by Trevallion
stood looking curiously at Anna as she opened the letter.
"Mr. Peveril not been home all night, then?" she said conversationally. "My! But 'e do work hard."
Anna looked up quickly, aware that her colour was betraying her.
"He'll be here for breakfast, I expect," she said.
"Don't make sense," the girl replied. "Out all night and home to breakfast! Where would 'un sleep?"
She went away then, humming blithely, for she had not been long enough under Rebecca's eye to learn restraint, but her careless words still rang in Anna's ears as she read Alix's brief scrawl.
I think you had better come and have a talk with me, darling [she had written]. Rick probably feels he's too far committed to ask for his release, but you, I'm sure, wouldn't want to hold him to a rash promise. The enclosed will explain.
The enclosure was a folded envelope with the single initial A written in Rick's unmistakable hand. With fingers that trembled a little, Anna took out the sheet of paper it contained and read:
My darling,
Since I find it impossible in the circumstances to tell you what I feel for you, I'm writing this in the hope you will understand and make things easy for me. These evenings when I am unable to reach you or say with any confidence what lies in my heart become almost unendurable. Is there a chance of happiness for us, my dear, or is the past too strong for you? I would not wish to bind you to an old promise, but since then, things have altered so much. I know, now, that life without you must be arid and desolate, but if you will have none of me I shall understand, for the fault was mine. I love you so much, my dearest dear, but as things are, I cannot bring myself to tell you. . . . Anna read the letter through several times, then folded it up and put it carefudy back in its envelope.
It gave her exquisite pain to read such a letter written to
another woman. So often she had wondered what kind of lover Rick would make, whether he could employ gracefully the age-old endearments of all lovers, whether he could be humble and gentle in his desire. "My dearest dear..." She had always known, she supposed, that the old passion had never died. "These evenings when I am unable to reach you . . . I would not wish to bind you to an old promise . . . I know, now, that life without you must be arid and desolate . . . The fault was mine . . . the fault was mine . . . She would remember those passages always. The desire she had always known he still felt for Alix lay nakedly exposed under the rather stilted phrasing. Poor Rick, she thought while her own love for him cried out in protest. . . poor Rick, caught in his own trap, unable to declare his heart because, despite his Peveril ruthlessness, there was in him honour and a sense of obligation to the stranger he had so wantonly thrust among them.
Anna dressed with grave deliberation. Her fingers fumbled sometimes with zips and buttons but her mind and intention were clear. She must resolve this foolish tangle herself, for, although Alix was clearly unscrupulous, Rick, she knew now, would never go back on that declaration so defiantly made on the night of his grandmother's birthday.
In the passage outside her room she met Ruth on her way to the bathroom.
"Hullo!" she said. "You're early! I shouldn't think breakfast will be ready yet."
"It doesn't matter. I'm going out," Anna said. She held the two letters in her hand, Rick's and Alix's, and Ruth gave her a more searching look.
"You all right?" she asked. "You've got a funny look."
"Quite all right," said Anna calmly, but the letters in her hand shook.
"Something's upset you," Ruth said and, suddenly recognizing the handwriting on Alix's note, snatched the letters out of her hand.
"What's Alix been writing to you about?" she said sharply.
"Please give them back," Anna said. "It's only a note asking me to go and see her."
"Is that where you're off now? It must be something urgent to demand your presence before breakfast. Anna— Rick's not there, you know. He's stayed at the quarry all night before. There's a makeshift dormitory where the men doss down in an emergency."
"Is there? May I have my letters, please?"
Ruth thrust them into the pocket of her dressing-gown.
"No," she said with a hint of the Peveril autocracy. "Don't worry, Anna. I won't read them. I'll put them back in your room when I've had my bath. What's the other one?"
It was not worth arguing, Anna thought wearily, turning away. The letters were as safe with Ruth as anywhere else. She did not know why she had still been holding them except that sometime or other Rick's letter to Alix must be returned.
Rebecca was laying the breakfast table when she got downstairs. She sniffed when she saw Anna and remarked tartly that breakfast would not be ready for another half-hour.
"It doesn't matter," Anna said. "I'm going out."
The woman gave her a sharp look.
"You look bad, miss," she said with the first hint of concern Anna had ever known in her. "Best have a cup of something hot before you go. Coffee's not ready, but there's tea in the kitchen."
"It doesn't matter," Anna said again.
"Where be to at this hour of the morning?" Rebecca demanded, lapsing into her west-country burr.
"Only to the cottage to see Mrs. Brook."
"Her won't be out of bed," Rebecca retorted suspiciously. "Come along to my kitchen, miss, and get some hot tea inside you."
Anna followed her, unprotesting. It was so unusual to be invited into the kitchen that she felt it would be rude to refuse, also the suggestion of hot tea was heartening, for she had not touched the early morning tray that the girl had brought up.
Sol sat at the big scrubbed table finishing his breakfast. The smell of frying bacon still hung on the air, tempting and tantalizing.
"You'm proper early this morning, missy," Sol observed, regarding Anna curiously.
"Get up!" said his wife briefly. "Miss is going to take a cup of tea before she goes visiting Miss Alix."
Sol rose slowly from the table and exchanged a meaning look with Rebecca.
"Her won't be out of bed," he said mildly. "So I told Miss." Rebecca hastily buttered a thick slice of bread and set it before Anna, then poured strong, scalding tea into a kitchen cup.
"There, get that inside you," she said. "Don't seem as if our good Cornish food has done you any good! You'm as thin as ever you were when you came."
Anna looked up into the woman's thin, severe face, and thought how strange it should be that Rebecca's first gestures of friendliness should come at a time when it no longer mattered, but she was grateful for the tea and even for the bread and butter. It was, she realized now, foolish to meet the enemy on an empty stomach.
"Thank you," she said politely when she had finished. "May I go out the back way?"
The woman gave her another curious glance but she said nothing and merely jerked her head towards the open kitchen door. Anna walked out into, the yard and past the piggery where Birdie was already busy swilling down the sties, and on over the ha-ha to the wasteland. The morning was one of particular beauty, she thought, seeing the shining drops of dew caught in cobwebs and bracken. The sky was a clear, tender arc of blue and there was already the first hint of autumn in the air.
At the cottage door she paused for one hesitant moment before knocking. Was Rick still there, she wondered? Would he think she was trying to catch him out, arriving so early?
It could no longer matter, she thought wearily, and lifted her hand to the knocker.
Alix's voice called to her to come in. If the door was unbolted, presumably someone had been in or out since last night, but Alix was alone now, still in bed, with pillows propped behind her and a spiral of smoke twisting upwards from the cigarette she held in an indolent hand.
"Well, that's what I call a prompt response, darling," she said, her eyes narrowing in the familiar cat-like stare. "I hope you're going to be sensible. I'm not very good at scenes at this hour of the morning."
"I've no intention of making a scene," Anna replied quietly. "Why did you sen
d for me?"
"Didn't Rick's love-letter make that plain? Where is it, incidentally?"
"I left it at home. I'll return it to you later."
"See that you do. I don't think Rick would like to think that you had read what was meant only for my eyes."
"I don't imagine any man would care for such intimate things to be shared with another woman," Anna retorted sharply, and Alix smiled.
"I hadn't much alternative," she said. "Proof in his own hand was better than anything I could say to convince you that he didn't love you."
"I've never been under the delusion that he loved me," Anna said steadily.
"No, I don't think you have. Well, now you know the truth. Didn't you guess it all along?"
"Perhaps."
"But you stid thought you could push me out and cash in on Trevallion and anything Rick had left over to offer you?"
"Isn't that what you want yourself, Alix?"
"Oh, yes, but I have the advantage of you, my dear. Rick's in love with me."
Anna turned away from the bed and stared out of the window to the lonely headland and the sea beyond.
"Well?" said Alix's voice behind her. "Are you going to
release him nicely and without any fuss? The gesture will have to come from you, you know. Having gone so far with his ridiculous pig-headed plans, he'll go through with them, even though he knows he's made a mistake."
"How can you be sure I'm not still ready to cash in on Trevallion, as you put it?" asked Anna, making her voice hard.
"Because," said Alix with soft amusement, "you're in love with him and you're the kind of selfless little fool who'd rather give than take."
"You don't," said Anna evenly, "make out a very good case for yourself."
"Because I'm honest? I know your kind, Anna. How would you like to live your life with a man who wanted another woman—to know each time he made love to you it was someone else he was thinking of—to watch him grow to hate you in the end because you stood between him and what he had always desired? You're too soft, my dear, you'd never stand the strain."
Anna turned back from the window. She was very white and her head was beginning to ache.
"You don't need to torment either of us any longer," she said in an exhausted voice. "I will release Rick, of course, not because I think you'll make him happy, but because if you are what he wants, he won't be happy with me."
Alix doused her cigarette in a half-empty cup of tea and got lazily out of bed, reaching for her dressing-gown. In the morning light she had a faint suggestion of blowsiness, the first hint that in a few years those magnificent proportions would begin to lose their firmness and indolence replace the active hardness of youth.
"How very wise of you, darling," she replied, taking a comb from the litter on the dressing-table and running it through her hair. "You won't, of course, mention the letter—that might make him feel uncomfortable."
"No. I won't mention the letter."
"On second thoughts, you'd better tear it up instead of returning it to me."
"I think not," said old Mrs. Peveril's deep voice from the doorway. "I have it here."
They had neither of them heard her open the cottage door. She stood on the threshold of Alix's bedroom, her hands trembling slightly on the knob of her ebony stick. She had clearly dressed in a hurry and not paused to see that buttons corresponded with their right buttenholes.
"Grand!" Alix exclaimed, too astonished for the moment to be warned of possible disaster. "Did you come alone across the ha-ha and the wasteland? Why aren't you still in bed?"
"You should know the answer to that, Alix, and, as it happens, I was not alone."
"Ruth!" said Anna, utterly dismayed by the turn events were taking. "She took the letters from me. She said she wouldn't read them."
"Your strange manner made her curious, my dear child. It also made Rebecca curious," said Mrs. Peveril dryly. "They brought the letters to me."
"And you read them, too?" asked Alix, watching the old lady with calculating enquiry.
"Yes, I read them, too. That was a cruel thing to do, Alix. Whatever your reasons it was unbelievably cruel."
"Aren't all the Peverils cruel?" retorted Alix, flinging back her head. "Was there any better way of making my position clear? I'm sorry, Gran, you should have found out this way, but at least you can see, as Anna has, where Rick's love still lies."
"Love!" Mrs. Peveril's eyes were filled with a fierce and violent anger. "Do you call it love, lying and scheming, using methods like this to get what you want?"
Alix smiled.
"It was you who encouraged me in the first place, Grand." she retorted insolently. "You can hardly complain if your chickens come home to roost, can you?"
Mrs. Peveril looked suddenly very old and tired.
"Yes, I encouraged you," she said. "Forgive me, Anna, but we thought at the beginning that Rick was playing some vindictive jest of his own. But since the wedding day was arranged—well, I told you then that it was time for you to go, Alix. You've changed. Lately you've shown me in many ways that I was, after all, mistaken."
"That's a pity," said Alix calmly. "Because now things have gone too far."
"Did Rick spend the night here?" Anna asked quite gently. She thought that for an instant there was genuine astonishment in Alix's eyes, then she looked Anna up and down with a slow smile.
"Of course," she drawled in her husky voice. "A pity you should raise that point in front of Gran, who most likely has Victorian ideas at heart, but perhaps it's all to the good. I'm sorry, Gran, but you will appreciate, I'm sure, that it's better Rick marries me after all."
Mrs. Peveril sat down on the dressing-table stool as if it was too much effort to stand any longer.
"I always said there was bad blood in you, Alix," she said heavily.
"Yes, and made it sound like a compliment."
"Oh, yes, I'm doubless to blame as much as you, but I didn't think that even you would go to such lengths."
"A natural conclusion to a love affair, however, you'll admit."
"Yes, if it were true." Mrs. Peveril suddenly raised her voice and called strongly through the open window, "Rick!"
Alix flung round to face the door, two brilliant patches of colour in her cheeks.
"How long has he been there?" she cried.
"I told you that I hadn't come alone," the old lady replied. "Rick was back from a night at the quarry just in time to accompany me here."
"Damn you!" Alix screamed at Anna. "What devil prompted you to lead me into that trap?"
"Anna doesn't know you as well as I do," old Mrs. Peveril observed grimly. "You took advantage of the suggestion very neatly, but I saw the surprise in your eyes first."
"Well," said Alix, beginning to look a little pinched about the nostrils, "you can't get away from the letter. That's written evidence. Anna has already accepted it."
Rick walked into the room. He looked tired and unshaven and his eyes were as hard and cold as the stone from his own quarry.
"What letter?" he said quietly.
Alix was silent and Mrs. Peveril took the letter from one of her capacious pockets and handed it to him.
Anna sat down on the side of the bed and turned her face away. She could not bear to witness his discomfiture, to listen to his excuses or hear his admission of guilt. The crisp flutter of paper as he turned the letter over and read the other side sounded very loud.
"You admit you wrote it?" his grandmother said, breaking the silence at last.
"Oh, yes, I wrote it," he replied. "How did you get hold of it, Alix? Did you go through my pockets one day when we had been swimming?"
"Does it matter?" Alix's voice held the reckless note of desperation, and Anna turned to look at her. "Since it was written to me there was scarcely any harm in purloining it."
"God!" Rick exclaimed with sudden violence. "You'd lie to the bitter end, wouldn't you?"
Anna's gaze shifted with difficulty from Alix's face to Rick's. H
ow could they go on accusing one another, hurting one another, when Rick held the proof in his hands, she wondered, clasping her own hands so tightly together that the heavy stone of the Peveril emerald bruised her flesh.
"You wrote the letter—you said so," she said stupidly, and his eyes rested on her for the first time, seeing the weariness in her drooping body, the strain in her lifted face.
"Yes, I wrote it," he said gently, and seemed to hesitate. "It was written to you, Anna."
"To me!" Bewilderment was in her eyes. "But-"
"You're surely not going to swadow a yarn like that, are you?" Alix broke in savagely. "When has Rick ever made love to you? Why do you suppose he should find it necessary to write a letter like that when he had only to tell you what he chose to put on paper?"
"Because," said Mrs. Peveril, her voice deep and strong again, "he was unsure of her, because he knew she still believed in that old passion for you. Isn't that so, Rick?"
"Yes," he said briefly, and his eyes were strangely humble as they held Anna's.
"Perhaps you would like to take the letter, Anna, and read it again—remembering that it was meant for you."
He threw the crumpled sheets of notepaper over to Anna who stuffed them carefully into the belt at her waist. She tried to catch his eye, but he looked away, embarrassed for the first time since she had know him.
"You've never learnt that to love is to give," went on Mrs. Peveril, turning back to Alix. "You've never learnt that you can't demand and take and still preserve your own integrity."
"Don't all the Peverils do that—demand and take?" Alix flung back. "Haven't you done it all your life, yourself?"
"Perhaps . . . but even I have learnt something . . . you, my dear, have learnt nothing and I think, perhaps, you never will. I've loved you very much, Alix—you were never afraid of me, like the others, and I used to see in you what I had once been myself. I spoilt you and didn't see that I was helping to make you what you are. For that I beg your pardon."
Mrs. Peveril had spoken with dignity and a rather pathetic regret, but Alix only laughed.
"Very well, you've called my bluff," she said, and suddenly turned on Anna. "I underestimated you, Miss Bread-and-Butter. First Ruth, then Rick, and now, it seems, Gran! Was it a rout of the Peverils, or only of me?"
