The Black Benedicts

by Anita Charles

  “First of all you can sit down,” he replied, indicating a chair drawn up close to the bed.

  She sat down.

  “The next thing is a question. Can you type?”

  She shook her head.

  “Do shorthand?”

  Another shake answered him.

  “A pity,” he remarked. “I thought perhaps you might have done both. However, you probably pen a nice, round, feminine hand, and I’m quite sure all your letters are terrifically neat, so as I’ve got a mass of correspondence which must be dealt with”—scooping together with his one hand the letters on the bed—“I’m going to get you to answer them for me if you will. I can’t do so myself with my left hand, and some of them are important, so if I give you a, rough idea of what I want you to say, do you think you can do the rest?”

  “Oh, of course,” Mallory answered, quite pleased to, be of assistance, and a little flattered for some reason because he had thought of her. “I can do that for you very easily.”

  “Good!” he exclaimed. He looked at her. There was still a faint twinkle in his eyes, and she noticed that when his mouth curved up in a certain fashion it had something very attractive about it. “I’ll pay you, of course, for your extra trouble. You needn’t think I’m trying to get a governess and a secretary out of you all for the same weekly wage, or salary, or whatever you like to call it.”

  Mallory felt herself flushing, and she actually felt quite angry.

  “Mr. Benedict,” she said, “surely it is permissible for me to do something for you when you are ill without expecting to receive compensation for my trouble?” Her clear voice sounded affronted. “I am not a money-grubber, I hope!”

  “Aren’t you?” His smile broadened. “Well, that’s something to know about you, anyway! But don’t forget I’m not ill, so that might make a difference to your feelings of generosity towards me...” A knock came on the door, and he called out irritably, “Who’s there. Who is it?”

  “Only me, darling,” Sonia Martingale called back soothingly, and without waiting for his permission she flung open the door as if she was preparing for a stage entrance, stood framed for an instant against the background of the corridor, with its crimson carpet and panelled walls, and then sailed in and straight up to the side of the bed with her arms full of flowers she had extracted from the gardener. “All for you, my poor sweet,” she said, in her low, crooning voice, and laid them, like a tribute, down before him on the eiderdown.

  It was true that without in the least intending to do so she did accidentally touch his arm, in the sling, but quite apart from the jab of pain that might have caused him, Mallory saw him recoil, as if stung, from the flowers. Sonia must, have worked hard over the gardener, who was a niggard with his precious blooms, for there were long-stemmed yellow roses from the hot-house, sprays of specially cultivated larkspur and delphiniums, as well as daffodils, narcissi and tulips. And when she had laid the whole lot on the bed, Sonia produced her trump-card, as it were, a neat posy of fragrant, deeply purple violets nestling in cool, wet leaves, which the gardener had parted with most reluctantly, for they were actually grown for the London market.

  “There, darling! Aren’t they simply wonderful? And all for a poor lamb who got thrown from his horse!”

  “Really, Sonia...” The dark colour was stinging his cheeks, and at that unlucky mention of the cause of his misfortune—he who had never before been thrown from a horse!—it increased to a positive tide. “Do you have to deposit that mass of verdure right on top of all my letters? Confound it, but I was doing my best to sort them out...! And all this floral stuff is for a sick room, not mine!” He drew back as if the heavy odour of the flowers offended him, and Sonia looked astonished.

  “But, darling, you are sick—this is a sick-room! I thought you would love them...” with a thin, disturbed wail in her voice.

  His conscience pricked him, and he looked up at her guiltily.

  “I do—oh, I do!” he assured her. “If only Miss Gower will take them away and find some sort of a container for them—preferably not in this room...! And come back, Miss Gower, when you have finished and let’s make a start on these letters. Some of them ought to catch the afternoon post.”

  “Very well, Mr. Benedict,” Mallory replied, scooping up the flowers, while Sonia Martingale watched her with upraised eyebrows. “I’ll be back very soon.”

  “But what is Miss Gower doing in here?” Sonia demanded, before the door had closed upon the governess. “If you want help with your letters, surely I could be the one to help you?”

  “No, no, Sonia, thank you,” he returned at once, and then reached forth his hand to pat her arm. “Run away now, there’s a good girl, and don’t pester me! I know I’m not being very grateful, and it was sweet of you to think of me like this, but honestly I loathe flowers—I mean I don’t like them at close quarters, in masses like this. All right for weddings and that sort of thing...”

  “Weddings?” she murmured, and half closed her eyes, as if the word affected her very strongly. Then she opened her eyes again and focussed them reproachfully upon him, very large and green and extraordinarily beautiful, and her lips pouted a little. “Raife, darling, why can’t I stay and talk to you...”

  “Presently,” he promised her, “you shall talk to me as much as you want to do, but for the moment I’m busy.”

  “Then I shall get John to take me for a drive, “she said.

  “Do,” he agreed at once. “And make it a long drive—it will do you good!”

  She sailed away out of the room with her head held high, but he was not seriously perturbed by her display of being more than a little upset. And when Miss Gower returned she was carrying the violets in a dainty crystal goblet, the rest of the flowers being on view in his sitting-room, a somewhat monastic apartment next door.

  “I thought you would like to have these beside the bed,” she suggested, as she set them down on the bedside table.

  He gave her a quick, amused look.

  “Most tactful of you,” he observed, “most tactful!”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  For the next few days Mallory had little time to devote to anybody save her employer, who kept her so busily occupied that Serena decided she was being neglected, and sulked a little in the school-room. The child was also extremely annoyed because she was not allowed to visit her uncle in his bedroom, and the annoyance spread to Miss Martingale when she found that she, too, was to be persistently barred entry.

  “But this is quite ridiculous!” she exclaimed in tones of high indignation on the third day, when her somewhat peremptory knock on the door resulted in its being opened by a bare few inches and the temporary secretary politely refusing her admittance. “I’m sure if you tell Mr. Benedict that it’s me...”

  But Mallory had already received her instructions, and they left her with little room to do anything about them. But she did try to soften the harshness of the edict.

  “Mr. Benedict had rather a bad night, I’m afraid,” she explained, “and he doesn’t really wish to be disturbed. Perhaps later to-day—or tomorrow...”

  “If he had a bad night he ought not to be bothering about correspondence, and things like that,” the ballerina declared, looking with barely veiled hostility at Mallory. “And it’s high time a proper nurse took over and organized things for him. Business worries should be kept away from him at this time—or if it’s a genuine emergency his London secretary could be brought down. I shall speak to the doctor...”

  When Mallory passed this information on to her employer he looked at first badly irritated, and then all at once his irritation collapsed, and he lay back with a faint sigh on his pillows.

  “In a way, I expect she’s right,” he admitted. “You can’t have guests and ignore them altogether.”

  And then as Mallory’s gaze drifted to the violets beside the bed—magically retaining their beauty and perfume—his eyes followed the direction of hers, and he studied the flowers with great thoug
htfulness and concentration for several seconds. After which he announced that they would work for a short while in the library the following morning, if she could spare the time, and that he would be getting up for dinner that night.

  “So you can pass on the intelligence to Miss Martingale if you see her,” he concluded, and Mallory was a little surprised because it struck her that he was deliberately avoiding her eyes.

  Miss Martingale was all over him when he descended to the dining-room that night, and because his arm was still in a sling, and he had rather a marked pallor, she made a tenderly effusive fuss of him. But the fuss was not so noticeable when he insisted on Miss Gower bringing Serena to the drawing-room after dinner, and although it was not part of the governess’s duties to be observant where he was concerned, it did strike her that although he joked in a somewhat caustic manner, and suffered the attentiveness of Serena, who was quite genuinely devoted to him, as well as the lovely Sonia’s more feline demonstrations of affection, by the time the evening was only half over he was making a supreme effort to endure anyone about him at all. She fancied that his hard white teeth were firmly gritted together behind the imperturbable mask of his face, and there were one or two beads of perspiration glimmering brightly under a thick wave of his dark hair.

  She promptly took it upon herself to order Serena upstairs to bed, and although she could not of course say anything, she looked at him very hard before she left the room, and her look said plainly:

  “Don’t you think that you’ve had enough...?”

  The look was intercepted by Sonia Martingale, whose slender eyebrows rose, while the eyes themselves looked suddenly extremely annoyed. But Raife Benedict smiled, the merest ghost of a smile, and he called after Mallory as she left the room with her charge:

  “I shall follow your example before very long. And, don’t forget, I wish to see you in the morning, Miss Gower!”

  In the morning, in the sombre panelled library, with the portrait of his ancestor looking down at them from the wall above the fireplace, he regarded her with the old cynical look, faintly distorting the shape of his mouth, as he sat at his walnut desk and finished handing over letters with which she was to deal when she was alone.

  “Shall I tell you something, Miss Gower?” he asked.

  Mallory looked up in surprise, her pencil still poised.

  “Yes, of course,” she answered—“if you think it’s something I should hear?”

  “I do,” he told her. He was much more like himself this morning, and he was not even wearing the sling, and that mocking, disturbing sparkle was back in his curious hazel eyes. “Miss Martingale reproved me very strongly last night because she says I’ve been treating you unfairly these last few days. She will have it that a young unmarried woman, spending hours at a time in the bedroom of a bachelor like myself, is unhappily likely to find herself compromised if that sort of thing goes on for long! I must say it hadn’t occurred to me that I was placing you in any real danger, particularly as I’ve been feeling distinctly under the weather for the past few days, but perhaps you share Miss Martingale’s views? Perhaps you feel that I’ve already compromised you?”

  Mallory was so taken aback, and the mockery in his eyes confounded her so much, that for a few seconds she could say nothing at all. And then she managed an expostulation.

  “But that’s—that’s ridiculous...!”

  “You think so?” he inquired, smoothly.

  “You were ill, and I was merely helping you...”

  “Very efficiently, too, if I must say so!”

  “And someone had to assist you with your correspondence! And what if I’d happened to be your real secretary...?”

  “Ah, but you see you aren’t!” he explained, carefully selecting a cigarette from his neat gold case and then tapping it on the outside of the case. “You’re Serena’s governess, and your place is upstairs in the school-room, or walking in the park with Serena, and I hadn’t any real right to snatch you from your natural environment and incarcerate you in a bedroom smelling strongly of moth-balls and carefully preserved antique furniture! The fact that I was temporarily without the use of one normally good arm, and that I was so badly bruised from top to toe that I seemed to be one continuous ache, has nothing whatever to do with it. You were in danger from malicious tongues, and neither of us seemed to realize it!”

  “That was because there was nothing to realize,” she answered stiffly, and started to gather up the letters. “Would you prefer it if I do these in the school-room?”

  “Not at all. You can work here in the library, but to get back to this business of your being compromised...”

  “Must we?” she asked, with dangerous calm, although her bottom lip for some reason required to be caught up between two small white teeth to steady it.

  “I think we must,” he answered, smiling enigmatically. “You see,” he explained, “you don’t look like a secretary—and I’m not only quoting Miss Martingale! At least, you don’t look like the accepted idea of a highly efficient young woman capable of ordering her employer’s life for him! Although I know you are efficient, you look young and vulnerable and—far too attractive...!”

  “Please,” Mallory managed, controlling herself with an effort, “if these are all the letters you want me to answer for you...”

  “They are all I want you to answer for me to-day.”

  He rose and pushed back his chair, and although he continued to smile, his eyes were no longer deliberately mocking. There was even something faintly whimsical hovering about his lips now.

  “And don’t let even the thought of malicious tongues worry you, will you? Because in this house I’m quite sure you’re already highly popular! And although I’ve annoyed you I’ve been tremendously appreciative of all you’ve done for me over the past few days,” surprising her considerably by suddenly holding out his hand to her. “I’m going to London to-morrow, and I may not be back for a week or more, but while I’m away I hope you’ll get some exercise on Shamrock, and Serena’s new pony should arrive any day now. Carry on the good work you’ve begun on Serena—I think she’s improved quite markedly since your arrival on the scene!”

  “Oh!” Mallory exclaimed, and for the life of her just then she could not understand the feeling of almost acute disappointment which welled over her at his news, and the quality of flatness it introduced into her voice. She supposed that if he was returning to London, Miss Martingale would be returning with him, but—the house would seem extraordinarily empty once they had all left. It would seem extraordinarily empty once he had left!

  She put her fingers into his clasp, and he retained them for several seconds—unusually long-drawn-out seconds they seemed for a hand-shake—and when it was over her fingers tingled queerly, and she found it difficult to forget the strange vitality of that hand-clasp. It was just as if something warm and vital—and rather extraordinary!—had communicated itself from him to her at a moment when she was quite unprepared for it, and in spite of the fact that she had felt so angry with him a few moments ago, when she had felt so sure that he was mocking her, and for some reason amusing himself at her expense, all at once she was so loath to have him leave Morven Grange that she was afraid what she was feeling would be given away by her eyes, and she kept them carefully lowered.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I—Serena is very easy to deal with, really...”

  “Unlike the rest of us Benedicts,” Raife observed, smiling this time with something odd and unamused in his smile. “As a family we are about as tractable as Saladin, and possibly as unpredictable!”

  He gave her fingers a little, close squeeze, and then dropped them gently—remarkably gently for one whose movements were usually governed by impatience and impulse.

  “And if you’ll put those letters on my desk before the afternoon post,” he said, “I’ll sign them and see that they get away.”

  Then he turned away almost brusquely and walked towards the door, and she realized that he was goin
g in search of Sonia—and it was quite possible that she might not see him again before he left! She might not see him for several weeks...!

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  As it happened, several weeks did actually pass away before Raife Benedict decided to return to a countryside that was now ablaze with midsummer, and in the interval Mallory found that life at Morven flowed along rather sluggishly. She and Serena spent a great deal of their time out of doors, especially when Serena’s pony arrived and they were able to take advantage of the sudden perfection of the weather. Serena had sat astride her first pony when she was not much more than three years old, and she would have been quite happy to ride Shamrock, the little chestnut mare, if her uncle had given permission; but as it was it was Mallory who found Shamrock just right for her weight, and in worn jodhpurs and an open-necked blouse, with Serena looking like a small equestrian fashion-plate beside her, they roamed the lanes and explored the woods around the Grange, discovering favourite beauty spots and hidden nooks to which they returned again and again, occasionally persuading Mrs. Allardyce, the cook, to pack them up a picnic basket, and spending the whole of the day out of doors.

  Other days they worked conscientiously in the school-room, a host of new books having been sent down from London to assist them in their studies after Mallory had approached her employer on the subject. With typical prodigality he had placed an order for a far larger number of text books, works of reference on all sorts of subjects, as well as some lighter reading matter, than they were ever likely to require—at least, not in the interval before Serena was placed in some sort of a scholastic establishment were sooner or later she would have to find herself.

  In the meantime, she found Mallory a most pleasing companion, and a vast improvement on Darcy, who was beginning a retreat into a sulky shell where she found few sympathizers, for even Mrs. Allardyce had taken quite a fancy to the ‘new young lady’ and Mrs. Carpenter had approved of her from the very beginning.