaston was deeply attached to Marcelle. He came here with her from France.” He answered coldly as if her protestations were impertinent.

  “And Smithers?” she persisted because the formal elegance of the room was beginning to oppress her.

  “Smithers has never had great charm of manner for the ladies. You must forgive us all our shortcomings, my dear,” he said a little sardonically.

  After that there was a long silence. Rain still pattered on the windows and the sound of the breakers was a steady and alien accompaniment to Lucy’s thoughts. Her wedding day ... for all the implications of her bargain with Bart, it was still that ... a day that would never come again ... For one dreadful moment she thought she was going to cry, and asked timidly if she might see her room.

  “Of course, how remiss of me,” he said, getting immediately to his feet “I’ll ring for Smithers.”

  “Couldn’t you—couldn’t you show me yourself?”
she stammered, instinctively shrinking from the prospect of the hostile manservant conducting her through this alien house which was now her home.

  “If you prefer,” he replied courteously, and tossed her folded coat over his arm.

  She followed him up a curving stone staircase, noticing for the first time that the house was lighted by oil lamps and not electricity. The fact brought home the isolation of Polvane from civilization, and she did not wonder that little Pierre, with his mixed blood, was strange and unchildlike and older than his years. There seemed to be many rooms and corridors, but remembering the shuttered windows, she supposed that not many of them were used.

  Bart opened a door and Lucy received a confused impression of massive furniture and a bed with heavy drapes looped back from the half-tester. Someone had unpacked her meagre possessions and a fire burned cheerfully in the grate.

  “Not very bridal, I’m afraid,” Bart said with a suspicion of laughter in his voice. “This used to be my father’s room when he was alive.”

  “Were you born in this house, then?”

  “Yes. We’ve been here for three generations.”

  “And which is your room?” she asked.

  He nodded towards an intercommunicating door. “Through there. The door isn’t locked, in case you should be visited with nightmares.”

  “Oh!”

  He turned her round slowly to face him and watched the firelight reflected in her wide, enquiring eyes.

  “What did that ‘oh’ mean?” he asked. “Do you prefer to keep the door between us locked?”

  She blinked a little nervously, unsure of him in this mood.

  “There’s scarcely , any need, is there?” she answered gravely. “Ours is just a—just a marriage of convenience, isn’t it?”

  He gave her a long, puzzled look, as if he had only just now realized he had committed himself for better or worse.

  “You’re either very innocent or very trusting,” was all he said, and he went through the door between their two rooms, leaving her standing there.

  She wandered curiously about the room, opening and shutting drawers and cupboards, finding where her belongings had been put, and disliking very much the thought of Smithers’ prying hands going through her possessions. It would be instantly clear to him, and subsequently to Gaston, that the new Mrs. Travers had arrived with no trousseau and that such clothes as she had were both cheap and shabby.

  She had bought one new dress which, as a concession to her own romantic ideas of such an occasion, she had intended to be married in, but the weather and prudence had decided her at the last moment against wearing it. She put it on now, a pretty confection of ribbons and flounces more suited to the warm summer days ahead than this chilly spring evening, but it was her wedding day; tonight she would be dining for the first time alone with her husband and although this was merely a marriage of make-believe there should be something to remember.

  When she went downstairs again, the drawing-room door was firmly shut, but that into the library stood open, and Bart was standing with his back to a blazing fire, a glass of sherry in his hand.

  “Charming,” he observed, surveying Lucy’s new frock with a lifted eyebrow, “but you look like a little girl. Are you sure you’re really twenty years old?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Lucy sedately. “I’ve been earning my living for nearly four years.”

  “Companion to old ladies?”

  “That sort of thing. I wasn’t trained for anything, you see. My aunt—the one who brought me up—believed in waiting for a suitable husband.”

  “And now you’ve found one. Tell me about yourself, Lucy Baa-lamb.”

  He handed her a glass of sherry and she sat down by the fire with her feet neatly together like the little girl he had called her.

  “There’s nothing to tell,” she said. He knew about the aunt who had died when she was sixteen, leaving her penniless and totally unfitted to make a life for herself. There was nothing about her that could possibly interest him.

  “Nothing?” he asked.

  The sherry warmed her and loosened her tongue.

  “Well, just one thing, perhaps. We’ve met before.”

  “You and I? When, for heaven’s sake?”

  “Six years ago. You pulled me out of the sea, but I never knew your name. I was fourteen.”

  His eyes were suddenly on her, shrewd and penetrating. “Good lord, of course!” he exclaimed. “I knew I’d seen those eyes before! You were a skinny little schoolgirl being baited by a bunch of brats.”

  She could hear them now, their voices shrill above the screaming of the gulls.

  “Ba-a ... ba-a ..” they had taunted her. “Silly little sheep, afraid to swim!”

  She could not swim, but at fourteen and older than the rest of them, would not admit it. The green swell of the heaving water had frightened her dreadfully, but the jeers of the children had scared her more.

  “You saved my life, but you were very rude to me,” she told Bart. “You said it was silly and vainglorious to take a dare, and if the other children had called me a silly sheep they were probably right.”

  “Dear me!” said Bart mildly. “It doesn’t sound as if I was very gallant.”

  “No, you weren’t. I annoyed you.”

  “And you recognized me again?”

  “Oh, yes. I never quite forgot you.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It didn’t seem important. You hadn’t remembered.” Even as she spoke, Lucy knew that must have been the year of his personal tragedy. Six years ago ... The young Marcelle could have been dead only a few months. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, “so very sorry for everything.”

  “For rescuing you from a watery grave?” he asked, deliberately misunderstanding her. “Well, Lucy, our paths crossing again must seem like fate to you—or don’t you believe in fate?”

  “Yes—yes, I do. You see, because I hadn’t forgotten you it made it easier to—to marry you.”

  All at once his face became closed and guarded, the familiar dark face of the man who drove recklessly through the lanes, who had warned her that he had nothing left to give.

  “Had I known,” he said brusquely, “I might have had second thoughts after all.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I was under the impression we were strangers—because at fourteen one might be tempted to build up a chance episode into something—romantic.”

  She flushed, wishing she had kept silent. As things were, she could only embarrass him by implying that she had remembered him all these years with gratitude. ‘You didn’t strike me at the time as a romantic person, Mr. Travers,” she said calmly, and as he raised his eyebrows and gave a short laugh, added hastily, “I’m sorry, the wrong name slipped out. It’s awfully hard to remember.”

  “Practice in your bedroom,” he admonished her severely, and looked relieved when he was called to the telephone.

  Left alone, Lucy thoughtfully finished her sherry and sat holding the empty glass. She should not have reminded him now; she should not have suggested, however indirectly, that he had possessed sufficient attraction for her to agree to this outrageous marriage. She must be very careful in future, very careful indeed not to let him know that for her the fact that he had once saved her life had forged a bond between them.

  When he came back into the room his manner had entirely changed. He was already shrugging himself into a light overcoat and Smithers could be heard bringing the car round to the front door.

  “I have to go out,” he said briefly. “An urgent call from the hospital. I’m sorry, Lucy, but you’ll have to eat Gaston’s special dinner by yourself.”

  She got slowly to her feet, gazing at him with dismayed eyes. Not tonight ... not her very first night among strangers in a strange house...

  “But Bart…”

  “You’ll have to get used to it, I’m afraid.”

  “But tonight—the hospital knows we were married today.”

>   His mouth twisted a little sardonically.

  “This is scarcely a honeymoon, my dear. We can hardly afford to be sentimental to satisfy conventions which can’t apply to us,” he said.

  He did not intend to be cruel, she supposed, but his words came as a slap in the face. Had she hoped? But of course she had not, for what was there to hope?

  “Of course not,” she said. “Will you be late? Should I—should I wait up?”

  “Heavens, no! Go to bed—I may be operating half the night.”

  “Very well.”

  He patted her briefly on the shoulder in passing.

  “Cheer up! The evening might have been a bit of a strain, mightn’t it?” he said, and was gone.

  Tears chased each other down Lucy’s cheeks. She was twenty years old ... this was her wedding night, and she wore her only new frock...

  “What did you expect?” she chided herself angrily, but her unreasonable heart could only answer: Not this, not this...

  In the big, cold dining-room, she sat very straight in her chair at the foot of a mahogany table which seemed to stretch for miles and miles into the shadows. Smithers’ supercilious presence embarrassed her acutely and the courses of Gaston’s special dinner appeared endless. From outside came the steady roar of the breakers and sometimes it seemed as if the derisive voices of children mingled with the waves, chanting their eternal Ba-a ... ba-a ...

  In law she had today become Lucy Travers, she thought, choking over a piece of chicken, but knew then that she would always and for ever be Lucy Lamb, unchanged and undesired through the years...

  CHAPTER TWO

  I

  LUCY slept fitfully in the big bed, unfamiliar and a little intimidating with its many heaped pillows and the heavy drapery from the high half-tester shutting her into solitude. She tossed restlessly, listening to the sound of the breakers, and in the small hours she heard Bart return, and lay watching a thin thread of light appear under the door which divided their rooms. She had an impulse to call to him, to seek a child’s assurance for this, her first night under his roof, but she remembered him saying: “This is scarcely a honeymoon ... we can hardly afford to be sentimental...” and turned her back to that heartening glow of light. She might be Bart’s wife, but for him she was no more than a convenience, a whim to satisfy his son...