
Mills&BoonClassics
Sara Seale
THE GENTLE PRISONER
There was a curious similarity between the fairy tale of "Beauty and the Beast" and Shelley Wynthorpe's relationship with Nicholas Penryn. The Beast lived in a remote house, surrounded by high walls; so did Nicholas. Beauty's father brought her a white rose from the Beast's garden; so did Shelley's father, when he visited Nicholas and they came to their strange arrangement that Shelley should become Nicholas's wife. The Beast was hideously ugly --- and Nicholas, badly scarred, was convinced that no woman could ever feel anything but revulsion for him. But. .. after a year and a day, Beauty had fallen truly in love with the Beast. Would Shelley, with her gentle ways, be able to bring her own love story to its happy ending?
Sara Seale
THE GENTLE PRISONER
f
MILLS & BOON LIMITED LONDON • TORONTO
All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the Author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the Author, and all the incidents are pure invention. The text of this publication or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.
Philippine copyright 1977 This edition 1977
This edition © Sara Seale 1977
For copyright reasons, this book may not be issued on loan or otherwise except in its original soft cover.
ISBN o 263 72527 8
Set in 10 on upt Plantin
Made and printed in Great Britain by C. Nicholls & Company Ltd The Philips Park Press, Manchester
The house, in the soft summer twilight, looked grey and forbidding. The high wall which completely enclosed it rose in a straggling circle from the silent moor, and only through the tall iron gates could the house itself be seen, strong and implacable with its shuttered windows blank to the enquiring eye. Away on the horizon the slag-heaps of china-clay workings rose like ghostly, snow-covered hills.
The man, with his hand already on the chill iron scrolling, paused and shivered. He had an instinct not to enter, a faint presage of ill-luck, should he push those hostile gates ajar and slip inside.
"Absurd ..." he said aloud, and his hesitant, delicately shaped hand fumbled for the latch.
Inside the gates it was as if the barren moorland had blossomed under some magic wand, for he found himself in a rose-garden which was as unexpected as it was beautiful. A short drive led directly to the house.
He pulled a bell at the side of the heavy front door, and to the old man who answered it, he said:
"Mr. Penryn, please."
"Mr. Penryn is not officially in residence," the old man said severely, "but if you will give me your name, sir, I will enquire."
"Wynthorpe. Lucius Wynthorpe. Tell your master I come from Mrs. Anderson."
The hall seemed very silent when the old man had gone. Lucius Wynthorpe shivered again and glanced over his shoulder at the closed front door.
"Absurd ..." he said for the second time, as the old man returned.
"Mr. Penryn will see you," he said. "This way, if you please, sir."
For a moment, the lamp illumined a mirror on the wall, and Lucius saw himself in passing, the familiar ascetic features softened by the unaccustomed light; the silvery hair swept back from the high forehead with distinguished elegance. He was reassured. Such a setting suited his thin, rather wistful charm. He should not have to appeal in vain.
The room he was shown into was shadowed and indistinct and his eyes immediately focused on the pool of light shed by a single lamp by the fireplace, and the man who rose from a high-backed chair to greet him.
"Mr. Penryn?"
"Yes," his host replied after a slight pause. "I don't think I know you, do I?"
"No," said Lucius quickly. "You don't know me. Mrs. Anderson gave me your name, and since I'm staying in this district, I thought - " he paused, and Nicholas Penryn said smoothly: "You've come on business? I don't as a rule see strangers." "Business - yes, well, perhaps it is business of a sort." Lucius' charming face was hesitant. "You see, I - " "Won't you sit down?"
"Thank you. I'm sorry for calling on you so late, but -well, I only learnt this afternoon that you were home again."
Lucius looked with curiosity at the man who had resumed his chair opposite him. There were many stories about Nicholas Penryn, his wealth, his slight eccentricity, his shrewdness in business matters; Penryn of Garazion. With mild surprise, Lucius saw him to be a much younger man than he had expected. The face, turned slightly away from him, was strong and dark with flaring nostrils and deep furrows running from the nose to the line of the jaw. Thick black hair grew in a widow's peak on the broad forehead, and the eyebrows were straight and black and uncompromising. It was a face that would have been ugly except for the surprisingly gentle mouth, then he turned his head to look directly at his visitor, and Lucius moved involuntarily. A deep scar disfigured the other side of his face, puckering the corner of his mouth, and drawing one eyebrow into a satanic lift. Mephistopheles ... Old Nick ... Lucius could see how he had got his name.
"My face shocks you?" the harsh voice asked, a little mockingly.
"My dear fellow! I hope I wasn't staring," Lucius said quickly. "I had heard about your accident, of course. No, the
fact is you are such a much younger man than I had supposed."
"Thirty-eight," Nicholas smiled, and the scar made it a crooked, slightly sinister effort. "And that shocks you more. You'd put me down in the late forties, hadn't you? Now, what can I do for you?"
Lucius measured him thoughtfully. "I won't wrap it up," he said, "The fact is, Mr. Penryn, I've come to beg."
He saw a wary hardness come into the dark eyes, before the heavy lids veiled them.
"Yes?" Nicholas said, and there was a faint weariness in his voice.
"Oh, I know," Lucius said quickly. "You are used to begging letters, even personal approaches such as mine-they are the natural accompaniments to a man in your position, but I had been told - Mrs. Anderson in fact told me that you cherished a - kindness for the maimed, for the disfigured - that - forgive me - your own injury had made you tender towards other unfortunates. Mrs. Anderson spoke of the immense good you had done for deserving cases."
"Mrs. Anderson, it would seem, has talked too much, as usual," Nicholas remarked dryly. "What is it you want of me?"
Lucius smiled his charming, deprecating smile.
"Money, alas! What else? I have a daughter, Mr. Penryn
- an only child. She is eighteen - just on the threshold of womanhood. She spends her days in a spinal carriage - an accident two years ago - a hit-and-run driver - you know the sort of thing."
Nicholas moved his head until the scarred side of his face was in shadow.
"I'm sorry," he said with the politeness of a man who has heard such stories many times. "And in what way can I help you?"
Lucius clasped his hands between his knees as he leant forward into the circle of lamplight.
"My daughter is my whole life," he said slowly. "Everything that medical science can do for her has been done and there is no possible hope of further improvement. All I care about now is that she should have some kind of bearable life - and this is what I cannot give her. I make no excuses, Mr. Penryn -I have been a drifter, a waster. But I cannot bear the thought of my daughter suffering as a result, and I need money for her, never for myself."
"Did you not get damages at the time of the accident?" Nicholas Penryn's voice was flat and mechanical.
"I told you - it was a hit-and-run affair. We never found the man responsible. Meanwhile my daughter needs a holiday, occasional weekends in the country, books, music - the sort of thing that can be enjoyed from the confines of a wheelchair. And this is just the sort of thing I cannot provide for her."
"I see. How much do you want?"
Lucius was taken aback. He had not expected such a simple capitulation.
"One thousand pounds would cover all her immediate needs and look after her for some time to come," he said. "Mr Penryn, you cannot conceive the weight you will take off my mind. The thought of my dear daughter, lying there day after day, with nothing but the immediate necessities of life - "
Nicholas moved and his disfigurement showed cruelly in the lamplight.
"I have not said I am prepared to help you, Mr. Wynthorpe," he said smoothly.
Lucius caught his breath and his eyes were strained.
"I misunderstood you," he said quietly. "When you asked me how much I needed, I thought - no matter. I apologize for disturbing you."
He rose with dignity, but Nicholas did not move.
"Sit down," he said. "I have not said thatT refuse to help you. I would like some details of your own circumstances."
Lucius told his brief story with halting charm. He had told it so often before, that almost unconsciously he used the same inflections, the same effective pauses, alive to the smallest change in his listener's attention.Nicholas watchedhimthrough half-closed eyes, making no interruptions, his singularly beautiful hands resting quietly on the arms of his chair.
His parents had been well off, Lucius said, and he was brought up unfitted for any career. He was already married and living on an allowance from his father when the family business failed. The allowance vanished overnight, and he found it impossible to get steady work. He was fitted for nothing, he had a delicate wife, and then his child was born.
"My wife died giving birth to our daughter," he said, "and I was left to bring her up as best I could. After my parents died, I was left with a very small income which I've never been able to enlarge. By then I was no longer young and there was no place in the earning world for me."
Nicholas looked at him thoughtfully, at the cultured, delicate face, its weakness hidden by its ready charm, the face of a man taught in adolescence to live on others, and he thought of the young girl, helpless in a spinal carriage, dependent perhaps on the charity of a stranger.
He got to his feet.
"You're a wastrel, aren't you?" he said quite pleasantly. Lucius drooped.
"Yes," he admitted. "You're quite right. But the sins of the fathers, you know - do you really think it's fair - that old biblical cliche?"
Nicholas' hand vaguely fingered his scar.
"No," he said. "No - I've never been sure. And after all-"
"Yes?"
"It doesn't matter."
Lucius rose too and faced him.
"After all, you were going to say, you had advantages which people like myself hadn't." Nicholas' eyes were suddenly cold.
"I inherited my father's money, if that's what you mean, but I inherited the business too, and I've worked to keep it going."
"China-clay," said Lucius musingly. "One of the oldest trades in Cornwall. You are a Cornishman? Yes, of course, with that name and that complexion. Perhaps I envy you." He glanced round the room. "You have some lovely stuff here, if one could see it."
Nicholas took the lamp and carried it from cabinet to cabinet. Glass gleamed in the passing light, and china and pieces of carved jade and rare editions of old books. "My collection, and perhaps my life, now," he said.
"Yes, I've heard how you shut yourself up here with your possessions. Unusual for so young a man. An escape?"
"Escape?" Nicholas looked startled. "Perhaps."
The light suddenly caught a painting over the mantelpiece, and Lucius paused involuntarily.
"Extraordinary!" he said.
"That?" said Nicholas. "It's by an unknown artist, eighteenth century, of the Greuze school. Rather charming, isn't it?"
The portrait was that of a child dressed in the stiff garments of the period, her hands folded quietly in her lap, her grave, enquiring eyes looking out from under a fringe of fair hair. The tones of the painting were very delicate and clear, and Nicholas' eyes were tender as he rested on it.
"I've always had a great affection for her," he said with unexpected gentleness.
"Extraordinary," said Lucius again. The light moved on and the picture was in shadow. Lucius held a Yung Cheng vase in his hands, turning it round to the light.
"This," he said softly, "is worth more than all my debts. It hardly seems fair, does it?"
Nicholas put down the lamp.
"Mr. Wynthorpe," he said, "I'm prepared to help you - for your daughter's sake. If you will send me a list of what you need, I will get something done for you."
Lucius stood in the shadow, indeterminate and tense.
"A cheque for a thousand would cover everything," he said.
"I dare say. But I would prefer to settle things my own way. May I have your address?" Lucius hesitated.
"We have no settled address," he said vaguely. "We move on when the spirit takes us."
"But you have a bank, I presume, or somewhere where you can be reached?"
Lucius shrugged.
"As you please. We have been lent a small cottage at St. Bede, so our address is only temporary, you understand."
"Quite. And after that?" Lucius shrugged again.
"It's in the lap of the gods. I'm afraid we live from hand to mouth, but I can't do anything else. If you could write me a cheque now, it would save you a great deal of trouble."
"Possibly." Nicholas went to a desk and found a pad and pencil. "Your address, please."
Lucius gave it. He looked defeated and suddenly tired as he waited while Nicholas wrote. The room with its treasures seemed to close in on him as he stood. Each separate item would mean life and gaiety to him. Each inanimate object resting mutely in its appointed place could mean freedom from care.
"You are a collector?" he remarked idly.
Nicholas closed the writing pad.
"Yes," he said, "I'm a collector."
The interview was over. Lucius walked with his host through the silent hall and waited while Nicholas opened the heavy door. As the door swung back, the scent of the roses came to meet them. It was nearly dark now, and beyond the rose-garden, the high wall rose sombrely to the fading sky.
Lucius stretched out his hand to a white Frau Karl Druschki.
"May I?" he asked, snapping off the bloom before he was given permission. "For my daughter, you know. She loves roses."
"Certainly," said Nicholas courteously. "You have a car?"
"I left it outside," Lucius answered, fingering the rose delicately. "Well, good night, and thank you - or shouldn't I thank you, except for the rose?"
"You will be hearing from me," Nicholas said, and stood in the porch, watching his visitor depart.
When the last sounds of Lucius' car had died away, Nicholas went into the house, shutting and bolting the door behind him. He paused for a moment, in the quiet hall, stroking his scarred cheek, then abruptly he went to the telephone and put through a London call.
"Hullo ..." he said when the connection was made. "Please put me through to Mrs. Anderson..."
The small fishing village of St. Bede lay beyond the clay works
where the moor dipped to the estuary. It was too remote for the tourist, but a small artists' colony gathered there during the summer months and were tolerated mildly by the fisher folk.
Nicholas left his car on the headland, and began the short descent down the cliff side to the village. It was just six o'clock and already the shadows were lengthening. Nicholas descended the last part of the cliff path and began to walk along the shore.
He was familiar with most of the cottages which were let to summer visitors, but the address Lucius had given was strange to him, and he glanced about for some likely person to direct him. Some children were playing in the rock pools left by the tide, but they ran away when they saw his face, leaving a young girl who sat on a rock and dipped her bare feet in the water.
"I wonder, could you direct me to Gull Cottage," he asked. "It's lent, I believe, to a Mr. Wynthorpe."
She looked up at him and he was immediately teased by some sense of familiarity. She was strikingly fair. The fine, soft hair which swung to her shoulders was almost silver, and widely spaced grey eyes looked gravely out from under a high forehead.
He was used by now to strangers' reactions to his face, the polite shock, even repulsion, then the pity which had at one time hurt him so much. He did not expect to be hurt again, but something in the quick widening of this child's eyes, in the startled, almost imperceptible withdrawal, made him move impatiently and turn the disfigured cheek away.
"Yes," she said then, and her voice was as grave as her eyes. "Up there on that little terrace - next to the pink-washed cottage with the shutters."
He followed the line of her pointing hand with his eyes, and saw the two cottages side by side above the first cobbles of the little quay side.
"Thank you."
"I would take you there myself," she said with polite unexpectedness, "only I can't leave for a little. Would you tell me the time?"
He looked at his watch.
"A quarter-past six."
She sighed.
"Another half-hour," she said, and he raised his eyebrows enquiringly.
She made a little movement with her head and he noticed for the first time that one of the bearded artists who strolled about the village had set up his easel by the breakwater and was painting her.
"Oh, I see," he said gravely. "You are a model."
She nodded.
"He pays me a pound," she told him with reverence, and he smiled, the rare smile which twisted the scarred side of his mouth, but nevertheless lent his face an unexpected charm.
Immediately her face lost its polite gravity, responding at once in an answering smile that was wholly childlike, and he knew why she had seemed familiar. She might well have posed for the grave child whose portrait hung in his study.
"What's your name?" he asked.
"Shelley."
"I meant your Christian name."
Her eyes widened again in faint reproof.
"That is my Christian name," she replied.
"I beg your pardon," he said at once. "It's a strange name for a girl, but it suits you. Here's another pound to go with the other."
He pressed a note into her hand.
"Thank you," she said gravely, and he smiled at her and walked on.
He forgot her at once as he knocked on the open door of the cottage. He could see the obvious signs of departure inside; half-filled suitcases, books piled on the floor, and the general disorder of hurried packing. His eyes grew hard as he waited, and when Lucius himself came to the door, he remarked smoothly: "Good evening, Mr. Wynthorpe. You didn't give me to understand that you were leaving so soon."
He thought Lucius lost colour at sight of him, but his skin had a naturally transparent look, and it might have been a trick of the light.
"My dear fellow!" he exclaimed. "I didn't expect to see
you. I'm sorry not to be able to ask you in, but as you see, we are in a state of chaos."
"I think you will ask me in, all the same," Nicholas replied suavely. "You and I have some business to discuss, if I'm not mistaken."
Lucius hesitated.
"I'm exceedingly busy," he said. "We leave tomorrow morning."
"Yesterday," said Nicholas mildly, "you asked for my help, Mr. Wynthorpe. Surely you haven't forgotten?"
Lucius's eyes brightened, but he said:
"I have regretted it, Mr. Penryn. I should not have sunk my pride so low as to beg from a stranger. But my daughter is very dear to me. Forgive me."
"May I come in?" said Nicholas.
Lucius stood aside, and he walked into the disordered living-room. Lucius shut the door.
"You have decided to help us?" he said tentatively, and leant from the open window to glance up and down the shore. "You must forgive me for hurrying you, but there is so much yet to be done, and my daughter, as you know, is quite helpless."
"Is your daughter upstairs?" Nicholas enquired.
Lucius glanced from the window again.
"No ... no ... she is out in her chair. I pay a boy from the village to push the chair. She likes to go out and watch the children playing on the shore, poor child."
Nicholas removed a pile of clothing from a chair and sat down.
"It must be quite a business moving about at such short notice with a crippled girl," he said.
"Not easy," Lucius said with his deprecating smile. "Not easy - especially when we cannot afford to travel in comfort. But she never complains, and that, of course, makes it harder for me to bear. What did you wish to see me about, Mr. Penryn? I have, soon, to prepare my poor girl's supper."
"Yesterday," Nicholas said, "you asked me for a thousand pounds."
Lucius stood in a shaft of sunlight. The thick white hair, the finely cut features were illumined in a golden radiance.
"I was unwittingly greedy," he said, "and I was desperate to help my daughter. But five hundred, perhaps - if you could have seen your way ... As I told you, I have been foolish, improvident ... I would pay you back, somehow..."
Nicholas turned his face to the same shaft of sunlight, and the scar stood out cruelly.
"You have never paid anyone back in your life," he said harshly.
Lucius started.
"I beg your pardon?"
"I said," repeated Nicholas, "you have never repaid anyone in your life. I've been making enquiries about you, Wynthorpe. It was foolish of you to have quoted Mrs Anderson. Shall I tell you what I've discovered about you? You live by your wits. Begging letters, personal appeals to more gullible people than myself - principally women, I understand. You trade on the disabilities of rich people with your stories of a crippled daughter. I doubt very much if you have a daughter at all."
Lucius's thin shoulders sagged.
"Oh, yes," he said wearily, "I have a daughter."
"A crippled daughter?"
"Alas, yes. Can you blame me for trying to ease life a little for her? You are a rich man, Penryn. You cannot conceive of the problems of the poor."
"You could have worked."
"With a different upbringing perhaps. But what I've done, I've done only for my daughter. I would steal for my daughter, and am not ashamed to say it."
"The way you live is only a form of stealing," Nicholas said dryly. "You realize, I suppose, that you risk prosecution every time you try and obtain money by false pretences ?"
"Not entirely false," said Lucius humbly. "If you could see my daughter - "
There was the sound of light feet on the steps outside, and the door was flung open.
"Father!" called a voice, "Has your visitor gone? Did you
remember the eggs? I've earned a pound today ..."
Nicholas turned sharply, aware of Lucius' quick gesture of protest. The young girl he had met on the shore ran into the room, her feet still bare, and flung her arms round the older man's neck.
"Haven't you finished your packing yet, lazybones?" she said, then turned and saw Nicholas. "Oh! I'm sorry. I thought you were alone."
Lucius turned away.
"My daughter, Shelley," he said wearily. "Mr. Penryn." "We've already met," said Nicholas grimly, and she drew back against her father at the expression on his face. Lucius drew away from the girl.
"I think perhaps, my dear, you had better go down to the shore again for a little. This gentleman has come on a business matter."
"Let her stay!" said Nicholas harshly. "My business is very brief, and she might as well hear it from me as from you."
"Please..." Lucius' voice had unexpected dignity, "Shelley knows nothing of my affairs - nothing - do you understand?"
Nicholas glanced at the girl regarding him with the grave enquiry he had remarked in her earlier. She drew back a little, aware of the new hostility in him.
"Do we owe you money, Mr. Penryn?" she asked quite simply.
"Not yet," he replied a little grimly. "Please, Shelley," her father said.
"It's quite extraordinary," said Nicholas slowly, staring at her.
She smoothed her hair nervously, and glanced at her father.
"The likeness to my picture," said Nicholas. "You must have noticed, surely?"
"Oh, yes," said Lucius. "I noticed at once."
"And missed the opportunity of cashing in on the coincidence?"
"One can't think of everything," Lucius said, and smiled. "And supper?" Shelley asked again, her hand on the doorhandle.
"I think, perhaps, I will stay," Nicholas said, watching her.
Lucius looked at him quickly and then at his daughter, and his head went up.
"Splendid!" he said, rubbing his hands together. "Shelley makes an excellent omelette. I will go round to the pub for some beer. Shelley, my child, what will Mr. Penryn think? A torn frock and your feet bare like a fishergirl's!"
"He thinks I'm a child," she said simply. "He gave me a pound."
"Then return it at once, my dear. You should never take money from strangers."
She held out the note to Nicholas, but he shook his head and his smile was a little cynical.
"No, keep it for luck," he said. "How old is your daughter, Wynthorpe?"
"Eighteen," said Lucius with a quick glance at him. "But she prefers, for some reason, to look like a schoolgirl. Run and change, my dear. Put on your pretty white dress."
"But it's packed," she said, looking bewildered.
"Never mind. Unpack it. And don't forget your rose, my child - it came from this gentleman's garden."
She gave Nicholas a strange, startled look and ran out of the room.
"I almost believe you were telling the truth for once," said Nicholas, going to the window and turning his back. "Is it true she's ignorant of the way you live, or does she play the crippled daughter for you when it's convienient?"
"Shelley knows nothing more of me than the fact that I cannot always pay my bills," Lucius replied. "She has been educated in a convent school although we are not Catholics, and is very simple and unsophisticated."
"And what are your plans for her?" he asked.
Lucius went and stood beside him.
"What would you suggest?" he enquired softly.
"I have no suggestions," said Nicholas shortly. "Doubtless you'll find a place for her in your scheme of life. Handled properly, she should prove a useful asset."
"You're very bitter, aren't you?"
"No one likes being made a fool of. You were just plausible
enough to put over your crippled daughter and nearly get away with it. I merely feel sorry for that girl if she's really as innocent as you make out." Lucius shrugged gracefully.
"And what action are you planning to take yourself?" Nicholas frowned.
"I don't know yet. I could prosecute, you know." "And your witnesses?" Nicholas looked at him coldly.
"You really are a blackguard, aren't you?" he said. "I don't imagine it would be difficult to trace back your other activities and produce witnesses enough for the purpose. I came here intending to do that very thing. Society should be protected against parasites like you."
"It would be Shelley who would suffer if I went to prison," Lucius said softly.
"Why should I care what happens to your daughter?"
"But I think you do. Perhaps, after all, she has already begun to be an asset to me. Ah, here she is!"
Nicholas turned from the window. His expression was exceedingly uncompromising as he watched the girl enter the room. She came in hesitatingly as though the stranger's presence made her uneasy. In her long white dress she looked older but more unsure of herself. The white Frau Karl Druschki was pinned to her shoulder.
"It's kind of you to invite me for supper," he said quite gently.
Lucius fetched a large earthenware jug from the sideboard and patted his daughter's shoulder in passing.
"I'll go and fetch the beer," he said. "Entertain Mr. Penryn nicely while I'm gone."
"Will you be long?" she asked him anxiously.
"Not long, but long enough," he said, and went out, laughing.
She moistened her lips nervously and began to talk to Nicholas.
"Are you staying here, Mr. Penryn?"
"No, I live in this district, about twenty miles away, across the moor."
"Oh. I've never been inland. The moor is rather grim, isn't it?"
"Some people think so."
"Do you come to St. Bede much?"
"Not very often, except on business."
"Oh," she said again. "Was it business you had with my father?"
He glanced at her puzzled face.
"I wasn't really thinking of that," he said gently. "My real business is china-clay. Look!" He led her th the window. "There's one of our ships taking a cargo of china-clay to Brittany. It's dug up out of the ground and turned into pottery, and porcelain, and water-colours and paints. If you were to go up on the moor you would see the workings, looking rather like the pyramids in miniature."
"It sounds very interesting," she said politely.
She sat down on the window-seat and folded her hands, quietly in her lap.
"I'm sorry about the pound," she said shyly. "I didn't like to return it for fear of offending you."
"And I'm sorry for offering it," he retorted. "If I'd realized you were really a grown-up young lady, I wouldn't have dreamed of it, of course."
"I'm not very grown-up, really," she said, and he smiled suddenly.
As before, her face lost its gravity and she smiled back.
"That's better," he said, sitting down beside her. "Now tell me all you've been doing since you left school."
She relaxed, flinging back her head so that the rather touching hollows of her throat and collar-bones were revealed.
"Well, first we went to London, but I didn't like it very much. Father had to be out a lot and we had rather stuffy rooms and the landlady was cross. Then we went to a place on the river where Father had to do a business deal. I liked the river and wanted to stay, but Father said we must go as soon as he had finished his business, and we came here."
"And you like it here?"
"Oh, yes, but we have to leave tomorrow and my portrait is only half-finished, and Mr. Lord is very annoyed."
"I see." His regard was suddenly gentle. "Do you mind if I call you Shelley? As you said yourself, you're not quite grown-up. How did you get your name? Is it a family one?"
"No." Her voice was soft. "It was my mother's wish. She loved the poet, Shelley, and wanted her child called after him, whatever sex it should be."
"Poor drowned Shelley ... Do you remember your mother?"
"No. She died when I was born."
This much, then, was true.
He touched the rose pinned to her shoulder.
"My rose becomes you," he said lightly. "Why did you look at me so strangely when your father asked you to wear it?"
She looked down at her hands and a faint colour came into her cheeks.
"Because of something he said when he gave it to me," she replied.
"Oh? What was that?" "You might be offended."
"Nothing your father said could offend me," he said dryly. "Well, he said - 'here you are, my dear - from the garden of the beast.'"
He drew back as if she had struck him.
"I should undoubtedly veil myself before strangers," he said with acid bitterness.
The colour rushed to her face.
"Oh, no, no, it wasn't meant like that," she said, her voice breathless with dismay.
"How else? That and something else which I hope you don't understand."
"It was the old fairytale - Beauty and the Beast - don't you remember? The poor merchant went to the beast's palace and stole a rose for his daughter."
"This beast was an ugly sort of devil, I imagine - repulsive, in fact."
"Well, yes, he was, but he couldn't help it. He was enchanted, you see."
"And what happened then?"
She drew back a little at the grimness of his voice.
"In return for the rose, the beast took Beauty and she had to live in the palace with him for a year and a day or else her father would have been eaten up."
A curious expression crossed his face.
"A very sensible arrangement," he said briskly. "I must read up my fairytales when I get home."
"And you're not offended?"
He looked at her then, a long, piercing look, and watched the distressed colour fade from her face.
"No, I'm not offended," he said gently. "Here's your father coming back."
There was a small back parlour uncluttered by the signs of their departure, and here Shelley prepared their meal and set candles on the table and flowers in an old chipped blue bowl. She waited on them silently, her dress fluttering mothlike in the candlelight as she passed behind their chairs, and afterwards she brought coffee, then cleared the table while they sat and talked.
Lucius talked well, weaving fancy into fact with long accustomed ease, but he missed none of his guest's reactions to the evening and observed his eyes resting several times with thoughtful scrutiny on Shelley.
But the girl seemed shy. She responded only briefly to his attempts to bring her into the conversation, answering: "Yes, Mr. Penryn," "No, Mr. Penryn," until Lucius could have shaken her.
"Convent life has made you gauche, my sweet," he said a little acidly, and Nicholas saw her flush. She looked at her father with puzzled pleading, aware that he wanted something of her, but aware too of the uneasy influence of the dark stranger.
"Do you live all alone, Mr. Penryn?" she asked with an effort, saying the first thing that came into her head.
"Yes," he answered gravely. "Quite alone."
"He shuts himself up in a big house in the middle of a moor with a high wall all round," said Lucius a little waspishly. "And lives with beautiful inanimate things. You never saw such treasures, Shelley - they must be worth a fortune, eh, Penryn?"
"I don't care for things," Shelley said.
"You little Philistine! These things, as you call them, are worth a fortune - a collector's paradise."
She felt Nicholas' eyes on her, and looked at him dumbly.
"I think Shelley means that treasures worth a fortune have no intrinsic value for her," he said quietly. "You would prefer to deal in flesh and blood commodities, wouldn't you, Shelley?'
"To love only things seems a little empty, somehow," she said shyly.
"Occasionally that's all that's left to some of us," he remarked and his voice was dry.
"But surely you of all men, Penryn," said Lucius with light malice, "need never want for companionship? Money, they say, unlocks all doors. Why should you allow a physical misfortune to turn you into a hermit?"
"I don't care for the kind of companionship which is bought," said Nicholas with cold disdain.
Shelley raised her head. It was getting dark and her face and her white dress were scarcely more than pale outlines in the failing light.
"You cannot buy people," she said softly.
Nicholas moved, unconsciously shielding his disfigurement with his hand,
"Can't you, Shelley?" he said with gentle irony. "I've usually found you can."
She was silent, aware of a strange kind of power in him, and he knew she was a little afraid.
"I must be going," he said on a different note. "And I think we have a little business to discuss first, Wynthorpe."
Lucius made a vague gesture towards his daughter.
"Shelley, my child, isn't it time you were in bed?" he said.
"Oh! Yes, Father ..." Her voice was bewildered, but she rose at once.
She stooped to kiss her father, and her cheek lingered for a moment against his.
"Good night, Father."
He returned her kiss a little impatiently.
"Run along, child. Say good night nicely to Mr. Penryn. You are not likely to meet him again, is she, Penryn?"
Nicholas rose, and she held out her hand, aware of the hostility between the two men. But his clasp was firm and curiously gentle, and the ugliness of his disfigurement was softened for the moment in shadow.
"Good night, Shelley," he said. "And thank you for my excellent omelette."
"Good night, Mr. Penryn," she said, reluctant to leave them together.
When she was at the door, he spoke again.
"The beast is not going to eat up your father," he said, and she gave him a startled look and slipped from the room.
"Now what," remarked Lucius, frowning, "in the world did you mean by that? You haven't been talking to the girl, have you?"
"She told me a fairy story, that's all."
Nicholas did not sit down again, but stood with his back to the empty fireplace, his hands in his pockets, jingling his loose change.
"I've a proposition to put to you, Wynthorpe," he said. "I'm prepared to overlook your past attempts at fraud and even to help you to some sort of settled way of living."
Lucius relaxed in his chair.
"My dear fellow, that's very generous of you - very generous. There is a - quid pro quo attached to your offer, no doubt." "Naturally." "And that is?"
"I will help you in exchange for your daughter." A small sigh escaped Lucius. So he had not been wrong after all.
"My dear chap," he said, "it's a little awkward. I wouldn't care to press such a delicate matter. Shelley is inexperienced and shockingly innocent. I don't know if she could ever be persuaded..."
Nicholas' eyes narrowed and his voice was icy as he answered:
"Please don't misunderstand me. I'm quite prepared to marry your daughter."
Lucius flushed a little.
"Foolish of me, of course. You had misled me by your obvious preference for solitude."
"And yet, if I'm not mistaken, you wouldn't have been averse to the other alternative. What a conscienceless swine you must be!" There was bitter contempt in Nicholas' voice, and Lucius rallied.
"Oh, come now, we're both men of the world," he said. "Virtue is all very well in its way, but it can be a damned bore at times. But you intrigue me. You can't pretend to have fallen in love with her at first sight - a girl twenty years younger than yourself!"
Nicholas' face was impassive.
"Call it what you will - the collector's instinct, perhaps. She is very - decorative."
"Yes, yes, she has a quality - I'll give you that."
"Yes ... she has quality ..." Nicholas said slowly, then bis head went up, his nostrils flaring a little. "So you'd really sell your daughter? You're even more contemptible than I had supposed."
"I'm sorry," said Lucius mildly. "Weren't you serious, then?" "Perfectly. Weren't you?"
"Oh, yes. I'd be a fool if I turned down such a proposition of security for my daughter, wouldn't I?" "That might depend." "On what?"
"On how much you loved your daughter. You know very little about me." Lucius' smile was suave.
"Enough to know that you would look after her," he said. "Collectors, after all, are fussy about their treasures."
Nicholas' face hardened.
"Very well, then. Here are my orders."
"Orders?" Lucius' eyebrows went up.
"Yes, orders. You will do as you're told in this matter, Wynthorpe, and I shall expect every co-operation from you. You will naturally not leave here in the morning, and you will allow me every facility for visiting your daughter. If you have pressing debts, which I'm sure you have, you will acquaint me of them, and the day I marry Shelley, I will settle two thousand a year on you for life on the understanding that this shall cease should you return to your old tricks. Do I make myself clear?" Lucius grinned.
"Very clear. Tell me, did you think all this out while I was fetching the beer?" Nicholas made no answer and he said curiously, "You're a strange man. What do you expect to get out of this? Shelley knows nothing of men - she has certainly never been in love."
"So much the better," said Nicholas harshly.
"Young girls need careful handling, so I'm told. Do you think your - appearance is going to inspire confidence?"
The scar stood out on Nicholas' cheek lividly for a moment.
"That's my affair," he said quietly.
"I trust so, my dear chap, I trust so. And what am I to tell Shelley?" Nicholas moved into the shadow.
"You'll tell her nothing. Your plans have changed, that's all."
"You don't want me to try to - persuade her into matrimony?"
"When the time comes, I shall naturally expect you to use such influence as you may have - should that be necessary."
"Well," said Lucius getting to his feet, "this is about the strangest transaction I've made in my life. I hope, for both our sakes that my daughter proves reasonable."
"I hope so, too," said Nicholas politely. "I'll say good night now."
Lucius led the way through the litter of the front room and they stood for a moment on the little terrace, looking out to sea.
"Tell me," said Lucius curiously, "what will you do with Shelley when you've got her? Put her in a glass case?"
A brief spasm of pain crossed Nicholas' dark face.
"Perhaps," he said. "Good night."
His footsteps rang firmly on the stone steps, then vanished as he reached the sand, and his tall figure was soon lost to sight in the darkness.
Lucius shivered suddenly, and went back into the cottage and bolted the door.
Often, when Nicholas came to visit them, he would find Shelley on the shore. The first time, she was sitting just as he remembered her, dabbling her feet in a rock-pool while the little bearded artist painted by the breakwater.
"Can you direct me to Gull Cottage?" he said, and watched the startled look fly into her eyes.
"Mr. Penryn!" she exclaimed. "Did you know we were still here?"
"Yes," he said, "I knew."
Reserve descended on her.
"Of course, you had something to do with it, hadn't you?"
"Did your father tell you that?"
"No. But it was after you had gone he changed his plans. An unexpected business deal, he said."
"I see. But you were glad to stay?"
"Oh, yes. And Mr. Lord is able to finish his picture."
Nicholas walked behind the artist and looked over his shoulder. The painting was not very good - just the usual composition of sand and sea and light, and the conventional figure in the foreground "You are interested?" the artist asked. "You would like to buy it, perhaps ?"
"No, I don't think so," said Nicholas, and sat down with his back to the breakwater to wait until the sitting was finished.
Shelley pocketed her pound and stood looking uncertainly at Nicholas.
"Did you want to see Father?" she asked.
"No," he replied, "I came to see you."
"Oh!" She put her hands behind her back and stood on one leg like a corrected child.
"Aren't you used to people coming to see you?" he asked.
She shook her head.
"I don't know what to talk to you about," she said, and sounded a little embarrassed. He got up, brushing the sand from his clothes.
"Let's walk along the shore and look for shells," he said.
She turned obediently to accompany him, but she was no more than a polite child, walking sedately beside him, stooping sometimes to pick up a shell, answering when she was spoken to. When they returned to the cottage, in duty bound she asked him in for a cup of tea and with relief left him in the living-room, while she went out to the kitchen to boil a kettle.
Lucius was out, and Nicholas and Shelley sat drinking tea together and making polite conversation until he returned.
"Well," said Lucius, taking the lid off the teapot and peering inside, "I wondered when you would be making an appearance. Has Shelley entertained you nicely?" As Nicholas rose to leave. "Walk with Mr. Penryn to the cliff path, my dear. If he has taken the trouble to call upon you, the least you can do is to see him off."
She got up at once and went with Nicholas to the door.
"You don't need to come, you know," he said gently.
"I'd like to," she replied politely. "It's a lovely evening."
They walked in comparative silence to the cliff path, then" Nicholas took her hand.
"May I come again?" he asked.
Her eyes opened widely.
"But of course," she said. "Father is usually here."
His smile was a little twisted as he watched her turn and run back along the shore with the free, joyous movement of a young colt released from the halter.
He did not come again for over a week, and this time he brought her a present. It was an eighteenth-century singing bird in a painted box, and her pleasure was such that for a while she forgot her shyness of him.
"Isn't it charming, Father?" she cried to Lucius when he came in. "And wasn't it kind of Mr. Penryn to bring it for me?"
"Very pretty," Lucius said, cocking an eyebrow. "One of the treasures from the collection, I take it."
"It has no great value," Nicholas replied carelessly.
"Why don't you drive Shelley over one day and show her your collection?" Lucius asked slyly. "She should see Garazion, the home of the Penryns."
"No." Nicholas' voice was suddenly harsh, and Shelley quietly put her singing bird away.
"Mr. Penryn knows I have no knowledge of such things," she said.
"I would like to take you one day to the little village of Polpen and show you the dancing Druids," Nicholas said. "Will you come?"
"If you would like me to," she replied politely.
"Really, my sweet," Lucius said when he had gone, "you might show a little more enthusiasm. Penryn is quite an important man in his way, and he seems to have taken a fancy to you."
"Do you owe him money, Father?" she asked simply. "Why do you ask?"
"Well that first night, I thought it must be money he had come about." Lucius laughed.
"Well, in a sense, I suppose it was, so be nice to him, child."
It soon became evident, even to Shelley, that Nicholas came for the purpose of seeing her. There were moments when she forgot her shyness in the delight of some unexpected pleasure, and then she would become the child he remembered running freely on the shore, but there were times when he alarmed her, although he was always gentle, times when his face twisted cruelly in its disfigurement and his voice was harsh and bitter until he remembered she was afraid of him. For her father's sake she tried to behave as he wished, but always she had the impression that Nicholas had some hold on them, that should he choose to drop his gentle mask, he could destroy them both by some magic formula.
One day as Nicholas came down to the shore he saw a small crowd gathered at the water's edge. Fisherman were making a stretcher from pieces of driftwood, while the curious onlookers pressed forward to the water. At that moment he saw Shelley push her way through the crowd and run blindly across the sand towards him. He called her sharply and she paused. For the first time she seemed really glad to see him, running to him, and catching him by the sleeve.
"Mr. Penryn! Oh, I'm glad you've come!" she cried and her eyes were wide and filled with horror.
"What is it, child? What's happened?" he asked.
"A body's been washed up - a young fisherman - we knew him quite well." She shuddered. "I saw him and he was all swollen and horrible."
He drew her into a recess in the cliffside and put his arms round her trembling body.
"I know," he said. "I know. These things can be horrible. You shouldn't have watched."
"Father took me. He wanted to see. I didn't know death was so ugly."
He pressed her head against his breast, stroking her hair with gentle fingers, angry with Lucius,tender for her ignorance.
"It isn't always," he said. "Death is often very beautiful and very peaceful. Try not to think of the body that's left. We can't always help what happens to our bodies, you know."
She looked up at him, and saw the scar, harsh and remorseless, twisting his dark face into a semblance of pain.
"No," she said. "No. I'll remember."
He held her there while the sad little procession wended its way back to the village, and for a short while he was no longer a stranger. For a moment she found in him the strength and tender assurance for which she had always sought in her father, and was comforted.
"Come," he said when the last fisher child had walked soberly home. "We'll walk along the shore the other way and look for shells."
They sat on the warm, sun-baked rocks and watched the sails in the bay, and Shelley found she could talk to him quite easily. She told him of small forgotten incidents of her childhood; the first dead bird she had found one snowy Christmas, its claws stretched to the sky in mute defeat, the loss of a school friend who had formed another attachment, the little blind nun who had never seen the sun...
"You seem to remember all the sad things," he said. "You were a lonely child, weren't you, Shelley?"
"Was I? I don't know. The nuns were very kind, but it was lonely sometimes staying behind for holidays. The school
seemed so empty when everyone had gone."
"Did you not go home to your father, then?"
"Not often. I think it wasn't always convenient for him to have me, and we have no other relations."
"And you're still lonely."
"Oh, no. I have Father now."
His jaw tightened but he said nothing, and glancing at his face she said a little timidly:
"I think all human beings are a little lonely. No one can ever quite get to the secret places."
He turned to smile a little sadly at her.
"Yes, Shelley, that's true, but sometimes two people can understand each other well enough not to feel shut out."
"Have you felt that?" she asked.
"No," he said abruptly. "No, I never have."
After that things were easier when Nicholas came to St. Bede. Shelley would often watch for him and rim along the sands to meet him, her pale hair flying in the wind. They would bathe in the warm waters of the sheltered bay, and Shelley from the shallows would watch Nicholas' black head as he swam strongly out to sea.
"Next year I shall seriously have to teach you to swim, you lazy young woman," he told her once.
"Next year?" Her fair eyebrows disappeared beneath her fringe, "But we shall be gone before the winter."
"Will you?" he said. It was a slip which Lucius would have enjoyed.
"Oh, Father would never spend the winter here."
"No," said Nicholas smoothly, "I don't suppose he would."
Shelley learned a little of the Penryns from the fishermen. There had always been Penryns in these parts, they said. Generations of them had owned the clay works and the little coasters that put out in the bay, but now there were none left but this one, this Old Nick with the ugly face and a hard head for business. Penryn of Garazion. But from Nicholas himself, she learned nothing at all. He never spoke of Garazion or offered to take her there, and he never spoke of his past life or of the reason for his scarred face. A stranger he was, but a stranger who, Shelley sometimes thought, was at times closer to her than her own father.
"And that," she said aloud, "is rather odd." They were sitting in the thyme and heather on the mainland looking down the steep cliff path which had brought them up.
"What is rather odd?" he asked idly, but she looked embarrassed.
"Nothing," she said hastily. "I'd forgotten you. I was thinking aloud."
"Will you forget me, I wonder, when I go away?"
"Why?" she looked bewildered. "Are you going away?"
"For a little while, on business. You won't see me again for a fortnight or so after today, Shelley."
"Oh ..." She sounded rather blank. "I - I think I'll miss you."
"I hoped you might. Shelley, do you think you could bear to marry me?"
The question was so abrupt that at first she only stared at him.
"What did you say?" she asked at last.
"I asked if you could bear to marry me." His voice was quite unemotional.
"I thought that's what you said," She sat very erect in the heather, and the wind blew long fair hair across her face. "Is it - is it a kind of joke?"
He pulled out a pipe and began filling it with tobacco.
"It's no joke, I assure you," he said. "Why - does it seem funny?"
"Oh, no ... no, not at all," she gave a nervous little laugh. "Only you see, no one's ever proposed to me before and - and - well, I don't know you!"
"Why do you suppose I kept coming to see you?" His pipe was alight now, and she suddenly found his eyes on her with their old piercing regard.
She averted her own and looked out to sea.
"I thought Father owed you money," she said in a low voice.
"I see. You don't know much about men, do you, Shelley?"
"No."
"Does it seem so strange to you that I should want to marry you?" She was silent. "Look at me. Am I too old?"
She turned her face unwillingly towards him, shy with embarrassment, aware, again, of that compelling quality in him. "I don't know how old you are." "Thirty-eight."
"Is that all?" There was a flash of surprise in her eyes, then the embarrassment returned. "Or is it my face?" His voice was suddenly harsh. She flushed vividly. "No-oh, no!"
"You protest with a little too much fervour," he said grimly. "You are not the first woman to recoil from being kissed by me, though there were always plenty to be bought."
She stared at him helplessly and put out a tentative hand. "If someone loved you..."
"You're very young," he said, and the scar stood out lividly as it did when he was moved. "Very young and very foolish. I learnt long ago not to expect love from a woman. I'm not asking you to love me, but you might, I think, be kind."
She sprang to her feet and stood taut and poised for flight.
"No... no. .. I can't," she said.
He got up and deliberately knocked out his pipe and put it in his pocket.
"I'll ask you again when I come back," he said gently, and saw that she was crying. He held out his hands, "Oh, my dear - all right, I won't touch you. Go home and think it over quietly."
"No!" she said again. "I'm sorry ... no ..."
She turned with a quick, lithe movement, and fled from him down the cliffpath.
He let her go, angry with his own clumsiness. He had frightened her, and he had allowed the bitterness of years to shake his habitual control. His was no passion to offer schoolgirls; he should have known better...
The tears were still wet on Shelley's face as she ran into the living-room of the cottage. Lucius, his feet comfortably on a chair while he idly filed his nails, looked up enquiringly.
"Back so soon?" he said. "I didn't expect you for hours. What have you done with your sinister swain? Ah, tears! Have you quarrelled, my pretty?"
She stood looking at him with drowned eyes. "Father, he - he - " she began. Lucius began his filing again.
"He what? Don't tell me he lured you into a dark cave and wreaked his will."
She pushed the hair back from her forehead with a tired gesture.
"I don't understand you when you talk like that," she said wearily. Lucius cocked an eyebrow.
"Didn't they teach you the facts of life at the convent?" he enquired.
"Oh, that. I know what your words mean, of course, but I don't know what you mean." "Perhaps it's just as well. And what is all this distress for?" "He wants to marry me." Lucius filed vigorously.
"Is that all? I've been expecting you to come and tell me that long ago, but I niust say I didn't think you'd arrive in tears."
She rubbed her wet lashes.
"Did you know, then?" she asked without surprise.
"Of course. Your distinguished admirer, quite rightly and properly, acquainted me with his intentions some time ago - on the evening when he first met you, in fact."
Her eyes widened.
"But how could he know? We were strangers ..." Lucius gave her a puckish look.
"Things happen that way, sometimes, my love. What did you say to Old Nick?"
"Say?" she looked stupid for a moment, "oh, I said I wouldn't, of course."
The file rasped suddenly, but Lucius did not look up.
"Dear me! Might one ask why?" he said.
"Father! But you must see! He's so much older ... I don't know him at all... and... and... his face..."
"Ah, his face. It repulses you?"
"No - not exactly. It frightens me a little because - because of the hurt he must suffer - feeling he's different, I mean. If
I loved him - "
"Ah, love," said Lucius. "You believe that love transforms ugliness - makes it beautiful?"
"I don't know. I know nothing about love, but surely - "
Lucius started on the next nail. His hands were his pride, and he had beautiful nails, shapely, though brittle.
"Now love, let me tell you, has very little to do with these things," he said and waved the file at her. "No, don't interrupt. To be intelligent about life is what matters. I, my dear child, have not been at all intelligent about life - until now. And you - well, my dear, I have very little future to offer you. Think twice before you throw away security, for, whatever else he may be, Nicholas Penryn certainly represents that. Besides, I think he's fond of you, and that makes a lot of difference."
"You mean he loves me?"
"Did he say so?"
"No, he didn't say so. He said he had learnt long ago not to expect love from any woman."
"Sensible man. Well then, what ails you, Shelley?"
She looked at him wistfully, seeking for the understanding she needed.
"It's just - well, it's just that it's impossible," she said flatly. "I don't love him - I don't even know him. He's shut up in himself and his private world and never speaks of it. How can I go to live with a stranger?"
Lucius finished off the last nail and tucked his file carefully away in his breast-pocket.
"Very lady-novelist, my dear, but in point of fact we all marry strangers, and if you don't - if you don't -"
"Yes, if I don't?"
"Then we shall both find ourselves rather in the soup." She said accusingly: "You do owe him money." Lucius examined his nails with satisfaction. "Well, yes, I suppose I do." "And did he make some bargain with you?" "Not exactly a bargain. As I told you, he took a fancy for you that first evening."
She said passionately, childishly:
"Then you've been in league together against me."
"Oh, my dear child;" Lucius' voice was acquiring a thin edge to it, "Don't let's have such melodramatic talk. Penryn is simply a rich man who can afford to pay for his whims. The fact that I may owe him money is neither here nor there, but I gave my consent, should you agree to marry him, and that's all there is to it. When are you going to see him again?"
"He's going away on business for a fortnight - perhaps longer."
"Wise man. Then what are we having such a scene about? By the time he comes back you'll have got over the first shock and be quite used to the idea."
"Father ..." She knelt on the floor beside his chair and rested her arms on his knees. "Let's go away from here - now - before he gets back. If you owe him money he'll wait, like the others. But let's go away from St. Bede, let's go away from Cornwall."
Lucius sighed.
"Now, Shelley, I'm no good at scenes, you know that. We can't leave St. Bede just yet - there are reasons. And I want you to think this thing over very carefully before you finally decide. I may say it will make a great difference to me personally if you refuse - I can't explain everything to you now. Besides that" - he kissed her carelessly - "I want to see your future secure. Let's say no more about it now. In a few days, my pretty, you'll feel quite different. Dear me! Daughters can be more of a problem than I suspected!"
It was an unhappy fortnight for Shelley, and during that time she grew up a little more, and the simple things of life were not quite so simple after all, and there was no one in all the world to turn to, for Lucius had failed her.
"I thought you would want to please me," he would say sadly, looking at her with reproachful eyes, if she brought up the subject of Nicholas again.
"Have I ever asked anything of you before...?"
"I had a struggle to keep you all these years..."
"Your mother would have counselled wisdom if she had been alive..."
"I'm getting old, Shelley ... you could help me so much when the rot sets in..."
All through those hot days Shelley listened, beaten down, drained by his pleadings. Lucius could always command words, and words could defeat her for she did not understand them. Between her father and Nicholas she could not fight for she did not know what she was fighting.
"Is it something more than money?" she asked him once. "If it's just that you're in Mr. Penryn's debt, I'm sure he wouldn't want... well, he's decent... no man would ..."
Lucius thought of his settled income, the two thousand a year that would buy freedom to live as he wanted, freedom from all those rich women and thin mealy-mouthed charity, the begging letters and the endless, endless evasions.
"Yes," he said with a little twist to his lips. "It's more than money; it's peace of mind."
She was sitting in the window, silhouetted against the evening sky, and she stretched up her arms to lift the long hair from her neck and hold it on the crown of her head. It was a simple, very charming movement, and Lucius said: "You are quite delightful, my dear."
She turned at the genuine note in his voice, and ran across the room to sit on his knee.
"Oh, Father," she said, "Peace of mind! If Mr. Penryn has some hold on you, I'll talk to him - I'll explain."
She felt him stiffen.
"You'll not mention it to Penryn, do you hear me, Shelley? It's nothing that you would understand, and he would not care for such things being discussed. I have your promise?"
"Very well." Her arms slackened round his neck. "If he asks me again I'll just say no."
"And that's your last word?"
"It has to be."
For a moment his face held the defeated disappointment of a child, and she laid her cheek against his.
"I'm sorry," she said gently. "Can't you understand?"
"I understand nothing except that there's no gratitude in one's children," he said, pushing her away. "Please, Shelley - it's too hot for this sort of thing."
They did not know when Nicholas returned. Sometimes Shelley would go to the door half-expecting to see his tall figure striding along the shore, but he did not come, and the days were cooler and the fishermen said that rain was on the way.
The quiet hour before supper was the easiest, for then Lucius went down to the inn and Shelley could sit idle in the window and think of nothing. She was sitting there one evening when a step sounded on the terrace and someone pushed open the door. She turned quickly and saw Nicholas standing inside the room, looking at her.
She stared at him, the colour draining from her face, but she found no words to say, but stood up slowly, her hands behind her back like a child.
"Good evening, Shelley," he said prosaically, and crossing to the window, took her gently by the shoulders and turned her round to face the light. She saw his face change and he said quickly: "What have you been doing to yourself, child? You look exhausted - drained." He touched the shadows under her eyes and she remembered the reassurance of his hands.
"It's been so hot," she said. "Day after day - "
"And day after day, your father," he finished for her. "I should have known how it would be."
All at once she was weeping, standing there between his firm hands and crying.
"It's been so bad?" he asked compassionately. "Poor Shelley - poor drowned Shelley - drowned in a sea of tears."
He drew her into his arms and she remained there passive and weeping and very tired.
"That other day," he said quietly above her head, "I didn't mean to frighten you ... you know why I've come, Shelley?"
She made a small movement against his breast. "And is your answer still no?"
She looked up into his face and saw the ugly scar which twisted the muscles so cruelly, and, as once before, when the dead body of the young fisherman had been washed upon the shore, she found in him that strength and tenderness which her father had denied her. There was no one else.
"No," she said wearily, "I'll marry you." He put a hand under her chin, searching her face with his hard, keen eyes. "Your father succeeded in persuading you?" he asked. She shook her head.
"No," she said. "Until this moment I said I would not." He smiled.
"So I've won my own battle?" "No one else wants me," she said. He kept his hand under her chin.
"Look well at my face, Shelley," he said harshly. "It's what you will have to live with."
She reached up and touched his cheek, her fingers running gently over the scar.
"It doesn't matter," she said, and he bent his head and brushed his lips briefly against hers, turning his disfigurement away from her.
"It's raining!" Shelley cried suddenly, and there was a great relief and still the tremor of tears in her voice as she broke away from him and ran out on to the terrace and lifted her face to the sky.
He followed her slowly and saw her raise her arms and turn the palms of her hands upwards to catch the raindrops. Across the bay the rain swept, dancing on the water and washing the coal dust from the little coaster.
"Is that the China Queen, Mr. Penryn?" asked Shelley, pointing.
"No, she's the Star of Persia" he replied. "And my name is Nicholas - or Old Nick, if you prefer it."
"Oh!" She gave him a startled look. "Of course. I think I prefer Nicholas. There's Father." She instinctively moved closer to him. "He'll think it's because - "
He put a light hand on her shoulder.
"Does it matter what he thinks?" he asked.
"No," she said, remembering Nicholas' dark influence upon them. "No..."
They watched Lucius hurrying across the cobbles, his collar turned up against the rain.
They were married at the end of August in the little church at St. Bede. The witnesses were Lucius and a fisherman, and outside, a small knot of villagers had gathered to watch them come out. A wedding was a wedding, however quiet it might be, and Penryn was a name that held interest in these parts. Shelley wore the white dress in which Nicholas had first seen her, and they went back to Gull Cottage to drink champagne. Shelley knew that her father's serious celebration would begin at the inn, after they had left. They were to go straight back to Garazion; Nicholas had business to attend to and a honeymoon seemed superfluous in the circumstances.
To Shelley the day had been completely unreal. Walking along the quayside with her father, her white dress fluttering in the breeze, the curious eyes of the village women, gossiping at the doors, and Nicholas waiting at the church, very tall, very dark, a stranger again as he had been that first evening at Gull Cottage. Standing beside him in the damp little church, making her responses, she had known only a longing for the sunlight. She missed the smell of incense and the twinkling lights of the convent chapel, and only Nicholas' hand on hers was warm and reassuring. But the ring, as he slipped it on her finger, was cold, and she heard the vicar's words with dismay.
"With this ring I thee wed, with this body I thee worship ..."
But she did not worship, and Nicholas... what did she know of Nicholas who had said, "I learned long ago not to expect love from a woman..."
Lucius was pouring out more champagne.
"Well, here's to you both," he said, raising his glass, "and here's to you, Shelley, for turning into the daughter of my old age, after all."
He was in high good humour. Nicholas' lawyer had called on him in the morning, and there was nothing any longer that could be a danger to him.
"We ought to be going, soon," Nicholas said.
Silence fell upon them. Lucius drank, his eyes on his own
well-being, Nicholas watched them both under his straight black brows, and Shelley was suddenly still. This was the end, she thought; the end of Gull Cottage, of the convent, and of Shelley Wynthorpe. She was Shelley Penryn now, and belonged to that dark Cornish family who sent their ships across the bay and were rooted in the harsh soil of the west.
"Come, Shelley, it's time," Nicholas said.
"I'm ready," she said. She went to her father. "Goodbye, Father. We have to go now."
She kissed him carefully, knowing now that the parting meant nothing to him, then she took Nicholas' outstretched hand, and they went together down the steps.
At last it was done. St. Bede was behind them, and the car climbing slowly to the headland. Gull Cottage was behind them and the walks on the shore and the last exhausting weeks, and Lucius who would be gone tomorrow. Now there was only Nicholas.
Soon the moor unrolled before them, and St. Bede was left far behind. The screaming gulls, the fishermen, the children, even the sunlight seemed to have vanished. There was only a great stillness, an unbroken stretch of country which held no life and the long road, stretching solitary ahead. At last the high granite walls of Garazion rose to meet them and they stopped before the gates.
"Home," Nicholas said, and she looked at the wall and shivered.
An old man came out of the lodge to open the gates and stared hard at Shelley as they passed, then she saw the rose-garden.
"Oh," she said softly. "It is like the fairy tale."
Nicholas' mouth twisted in a wry smile.
"The garden of the beast?" he said. "You shall have another rose to wear tonight - Beauty."
The front door was opened by the old servant who had admitted Lucius on his only visit.
"Welcome to Garazion, ma'am," he said, and his old eyes widened, then softened as he saw her.
"Yes, Shelley, welcome home," Nicholas said.
But this could never be home, thought Shelley, stepping into
the dark, echoing hall. It was too big, too solemn for laughter and coats flung untidily on chairs. The gleam of old wood and brass and immense silver salvers greeted her from the gloom. Coats if they were here at all, would hang decorously in the great oak press which looked like a vault.
"Bring some tea for Mrs. Penryn, and whisky and soda for me," said Nicholas, and she followed him across the hall to an open door, thinking how strange it was to hear herself called by his name.
It was the same room into which Lucius had been shown, and which Nicholas called his study. Shelley stood just inside the doorway gazing with wide eyes at the crowded cabinets, the cases of books, the elegant period furniture.
"There's so much," she said at last.
"The collector's failing, I'm afraid. One tends to become overcrowded," Nicholas said. "Now, let me introduce you to your portrait."
He took her to the fireplace and stood her beneath the painting of the unknown child.
"The very first time I saw you you reminded me of this," he said. "I've always been very fond of her. She's been my close companion for years."
"Who is she?"
"No one knows."
"And am I really like that - so grave and solemn?" "I think so."
The old man brought in a laden tray and set it down on a table.
"Don't you think there is a likeness, Baines?" asked Nicholas nodding to the portrait.
The old servant straightened his back and smiled at Shelley.
"Undoubtedly, Mr. Nicholas," he said. "I noticed it myself as soon as I set eyes on madam. Will that be all, sir, or shall I send Mrs. Medlar to madam?"
"Later," said Nicholas. "Now, Shelley, pour out your tea. It's rather soon before dinner, really, but I've no doubt you'll be glad of it."
Watching Nicholas handling the decanter. Shelley privately thought that she would have preferred whisky. The evening
stretched very long ahead of them.
"Who is Mrs. Medlar?" she asked, wielding the heavy silver teapot with difficulty.
"She's the housekeeper. She came to look after my mother before she died and has been here ever since. After dinner I'll show you some of my treasures, and tomorrow I'll take you over the house."
And the next day, and the next? The tomorrows stretched endlessly ahead and she put down her cup abruptly.
He gave her a sharp glance.
"You'd like to tidy for dinner," he said. "I'll ring for Mrs. Medlar."
Mrs. Medlar was a Cornish woman, bustling and broad. She reminded Shelley of Mother St. Ursula who had looked after the children's clothing and dosed them for colds. There was something nun-like, too, about her voluminous black skirts and jangling chains, and her black hair drawn primly over her ears like a coif.
"I'm sorry we are not more prepared for you," she said, walking with Shelley up the wide, shallow stairs. "But Mr. Penryn gave us no warning he was bringing home a bride until yesterday."
Shelley felt the chill of the unexpected guest who has made trouble for the staff.
"I'm sorry," she said a little helplessly. "I'm sure he didn't mean to inconvenience you."
"Mr. Penryn has a perfect right to inconvience his employees. He pays good wages," said Mrs. Medlar, and Shelley felt reproved.
The housekeeper paused at the head of a long corridor and opened a door.
"This is your room," she said, standing aside for Shelley to enter. "All the Penryn brides have slept here, so I've been told."
"How big it is," said Shelley, timidly viewing the massive furniture with misgiving.
"All the rooms at Garazion are big," Mrs. Medlar said. "Too big for these days of short staff. Well, if you've all you want, ma'am, I'll be going down. Mr. Penryn will be up before long, I don't doubt."
Left alone, Shelley stood in the middle of the room and looked at the high tester bed which, for all its size, seemed marooned, a small island on its own in this vast sea of space. She was still standing there when someone knocked on the door and Nicholas came in.
"How lost you look in all this space," he said. "We can change the room, you know, if you don't like it."
"No. It's strange to me, that's all," she said. This room, another, what did it matter?
He looked at her rather sharply but made no comment except to lay a white Frau Karl Druschki on the the dressing-table.
"There's a rose for you," he said. "And I've left something for you to pin it on with."
He crossed the room and took her hands in his.
"Does the bed frighten you?" he said. "I saw you looking at it. The tester won't tumble down on your head, you know."
She tried to smile, and after a little silence he led her across the room to another door.
"I sleep in there," he said prosaically, and opened the door for her to see inside.
Both relief and shame at her own thoughts sent the colour to her face, but he merely touched her cheek in passing and went into his room and shut the door.
She sat down at the big triple mirror and began to comb out her hair. She would get used to the space, she told herself, used to the canopied bed and to Nicholas next door. She saw his rose lying where he had left it, and beside it an exquisite brooch set in the form of a true lovers' knot with diamonds and sapphires. The colour flooded her cheeks again and she picked up the brooch and the rose and ran to the dividing door between their rooms.
"Nicholas," she called. "Please come out!"
He opened the door remarking:
"There's nothing to stop you from coming in."
"Oh, Nicholas, it's so lovely..."
"The brooch? A small wedding-present. Tomorrow I'll find you some more trinkets." "But I've nothing for you," she said sadly.
He smiled.
"Let me pin it on for you, then we'll go down to dinner."
Shelley felt very solitary at her end of the long table. A very forest of candelabra seemed to be between her and Nicholas and the light from the candles dazzled her so that she could not see his face. Penryns looked down from the walls, all of them dark, all with that piercing regard which she found so disconcerting in Nicholas, and the high, carved back of her chair was cold against her shoulders.
Baines at her elbow was pouring champagne into one of the delicate fifteenth-century goblets which had come fromVenice, and she caught the gleam of the glass Nicholas was raising to her.
"To you, Mrs. Penryn," he said. She raised her own timidly.
"To you, Nicholas," she replied, and sipped the wine nervously.
It seemed a long meal to Shelley. She was unused to having a servant in the room and she could think of nothing to say. At last the table was cleared, and the coffee set before her on a heavy silver tray, and Baines had left them.
Nicholas carried his brandy to her end of the table, and drew up a chair beside her.
"That's less lonely," he said.
He looked at her sitting so straight in her high-backed chair, her hands clasped tightly in her lap, and her eyes, wide and grave under the straight fringe which shone silver in the candlelight.
"You look like the portrait of the child, now," he said. "You are only a child, aren't you, Shelley? Does Garazion seem very strange to you?"
"A bit," she said forlornly.
He reached for her hand, turning it gently palm upwards in his own. It was her left hand, and the plain platinum ring moved loosely under his fingers.
"Regrets?" he asked, and she looked at him, seeing the sinister lift which the scar gave to his eyebrow, the little twist
to his mouth; but seeing also the gentleness, the odd humility in his eyes.
"No," she said gallantly. "No, Nicholas. Just give me time."
"Well, pour out the coffee," he said briskly. "And drink your brandy, it will do you good."
They went back to his study, and he showed her his collection, telling her how he had acquired each piece. She watched him handling glass and delicate china with his firm, beautiful hands, touching each object with loving care, inviting her ill-informed opinion, and did not realize that he was like a little boy, laying his treasures at her feet. She only knew that she was desperately tired, that Garazion was like a museum, dead and unfriendly, and that she was a Penryn - the only fair Penryn who had ever come there.
"Tomorrow," Nicholas was saying, "I will show you the chests. Materials - silks, brocades, velvets - all brought back through the years by the coasters. We will have them made into dresses for you. You are, you know," he smiled crookedly, "the best piece in my collection. You must have the perfect setting."
She did not realize that in his own way, he was making the most subtle love to her. She only knew that he treated her like a treasure which he had added to his collection, and that her father had owed him money.
"Mrs. Medlar doesn't like me," she said irrelevantly.
"Mrs. Medlar?" His thick eyebrows drew together in the familiar uncompromising line. "Has she been impertinent?"
"Oh, no" said Shelley quickly. "But - " She tried to laugh. "Perhaps you upset her arrangements. Did you just walk in and say 'I'm going to be married tomorrow; have everything ready.'?"
He smiled.
"Something like that. She hasn't complained, I hope?"
"No. But you are very secretive, aren't you? I know nothing of Garazion, and Garazion knows nothing of me."
"You're very tired, aren't you?" he said gently. "Go to bed, my dear."
In Shelley's room, the heavy tapestry curtains were drawn across the windows and a lamp stood on the dressing-table and another on the little table by her bed.
The house was very quiet. She missed the sound of footsteps coming from the inn after closing time, the voices calling good night, the wash of the sea and the sound of a ship's siren out in the bay. Outside her windows there was the moor stretching endlessly, silent, watchful, and she a prisoner inside the high granite walls.
She heard Nicholas come up and go to his room, and still she stood, in her long pale dressing-gown, listening to the silence. She was still standing there when he opened the door between their rooms.
"Not in bed yet?" he said, and stood watching her. "No, I-it's so quiet."
He went to her, and his hand was gentle under her chin, raising her face to his.
"You're afraid," he said, and brushed the fringe from her forehead.
She looked up at his dark face and knew that it was true. She was afraid, afraid of this strange man whom she knew so little, of the demands he had every right to make, of her own ignorance and inexperience.
Her face, lifted to his in the moonlight, was young and defenceless.
"Nicholas, I -1 - " she stammered.
"Don't be afraid of me," he said, and his hands went to her shoulders, drawing her to him. "You are so lovely, Shelley -such a charming child - help me to make you happy."
She placed her own hands against his breast, holding him off with desperate appeal.
"I don't know you," she said. "Give me a little time to get used to you."
His eyes were quizzical.
"There's only one way of getting used to me, you know," he said. "You married me, my dear. What did you expect?" "I don't know," she said forlornly. "I don't know..." "But you expected a lover, surely?"
A lover? No, she had never thought of the dark Penryn as
that. He had never made love to her during their short engagement, or, if he had, she had not understood.
"A lover?" she said, feeling even then the comfort of his hands, and striving to understand him. "But we don't love each other. You said you didn't expect that."
The gentleness went out of his hands, and his face was suddenly hard and demanding.
"No," he said. "I don't expect that, but I do expect the recognized privileges of marriage. You surely didn't marry me expecting less?"
"No..." she whispered.
"Come, then, I must teach you. We cannot remain strangers, you and I."
His arms closed round her;, and she stood passively against him, her face lifted to his in mute acceptance of whatever he should demand of her. But in the moment before his mouth closed on hers, the moonlight fell full on his disfigurement, cruelly etching the scar which twisted that side of his face into such sinister ugliness. In his urgency he had forgotten to turn his head from her. For a moment she could not control her instinctive recoil, and she began to struggle.
"Don't fight me, relax, darling," she heard him say, but she was beyond reason, beyond pity.
"I can't ... I can't ..." she cried. "Nicholas, forgive me, but I can't..."
He let her go, and his voice, when at last he spoke, held such strange bitterness that she hid her face in her hands.
"I was forgetting," he said. "I should have drawn the curtains, and put out the lights."
The frightened tears trickled through her fingers, but she could find no words. A vast weariness engulfed her, and a growning sense of utter inadequacy.
"I'm sorry ..." she whispered. "I'm so sorry..."
There was silence, then she felt his fingers on hers, drawing the hands away from her face.
"Look at me, Shelley," he said. The hard urgency had gone from his voice, and only a great sadness remained. "Does my face shock you so very much?"
She raised her eyes to his, and what she read there made her want to recall her first, instinctive revulsion.
"I was stupid," she said. "If you will give me time ..."
He thrust his hands in the pockets of his dressing-gown.
"Time?" he repeated ironically. "Time to get used to the monster before he can at least demand tolerance? Well, I suppose it's natural. I had no right to expect that I could be - anything but repugnant to you."
She made a move towards him.
"I - I'm willing to give you anything you wish," she said. He made no effort to touch her.
"No, Shelley," he said, and there was an infinite weariness in his voice. "I wouldn't hurt you, and I won't distress you any further. Go to bed, my dear, you're worn out."
"If I've hurt you -" she began a little desperately, and he replied with his old gentleness:
"That was my own fault. I learned long ago not to be hurt. I should have remembered that tonight."
"Why did you marry me?" she asked, and they were not the words she had meant to say.
"Why do you think?"
"I don't know ... I don't know ... I only know why I married you, and it wouldn't be the same."
"No, it wouldn't be the same," he said harshly. "What was it your beast did with Beauty?"
She looked bewildered.
"Beauty? Oh, he kept her for a year and a day."
"And then?"
"Then she married him."
He turned the disfigured side of his face away from the moonlight.
"I see. You're very young, aren't you, Shelley?" he said. "Good night, my dear."
"Nicholas, I - " her hands went to his shoulders. He turned them palm upwards, and kissed them lightly, each in turn.
"Good night," he said again, and was gone. Shelley looked at the closed door and a sense of failure took her and brought shame and also bewilderment. She was so
tired ... so tired ... She climbed into the great bed, and lay watching the moonlight flood across the dressing-table catching the sparkle of the diamonds in Nicholas' brooch. She thought of the convent and of her little white bed, so narrow, and so safe, and she turned her face into the pillow and wept.
She woke suddenly, conscious that something had disturbed her. It must have been much later, for the moonlight had shifted and now lay in a patch across the foot of the bed. She sat up, listening, her heartbeats loud in her ears, and then she heard it. The sound of a cat crying outside her door, and the faint scratch of claws on wood.
"Oh!" She flung back the bedclothes. A cat would be company. It would curl against her, purring and kneading her with its claws, and she would tickle its soft stomach and watch it roll over in ecstasy, and fall asleep with its contented breathing in her ears.
She opened the door and it slipped inside, a great Persian with tail erect and yellow eyes gleaming in the moonlight. It rubbed itself against her legs and she picked it up and carried it to the bed.
"You're warm ... you're alive ..." she whispered to it, waiting for its purr.
But it would not stay. It kept running back to the door with little throaty cries, and, reluctantly, Shelley let it out again. She watched to see where it went, but the cat ran a little way down the corridor and paused, looking back and crying.
"Where do you want to go?" she asked it softly, and it ran a little way and cried again.
Shelley pulled on her dressing-gown and followed it. The cat seemed pleased, running ahead, and pausing to make sure she followed. The cat turned down another corridor, past closed doors and windows, down some steps and into another, smaller passage where it stopped. Shelley stopped, too, the silence of the house enveloping her. Not quite silent, though. Somewhere, someone was crying.
The cat stalked to a door and lifted a paw to scratch, and Shelley opened the door very quietly to let it in.
The bedroom was almost as big as her own, with the same massive furniture and tester bed. Sitting up in the bed was a
young boy, a shaft of moonlight slanting across his dark, tumbled hair.
The crying stopped and they stared at each other.
"Why are you crying?" Shelley asked.
The boy gulped.
"It was Mitzi. She sleeps with me, and I couldn't find her." The cat sprang on to the bed and he gathered it into his arms. "She is here now, my Mitzi. Who are you? I didn't know there was another child in the house."
Shelley shut the door behind her.
"I'm not a child," she said quietly.
"Aren't you? You look like a child with your long silver hair. What's your name?" "Shelley."
"He was a poet, wasn't he? Why have you got a poet's name?"
"My mother loved him."
"My mother's in India. I'm too delicate for India." "Are you?"
She came slowly towards the bed and he watched her with his great dark eye's still bright with tears. "Who are you?" she asked.
"I'm Martin," he said with surprise that she should not know. "I'm seven."
"Are you? And I'm eighteen. Do you live here?"
He stroked the cat, curling up in the tumbled bedclothes.
"For a little while," he said indifferently. "When I'm strong they'll send for me, though. Till then I have to live with my Uncle Nick. I hate him."
Shelley felt she must be dreaming.
"Is Nicholas Penryn your uncle?" she asked incredulously. He nodded. "Why do you hate him?"
"He frightens me. He has an awful face. Do you know what they call him in these parts? Old Nick, and that means the devil."
"No - no, Martin. He's very kind."
"Do you know him? Who are you?"
She smiled.
"I'm your Uncle Nick's wife," she said. "I suppose I'm
your aunt." She suddenly began to laugh and he joined in with a high, nervous giggle.
They laughed a little hysterically, then stopped abruptly, staring at each other. She came slowly and sat on the bed and the moonlight embraced them both and shone on their young, startled faces.
"Uncle Nick hadn't got a wife when he came to see me two days ago," the boy said. "At least he didn't say he had, but then he doesn't tell me anything. He didn't tell me that my mother and father had gone back to India until they were nearly there."
"That was probably for your sake," Shelley said gently. "And he didn't have a wife two days ago. I only married him today - at least, I suppose it's yesterday now."
Martin frowned.
"What did you want to marry him for at all?" he demanded. "He's quite old."
"Not really," she said and looked at the boy with wide eyes. She was, she realized with a shock, nearer to Martin's age than she was to Nicholas'. She shivered.
"Come into my bed," Martin said.
She slipped in beside him, and they snuggled down together, while the cat made dough in the blankets, purring contentedly.
"Who looks after you?" she asked.
"Mrs. Medlar. She's kind."
Kind? Mrs. Medlar? But then she would be kind. Martin was a Penryn.
"This is such a big house," she said drowsily.
"You can get lost in it," said Martin. "Shelley, will you love me?"
"Yes, Martin."
"Better than Uncle Nick?"
"Oh, that's silly."
His dark head drooped on her shoulder, and his eyes closed. "You can't love Uncle Nick," he said. "He doesn't want anybody. I've been lonely."
Her cheek rested against his forehead. "Perhaps he's lonely too."
"No." He was nearly asleep. "Grown-ups aren't lonely."
"Sometimes they are," she said and sighed. "Sleep now, and then I'll go back to bed."
The moon set slowly, meeting the new day, and they both slept.
Mrs. Medlar was shocked.
"It isn't as if it was myself that had found them," she said to Nicholas. "But for the girl to call Master Martin and find the new mistress there the very first morning - well, what are the servants going to think?"
Nicholas' eyes were cold.
"What should they think, Mrs. Medlar?"
"That a bride's place is with her husband," she sniffed.
"You forget yourself," said Nicholas icily. "Kindly tell Mrs. Penryn that breakfast is ready."
He had poured his first cup of coffee when Shelley came down and he bade her good morning with a faint twinkle.
"You appear to have had a night of adventure," he said, pulling out a chair for her. "Mrs. Medlar fears for the verdict of the servants."
She told him how the cat had wakened her and led her into the other wing of the house.
"He was lonely, poor little boy, and crying for his cat. I - I didn't mean to go to sleep myself."
He looked at her with gentleness.
"Just a couple of tired children. I'm afraid you can't have had much rest."
"Why didn't you tell me about Martin?" He looked surprised.
"I didn't think he concerned us. He's only here for a short time and he has his own rooms."
"But don't you ever have him with you?"
"Martin prefers his own company to mine," he said shortly. "My face frightens children."
She did not know what to reply. The bitterness in him always defeated her and she could not deny his ugliness.
"Tell me about Martin," she said. "Why is he here?"
"He's my brother's child," he said, and she exclaimed involuntarily:
"I didn't know you had a brother."
"No?" He frowned.
"No. I don't think I know anything about you at all."
"I have a younger brother in the diplomatic service in India. He and his wife had to leave Martin behind on their last leave as he's delicate and the climate didn't agree with him."
"I see," said Shelley. "Your brother - is he like you?"
"Justin? No, he's not like me. He's a very handsome man."
"Oh. Are there just the two of you?" "Yes, we're the last of the Penryns."
She thought he glanced at her a little curiously as he spoke and found herself flushing.
"I'm glad the little boy is here," was all she could find to say.
"Yes, it's as well," he said briskly. "I shall have to be away a good deal. He'll be company for you when the winter comes."
Dinner was a little easier that evening, with her place laid on Nicholas' right hand instead of at the foot of the table. In their little circle of candlelight they seemed closer to one another, and the room had no substance and the Penryn portraits were lost in shadow.
She had not spoken of Lucius all day, but now she said:
"Will Father be able to come and stay with us some time?"
He hesitated for a moment. He did not want Lucius at Garazion, probing into their relationship and laughing at what he found, but he caught Shelley's anxious look and smiled.
"Of course, if he wants to come," he said. "You're very fond of your father, aren't you, Shelley?"
"He was all I had," she said simply.
"And now?"
She missed his meaning and replied:
"Something went wrong the last weeks. Or perhaps I just expected something different. I don't think he ever really felt like a father to me."
"Perhaps we none of us quite get what we expect," he said enigmatically.
"No. It's strange, you know, but although I didn't know you at all, sometimes you seemed closer to me than my father."
He looked at her sitting there beside him, the candlelight spilling on her hair and her white dress, and his fingers tightened on the arms of his chair.
"Perhaps you should have been my daughter and not my wife, Shelley," he said a little sadly.
Her fair eyebrows rose questioningly.
"Is that what you wanted?" she asked.
He pushed back his chair.
"No, it's not in the least what I wanted," he said harshly. "If you've finished your coffee we'll go in the other room. I've some jewellery I want you to see."
In his study he turned up the lamp and carried it to a table where some old jewel-cases lay. He opened these and spread their contents out for her to see. The settings were old fashioned but most of the stones were beautiful. He made his selection with care.
"This - and this ... that's too heavy ... these are too old for you... this will look charming reset..."
She asquiesced with all his decisions, shy of venturing an opinion of her own. Nicholas did not make the occasion seem like a bestowing of gifts. It was more as if he was handing certain of his property into her temporary keeping.
"Don't you care for jewellery?" he asked a little sharply, aware of her awkwardness.
"I've never had any," she said simply. "I was wondering when I would wear all this."
"Well, not all at once, in any case," he said with a smile. "But this - " He picked up a string of small, well-matched pearls. "This you can wear now. It needs nothing doing to it."
He stood behind her, and, brushing her hair aside, fastened the pearls round her neck, then turned her round.
"Very nice," he said. "You have the right skin for pearls."
"Thank you," she said haltingly. "Thank you very much -they are lovely."
His hands still rested on her shoulders.
"Don't I get a kiss for them?" he said lightly. "Do you know you've never kissed me, Shelley?"
He saw the sudden confusion in her eyes and his expression hardened, but she raised her face at once, and reached up to him.
"Of course," she said, and he turned his head slightly away so that her lips touched the unmarred side of his face.
"I shall be going to London in a day or two, and I'll take these with me," he said, snapping the cases shut, and locking the discarded ones away in the safe.
"Will you be away long?" she asked.
"A few days. It depends."
He did not suggest that she should accompany him and she did not expect it. In the brief time she had known him he had never consulted her in the matter of his arrangements.
"Get Mrs. Medlar to take your measurements before I go," he said. "I'll see about some clothes for you."
"Nicholas - " she said, and he turned at once to give her his attention.
"Yes?"
She did not know quite what it was she had meant to say and Mrs. Medlar interrupted them at that moment.
"It's Master Martin, sir," she said with disapproval. "He won't settle down until Mrs. Penryn has said good night to him."
Nicholas raised his black eyebrows.
"This is a new departure, isn't it?" he said.
"Yes, sir. I told him you wouldn't want madam disturbed at this hour, but if he doesn't go to sleep soon, he will be fretful and difficult tomorrow."
"But of course I'll come," said Shelley instantly. "Poor little boy, I expect he misses his mother."
Mrs. Medlar pursed her lips and left the room, and Shelley turned to Nicholas.
"Come with me," she said impulsively. "He would like us both to say good night to him."
"I don't think so," he said with an odd expression. "You'd better run along, and then go straight to bed yourself. It's late. I have some work to attend to before I go over to the works tomorrow, so I won't disturb you when I come up."
His voice sounded cold and she hesitated, feeling herself reproved.
"Run along," he said again.
She went to him, holding up her face like a child to be kissed.
"Very well," she said. "Good night, Nicholas." "Good night," he said, and kissed her gently on the forehead. Suddenly wanting to cry, she turned from him and ran out of the room.
He was gone before she was down the next morning, and she breakfasted alone in the small morning-room wondering what she should do for the rest of the day. Mrs. Medlar had made it plain that she needed no help in running the house, and indeed, Shelley would have been dismayed had she been expected to take over the reins of such an establishment as Garazion. But there was Martin, she thought happily. After breakfast she would find Martin and make plans for the day.
Nicholas did not return for lunch, and she and the boy had it together in the morning-room, and afterwards, when rain began to fall, they spent the afternoon in Martin's room and he showed her all his treasures. She was reminded of Nicholas that first evening, and wondered if all the Penryns had the collector's instinct. Martin handled his possessions with just that same loving care with which Nicholas had handled his, and there was a likeness, too; the black hair, growing to a widow's peak on his forehead, the dark eyes, and the clean, definite line of the jaw.
Shelley read him fairytales, while the cat, Mitzi, sat in an Empire chair, and watched them aloofly. Rumpelstiltskin ... What will you give me if I spin this straw into gold ... The Juniper Tree ... my mother she killed me; my father he ate me; my sister, little Margery, gathered up all my bones . .. and Riquet with the Tuft ... "tell me candidly, is there anything in me, except my ugliness, which displeases you ?" "No, truly," replied the princess, "I like everything in you, except -your appearance . . ."
She shut the book, and absently returned the cat's stare. How they harped on ugliness, she thought. Riquet of the Tuft, the Frog Prince, the Prince with the Nose, Beauty and the Beast ... all were ugly, all enchanted...
She looked round the room with its cabinets, its heavy tapestries; strange playroom for a little boy, as strange, perhaps as the stories she had just read to him...
Tea was brought, and afterwards they played games of Martin's invention while the shadows deepened, and nobody came to light the lamps. Rain beat steadily against the windows, and dusk descended early. Nicholas came in, and Martin seemed only too relieved to be packed off to bed out of his way.
"Have you got those measurements for me?" Nicholas asked Shelley. I shall be leaving for town in the morning."
"So soon?"
He glanced at her then, and the eyebrow which the scar pulled out of line had a satanic lift. "Yes. Do you mind?"
"No," she said quickly. "No, of course not."
He gave an odd little smile, and carried his mail into his study, leaving her standing in the hall.
Mrs. Medlar took her measurements before dinner, clicking her tongue at the narrowness of Shelley's waist and the slim-ness of her hips.
"You'm no bigger than a child," she said, lapsing momentarily into her native west country speech, and disconcerted Shelley by adding: "The Penryn ladies are big and broard and get fine sons."
Shelley sighed.
"Did you know Martin's mother?" she asked.
"No, poor lady, she died in childbirth," the housekeeper said and Shelley turned startled eyes on her.
"But he speaks of his mother," she said.
"Oh, as to that, Mr. Justin Penryn married again. A very nice lady. She brought Master Martin here before she went back to India this time."
"Oh, poor little boy," said Shelley softly, thinking of her own mother.
"Yes, it was sad," Mrs. Medlar said, for once relishing a little gossip. "Miss Lydia - Master Martin's mother - stayed here a great deal as a girl, so I understand. She was a Penryn before she married; a cousin, and quite the daughter of the house."
She paused in her measurements, darting a quick, bright glance at Shelley, no doubt thinking it strange that she should know so little of the family she had married into.
"Oh," Shelley said and added quickly: "Is Martin's stepmother fond of him?"
"Oh, as to that, Mrs. Justin Penryn is a proper mother, but she believes in a time and a place, like Mr. Penryn. There was no nonsense about the boy when she was staying here. She realized at once that this isn't the sort of house for children to go rioting through."
No, thought Shelley, it wasn't.
"He seems a good child," she said placatingly.
Mrs. Medlar whisked the tape-measure round her chest.
"Good enough if let be," she said primly. "But children should have their regular hours and not be a nuisance to their elders. Master Martin can play up something shocking if he's encouraged. Will that be all, ma'am?"
"Yes, thank you."
Shelley changed her dress, listening to the rain beating against the windows. She heard Nicholas go to his room, but he did not come in to her, and when she was ready she went along to Martin's wing to say good night.
Sitting opposite Nicholas in his study after dinner, she longed to ask him questions about the dead Lydia who had been a Penryn too, and a daughter of the house, and fallen in love with the handsome younger brother. But she found she could not ask him the things he had already omitted to tell her, and said, instead: "Will you take me to see your clay works some time?"
He looked surprised.
"Certainly, if you would be interested," he replied.
"Tell me how china-clay is found," she said.
He answered her with the careful attention he always paid to her enquiries, telling her of the discovery of china-clay in Cornwall in 1755, of its uses, and the way it was worked, and of the Penryn connection with the industry for two centuries back.
"Has there always been a son to take over the business?" she asked.
"Yes," he said, and was silent.
Sitting there quietly, listening to the rain, she wondered if that was why he had married her. Surely, in that case he would have chosen some Cornish girl, big and broad, as Mrs.
Medlar had said...
She was aware of his eyes upon her in the old piercing regard, and he said a little mockingly:
"No, that wasn't the reason, Shelley."
She flushed scarlet, not knowing how to reply, and he picked up an engineering quarterly and began to leaf through it.
"There are plenty of books if you'd care to choose one," he said, and she got up, feeling as she had done in the convent when reproved for idleness.
She found an anthology of seventeenth-century verse, and took it back to her chair, where she sat, dipping into it, listening to the rain, and wondering where her father was and what he was doing. Sometimes he had read verse aloud to her because he had liked the sound of his own voice declaiming, and those had been pleasant evenings with the light fading across the bay and the sound of the tide washing on the shore.
Yes I could love if I could find A mistress fitting to my mind, Whom neither pride nor gold could move To buy her beauty, sell her love ...
She looked across at Nicholas, his dark face still and closed in the lamplight; Nicholas who had said: "You're not the first woman to recoil from being kissed by me, though there were always plenty to be bought..."
... Were neat, yet cared not to be fine, And loved me for myself, not mine ...
She shut the book and found his eyes on her again. "Do you know the seventeenth-century poets?" he asked. "No. We didn't have poetry about love in the convent." He smiled.
"You liked your convent, didn't you?" "Yes. It was-safe." He raised his eyebrows.
"That's an odd word to use at your age. Didn't you feel safe with your father?" She considered.
"Not always. He was - unsettled."
"And do you feel safe with me?"
She thought he asked the question a little mockingly, but his eyes were steady, enquiring.
"I don't know," she said. But she remembered him that day on the shore, shielding her from the sight of the dead fisherman and telling her that death could be beautiful. "Yes ... yes, I think so."
He got up and, removing the book gently from her lap, took her hands in his, pulling her out of the chair.
"Remember that," he said, looking down at her. "Remember that always. I'm giving you time, Shelley."
Her grave eyes questioned him.
"Time for what?" she asked.
"Don't you know?" There was a hint of tenderness in his voice "When I come back I'll tell you."
It was like that other time when he had asked her to marry him. Then he had said: "When I come back I'll ask you again."
She said: "How long will you be gone?" and he answered as before:
"It all depends. Now, go to bed. Good night."
He was gone a fortnight, and during that time Shelley did not hear from him except for a brief phone message stating when he would return.
The time had passed quickly. She and Martin had been much occupied in arranging the room which Shelley had chosen for her sitting-room, denuding the unused upstairs rooms, pilfering like magpies anything that took their fancy until the room began to resemble a junk shop.
"Half of it will have to go," Shelley said, surveying their efforts with dubious eyes and picturing Nicholas' face when he saw it, but it had been fun collecting things, and rather like playing at house in nursery days.
The evenings were long once Martin had gone to bed, and often the rain was the only sound which broke the stillness of the house, and, towards the end of the month, mild gales, a foretaste of what would come in the winter.
"I've known the wind so strong it would tear the ivy off the
walls," Baines told her. "But the house doesn't even shake. Wonderful strong, these old Cornish houses."
"Don't you ever feel lonely?" Shelley asked the old man.
"Well, you see, ma'am, I've been here for so long," he said. "And in Mr. Nicholas' father's time, things weren't so quiet, as you might say. They've always kept themselves to themselves, the Penryns, but until Mr. Nicholas'accident there was entertaining."
"How long ago was that?" asked Shelley, and he looked at her a little curiously, thinking, perhaps, it was a thing she should have known.
"Twelve years last June," he said gently. "I remember well because it was the summer Miss Lydia married and went away, and six months before old Mr. Penryn died, and after that, Mr. Nicholas shut himself up at Garazion and would see no one."
"Twelve years," said Shelley wonderingly. "That's a long time."
Twelve years ago she had been six and in her first year at the convent, and Nicholas - Nicholas had been a young man of six-and-twenty with his career before him, and hopes - what hopes had he cherished at twenty-six?
Another time she asked him what Lydia had been like. There were no photographs at Garazion, only the Penryn portraits, and neither Nicholas nor his cousin had joined their ranks. She was familiar now with the handsome face of Justin Penryn painted in his arrogant twenties, the dark eyes and lift of the eyebrows strongly reminiscent of his elder brother, but of Lydia she knew nothing.
"Miss Lydia?" The old man's face crinkled in loving memory. "She was full of life. A big, strong, handsome girl, always laughing, as I remember. She and Mr. Nicholas were very close. It was hard that she should have had to go away at that time - Mr. Justin should have waited."
Shelley looked startled. It was difficult to picture someone who had always laughed at Garazion.
"And then there was Mrs. Penryn," Baines went on, and his old eyes had an inward look, remembering. "She was an invalid for so long. It was the shock, they said, of Mr. Nicholas'
accident and Mr. Penryn's death. She lost the use of her legs. It didn't come on for some years, but she was never quite the same, poor lady, after that summer."
"Then Mrs. Medlar wasn't here before the accident?"
"Oh, not until some years after - when Mrs. Penryn could no longer get about, that was." He looked at her gently. "It was hard on Mr. Nicholas. He had no youth, as you might say."
She began dimly to understand Nicholas, old before his time, shouldering responsibility and a bitter personal handicap together, shutting himself up with impersonal treasures which he once had told her possessed no power to hurt.
"We were all very pleased," Baines was saying softly, "when we heard he was bringing home a bride. Mr. Nicholas has been alone too long."
She thought he looked at her a little curiously, thinking perhaps she was a strange choice for a Penryn whose women had been big and broard and borne fine sons, and felt herself flushing. Nicholas was still alone. She had no part, she thought, in his closed, secretive life, and the ghosts of Garazion., She wondered if she had failed him in some fashion on the day of their marriage, and remembered him showing her his treasures, as Martin had shown her his, and the gentleness in his scarred face as he had tried to put her at her ease. And later, had she shut him out with her concern for Martin, her relief at his presence in the house? She remembered Nicholas saying before he left: "I'm giving you time, Shelley ..." Time, she thought, there's all the time in the world at Garazion, and you must tell me what you want of me, Nicholas ...
It was raining the day of Nicholas' return, and, looking out of the windows, Shelley thought how sad the garden looked, with the roses, almost finished now, bearing a few stray petals already brown at the edges. Fallen leaves were piled by the paths in orderly heaps, and the creeper on the high wall was turning red.
Martin was in a difficult mood, resenting, no doubt, his uncle's return, and sensing, as children do, the threat to his own individuality.
'You'll still play with me, won't you?" he asked Shelley, and he laughed.
"Of course. I expect Uncle Nick will play with you, too." Martin scowled and momentarily looked extraordinarily like his uncle.
"He won't," he said. "Besides, I don't want him."
"Well, we'll see," said Shelley, and saw his first look of distrust at such a familiar adult remark.
"Why don't you like him?" she asked curiously.
"I don't know. His face frightens me."
"That's nonsense! Come on - let's play hide and seek!"
They were both suddenly gay, tearing round the house, laughing, shouting, keyed up in expectatiom, then disaster overtook them. Martin, in flight from Shelley, entered the first door which stood open and raced into Nicholas' study, overturning a small Empire table as he ran. There was a tinkle of splintering porcelain, and he stood aghast, and cried: "Shelley! Shelley!"
They knelt on the floor, looking at the pieces of the broken bowl with frightened eyes. "Is it valuable?"
"I'm afraid so. Everything in here is valuable," she said, and rang the bell for Baines.
"Oh, dearie me!" the old man said, picking up the pieces with gentle hands. "The famille-verte ... Mr. Nicholas will be upset. It took him a long time to find that piece."
"Couldn't it be mended?" Shelley asked. "It's not so badly broken. Look, the pieces fit."
Baines shook his head sadly.
"You see, miss - ma'am, I should say - it wouldn't be perfect, and its value's gone."
"Oh, yes, I see. Was - was Mr. Penryn very fond of it?"
Baines gathered up the pieces, fingering the delicate tracery lovingly.
"The famille-verte ..." he said. "Yes, Mr. Nicholas was fond of it. Oh, dearie me! On the very day he is coming home."
The mishap set the key note to Nicholas' homecoming.
Martin, in a storm of tears was led away to Mrs. Medlar who remarked that she had known such freedom from discipline could have but one end, and Shelley, waiting for Nicholas in the library, felt her throat constricting further, and knew that her forebodings of the morning were to be fulfilled. She was going to have a temperature.
She heard the car on the gravel outside, and then the sound of the heavy front door opening, and she went out into the hall.
He stood looking at her for a moment, waiting, perhaps, for her to run to him, then he tossed his hat and coat onto a chair. "How are you, Shelley?" he said.
She went to him then, lifting her face to kiss him. Their lips met lightly, his cold from the raw, wet night, and he held her away from him, looking keenly at her face.
"You look flushed," he said. "You're well?"
"Quite well," she answered. "Did you have a good journey?"
"Yes, thanks." He released her, sighing a little as he turned away. He had hoped so much that on his return she would have been glad to see him. "Come and tell me what you've been doing since I've been away."
He went directly to his study, and she followed, seeing the way he glanced at the cabinets, unconsciously making sure that all was well with his treasures.
"I hope you haven't been too lonely," he said.
"No," she replied. "I had Martin. Were you busy in London?"
He smiled a little crookedly.
"What a polite little interchange," he said. "Yes, I was fairly busy. Your jewels are being re-set, and some new clothes should"be arriving soon." His eyes, wandering about the room, fell at last on the Empire table.
"Where's the famille-verte bowl?" he said sharply. "Has Baines put it away somewhere?"
Her throat felt tight and burning, and her skin had the familiar prickling of a rising temperature.
"Nicholas," she said, "I've something to tell you - something bad. I'm afraid you'll be very angry, but- "
He looked at her piercingly.
"But what? Bad news is better out, Shelley."
"The famille-oerte bowl - it's broken," she said.
His face was very quiet.
"How did that happen?"
"It was Martin - both of us, really. We were playing hide-and-seek and Martin knocked the table over."
"And did you" - his voice was quite expressionless - "have to play hide-and-seek in my study?"
"Martin ran in here by mistake," she said miserably. "He was very upset, and we are both terribly sorry."
The bowl had been one of his more prized possessions, but it was her immature attitude that annoyed him most.
"Really, Shelley, I should have thought with all the house to play in you could have left my study alone," he said impatiently.
Mrs. Medlar opened the door. She had, Shelley thought, a gift for interrupting at the wrong moment.
"Good evening, sir. I hope you had a pleasant trip," she said then turned to Shelley. "You'll have to go to Master Martin, ma'am. He's been crying ever since he broke that bowl, and I can't do anything with him."
Shelley hesitated.
"Come with me, Nicholas, and tell him you're not angry." she said, but Mrs Medlar said at once:
"You'd best not see him till the morning, sir. He only wants Mrs. Penryn."
"Then by all means let him have Mrs. Penryn," said Nicholas smoothly, and Shelley left the room.
By the time she had soothed Martin and changed her dress for dinner, her head had begun to ache. They had said at the convent that she would outgrow these nervous upsets, and so she had to a large extent, but tonight she knew there was no escape, and the old, nervous desire to weep at small things took possession of her and she hoped Nicholas would preserve his annoyance and not be too gentle.
But he, when they met for dinner, no longer showed his annoyance or his disappointment at his homecoming, and
seemed just as she remembered him, courteous, a little remote, Penryn of Garazion.
"You're not eating," he said once, as Baines removed her almost untouched plate.
"I'm not very hungry," she said. He smiled.
"Such an unanswerable reply I always think," he said. "Still, drink up your wine."
Back in his study he said:
"Don't worry about the bowl. I'll find another some day."
Her eyes filled, as she knew they would, easily, treacherously.
"I do worry. I know how much your things mean to you."
"Do you, Shelley? Perhaps one's things, as you call them, shouldn't be so important."
There was another silence. It was a slow, difficult evening. She got up abruptly.
"Do you mind if I go to bed?" she said, fighting that childish desire to cry.
His face changed and he got to his feet.
"You're not well, are you?" he said, and put a hand on her forehead. "You've got a temperature, my dear. What have you been doing with yourself?"
"Nothing," she said. "It's a kind of nervous thing. I used to get temperatures as a child. It'll be gone tomorrow."
He touched her flushed cheeks.
"I should have sent you to bed long ago," he said. "If you're not better in the morning we'll have old Doctor Tregel-las up. Poor child, run off to bed and I'll come and tuck you up."
"Oh, Nicholas, don't!" she cried and the tears spilled over. Weeping, she broke away from him, and ran blindly out of the room.
He was in to see her the next morning before she was called, a dressing-gown flung over his pyjamas and his black hair ruffled from sleep. He took her temperature, looked satisfied when he found it was normal, and told her to stay where she was until lunch time.
"Have you to go to the works today?" she asked.
"I'm afraid so, after a fortnight's absence. I must have a word with the foreman, but I'll be back for lunch." He ran
a hand over his chin and grimaced. "I need a shave," he said and went back to his own room.
She did not see him again until the evening. She took his advice and stayed in bed for the morning because it was pleasant to relax in idleness when there was really nothing the matter with you, although she could not quite get rid of the slight feeling of guilt, which the early risings of the convent training had instilled in her, at such wanton laziness. She and Martin had tea together in the old wing of the house, and when the boy's bedtime came, Shelley went downstairs to wait for Nicholas.
He had already returned and was in his study examining an unframed print when she came in.
"Hullo," he said. "I was just coming up to find you. How are you, my dear?"
"Quite all right again," she said.
There was still a trace of anxiety in his regard, then he smiled.
"Very well," he said. "But don't try and hide it from me another time. I was just looking at a Bartolozzi print I found in London. Come and see."
He picked up the print and she looked at it doubtfully over his shoulder. She knew as little of pictures as she did of glass and china, and of the merits of old prints, nothing at all.
He explained to her the methods of the earlier engravers and how the art developed until it was finally perfected by Bartolozzi, and she thought how well he talked upon subjects which really interested him, and how courteous he always was in never dismissing her own ignorance.
"But I'm afraid I bore you," he finished abruptly, observing the grave politeness of her attention.
"Oh, no, Nicholas," she said quickly. "I want to learn."
His smile was a little enigmatical.
"There are simpler lessons which, no doubt, should come first," he said. "Perhaps I'm not a very good instructor."
She made no answer, for she was a little unsure of his meaning, but she experienced a strong desire to do something for him that would give him pleasure, to surprise him as she sometimes surprised Martin with an unexpected treat. The idea of having the Bartolozzi framed and ready to hang at once in his study came to her with simple clarity. She still had five pounds left over from one of her father's rare gifts of pocket money, and she could surely find a frame for that. It was not much to do for Nicholas, but it would be a surprise, an indication that she wished to please him and take an interest in the things which mattered to him.
It took a little contriving, for she must manage to get to the nearest town tomorrow while Nicholas was at the works, and that meant she must walk across the moor to the village and catch a bus to Polzeal, a place she had never before visited. She set off as soon as Nicholas had left the house.
It was a five-mile walk to the village, and the print, wrapped carefully in newspaper, was a tiresome encumbrance. She was afraid of bending the edges, and in the bus, she sat with it on her lap, guarding it anxiously from contact with her fellow passengers, and looked with interest out of the windows. It was, she realized, the first time she had made a journey from Garazion without Nicholas since he had married her.
The small seaside town of Polzeal at the end of September was deserted and a little forlorn. Shelley explored the streets, conscious of the cold gusts of wind which blew from the sea, and the end of season lassitude which had settled over the little town. She found no picture dealers with frames to sell, and at last paused before one of those arts and crafts shops to be found in every town. Time was getting short; her bus was due to leave again in half an hour, and she went into the little shop, encouraged by its displayed reproductions among the china rabbits and bric-a-brac, and the pile of frames stacked against the wall.
A woman in a smock enquired languidly what she wanted, and Shelley unwrapped the print. The woman glanced at the Bartolozzi without interest and produced a selection of frames.
"That one," said Shelley, choosing a plain, narrow frame. "How much will it be, and can you do it now?"
"If you care to wait ten minutes," the woman replied indifferently. "The price is seven pounds."
"Oh!" Shelley looked dismayed.
"Would you have something a little cheaper?"
"Not that size," the woman replied. "And that's cheap, I assure you, but the end of the season - "
"I only have," Shelley faltered, "five pounds."
"Too bad," the woman said without interest. "Well, what about a smaller frame? You only have to cut down the margin of your print. It would look nicer, I should say."
"All right," Shelley said, deciding. She wanted her surprise at once, and perhaps the print would look better without all that surround of white. "Would you please be as quick as you can? I have a bus to catch, and there isn't another for two hours."
She was tired by the time she reached Garazion. A ten-mile walk across unfamiliar country was quite an effort, but she got home before Nicholas, and she put the framed print back on the mantelpiece with the happy satisfaction of something important achieved, and went up to Martin's room for tea, having told Baines to let her know the instant Nicholas returned.
When the summons came, she ran down the stairs with the excited anticipation of a child He was standing before the fireplace, looking at the print, and she ran behind him, and slipped a shy hand through his arm.
"Do you like it?" she asked.
He turned to look at her and for a moment she was uncertain of the reception of her surprise, so dark and uncompromising was his expression.
"Did you have this done?" he asked slowly.
"Yes," she said. "It was my surprise for you. The frame I wanted cost more than I had, so I had to have a smaller one, but the woman in the shop said it would look better. Don't -don't you like it, Nicholas ?"
His expression was still curious, but he said with gentleness:
"What shop?"
"A shop in Polzeal. One of those places that sell china animals and reproductions. All the reproductions were framed like this."
"How did you get there?"
"I walked to the village and got a bus."
His eyes suddenly softened.
"Five miles there and five miles back all to get me a frame?" he said.
"It was a surprise," she said, and repeated a little doubtfully: "Don't you like it, Nicholas?" He stooped and kissed her forehead.
"It's a lovely surprise," he said gently, and would never tell her that prints without their margins lost all value to a connoisseur.
"Thank you, Shelley, for a charming thought. I'm delighted with it."
Baines came in with the evening drinks as Nicholas finished hanging the print.
"Don't you think that's charming?" Nicholas said. "Mrs. Penryn walked ten miles across the moor to get a bus to Polzeal to find me a frame."
Baines looked at the print and then at Nicholas.
"Very charming, sir," he said softly. "We shall have Madam a collector, yet."
October came, and with it rough weather. The strong moorland wind blew the last leaves off the trees and the garden lay drowned and sodden in the rain. Nicholas spent most days at the works, sometimes coming home for lunch, sometimes not, and Shelley drifted once again into Martin's company.
Nicholas neverentertained,and no one called. Very occasionally collectors and art experts came to Garazion and were asked to stop for lunch, looking with surprise at Shelley when she was introduced, and the elderly and more gallant of them would be sure to say to Nicholas: "Ah, the gem of your collection, I observe, my dear Penryn."
"I wish they wouldn't," Shelley said on one occasion.
"Why not?" He smiled at her. "It's true."
"No," said Shelley.
His eyebrows went up.
"That was meant to be a compliment, you know."
She could not explain to him how she felt; perhaps she hardly knew herself, but she cared less and less to sit in Nicholas' study surrounded by his beautiful things while he looked at her enigmatically under his dark, brooding brows.
She looked at him in swift denial.
"Oh, no," she said, "only I wish sometimes I had something to do - something important, I mean."
"I don't want you to do anything which doesn't please you," he said a little harshly. "Have you no interests of your own?"
"I'm not very talented," she said. "And there isn't a piano here."
He frowned.
"A piano? Do you play?"
"A little. They taught music well at the convent."
He made no further comment, but at the end of the week a small Bechstein grand piano arrived from London and was carried up to Shelley's sitting-room.
Nicholas was out at the time, but she was waiting in the library with the door open, listening for his return, and when she heard him come in she ran into the hall. She had already changed for dinner, and he stood and watched her. Her wide silk skirts billowed from her narrow waist, and the pale hair, soft and fair as a child's, flew back from her glad face as she ran to meet him. For the first time since he had known her, she forgot to be shy with him, and flung both arms round his neck.
"Nicholas! Oh, Nicholas..." she cried.
He stood quite still, and his hands were a little unsteady on her waist.
"That's the first time you've ever done that," he said slowly. "Are you so pleased to see me?"
"Yes," she said. "Oh, Nicholas, you never said a word, and it's the most lovely surprise I've ever had. Thank you ... thank you..."
"What's a surprise?" he asked, the moment already fading for him.
"The piano, of course. I'm so happy."
"Oh, the piano." He released her gently. "It's come, has it? I'm glad you're pleased, Shelley."
She drew back a little, aware of the flatness in his voice, and aware, too, that she had indulged in the kind of demonstration which, in a less exalted moment, she would never have dreamed of showing him. Shyness descended on her again, and she said more soberly: "It was so very good of you, and you've made me so happy." "As easily as that?" he said a little sadly and became a stranger again.
"It wasn't a little thing," she said uncertainly. "It was a - a generous thought and - and must have cost an awful lot of money."
He smiled.
"Money is only relative, you know," he said, taking off his coat. "If you have it, what you spend on things means very little."
"I suppose so," she said doubtfully, then the pleasure bubbled up in her again. "Come and hear it," she begged. "It has a most beautiful tone." She took him by the hand and pulled him towards her sitting-room.
She was not at all shy of playing for him. She had been well taught at the convent, and although her execution was faulty, she had a delicate touch, and a certain facility for playing from ear. Nicholas knew little about music, but it seemed to him that she played surprisingly well. He leant on the piano, watching her, and thought how strange it was to hear music in Garazion.
"What was that?" he asked.
"The Turtle Dove - a Somerset folk song. Listen, you should like this..."
She played him airs from the Elizabethans, and Purcell's lovely Evening Hymn.
"You play very well," he said.
"Not really," she replied, but turned to him eagerly with the assurance that here was something of which he knew nothing.
"You like my music?" she asked softly, and he reached out a hand to her.
"Shelley ..." he said, and as her fingers touched his, there was the sound of a badly suppressed sneeze from behind a Chinese screen.
Nicholas took two strides and pushed back the screen, revealing Martin, in pyjamas and dressing-gown, crouching against the wall.
"What are you doing here?" he demanded harshly.
The boy blinked up at him, his face already puckering for tears.
"I - I wanted to hear her play again," he stammered. "I knew she would. When you came with her I -I hid behind the screen."
"Oh, Martin," Shelley said softly. "You're supposed to be in bed."
Nicholas pulled him out, and, glancing at his face, Shelley thought she had never seen him look so angry.
"It's time you knew when you're not wanted, young man," he said grimly.
Martin started to whimper, and Shelley said, defensively: "He hasn't done any harm, Nicholas. He'll go to bed now.
like a good boy, won't you, Martin? And tomorrow I'll play
anything you like."
"He will stop me," said Martin, the tears already running
down his face.
"Don't be so silly," Shelley put an arm round him. "Of course he won't, will you, Nicholas?"
He looked at them both, ranged in the moment against him, and said coldly:
"I must change for dinner. Go back to your room, Martin, and don't let this happen again."
He saw the old look of uncertainty come into Shelley's eyes, and turning on his heel, left the room without another word.
With November, the gales came in earnest. The wind tore across the moor, pulling at the house, beating on the windows, and Shelley listened to it, deep in her isolation, crouching over a fire, afraid to venture outside for what the wind might do to her. Nicholas was away for several nights at a time, and she and Martin would resume their meals together, sometimes in the morning-room, sometimes in Martin's own wing'where the wind seemed less violent.
To Nicholas it was a period of great frustration, and his only defence was to be much away from home. He knew he had handled matters badly, but Shelley, eighteen, unawakened and a little afraid of him, was outside his knowledge. Always there seemed some little thing to distract. Interruptions, business matters, and Martin, always Martin, with his childish claims and jealousies driving him into the position of unwanted guardian to them both. With bitterness he remembered that he had told her he did not expect her to love him. He still did not, for his humility had sprung from bitter causes. But he had himself come to love very deeply this gentle child whom he had married in such strange circumstances, and he could only wait - perhaps for the year and a day of the fairytale, perhaps for ever.
Shelley, he thought, watching her darkly as she sat at her piano, or with her hands folded quietly in her lap like the child in the picture, had no conception of the hunger that often shook him. How should she? He had taken her straight from the schoolroom, and what knowledge could she have of the long years which had taken toll of his youth and his manhood?
But there was much that gave him pleasure. He liked to watch her running down the stairs when he called, her hair flying out behind her, he liked to see her sitting at his table, drinking wine with him in the candlelight, or in a straight, high-backed chair in his study under the portrait of the child she so much resembled. And he liked to hear her play. Then she would seem released and unaware of him, and her fingers were loving on the keys and her lifted face grave as a child's. He loved the way she would turn to him and ask: "Did you like that?" and the serious air with which she explained a song to him.
After all, he thought a little wearily, there was time enough and to spare at Garazion, and the months stretched ahead of them. Perhaps in the spring he would take her away...
By December the gales had spent themselves, and there were days of fine sparkling weather when even the moor looked gay under its web of frost and the great iron gates of Garazion were laced with silver.
Christmas at Garazion, Shelley thought, lying at night in her fourposter bed and watching the firelight dance on the high ceiling. Would they decorate the house with holly, she and Martin, and perhaps bring a little tree from the plantation behind the stables? But Christmas was a time for giving, and she had nothing to give, and even if she had some money, what could she find for Nicholas which, amongst all his rare possessions, could hold its own?
She could hear him moving about in his room, getting ready for bed, and wished he would come in sometimes and sit and talk to her. But he seldom did. She called him softly; then, as he did not answer, more loudly.
He opened the door between their rooms.
"Did you want me?" he asked.
"Yes," she said. "I wanted to talk about Christmas."
His eyes had a slightly ironical expression.
"Couldn't it wait till the morning?"
"It could, but-"
"But what?"
She held out a hand to him.
"It's just an excuse, really. I'd like you to come and talk to me."
He came slowly across to the bed and sat down. "What did you want to say about Christmas?" he asked her gently.
"I wondered if Martin and I could have a tree - a small one from the plantation - and decorate the house." His smile was a little twisted.
"We never do decorate the house," he said. "But of course if you want to, Shelley, you may, only be careful where you put your holly."
For a moment she felt chilled.
"We wouldn't put it anywhere that mattered," she said, thinking at once of the many things in the house which must not be touched.
He saw the withdrawal in her face and said:
"I'm afraid we never do much about Christmas at Garazion. You see for so many years there's only been myself here."
"But now there's Martin," she said gently.
His eyes were quizzical.
"So there is. Well, we must see what we can do about Martin."
"Nicholas - " She fidgeted under the bedclothes, curling her toes round her hot water bottle.
"What now? Won't you leave it to me?"
She had been going to tell him that she had no money with which to buy presents, but she thought he sounded impatient. She had never asked him for money before, and for no reason she remembered her father had been under an obligation to him.
"It doesn't matter," she said, and he got up. "Was that all?" he asked, and, like a child, she wanted to keep him a little longer.
She caught his hand, holding him there. "It was, really," she said with a little sigh. He looked down at her impassively.
"What was it you began to say just now?" he asked, and she let him go.
"Nothing. You don't understand," she said. He bent and kissed the soft hair.
"No, my child, it's you who don't understand," he said gently, and left her.
Lack of any money of her own was also a handicap to Shelley in other ways. Lucius in his more recent letters had hinted that now his daughter was a rich woman, a tactful cheque now and again would not come amiss. He reminded her delicately of the money which had been lavished on her education, pointing out that his expenses, now he lived in London, had risen considerably, whereas hers, buried in the middle of a moor, must be negligible.
It distressed Shelley that she could not help him. It was true that she never needed money for herself, since she seldom went outside the gates of Garazion; her clothes and personal needs were dealt with directly by Nicholas himself, and since Mrs. Medlar took care of all the household bills, a house keeping allowance was quite unnecessary. She supposed it was usual, as her father had pointed out, for a husband to make his wife a settled allowance, but Nicholas had never suggested it, and she did not like to ask him.
Early in December he went to London again, and to her tentative suggestion that she might go with him to look at the Christmas shops, he replied evasively:
"My plans are unsettled. I don't know how long I may have to stay."
She did not try to persuade him. She knew nothing of Nicholas' arrangements in London; she would probably be in the way.
"Will you be seeing Father?" she asked a little wistfully. "Possibly. Any messages?"
"Just - just my love and - a happy Christmas. Tell him I'll be writing." He glanced at her a little oddly.
"Are you worrying about Christmas?" he asked. "Don't. I'll find him a suitable present on my rounds and send it to him from us both."
"Thank you," she said a little flatly.
He knew quite well what was in her mind, but he had no intention of opening up yet another source of revenue with which to line Lucius' pockets.
"Take care of yourself while I'm gone," he said kindly. "And let me have a line from time to time to tell me you're all right. I'll attend to Martin's presents and anything else that's necessary."
It never occurred to him that she might want to get something for himself.
He had been away a week when he wrote to say he would not be returning until Christmas Eve. He had seen Lucius who sent his love; she was to take care of herself and not run temperatures.
A week before Christmas the snow came. They went to bed one night to the sound of an icy wind blowing round the house and woke the next morning to a white world and the strange hush of falling snow.
After breakfast they went out, and Martin, after his first, rather timid steps, flung himself in the snow, rolling like a puppy, and tossing handfuls of it into the air. They ran out onto the moor, and Shelley thought how beautiful it looked with its unbroken mantle of white hiding the bleak, rough ground and the treacherous bog beyond. Only the rocks of Garator showed black and sombre where the snow had not covered them, and, in the distance, the slag-heaps of china-clay looked dirty against the dazzling whiteness.
"It looks," said Martin, awed, "like magic. As if we had woken up in another country, and no one was alive but us. I think, Shelley, we were safer inside the wall."
Yes, it was lonely, Shelley thought, big and lonely. Even the road was lost in that vast blanket of white, and Garazion a castle, a fortress, perhaps, with no way in or out.
Shelley sat in Nicholas' study that evening, and wished he was there. After the carefree day she felt lonely and grown-up, sitting by herself in the quiet house with no one to talk to.
She remembered the moment at Christmas time, the Crib in the chapel with its gentle, watching effigies, the candles, and the carols. But no carol-singers came to Garazion, Baines had told her. It was too isolated, and since Nicholas had shut himself up alone there, the house had become forgotten. The thought of the carol-singing made her feel very lonely, and she remembered those Christmas holidays spent at school, which had seemed lonely, too, and saw herself, the only child left among the nuns, with the veil which always would slip off her head in chapel, singing Holy Night before the Crib. She could almost hear the words now - Stille nacht - heilige nacht... But that was German, and she realized with a start that someone was singing; someone was singing outside the house.
She ran out into the hall to listen. There were two voices, perhaps three, she thought, and one was a clear, high tenor, true and trained, and piercingly sweet.
The carol finished and she opened the door, and stood there in her long, pale dress, the snowlight falling on her hair, turning it to silver, and a voice from the shadows said softly: "It is true, then. This is the ogre's castle and here is the imprisoned princess."
She looked gravely at the dim forms clustered in the porch, their lantern casting shadows on the snow, then the speaker picked it up and held it above her head.
"Amazing," he said. "Won't you ask us in, princess?"
"Of course."
She stood back for them to enter, and they stepped into the hall, shaking the snow from their shoes. There were three of them, as she had thought, and the first and tallest of them looked about him slowly.
"Amazing..." he said again.
She closed the door and said.
"Who are you? You sing very beautifully."
He bowed deeply while his two companions stood silent, shifting from one foot to the other.
"We are but strolling mummers," he said. "And having heard of the walled fastness of Garazion, came to see for ourselves."
"Were you the tenor?" she asked, and he stepped into the circle of lamplight.
He was as fair as herself, fair and young, with twinkling blue eyes and laughter in his voice.
"I was, alas, madam, the tenor," he replied. "These voiceless clods are my henchmen - Jake and Willy. My name is Colin."
"And mine," she said, "is Shelley."
"Now that," the young man said, "is perfect."
"Won't you come in to the fire?" she said, and walked ahead of them into Nicholas' study.
Inside the room, Colin paused and whistled softly.
"So it's all true," he said slowly. "The rare pieces, the connoisseur's delight."
"So you've heard of us here at Garazion?" she said, sitting in her straight-backed chair by the fire. "Oh, yes, I'd heard of you."
"My husband's away from home, I'm afraid," she said, and he answered with fresh laughter in his voice: "Yes, I'd heard that, too."
Shelley blinked. It was all a little unreal, and this strange, fair young man confused her.
"Will you have something to drink?" she asked politely, and rang for Baines. After all, it was traditional to refresh the carol-singers.
Jake, or perhaps it was Willy, spoke for the first time.
"I think we should go, Colin. You've got in, and now I think we should go."
"Did you not expect to get in?" asked Shelley with surprise. Colin smiled at her.
"Well, no," he said. "Garazion has its legends, you know, like all the other wonders of the moor."
She did not understand him, and turned with relief to Baines, standing enquiringly in the doorway.
"Oh, Baines," she said, "the carol-singers have come to Garazion. Will you bring drinks, please, and, perhaps some sandwiches."
She saw Colin looking at the portrait of the child.
"Did you sit for that?" he asked.
"No," she answered, smiling. "It was painted in the eighteenth century - artist unknown."
"The likeness is extraordinary. Are you really married to Penryn of Garazion?"
"Of course."
"You look so young."
She was silent, her hands folded in her lap. Jake and Willy sat on the edges of chairs, looking uncomfortable, but Colin was entirely at his ease.
"Shall we sing for our supper while we wait?" he said, and without more ado, lifted up his voice, and after a moment's hesitation, the other two joined in. They sang an old sixteenth-century carol which was new to Shelley, and Baines, carrying in a loaded tray, stood for a moment to listen.
"That was charming," Shelley said when they had finished. "Now, please help yourselves to what you want."
A tousled black head looked round the door and Shelley exclaimed:
"Martin! Why aren't you in bed and asleep?"
"I heard them singing," the boy said, sidling into the room. 'Carol-singers, like you told me, Shelley. I wanted to see them."
"Oh-ho!" said Colin. "And who is this young man? Another enchanted mortal?"
"He's my husband's nephew, Martin Penryn," she said, drawing the boy to her. "Martin, this is Mr. - er - Colin, and this is Mr. Willy, and this is Mr. Jake, only I'm not sure which is which."
They all laughed, then helped themselves to drinks while Martin leant against Shelley and nibbled chocolate biscuits. Colin sat in Nicholas' chair, talking nonsense and quoting a great deal while he watched Shelley with his bright blue eyes, and even Jake and Willy, although they said little, relaxed and did ample justice to Shelley's hospitality.
Later, more carols had to be sung for Martin, and Shelley shyly joined in, while the fire sank lower and shadows crept out of the corners of the room. The Louis XVIII clock struck the hour with its thin, silvery chime, and Colin jumped up.
"Midnight!" he exclaimed. "The witching hour of all fairytales. We must be gone."
"Is this a fairytale?" Martin enquired, his head already nodding drowsily.
"Of course! And if we don't go at once we shall be turned into pumpkins. 'For night's swift dragons cut the clouds full fast. And yonder shines Aurora's harbinger ...' Princess Shelley, I thank you for our feast. We shall meet again."
"I don't think so," said Shelley politely. "No one ever comes here."
"We shall meet again," he repeated, and took her hands as she waited in the hall to see them off.
"How did you get here?" she asked belatedly.
"Our chariot - otherwise our derelict car awaits without the gates."
Her eyes widened.
"But the snow!"
"It's not deep yet on the roads."
"How did you get in? The gates are locked at night."
"That was to be expected in the ogre's castle. We came the usual way - over the wall. Good night." He lifted her hands and kissed her fingers lightly. "You are very lovely," he said in a small soft voice, and was gone.
The next morning Shelley awoke wondering if it had all been a dream. She looked out of her window, but fresh snow had fallen in the night, covering all tracks, and it was as if they had never been.
Baines greeted her smilingly at breakfast time and she said to him:
"The carol-singers did come last night, didn't they, Baines?"
"Oh, yes, ma'am," he said. "And very nicely they sang -quite a cut above the usual. But then they would be, seeing they are professional young gentlemen."
"They told me they were mummers," she said, pouring her coffee.
"A fancy way of saying they were actors," he replied. "I understand they are playing over at Polzeal for Christmas week."
"Oh!" Shelley wished she did not know. She would like to have kept that evening enchanted and anonymous.
"It's a mystery to me how they got here," Baines said. "For old Isaac at the lodge never let them in."
"They came over the wall," said Shelley, and grinned at him suddenly.
He smiled, but shook his head at the same time.
"Oh, dearie me," he said. "That wouldn't please Mr. Nicholas. It's his collection, you see. If people can get over the wall, it's no use locking the gates. I must speak to Isaac and get him to cut down the creeper."
Shelley sighed. Sometimes she thought Garazion was very like a prison, with its locked gates and its guardian wall.
"Is Martin all right this morning?" she asked.
"As right at a trivet, but Mrs. Medlar wasn't best pleased he
was up half the night. She'll no doubt complain to you, ma'am."
"Then I'll keep out of her way," said Shelley briskly.
She managed to evade the housekeeper for the morning and she and Martin went down to the plantation to choose a tree.
Then Shelley started to run, dodging round the tamarisks pursued noisily by Martin until, finally, she allowed herself to be caught and pelted with snow. There was a soft thud and a snowball fell at their feet, then another and another. Someone was throwing them over the wall.
"Who could that be?" Shelley said, and shouted "Hi! Do you know you hit me, whoever you are!" she cried indignantly, opening the gate with a flurry of dislogded snow.
Someone laughed and a remembered voice said:
"Good morning, princess."
He was standing close in by the wall, his fair head uncovered, a bright blue muffler, which matched his eyes, wound round his neck.
"I'm sorry if I hit you," he said. "But I had to attract your attention, and I couldn't see what I was hitting, you know."
She laughed.
"You really do drop from the skies, don't you? How did you get here this time?" "Walked."
"What, from Polzeal?"
"No, only from the village. The buses are still running. How do you know I come from Polzeal?" She smiled.
"Oh, we hear things, even at Garazion." "Been making enquiries?" Her nose went in the air.
"Certainly not. My servant happened to tell me." His eyes crinkled at the corners.
"It's no good being haughty," he told her. "Last night you were the princess and very delightfully dignified, but today you're just a little girl with a handkerchief round your head and snow on your lashes. Come for a walk."
She rubbed her lashes with her mittened fingers.
"We're supposed to stay in the grounds in case of drifts," she said doubtfully, and he laughed.
"I know all the drifts, I've come through them. They're not so bad," he said. "But perhaps the little boy - "
"No, no, I want to come, too," cried Martin.
"Very well. Each of you take a hand and away we go."
He swung them along, one each side of him, and ran them through small drifts until they were breathless, then he swung Martin up on his shoulder and turned again for home.
"Will you ask me to lunch?" he said, and as she hesitated, added with a twinkle: "I won't pinch the collection."
"It isn't that," she said, embarrassed. In fact she did not quite know why she hesitated. "Of course, do come."
"On second thoughts, perhaps I won't. We'll meet each day, much more romantically, at the postern gate."
"Each day?" Her eyes were startled.
"Why not? I have so many things to say to you, Shelley."
He set Martin down at the gate, and he ran ahead into the garden.
"Must we always have the boy with us?" asked Colin with a lift of the eyebrow.
"No," said Shelley slowly. "He usually rests for an hour after lunch, but - "
His eyes crinkled at her.
"But you think we need a chaperone?"
"Of course not."
"How charming you are when you blush. Will you meet me tomorrow in your green mittens and the handkerchief tied under your chin?"
"I don't know," she said, and he started to walk away.
"I'll be there, anyway, and if you don't come, I shall throw snowballs over the wall and probably hit the aged retainer on the head. Au revoir!"
She met him at the gate the next afternoon. They walked to Penzennen's Pool and she told him the legend of the wicked Penzennen who had drowned there and was so evil that nothing lived in the water and no creature drank from it.
"Quite in the right tradition, princess," he mocked. "Are
there any more spells laid hereabout? I think you yourself have a spell laid on you." "How do you mean?"
"I don't quite know. I think perhaps you are the Sleeping Princess locked in your castle until the Prince comes to waken you."
He spoke lightly enough, but his bright eyes scanned her face with alert curiosity, and he was puzzled by the strange look which came, fleetingly, into her eyes.
"What made you come all this way in the snow that night to sing carols?" she asked him gently. "Baines said we were too isolated. Carol-singers - the usual ones, I mean - haven't been here for years."
His smile was apologetic and completely charming.
"I must confess to you, Mrs Penryn, it was a bet," he said.
"Abet?"
"Rumours - and legends, reach beyond the moor in Cornwall, you know. There is a legend that the dark Penryn carried off a young maiden for a bride and keeps her imprisoned behind a high wall, so fearful is he of somebody stealing his most prized possession."
The colour came into her cheeks.
"How absurd!"
"Isn't it like that?"
"Of course not. Nicholas - my husband has been a - a sort of recluse for years. He - he had a bad accident a long time ago."
"So I've heard. And traffics with the devil, so superstition says. Old Nick will come and get you, they tell their children when they're naughty."
The tears came into her eyes.
"That's abominable!" she cried. "He's kind and-and -" "But a little frightening? Oh, Shelley, my sweet child, don't take me seriously. I didn't mean to hurt you. Anyone, you know, who has lived as your husband has for so long, must fall victim to local superstition - especially in these parts. That was the reason for the bet. Willy wagered I'd never get inside the house and I took him up and made him come, too. Also, I must confess I was curious."
She smiled reluctantly. It was impossible to be angry with him for long.
"Well, you won your bet," she said. "Now, I must be getting home. Martin will be looking for me." "Tomorrow, then?" "No."
"Oh, cruel princess! But all princesses are cruel, aren't they? They set their suitors impossible tests, and chop off their heads when they fail."
"Except the right one," she said with gentle malice.
"Yes, except the right one," he agreed, and his expression was puckish.
But she saw him most days. Sometimes Martin came with them, and sometimes she met him alone, and for the first time, she knew that she had been unbearably lonely.
He was a delightful companion, full of a flow of nonsense that was touched with tenderness for her, and, for the first time, since she had come to Garazion she could talk freely and without thought. She had known few men besides her father before she married Nicholas, and certainly none as young or experienced as Colin, but she recognized her own kind and was happy, for was he not the playmate she had never had, the friend with whom she could share her own most secret thoughts?
Two days before Christmas it snowed again, and she went to meet Colin through a flurry of falling flakes.
"Let's walk," he said. "It's too cold for sitting about."
They strode along the crisp moorland tracks, swinging their jeined hands, and sometimes Shelley skipped beside him, snatching the handkerchief from her head and letting the snowflakes settle on her hair.
"How young you are," he said tenderly. "Young and so unspoilt. I wish I'd met you sooner, Shelley."
She replied unexpectedly:
"You mightn't have cared for me away from Garazion."
He glanced down at her quickly, surprised by her flash of perception. Was it true, he wondered? Was it the unreality of the situation which gave her such charm for him? But he said: "I should have cared for you anywhere," and indeed she had for him and, he thought, for all men, a rare quality which drew forth gentleness.
"Do you know tomorrow's Christmas Eve?" he said, and she stopped dead.
Christmas Eve, and Nicholas would be returning. Amazingly, unbelievably, she had forgotten all about him.
"How guilty you look!" he laughed, and brushed the snow from her hair.
"I'd forgotten," she said slowly. "I'd quite forgotten. Nicholas comes back tomorrow." He regarded her with gentleness.
"Shelley, do you love your husband?" he said. He had never asked her about her marriage. It had nothing to do with their own relationship.
She did not answer directly but said instead:
"He once told me he didn't expect love from any woman."
His eyes were bright and questioning, but he said lightly enough:
"Why ? Is he such a monster?"
"I think," she said haltingly, "he must be very sensitive about his face. He is - badly disfigured, you see."
"So I've heard. And does that revolt you?"
"No, oh, no," she said, and added gently: "One gets used to ugliness, you know."
"One gets used to anything, they say," he retorted. "So you don't love him. I didn't suppose you did."
He wanted to probe deeper. There was something childlike and unawakened about Shelley, and he began to feel a curiosity concerning her husband, but she said, starting to walk on again: "Nicholas married me and I'm grateful to him for so much, and sometimes" - her voice lifted in surprise - "sometimes, I think I'm sorry for him."
"Pity? There's many a relationship that has sprung out ofthat."
"No," she said. "One doesn't pity Nicholas." He left the subject at once and began asking her about her life before she had married Nicholas.
"You've led a very sheltered life, haven't you?" he said. "In your convent school and now behind your high wall. You're rather like Prunella. Do you know Housman's little play?"
Her face lit up with pleasure.
"Yes, we did it once. I was Prunella and I still remember every word. 'The love I fear to lose, the love I find: Those who might miss me - those who I might miss ...' Do you ever do the play, Colin?"
"It's in our repertoire. We turn it on if we get stuck. It's easy to act and has a great charm."
They had reached the gates and Colin said.
''Tomorrow in the summer-house? I have a Christmas present for you."
"Oh, Colin!" Her eyes were soft. "Well, it must only be for a little while. Martin and I have to put up our holly."
"I'll be there."
He had been waiting for half an hour before she slipped out and she seemed flustered.
"I mustn't stay," she said. "Isaac has brought in the tree and he and Mrs. Medlar are quarrelling as to where it shall stand and Martin's working up for a crying fit. He is overexcited."
"And so are you overexcited, my pretty child," he said looking into her flushed face. "Not starting your old enemy the temperature, are you?"
"No, I don't think so. But we're late with our decorations, and we must have all the mess cleared up before Nicholas gets home, and I must change my dress because he doesn't like to see me untidy and - "
"Stop it, stop it," he said gently. "Relax, my child, or you'll be a nervous wreck by the time that husband of yours gets back. Look, I've brought your present. It's nothing very much."
He thrust a small parcel into her hands and she opened it eagerly. It was a tiny Crib, the figures all beautifully carved from wood, and she exclaimed softly:
"Oh, Colin ... how lovely ... Look at the little donkey and the ox ... and the kneeling figures ... how beautifully
they're carved. Where did you find it?"
"It's local work. There's an old chap in Polzeal who does carving for a hobby. I thought you might like it."
She looked up at him, immeasurably touchedbythesensitive-ness he had shown in the choice of his gift.
"Thank you, dear Colin," she said. "I shall always treasure it. I've something for you, too. I couldn't go out and buy anything, so I'm afraid it's second-hand. Look, it's my medallion of St. Christopher. We all had them at school - I've worn mine since I was ten."
He took the medallion from her turning it over gently in the palm of his hand.
"I shall be all the fonder of it for that," he said. "But isn't it like giving away your luck?"
"No, only sharing it. I want you to have it - it's all I could find for you."
"Thank you, Shelley," he said gently, and slipped the medallion in his breast pocket.
They stood looking at each other, and a little scurry of wind blew round the summer-house, sprinkling them with snow.
"After today," he said steadily, "you don't want me to come here any more, do you, Shelley?"
Her eyes widened.
"I can't lose you," she said a little piteously. "You're the only friend I have."
"We could meet on the moor." "Could we?"
"Or -" His eyebrows lifted, "I could even come to the house and make a formal call."
"No," she said quickly. "I don't want you at Garazion. I can't explain, but I don't want you at Garazion."
He was silent. Now was the time he should make the break, he knew. Now, before it was too late and she ceased to be the child he had found, for this was Pierrot's old game.
"I'll walk to Penzennen's Pool each morning at half-past-eleven," he said brusquely.
"I don't know," she said. "I don't know, Colin. I must go now."
"A happy Christmas, princess," he said, and kissed her
gently on the forehead, just as Nicholas did when he said good night.
She was late going up to change, and she was still in her room, trying to hook up her dress when Nicholas arrived. She called out in answer to his knock, and turned, still struggling with her dress, to greet him. "Hullo!" she said.
He watched her a little curiously, in silence, and the disfigurement to his face seemed to be more cruelly marked than she remembered.
"Well, Shelley, how are you?" he said, then, and took her hands in his.
"Oh, you're cold!" she laughed, and he went over to the fire.
"Yes, it's a cold night. When I've warmed my hands, I'll do your dress up for you."
"I can manage," she said, and started searching for hooks and eyes again.
He stood by the fire, warming his hands, and she noticed again their strength and shapeliness, as the firelight flickered on the strong, delicate veins. His train was late, he told her, and the snow delayed the car. He had told Baines to put back dinner half an hour.
"Did you have snow in London?" she asked.
"Not much. I gather it's been quite thick here."
He left the fire, and turned her gently round with her back to him.
"Much better let me do it," he said, and began hooking up her dress with competent speed. Every now and then his fingers touched her bare skin, and she stood very still waiting until he had finished, when he turned her round again.
"There! Don't you think I'd make an efficient lady's maid?"
Without consciously thinking, she slid her arms round his neck and kissed him, and as always, he turned his face a fraction away from her.
"I'm glad you're back," she said.
"Are you, Shelley? It's good to be home," he replied, and stood and watched her while she sat down at her dressing-table
and began to comb her hair.
There was a difference in her this time, he thought. A new awareness, a fresh pliancy of mind, perhaps, something too delicate to define as yet; but the face which looked into the mirror was still the grave face of the child in the portrait.
"I must go and change," he said, and went into his own room.
After dinner he showed her the presents he had brought for Martin, telling her to choose which of them she would like to give him personally. They were expensive toys, and he had clearly been to much trouble in selecting them, but she felt she had no part in this present-giving. She wrote out cards, then set the gifts aside with the parcels already arrived from India. The boy was to have breakfast with them the next morning, and Nicholas told her that she must wait until then to open her own presents.
She flushed and her eyes were distressed. She had nothing for Nicholas, but she had managed to find something for Colin. She was aware that he was looking at her enquiringly, and said: "I've nothing to give you, Nicholas. I had no money to buy you anything." He said gently:
"My dear, I don't want presents from you."
"But Christmas," she said a little helplessly, "is a time when one wants to give. It's - it's rather humiliating only to receive."
His face was suddenly weary.
"Yes, I should have thought of that," he said. "Look, Shelley - I've bought myself a rather charming little eighteenth century snuff-box. Would you like to give me that? Wait -I'll fetch it for you to see."
She turned the snuff-box over in her hands, aware of his pleasure in it, and aware, too, of something anxious in his manner that did not wish her to be hurt.
"It's charming," she said gently. "If you would like it that way, Nicholas, I -I - "
He took the snuff-box from her and put it down on a table.
"Am I clumsy, Shelley?" he asked.
"No - no," she said quickly. "But I feel so - impoverished." He touched her hair gently.
"Never feel that," he said, "You have so much that has nothing to do with money and what money can buy. Just - " "Just what?"
He turned away, and his voice was harsh again.
"Just be yourself. That's all I ask," he said.
Breakfast, the next morning, was gayer than Shelley had anticipated, for Martin, delighted by his presents, forgot for the moment, his awe of his uncle, and became a natural, excited child. There were presents for Shelley, charming, expensive trifles, purporting to come from Nicholas and Martin alike, and a beautifully bound rare edition of the works of Shelley from Lucius.
But since she had known Colin, Shelley had learned to be sensitive to people's gifts. This was no expression of her father's choice. Nicholas had chosen it himself, and had probably paid for it, too.
Baines came in to clear the table, smiling at the pile of paper and festive string. Martin followed him round and began to sing Holy Night in a high, uncertain treble.
"That's very nice, Master Martin," the old man said. "Do you remember anything else the young gentlemen sang?"
"The young gentlemen?" said Nicholas enquiringly.
"The carol-singers, sir," Baines said. "They came a week or so ago, as Mrs. Penryn will have told you. Sang beautifully, they did, especially the young gentleman with the high voice."
"Carol-singers?" said Nicholas idly. "You never told me, Shelley."
She exchanged a guilty look with Martin. The carol-singers were their own special secret.
"They came over from Polzeal," she said. "They did sing very well. We had them in and gave them drinks."
"Really?" Nicholas did not sound very interested. "I haven't known carol-singers at Garazion for years, have you, Baines?"
Shelley expected Martin to say: "And we've seen Colin nearly every day and he gave us a present for Christmas," but
he made no mention at all of Colin, only his wary look of distrust for his uncle returned, and he left the room very shortly.
Later they went out on to the moor, and Martin played in the snow. Shelley surprised Nicholas watching the boy with the dark, brooding look she was coming to know so well.
"You're fond of him, aren't you?" she said softly, and he replied with gentle strangeness:
"He might have been my son."
After tea, they lighted the few poor candles on the tree, and put out the hall lamps. But the little tree looked lost and forlorn in the gloom, and the magic of the day had already departed for Martin.
With Christmas over, Nicholas returned to the works and was gone for most of the day. No more snow fell, and quickly it seemed, the existing snow melted into slush, and the moor was visible again, brown and bare and bleak. Garator shed its icicles, and a wind blew from the west, scattering the last snowflakes, and presaging rain.
Martin viewed the heap of dirty slush that had been the snow-man and suddenly wept.
"Nothing's the same, nothing's the same," he sobbed.
No, thought Shelley, nothing was the same. The magic of the snow had gone, and Colin, her one friend, had walked each day to Penzennen's Pool, and she not there to meet him.
She walked there one morning in a thin drizzle of rain, and, surprisingly, he was waiting for her.
"I thought you'd deserted me," he said, coming to meet her. "And this is my very last day. We move on tomorrow."
"Tomorrow?"
She had scarcely meant to come, and had certainly not expected to find him, but the thought that he would be gone tomorrow filled her with dismay.
"Where are you going to?" she asked.
"Devon, Somerset, Wiltshire; little towns in each, working our way back to London. Then we split up."
"Oh!" Her voice was bleak, and he said:
"But I'll be back. I'll be back in the spring, and then - "
All at once she was crying gently.
"The spring is such a long way off," she said and did not believe that he would come.
"Have you forgotten your namesake?" he chided. "If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?'"
"Nicholas gave me Shelley for Christmas," she said, trying to smile. "At least it was supposed to be from my father, only Nicholas chose it."
He did not understand the distinction, but her weeping distressed him, and he said quickly:
"Is he good to you - this Nicholas Penryn?"
She brushed the tears from her lashes.
"Oh, yes, very good."
"And yet you're not happy."
"I think I'm lonely," she said. "And I don't understand him very well."
He took her arm and they walked slowly along the shores of the little lake.
"You're different from other girls," he told her then. "Do you realize that had you been anyone else I would have been making love to you long ago?"
"Would you?" she said, surprised. "But I'm married."
"Yes, you're married," he mocked gently. "And I'd very much like to know what kind of a marriage it is. In the spring, I'm coming back to find out."
"My marriage," she said slowly, "Nicholas - Garazion -have nothing to do with us."
"No? And yet you are part of them all, you know - a little strange - the Sleeping Princess."
"Why didn't we meet before?" she asked forlornly, but she asked it as a child might, and she looked as a child might, with the raindrops trickling from her wet fringe into her eyes.
His smile, as he watched her, was a little wry, and he experienced the age-old masculine urge to be the first to waken her, for Nicholas Penryn, whatever his status, had certainly not done that.
"Shelley - " he said, his hands on her shoulders - "say good-bye to me properly - give me something to take away with me besides your medal of St. Christopher..."
She offered him her hps, instinctively, and naturally, but
there was no passion in her kiss, and he released her gently. Their time had run out. He must go tomorrow...
"Yes," he said, touching her lips, "Prunella - a sleeping Princess. Sleep till the spring, Shelley. Goodbye, my dear..."
She walked away from him slowly and looked back once. He was still standing by the water watching her, and so great was her desire to turn back to him once more, that she started to run, blindly, in panic, through the rain.
Nicholas had just come in when she got back to the house and he observed her with thoughtful surprise.
"You seem very wet and out of breath," he remarked.
"I am out of breath," she said. "I've been running."
"Where have you been?"
"To Penzennen's Pool."
She took his hand and suddenly held it very tightly. He looked at her more closely.
"Did something frighten you on the moor?" he asked.
"No. No, nothing, Nicholas. I'm just out of breath, that's all," she said, and did not realize she was still clinging to his hand.
His eyes were thoughtful.
"I shall be staying at home for the rest of the day," he said. "Shall we have a lazy afternoon together? Perhaps you'll play for me."
"Yes - I should like that," she said with a little sigh, and felt suddenly safe.
January was a cold, wet month, with fog rolling across the moor from the Atlantic, and the gulls flying inland as far as Garazion where they circled, screaming round the house for food. Shelley and Martin were much indoors at this time, for the boy had a series of colds and bronchial attacks brought on by the damp weather. They would sit alone in the high room with its tapestries, and formal, unchildlike furniture, while rain beat on the tall windows, or fog silently embraced the house, causing the lamps to be lighted at half-past three.
Very occasionally, Nicholas would join them, and sit, silent in the shadows, listening to Shelley reading fairytales. He would watch them, curled up together in one big chair, the firelight glancing on their absorbed faces, their two heads close, the one so dark, the other so fair, and his thoughts would stray, those thoughts which he found so impossible to put into words to his young wife.
Phrases from the story would fall on him at random: A bride for me before a bride for you ... Supposing he had said that to Justin so long ago ... As soon' as the door was shut, the Lindworm turned to her and said, "Fair maiden, shed a shift." The shepherd's daughter answered him, "Prince Lindworm, slough a skin ..." But how to slough a skin? How to slough the defensive skins of years, the ugliness of bitterness no less than the ugliness of the flesh?
"Poor Lindworm," he said when the story was finished, and Shelley looked across at him in surprise.
"But it was quite all right in the end," she said seriously. "He was only enchanted, you see."
He smiled a little crookedly in the shadows.
"It's so simple in fairytales, isn't it?" he said. "You make the right spells, say the right words, and lo! the enchantment is ended."
Martin said, his eyes enormous with a new idea;
"Are you enchanted, Uncle Nick?"
Nicholas rose abruptly to his feet.
"Yes, Martin, perhaps I am," he said and left them.
He had always been reluctant to take Shelley over the clay works, saying that visitors were not encouraged, but one day, when the weather was better, he gave in to her request, agreeing that she had been cooped up in the house too long.
He showed her everything, explaining with meticulous care the whole process of the china-clay industry. She watched, fascinated, the clay stream flowing through the mica drags, like a slow river of snow, and the china-clay churning and frothing like cream as the monitor washed it from tank to pit. She held the fine, powdery stuff in her hands, letting it sift through her fingers, wondering what delicate porcelain it would ultimately fashion, carried across the seas in the little coasters.
The foreman was a nice little Cornishman who looked at Shelley with polite curiosity, and gave her, at parting, a charming piece of pottery which had been made at the works.
"What's in there?" she asked Nicholas as they passed a small building which she had not been taken inside. "The laboratory," he replied. "Can I go in?"
"No," he said a little shortly. "There's nothing to interest you - only test tubes and a lot of paraphernalia."
"But I should like to see the clay being tested," she said with interest.
He took her arm and turned her from the place.
"I don't want you inside there," he said.
"'Tes safe enough, sir, these days," the foreman said, but Nicholas replied curtly:
"A laboratory is never safe for the novice. You should know that, Trevena."
"Yes, sir, but that time was twelve years ago, and Mr. Justin told not to meddle - "
"That'll do," Nicholas said, "It's time we went home, Shelley. There's nothing more for you to see."
They drove in silence for the first few miles across the moor. Shelley glanced at Nicholas' dark profile. The disfigured side of his face was nearest her and she could see the deep puckering of the skin, the slight lift to lip and eyebrow, dragging both out of line. Twelve years ago...
"Did something happen in the laboratory?" she asked quietly.
He did not take his eyes off the road.
"Yes, there was an explosion."
"Is that how it happened - your face, I mean?"
"Yes," he said again, "that's how it happened."
"Oh, how terrible," she said softly, thinking of the agony he must have endured. "Why did the foreman say your brother had been told not to meddle? Did he cause the accident?"
His face twitched.
"Justin was ignorant - and pigheaded," he said shortly. "Fortunately, he wasn't hurt. More fortunately still, neither was Lydia."
"Martin's mother? Was she there?"
"Yes, she was there."
He remembered them so vividly; Lydia, the charming visitor, exclaiming, asking soft questions, just as Shelley had done, and Justin, debonair, stubborn, showing off in front of Lydia.
Shelley's hand was on his knee.
"I'm sorry," she said gently. "I wouldn't have asked you to take me if I'd known."
"It's of no consequence now," he said. "But I'm running no risks for you, my dear."
The days passed uneventfully into February, and Nicholas! was away from home again. Shelley missed him this time. With no other distraction she had little to occupy her thoughts but the picture of Nicholas she was slowly piecing together. Such intimate knowledge of him as she possessed had only been gathered through the unguarded moments of others. Nicholas himself, unless directly approached, had seldom hinted at the bitter circumstances which had made him what he was, only through Baines, and even the boy, Martin, did she learn to know him better. She sometimes questioned Baines about those early days, as they worked together, tending the contents of Nicholas' cabinets, and slowly a picture formed of the two brothers and the young Lydia who had laughed and teased them and been like a spoilt only sister until one of them had fallen in love with and married her.
"Mr. Justin was always the gay one, reckless and on for a lark, you might say," the old man told her. "But Mr. Nicholas was the unselfish one, and the stronger of the two. We always thought it was Mr. Nicholas that Miss Lydia preferred, but there, she was fond of them both, and it was Mr. Justin she married, and now she's dead, poor soul."
Shelley paused in her work, fingering the delicate pattern of Imari porcelain, unaware of its texture. Had both brothers been in love with Lydia so many years ago, and was that why Nicholas sometimes looked at Martin with such sadness? Lydia's child, who might have been his, a dark Penryn so like them all; and she remembered him on Christmas morning watching the boy playing in the snow and saying: "He might have been my son."
Her fingers tightened on the thin plate which snapped in her hands, and she burst into tears.
"Oh, dearie me! How did that happen?" murmured Baines, but he was more distressed at her tears that at the loss of the plate. "Don't take on so, miss, dear - I should say, ma'am. Accidents will happen. Mr. Nicholas will understand."
"It's I who don't understand Mr. Nicholas," she sobbed, trying to fit the two halves of the plate together. "Oh, poor Miss Lydia... poor Nicholas..."
"There, there, I've been upsetting you." Baines took the broken pieces from her and laid them carefully on a table. "It will mend, it's a clean break. Not the same, of course, to an expert, but it'll hardly show."
She sat on the floor looking up at him with drowned eyes.
"Why couldn't she have loved him best?" she said.
He looked back at her, puzzled, and a little embarrassed.
"Well, as to that, no one can say," he replied. "But it was all so long ago, and if Miss Lydia had married Mr. Nicholas and not Mr. Justin, where would you have been, ma'am?"
"Yes, where would I have been?" she echoed forlornly and scrambled to her feet.
When Nicholas came home she braced herself to tell him about the broken plate, but Baines had already done so.
"You shouldn't have been so upset, child," he said with concern. "The old man was most distressed about you. He thought he must have upset you in some way."
"Poor Baines. He was sweet. It was only that - "
"Only what?"
"It was only that I suppose I was careless," she said. "I'm so very sorry, Nicholas. One of the Imari plates, too. First Martin, and then me. We must be a couple of hooligans."
He brushed the hair from her puckered forehead, and his smile was tender.
"My dear child! There's nothing else worrying you, is there?"
"No, only" - she smiled nervously - "things go in threes, don't they? I hope there won't be a third breakage."
"Well, so do I for the matter of that. Now, take those worried puckers out of your forehead and come and see what I've brought you from London."
His presents were always delightful; sometimes a trinket,
sometimes a new scent bottle for her dressing table, or even a foolish toy which had taken his fancy. This time he had brought her a little sable muff, and she stood in the lamplight, holding it to her face and looking at him over the dark fur with eyes that were soft with pleasure.
"One day," he said, "I'll have you painted like that, with a muff held against you face."
She rubbed her cheek against the fur, then ran to him and put her arms round his neck, and he could feel the softness of the muff against his face.
How long, he thought, with sudden hunger, must this waiting be? Should he, at moments such as these, break down that reserve between them which he himself had created? Should he take what was his right, and watch, perhaps, the revulsion she would be unable to hide in her eyes? Slough a skin, Prince Lindworm... Gently he let her go.
"I'm glad you're pleased," he said. "Next time I'll find you something to go with it."
Early in February a cable came from India to say that Frances Penryn's baby was born, and a week later Nicholas had a brief letter telling him that Justin was to be moved next month.
"Soon we will be able to send for Martin," she wrote. "Tell him his baby sister is a pet and don't let him be jealous."
It was strange, thought Shelley, that it was always Frances who wrote and never Justin. Was the shadowy ghost of Lydia still between them? she wondered. Yet Justin had married again; Justin had forgotten ...
"Do you think Martin will mind?" she asked Nicholas,
"His nose may be a little out of joint at first," he replied with a smile, "but he'll be used to the idea by the time he gets to India, and Frances is a sensible woman; she won't let him, feel neglected."
"Do you think they'll send for him soon?"
"In a month or so, I expect."
It was the first time that she had fully realized the boy would have to leave them. He had meant so much to her in her solitude that it was impossible to imagine that familiar wing shrouded and untenanted. Then she would, in truth, be alone with Nicholas through the long days and nights with no escape to turn to.
"When Martin goes, there'll be no one," she said.
"No one?" He held out a hand. "Shelley, come here ..."
She went to him slowly and he put an arm round her, drawing her down on to the arm of his chair.
"Ah, Shelley, how can I handle you?" he said. "Sometimes you're like Martin, just a little child with no thought, and sometimes you're almost a woman and full of flashes of wisdom. I think I was wrong at the very beginning."
The tears came now, quietly and gently, but he was not looking at her. He had never spoken to her quite like this before, and for a few moments she felt almost on the brink of discovering him for the first time.
"Do you mean," she asked forlornly, "that you were wrong to marry me?"
He sighed.
"Perhaps that, too. But having married you, I should have seen to it that you understood what I wanted of you."
"You seemed," she said, "to want nothing."
"My dear," he said gently, "have you understood me so little?"
He looked up then and saw her tears and the tiredness and bewilderment in her face. He pulled her down into his arms.
"Poor baby ..." he said. "You don't want a husband at all. You want a father and a mother and time to grow up. Well, I'll give you time, little one. Just be yourself and stop worrying."
She leant against his breast and knew again that sense of safety which she had experienced only with Nicholas.
"It's so hard to know how to treat you," she said. "You said you didn't want affection..."
"I said I didn't expect it, that's quite a different thing," he replied with sadness. "Could you ever feel affection for me, do you suppose, Shelley?"
"Oh, yes," she said. "Easily, if you would let me."
"Well, then, perhaps I've sloughed one skin."
"Sloughed a skin?"
"Yes, the Lindworm. Didn't he have to slough nine skins
before he won the maiden?"
"She whipped him with whips dipped in lye, then washed him all over with fresh milk," she said.
"It sounds a little drastic," he remarked mildly.
"It was to end the enchantment," she replied seriously. "Then he became a handsome young prince."
"Yes, well - I'm afraid that's beyond me." His voice was a little dry, and he kissed her wet cheek. "Now, run along to Martin while I do some work.
February was not a good month, but there were soft days when spring seemed not far distant, and Shelley and Martin walked in the garden, or played strange games of the boy's invention. Martin loved rhymes, and Shelley tried to remember all the old rhyming games she had played at the convent. They would chase each other through the plantation, chanting: "A Duck and a Drake,
And a half-penny cake,
And a penny to pay the old baker,
A hop and a scotch is another notch,
Slitherum, slatherum, take her!"
On wet days they would stop in Shelley's sitting-room and she would play him nursery rhymes and little chansonettes which delighted him. Once he asked her if Colin was coming back.
"Not yet," she replied. "Perhaps never." She did not think of Colin often, but she remembered vividly his bright blue eyes and the way they had crinkled in merriment.
"Was he just a magic?" Martin said, and she smiled a little wistfully and answered:
"Perhaps."
Then one morning, Nicholas came to her with a cablegram in his hand.
"Martin is to go home," he said, gently, because he knew it would hurt her. "When?" "Next week." Her eyes widened. "So soon?"
"Some friend of Frances' is going out with her own child and a nurse. They managed to get a passage for Martin. It seems a sensible arrangement."
"Yes," she said. "Yes..."
They did not tell him until a few days before he was to go. He watched Shelley with compassion, knowing that she would miss the boy, but knowing, too, that she might be dreading being left alone with him. He could not deny that for himself, Martin's departure would be a relief. He could have given him the affectionate tenderness which the sight of Lydia's child had first inspired in him, but the boy had not wanted him, and in a fashion Nicholas had never foreseen, he had been an unconscious barrier between himself and Shelley.
The last days were difficult for Martin was exacting. He demanded Shelley's attention at all times, even sneaking along to her room at night to slip into bed with her. Nicholas could hear them whispering together, but he gave no sign that he knew, except on the last night when he could hear them weeping. At one o'clock he got up and went into Shelley's room. In the light of his candle, they looked at him fearfully, their faces wet with tears.
"Martin, you must go back to your own room, now," he said. "You've got a journey tomorrow and you must get some sleep."
"Let him stay," Shelley said. "I'll get him to sleep." Nicholas put down the candle.
"No, my dear, you're tired out. Come along, Martin. I'll carry you back."
He came in to her again before going back to his own room, and sat on the bed for a few moments.
"Is he all right?" she asked.
"He was asleep before I left him," Nicholas told her gently. "Now, I want you to do the same."
"Yes, Nicholas," she said, and closed her eyes. She felt his hand, warm and firm on one of hers, and later she opened her eyes and said:
"I wish you'd let me come to London with you tomorrow." He shook his head.
"Much better not. Prolonged farewells are always painful.
I shall only be away a couple of nights - or would you rather I stayed away longer?"
Her hand twisted in his and she linked her fingers with his.
"No," she said. "Come back to me soon." He bent to kiss her.
"Now sleep, and remember - there can be other Martins," he said, but she was too tired to take his meaning, and by the morning she had forgotten.
They were all in the porch to see the boy off; Baines, Mrs. Medlar, even old Isaac. In the sudden excitement of his own importance, Martin forgot to be tearful, and although he clung to Shelley and hugged her tightly, he was anxious now for the new adventure to begin. Shelley watched the car drive away, old Isaac hobbling after it to close the gates, and surprised a look of real regret on Mrs. Medlar's face.
"You'll miss him," she said softly.
"Well, you get used to a child," the housekeeper replied, shutting the front door.
"Yes. I'll miss him too. It'll be lonely here without the boy," Shelley said.
Mrs. Medlar glanced at her, and smiled a little slyly.
"Well, that's easily remedied, ma'am," she said, and went upstairs.
Isaac said much the same to her, only more bluntly, when she met him later in the morning, as she wandered idly round the garden.
"No use frettin' after other folks' brats," he said. "Have one of your own. You and maister ev been married this seven months. Time you was startin' a family. Not but what you look like the breeding sort to me," he eyed her slight figure disparagingly. "Still, you never can tell."
"Yes, Isaac," she said, and began to walk away, but he called after her.
"That young fellow I seed you with at Christmas - like Mr. Justin again, he was." "Mr. Justin?" She paused.
"They used to meet in the summer-house just the same as you. Promised to maister she was, but she'd meet Mr. Justin
in the summer-house and they'd laugh and kiss. I know, I seed 'em."
Shelley came back. "Do you mean Miss Lydia had been going to marry Mr. Nicholas?" she asked, but the old man spat over his shoulder and started to wander away.
"'Tes foolish talk," he muttered, "'Tes proper foolish talk."
Shelley went thoughtfully back to the house. Was there, she wondered, more in that old relationship than she had always supposed? Had Nicholas, too, been in love with his cousin and lost her to his more attractive brother?
But introspection vanished when she got back to the house and found a letter from her father. Lucius wanted to come and stay for a few days. Might he come tomorrow and would she please arrange about having him met at the station? She had tried so often to get her father to Garazion that now he was actually coming she could scarcely believe it was true. For a moment she wondered if Nicholas had arranged the visit for such an opportune time, knowing she would be lonely. She sent a telegram at once telling him to come, and spent the rest of the day choosing which room he should have, what he should have for dinner his first night; even what she should wear to grace the occasion. She was glad she would have him to herself for twenty-four hours before Nicholas returned.
He arrived a little fretful after his long journey, complaining of the cold and the indifferent dining-car service on the train, but he returned Shelley's welcome with graciousness, and when he heard that Nicholas was away from home until the next day he seemed to forget his complaints and expressed much pleasure that he was to have his daughter alone for a little while.
"That was charmingly thoughtful of Nicholas," he remarked stretching his legs to the library fire, and reaching for the decanter which Shelley had placed at his elbow. "Now, let me look at you, my child. Yes, charming ... charming ... you certainly pay for dressing, Shelley. Who makes your clothes?"
"I don't know," she said indifferently. "Nicholas has them made somewhere in London."
Lucius' eyebrows rose.
"You mean he chooses your clothes?" "He designs most of them."
"Good gracious me!" Lucius looked amused. "Still, it's in character, I suppose. Are you still part of the collection, my sweet?"
He saw the momentary uneasiness in her face and changed the conversation immediately. Time enough to satisfy his latent curiosity. He had not particularly wanted to come to Garazion and meet his son-in-law again, but he was bored, and London was expensive; he was curious to see how this odd marriage was working out, and he hoped to borrow money from his daughter.
"And where is the good Nicholas?" he enquired. "Or have you become the discreet wife who never asks her husband questions?"
"He's taken Martin - the little boy I wrote to you about -to London to hand him over to some friend of his mother's who's taking him out to India."
"Well, that, I should think, is a relief," remarked Lucius, yawning. "Other people's children always underfoot can become a frightful bore."
"It wasn't like that at all, " she said. "I loved Martin. I shall miss him very much,''
"To be sure," said Lucius, looking at her curiously. "I'd forgotten. Take me round this mansion of yours and show me where I'm to sleep. I should like a bath."
After dinner he inspected the portraits, having some apt comment for each one. The excellent dinner had filled him with a glow of well-being; the lovely old silver and glass had delighted his eye, and Baines pouring wine at his elbow had given him the right feeling of importance. After all he might extend his visit; the house was extremely comfortable, and the good living would cost him nothing.
"You know," he said, "I was wiser than I thought when I persuaded you into this marriage. I'd no idea Old Nick did himself quite so well. Where's his august portrait, by the way?"
"There isn't one. At least, I believe he was painted as a very young man, but he had it taken away after - after the
accident," Shelley said.
"Really? Understandable, I suppose. No one wants to live with a constant reminder of what they once were. Who's this young spark?"
"That's Justin Penryn - Martin's father."
"O-ho! The handsome younger brother!" Lucius looked more closely. "Yes, I can see some women would fall for him. The girl was scarcely to be blamed in the circumstances."
"What girl, Father?" asked Shelley quickly.
"The cousin - the one that died - what was her name?"
"Lydia Penryn?"
"Yes, Lydia. Ran off with young Justin right under his brother's nose, so I'm told."
She stood with her back to Justin's portrait and said gravely: "Father, was Nicholas in love with Lydia?" He regarded her with amusement.
"Good gracious! Hasn't Nicholas told you that old story?" he exclaimed. "It was all in the best romantic tradition. It had always been understood in the family, apparently, that the girl would marry the elder brother -I think they were actually engaged when she changed her mind and ran off with the young one."
"But Father," she said slowly, "That must have been after the accident."
He was busy examining the next portrait and was not looking at her.
"Of course it was," he said. "I imagine the accident was mainly responsible. Nicholas can't have been a very pretty sight in those early days."
At the little exclamation of pain she gave, he turned and looked at her.
"Good gracious, my pretty, I've upset you!" he said. "It was bad luck on Old Nick, I'll admit. I believe he was very fond of her - but you can hardly blame the girl. It must have been a shock to her."
"And what about the shock to Nicholas - the double shock?" she said.
He began to wish he had not mentioned the thing at all.
"Well, it was all a long time ago, and the girl's dead," he
said impatiently. "You mustn't let yourself become morbid about things that don't really concern you. Nicholas must want to forget it or he'd have told you the story himself. Now, for heaven's sake, let's get back to the library fire and talk about pleasanter matters."
She followed him to the library, but all the time he was gossiping idly about his affairs she was scarcely listening. So much that she had not understood in Nicholas was made plain. The hermit's life he had led for so long, the concentration on beauty which was inanimate, the repudiation of love, even of affection, because one woman had found him repulsive. Even Lydia's child had shared that distaste, and it was clear now why Martin's behaviour had held such a sting for him. Shelley's whole being was outraged by the dead Lydia's cruelty, and could Nicholas have come home that night, she thought she could have told him all that was in her heart.
"Shelley, you're not listening," Lucius complained a little fretfully.
"I'm sorry, Father," she said. "What were you saying?"
"I was asking you if you could let me have a little ready cash before I go back. London's damned expensive these days, and you can't have many personal expenses, living here."
"I never have any money," she said simply.
Lucius' eyebrows climbed to his silver hair.
"But surely Nicholas makes you an allowance?"
"No. He's never suggested it, and I've never asked him."
He frowned.
"But this is all wrong. Every woman should have some independence these days. Nicholas can well afford to make you a handsome allowance. I shall speak to him about it."
"No, please don't," she said quickly. "I have all I need he's most generous."
"You've scarcely all you need if you can't even spare a tenner for your poor old father!"
She moved restlessly. This was a mood she instinctively distrusted in him. The early warmth and sweetness of their reunion seemed to have vanished, and his manner had the brittle quality of the days when he had been trying to persuade her to marry Nicholas.
"If you're hard up, Father," she said gently, "I'm sure Nicholas would help you. Shall I ask him, if you don't care to?"
Her father's smile was slightly cynical.
"No, I don't think so. We'll have to think of some other way," he said, and immediately set out to charm her again by being the tender parent. Whatever the effort, he must keep her sympathy and establish his right to first place in her affections, for he did not believe that Nicholas had touched them deeply.
All the next day he was the delightful companion she had always hoped for, and her sadness at Martin's departure went in the pleasure of his unexpected company. By the time Nicholas returned they were established in an intimacy that was not as irksome to Lucius as he had feared it would be. He had to admit that Shelley's desire to please him was very charming, and for a few days, at any rate, he was content to play the father of her expectations.
When Nicholas returned in the evening, Shelley came flying across the hall to meet him in the way he had come to look for. His heart lifted at the happiness in her face. She had missed him as he hoped she might. Now that the boy was gone he was all she had, and the knowledge filled him with tenderness for her.
"How are you, sweetheart?" he said, holding out his arms, and it was the first time he had ever used any intimate endearment for her.
"Nicholas!" she cried, catching himeagerly by the shoulders, "What do you think? Father's here. Isn't it lovely? I haven't been lonely at all."
His arms slackened about her. So the happiness had not been for him.
"Yes, well, that's nice for you," he said. "Did you send for him?"
"No. He just sent a letter. He couldn't have chosen a more appropriate moment, could he?"
He couldn't have chosen a more damnable moment, thought Nicholas grimly. Lucuis wandered into the hall.
"Good evening," he said, smiling a little puckishly. "I hope
the unexpected guest doesn't inconvenience you."
"Of course not. How are you, Lucius? Shelley has been hoping for some time that you would come down," Nicholas replied and shook hands.
"Drinks are in the study," Shelley said, and slipped a hand through her father's arm. They walked together into the study and Nicholas followed them.
Shelley began to ask questions about Martin. How had he behaved? Was his new guardian nice? Did he mind parting from Nicholas? He gave her satisfactory answers to all her questions, and she looked relieved, but he knew, that for the present at any rate, the boy was a secondary consideration. He watched Shelley and her father together with faint misgiving. Lucius had clearly been putting on an act ever since he arrived, and no one could do it better, but Nicholas distrusted his father-in-law's motives when he set out to please, and it hurt him to see how eagerly Shelley responded to the smallest attention.
Lucius was wandering round the room examining Nicholas' pieces with an appraising eye. His knowledge of such things was superficial, but he had always made it his business to be able to talk intelligently about the arts.
He paused before the Bartolozzi print and exclaimed:
"That's new, isn't it? A Bartolozzi, and a very fine one at that. What a pity it lacks its margin."
Shelley looked up quickly.
"Does it matter?" she asked.
"To a connoisseur, yes," Lucius replied, delighted to air his knowledge. "A print minus the margin loses most of its value, isn't that so, Nicholas?"
She looked at Nicholas and her eyes were dismayed.
"Is that true?" she asked.
His regard was gentle.
"Well, yes," he said. "But it doesn't matter, Shelley."
"Oh, it does, it does," she cried, and at her father's enquiring look, added humbly: "I - I had the margins cut to fit the frame, and Nicholas never breathed a word."
"How very restrained," remarked Lucius with a quirk of the eyebrow. "You're a little vandal, I'm afraid, my child."
"It doesn't matter," Nicholas said again. "The frame was
a present I value very much. By the same token, here's a present for you." He took a small parcel from his pocket and tossed it into her lap with a reassuring smile.
"Well, I must say that's very handsome - very handsome indeed," said Lucius, his eyes on the delicate, jewelled bracelet which Shelley lifted from its case.
"Oh, Nicholas, it's lovely," she said, and held out her wrist for him to snap the bracelet on.
"Well," said Lucius with his crooked smile. "You may keep her short of cash, but I must say you make up for it in other ways. That trifle must have cost you a pretty penny."
Nicholas snapped the clasp with fingers that were suddenly clumsy.
"Has Shelley complained I keep her short of cash?" he asked suavely, and she said at once, distressed:
"Oh, no, Nicholas. I told Father I don't need money."
"No, no, my dear Nicholas, it's I who complain," Lucius said with his old impudence.
"Father, please - " Shelley began, when Baines came into the room carrying a hat-box.
"Good evening, Mr. Nicholas, sir. Is this to go to madam's room?"
"Yes," said Nicholas shortly, but Shelley snatched it from the old man, as much to relieve her own embarrassment as anything else.
"Another present!" she cried, and lifted a little hat of sable fur, shaped like a bonnet, from its layers of tissue paper.
"Oh, how perfectly charming!" she said, and put it on, tying the ribbons under her chin.
Nicholas smiled unwillingly. It was impossible to be churlish, with Shelley standing there, looking at him, the dark fur framing her fair face with such flattering charm.
"It suits you very well," he said. "You remember I told you I would find you something to go with the muff."
"Yes, but two such lovely presents!" she said, and Baines, smiling affectionately in the background, asked.
"What shall I do with the flowers, ma'am?"
"Oh, shove them in water somewhere," said Nicholas, embarrassed. He had never meant to do his present-giving
under Lucius' amused eyes.
"No," Shelley said, "I want to see them. You're never given me flowers before, Nicholas."
There was a little silence while Baines went to fetch the box. Nicholas, aware of Lucius' curious regard, avoided his eyes, while Shelley stood fingering the strings of her bonnet and looking from one to the other of them with a puzzled expression.
The flowers were roses, white, hot-house roses with long stems. There must have been quite four dozen of them.
"Oh!" said Shelley, flushing unaccountably, "How perfectly lovely! I shall have them all in my sitting-room."
Lucius watched and made no comment, but his eyes, resting on Nicholas, were bright with an incredulous interest. After seven months of marriage, this! Poor devil, thought Lucius, with a rare flash of understanding, he had intended this to be a special occasion, and Lucius himself had spoilt it. Oh, well, life was full of special occasions which did not come off.
"I'd better go and change," Nicholas said, getting to his feet. "Help yourself to another drink, Lucius."
Lucius stayed with them for five days, and by the end of that period he felt he had entirely satisfied his curiosity, and was beginning to find his role of understanding parent a little trying to support, also it was deadly dull at Garazion. He tried to picture anyone less sheltered and unsophisticated than Shelley putting up with such a life, and failed. Either Nicholas was extremely clever in the odd fashion one would expect to go with the rest of his character, or he was a fool. Some day, someone would break into this prison fastness and be mightily intrigued by the situation he found there. You could not lock your wife away from the world indefinitely, even someone so undemanding as Shelley, and there must come a time when someone or something would wake her up.
He touched very lightly upon such matters to Nicholas, but found him no easier to approach than of old.
"You wouldn't understand, Lucius," he said patiently. "You and I want such different things of life."
"I never thought you wanted anything of life, shut away here
with all your valuables," returned Lucius.
"Well, you don't know me very well, do you?"
"Neither, I observe, does my daughter."
"No." Nicholas' face was impassive. "She doesn't know me very well, either."
"Well, my dear chap, do you think you're going the right way about things?" Lucius smile was entirely charming. "When all's said and done, it can't be very amusing for a young girl shut up here with no companionship - not even any money. I think you should remedy that, Nicholas. All women like to have a little something of their own to spend and no questions asked."
"Hard up again, Lucius?" asked Nicholas pleasantly. Lucius looked a little ruffled.
"My dear chap! I was thinking entirely of Shelley, though now you come to mention it, I could do with a loan."
"That's what you came for, wasn't it?" Nicholas' face hardened, and his scar was ugly. "You don't give a damn what happens to Shelley so long as you get something out of it, though I'm well aware you've gone over big this time. If you want money, why can't you ask me outright instead of trying to drag your daughter into it?"
Lucius spread his hands.
"Well, the last time-"
"The last time I turned you down, didn't I? My dear Lucius, I already allow you two thousand a year. That should be sufficient for your needs, but if you're hard up again, I'll help you this time on condition you keep away from Shelley."
Lucius looked pained.
"My dear fellow! Rather a curious condition, isn't it? My own daughter..." Nicholas' eyes were cold.
"It would be curious if you were anyone else. But you're not good for Shelley. You set up false standards for yourself, then, when it suits you, don't trouble with her at all. I don't want her to be hurt unnecessarily."
"Well," said Lucius gracefully, "since you put it that way - your family mansion isn't exactly exhilarating in any case. How much?"
"How much do you want?"
"Five hundred?"
Nicholas' eyebrows went up.
"Been going it rather, haven't you?"
"My own pet charities," Lucius said, with his old insolent grin. "It won't break you, my dear chap. That little trifle you bought for Shelley must have cost you all of that."
"I'll let you have a cheque before you go," Nicholas said quietly. "But remember this. I'm making her no allowance so long as I know you'll have access to it, so stop putting the idea into her head, will you?"
"Oh, you needn't worry. She's touchingly grateful for your generosity. It's a pity you don't make out quite so well on other matters."
"And who do you think I have to thank for that?" asked Nicholas violently. "I have to be father and mother as well as husband to her."
"And - er - lover, too, I hope," said Lucius gently.
Nicholas got up and left the room.
"I won't be seeing you again for a long time, my sweet" Lucius said to Shelley the day he left.
She lifted clouded eyes to his. Already the weight of his departure lay heavily upon her. He had been so very sweet.
"Oh, why?" she asked. "I know it's rather dull for you here, but you'll come for my sake, won't you - just for a few days?"
"It's for your sake I mustn't come," he said lightly. "How do you mean?"
"Your lord and master thinks I'm bad for you." She looked incredulous.
"Nicholas said that? Do you mean he told you you weren't to come again?" Lucius shrugged.
"But - but he wouldn't." She sounded bewildered. "Why should he?"
"I told you, he thinks I'm no good to you."
"Father, you must have misunderstood him."
"Well, ask him, my pet. I don't think he'll deny it. Do you find him attractive, Shelley?"
She frowned, still thinking of other things. "No, I don't think so." "But not actually repulsive?"
"Oh, no. Perhaps a little, just at first, but he's so good to me, and I'm sorry for him." Lucius' voice was dry.
"I shouldn't think he wants that. Women, you know, have found him very attractive, in spite of his face. He would be a good lover, I imagine."
She considered this.
"But he's so cold, so remote," she said.
Lucius threw up his hands.
"Cold! My poor child, where's your knowledge of men! Oh, of course, you haven't any, but try and employ a little of that feminine intuition we hear so much about. You're my daughter, Shelley. You can't be entirely lacking in sensibility."
He looked at his daughter and decided that if he were married to Shelley he would want to shake her. It hardly seemed possible that she should be so unaware of the man's feelings for her. Nicholas must have bungled things pretty badly to start with. Well, it was none of his business. He had only probed from curiosity, and he had no particular reason for wishing his son-in-law well.
"Sometimes - " she began slowly, and stopped. Not even to Lucius could she explain her muddled thoughts about Nicholas.
He patted her hand.
"Get him to take you about more, and persuade him to give you an allowance. I assure you it's perfectly normal, and he can well afford it," he said and she replied quickly.
"I'm so sorry I couldn't help you, Father. Perhaps if I asked Nicholas - "
"No, no, it doesn't matter. I'll manage," said Lucius, and dropped a light kiss on the top of her head.
When Lucius had gone, Shelley went up to her own sitting-room and stayed there until dinner-time. Nicholas left her alone, guessing she would miss her father. He could hear the sound of her piano as he went upstairs to dress for dinner.
She was very silent as they sat together in his study. She was
wearing a dress he was particularly fond of, black velvet and full, which made her fairness even more startling.
"A penny for them?" he said, trying to rouse her.
"I was thinking," she said slowly, "that in all these seven months I've hardly been outside Garazion."
He studied her carefully.
"Have you wanted to go away?" he asked.
"No - not really. There was Martin."
"Oh, yes, of course. There was Martin."
"Would you take me with you, sometimes, when you go away?"
"Yes, I'll take you if you wish," he said after a slight hesitation. "Are you tired of Garazion?"
"Of course not, but - " she flushed suddenly and stumbled over her next words. "Do - do you think I could have a little money sometimes?"
He looked surprised.
"What do you want money for? You only have to ask me for anything you need."
She bent her head, and the fine, soft hair fell forward over her face, hiding it from him.
"I know. You're very generous," she said. "But it isn't the same."
"You mean you want an allowance?"
"Well, Father said it was usual."
"I'm sure your father would think so," he said dryly. "No, Shelley, I won't give you an allowance." She looked up quickly. "Why not?"
"I have my reasons. If you should ever want money, you have only to ask me. Is that so embarrassing for you? I'm your husband, you know."
"It's not that." She sounded a little miserable. "It's times like Christmas. I - I have nothing to give. It isn't the same when you do all the choosing."
His face softened. Yes, he should have thought of that. " "I'm sorry, my dear," he said gently. "I'll see that things are different next year. Is there anything else?"
"No, only - I hated to send Father away empty-handed today,"
Nicholas' eyes grew hard.
"Your father didn't go away empty-handed, as it happens," he replied.
"Did you help him?" she said, surprised. "He never told me."
"No, I don't suppose he would." She looked at him with troubled eyes. "Don't you like Father?" she asked.
It was a difficult question to answer, and in his momentary hesitation and the guarded expression of his eyes, she read hostility.
"You don't, do you?" she accused, before he could speak. "Is that why you don't want him here?" He was silent and she said slowly: "Is it true that you told my father he wasn't to come back here?"
Nicholas moved restlessly. What devil's brew had Lucius cooked up, now?
"It's true that I told him I thought it best if he stayed away for a while, yes," he said quietly.
"But why-why?"
"Reasons I can't explain."
"Reasons you don't want to explain," she retorted, bitterly hurt.
"Very well. Reasons I don't want to explain at present," he said.
She sat stiff and straight in the firelight and there were two angry spots of colour in her cheeks.
"I don't understand you," she said. "You shut me up here with all these - all these" - she gestured a little helplessly -"things, and you even grudge me a few days' happiness ..."
"I don't think I've grudged you much," said Nicholas, watching her.
"Oh, presents - things again!" She was talking at random, saying the first thing that came into her head. "But the things that matter - I seem to have none of the things that matter."
"And what do you consider are the things that matter?"
She remembered Lydia and what she had done to Nicholas, she and Justin together.
"All the things that no longer matter to you," she said and stood up. "I think I'll go to bed, if you don't mind."
"How do you know what matters to me?" he asked gravely. "Shelley dear, come here..."
But she shook her head. Her little spurt of anger was gone now, and she only wanted to weep in solitude.
"I'm tired," she said. "Good night, Nicholas. I - I'm sorry if I was rude to you."
He wanted to take her in his arms, to tell her that the small flash of anger after so much careful politeness made her very lovable, and to ask her what she thought were the things which no longer mattered to him. But it was not the right moment. Lucius had clearly been disturbing her with his little hints and half-truths. It would be wiser to let her go.
"Good night, my dear," he said, and she missed the intense weariness in his voice.
It was a discouraging period for Nicholas. He realized that he must recover again the ground that he had lost in some way through Lucius' intervention, and it was unfortunate that at this time he was obliged to be much at the works, as his foreman was away, ill. It meant leaving Shelley for the greater part of the day at a time when he particularly wanted to establish a better relationship with her, and there were evenings, too, when he had to get through a great amount of paper work, and he would listen to the strains of her piano in the distance, and wonder if he had been fair to marry her.
To Shelley the days seemed very long. She would wander round the house, exploring the empty rooms, and one day she found a picture behind an old settee, its face turned to the wall. She dragged it out, idleness making her mildly curious, and propped it up against a chair, facing the light.
At first she did not recognize the face that looked gravely back at her, then with a sudden little intake of breath she realized that it was Nicholas. Here then was what he had looked like in those far-off days when the laughing Lydia had loved him, and cruelly left him. She sat for a long time on the floor, staring at the portrait, and pity filled her heart. This was Nicholas as he should have been, without the twisted features, and above all without the bitterness. Even at that age it had been a grave face, with a strength and gendeness that was lacking in Justin's portrait, but his attraction was undeniable. This was a man, Shelley thought, with surprise, who might well have had any woman he chose to love. She put the picture back where she had found it, and turned the canvas gently to the wall.
Often when he was out those wild March days, she would come to the deserted room with its shrouded furniture, its tall windows bare of curtains, and look at the picture. It seemed sad to her that it should lie there, abandoned and forgotten, and she would dust it tenderly and prop it up in different lights, studying each line of the face until she knew it by heart. Often now, she would look at Nicholas, when he was preoccupied with something else, and see, not the disfigurement which had at first repelled her, but the young, unblemished face of the portrait. It was a curious experience and she was reminded of the princess in Riquet of the Tuft who had been given the gift of making whoever she loved as handsome as she pleased: "Could you love me enough to do that?" "I think I could" said the princess, and her heart being softened towards him, she wished that he might become the handsomest prince in all the world...
Could love do that? she wondered, startled. Were all fairytales which ended in the disenchantment of the beast only an exposition of the loving heart?
Once he caught her looking at him with that strange, startled expression, and said, frowningly:
"What is it, Shelley? Haven't you got used to my face by now?"
It was one of those impatient, bitter little remarks he still made to her when his mind was occupied with other things.
"You think too much about your face," she said gently. "These things don't matter."
He looked at her, shaken for the moment out of his preoccupation.
"I've found, unfortunately, that it has mattered very much," he said.
"I think," Shelley ventured a little shyly, "you've allowed it to matter more than it should. Nicholas - " Suddenly she longed to be able to talk to him without that barrier of remoteness which he had built between them. "Talk to me, sometimes - really talk, I mean. Tell me about yourself."
"What do you want to know?" He sounded impatient and a little puzzled. He had formed the habit of thinking of her as a child he must treat with dispassionate care, and his mind was already half on his work.
She made a little movement as though she would go to him, then sat, quietly, her hands folded in her lap. The things she wanted him to speak of had been locked away for years. Perhaps he had already forgotten, perhaps he still remembered Lydia...
"It doesn't matter," she said. "If you want to work, Nicholas, don't pay any attention to me."
"Well, there are one or two things. I'm afraid I'm neglecting you, my dear, but Tregenna will be back in a week or so. I'll be freer next month."
Later, he remembered the small interchange and wondered if he had been a fool, but so much to do with the business was occupying his thoughts just now that it was difficult to preserve a balance.
Once he caught her in the room where the portrait was, and asked:
"What on earth are you doing in here?"
She looked suddenly guilty, and his eyes fell on the portrait propped up against a chair.
"Oh, you've found that, have you?" he said. "Not much resemblance now, I'm afraid. Has it given you a shock?"
"No," she replied. "I found it weeks ago. I often come up here to look at it."
His thick eyebrows lifted.
"Well, I consider that to be very foolish. I'll have it taken away," he said.
"No, please -" she said quickly. "Can I - I would like to have it in my sitting-room, if you don't want it."
"No," he said curtly. "No, I shouldn't care for that at all. It's best forgotten."
In these moods she could not reach him. Indeed she came to think he could feel no more for her than the possessive pride which he took in his collection. He gave her the same thought and care that he afforded to his most delicate porcelain. He would turn her round, approving, or criticizing her clothes, add a jewel, or take one away with the same fastidious thought with which he arranged the pieces in his cabinets, and she grew stubbornly fond of the old skirts and sweaters which she wore in the garden, just as she clung obstinately to the muddled conglomeration of her sitting-room, despite all Nicholas' half-amused protests.
Towards the end of the month a cable came from India to say that Martin had arrived safely, and Shelley felt a stab of nostalgia. Now, truly he was lost to her. He was safe with his parents and his new baby sister; Garazion was already a fading memory, with Mitzi, the cat, and Shelley, and the warm intimacy of months.
When Nicholas told her he must go away for a few days, she begged him to take her with him.
"You promised you would," she said, weary of the loneliness of the wind which never seemed to cease day after day.
"Not this time," he said absently. "I'm going north and it would be very dull for you."
"I wouldn't mind," she said, and it seemed to her suddenly that it was vitally important that this time he should not leave her behind.
"But I should," he told her lightly. "I shall be making business contacts all the time, and won't even have my evenings free. I shall have to go to London next month. I'll take you with me, then."
"I hope," she said, her voice trembling with unreasoning despair, "you won't be sorry."
His regard was tolerant and a little amused.
"I hope not," he said. "What are you imagining might happen while I'm away?"
"Anything," she said childishly. "I might drown in Penzennen's Pool."
"Oh, really, darling! If you feel you're likely to fall in the pool then keep away from it. What's happened to you, Shelley? You're not nervous at being left, are you?"
"No - not nervous exactly. I'm sorry, Nicholas."
The days seemed endless after he had gone, and when on the third day there was a telephone message from him saying he was obliged to stop away another week, she ran out on to the moor with the hot tears of disappointment streaming down her face. She came to Penzennen's Pool and stood in the wind staring into the dark, chill water, and remembering her absurd words to Nicholas before he went away. It would serve him right, she thought, if she really were to fall in and catch a chill, catch pneumonia, perhaps even die. She dipped the toe of her shoe in the water, then plunged her whole foot in and drew it out again quickly, crying out at the cold.
A voice behind her said:
"That's no way for a princess to behave!" And she whirled round, staring disbelievingly.
"Oh, Colin! Colin!" she cried with gladness, and ran straight into his arms.
"You've been crying," he said, touching her wet lashes.
"It was Nicholas," she laughed, accepting him happily as if she had seen him yesterday. "I thought he was coming home tomorrow and he's sent me a message to say he'll be away for another week."
"Oh, I see. And your husband's absence is a cause for tears these days, is it?"
"I was lonely. There's no one here now, you see. Martin has gone back to India."
"So you weep for your good man's return and find only me."
"But who else could I want to find more? When did you come? Why are you here?"
They were back at Polzeal, he told her, the same little band of players, opening in a fortnight with a month's repertory of old plays. He had, he said, already been twice to Penzennen's Pool to look for her.
"I never thought you'd come back," she sighed. "Martin said you were a magic."
"I told you I'd be back in the spring."
"Spring?" She looked at the rough March day and shivered.
"It will be April in three days. You'll be surprised how suddenly the moor can burst into spring.
"... And now all nature seemed in love; The lusty sap began to move; New juice did stir the embracing vines, And birds had drawn their valentines...' "
She remembered his habit of quoting and smiled. "Who wrote that?"
"I forget. You look pinched, my child. Has the winter been long?"
"Very long."
"Well, we have a week," he said lightly. "Let's make the most of it. I can borrow Jake's old car - you remember Jake, our producer? I'll bring a picnic tomorrow and we'll make a day of it."
He came every day, when they were not rehearsing, and wet or fine they drove about the countryside, discovering cromlechs and monoliths and forgotten hut-circles, and Shelley was entirely happy. Once they went to St. Bede and she showed him Gull Cottage and the little church where she had married Nicholas, and they ate winkles and raced along the wet sands, their feet bare, until Shelley laughingly complained of the chilly pools.
She returned each evening, ravenous for dinner and did not trouble to change, but sat down as she was in her rough sweater her hair still tumbled by the wind, and did full justice to Baines' offerings. The evenings were no longer lonely, for she curled contentedly by the fire and thought over the day that had been and the day that was to come, going early to bed and sleeping dreamlessly the night through. She wrote happily to her father, telling him of Colin's return and describing each day's small events with a wealth of detail which must have bored him mightily. But he replied graciously enough, told her that life was short and she should gather roses while she may, and, in any case, experience should be good for her.
To Lucius, yawning over his daughter's effusions, the situation had its pleasing side. He had no doubt that this young man's rather boring technique was merely leading up to a logical conclusion, and no one would be more delighted than he if his pompous son-in-law should be made a cuckold of. For two pins, he would have run down to Cornwall himself to see what was going on, except for the fact that Nicholas would be returning very shortly. Cromlechs indeed! In his young days it used to be etchings!
On the day before Nicholas came home, Colin and Shelley set out to explore the Pixie's Hole behind Garator. It was the first day of April to give real promise of spring, and the sky was a delicate ducks-egg blue, cloudless and tender. The moor seemed to have changed almost overnight and even Penzennen's Pool was tranquil and less forbidding.
"You see, I told you," Colin said, as Shelley exclaimed with pleasure. "April can work magic on the moor."
"All those little green bits - surely they weren't there yesterday," she said. "And look, Colin! There's a bird drinking
from the pool! That proves it's magic, or perhaps the enchantment's broken. Nicholas told me that the legend was that no living creature would drink from those waters."
"Like all legends, a little inaccurate, I expect," he said.
"No," she persisted. "I've never seen it before. It's an omen."
He glanced at her affectionately.
"An omen of what, you ridiculous child?"
"I don't know," she said, suddenly solemn. "But it's an omen just the same."
He was amused and a little touched by her belief in a miracle. Several times throughout the day she alluded to it and her mood seemed lifted and expectant, born of the small incident.
"You are a child, aren't you?" he said, when, after lunch, they lay in the heather in the mouth of the Pixie's cave and turned their faces to the thin spring sunlight. "I really do believe you take your magic seriously."
"Don't you?" she asked, stretching her arms above her head.
"There are different sorts of magic," he told her, cocking an eyebrow. "My own brand I take very seriously indeed." "What is your brand?"
"Never mind," he said, resisting temptation, because as yet he had no wish to precipitate matters between them.
He looked at Shelley, lying beside him, her arms stretched above her head, the grave, grey eyes fixed on the tender sky above her, and knew a moment's uneasiness. He had had many such affairs, but they had been different. Girls in the company, girls picked up in their various ports of call. On holidays they had gone and lain in the heather, or the hay. or the sand; whatever had offered for the occasion. But Shelley was not like these other girls, with her absurd magic, and her childlike pleasure in the moment, rather than the companion. He wondered idly about the dark Penryn. Did he not make love to his young wife? Did he not try to wake her from her long sleep?
"What do you do together, you and your husband?" he asked, curiously.
"Do?" She moved her head, savouring the thin warmth of
the sun. "We don't do anything."
"Don't you walk on the moor, discuss things, have fun together?"
"Nicholas is very busy. He's away a good deal, and he often works late in the evenings."
"Why did you marry him?" he asked. He had often wondered, for she clearly was not in love with her husband.
"My father wished it," she said, and he exclaimed a little incredulously:
"But my dear child, these aren't Victorian times! One doesn't marry because one's parents wish it!"
"No," she said, remembering Nicholas that hot evening when he had come to Gull Cottage for his answer. "And it wasn't quite like that, either. It was a sort of - personal compulsion - I can't explain, but Nicholas is like that. And I felt safe."
"Safe with the dragon?"
The light breeze stirred the fringe on her smooth forehead.
"He isn't really a dragon," she said. "He's been very much hurt. I think he once loved someone very deeply and she - she let him down when he most needed her."
"The cousin who ran away with the younger brother?"
She looked at him, startled.
"You know?"
"My dear, everyone knows in these parts. It's one of the local legends."
"I suppose so," she said, and sighed. "But Nicholas has never told me, himself. I should so like -" "Yes?"
"I should so like to make up to him."
He was silent, watching, as she was, a lark soar, singing into the sky, and watching, felt a little ashamed. However Penryn had managed things, she was still there for his taking, could, possibly, even love him if he took any trouble. Now was the time to leave her, now, with Nicholas coming home tomorrow.
"Have you still got my Crib?" he asked idly.
"I gave it to Martin when he went to India; he loved it so. You don't mind, do you?"
"I suppose not. I still have your medal of St. Christopher."
He pulled it out of a breast pocket and dangled it over her nose.
"I didn't want," she said, troubled for fear she might have hurt him, "to part with the Crib. I kept the donkey for remembrance."
For remembrance ... that's how it should be, he thought, and touched her cheek, gently.
"You're very sweet," he said. "I think we should be going home."
But at the gates of Garazion, he said, in spite of himself:
"I'll be at the pool most days, or, if you leave the small gate open, I'll go to the summer-house. If your husband's busy, you'll be lonely again."
"I think," she said, "I would like you to meet Nicholas. We must arrange it."
"Sometime," he said vaguely, and turned away across the moor to where he had left his car.
When Nicholas came back he regarded her with approval.
"You look much better," he said. "Have you been getting out more?"
"Nearly every day," she said, and he pinched her cheek. "See how wise I was not to take you with me to the dreary north. You're settling down more now, aren't you?" She slipped a hand through his arm.
"Oh, Nicholas!" she cried, "Couldn't we spend a day on the moor tomorrow? It's so lovely at the Pixie's Hole. We could take our lunch and lie in the heather."
"A little early for lying in the heather, don't you think?" he replied, "And I'm afraid I must go to the works tomorrow and make my report."
"Oh," she said and turned away.
He was busy for the next few days, and she and Colin walked on the moor, or met for a brief half-hour in the deserted summer-house. She was a little loath to meet him in the summer-house, perhaps, because so long ago, Lydia had met Justin there, and they had been lovers. She suggested once that he should come to tea and meet Nicholas when he got back from the works, but it was Colin now who did not wish to come to Garazion.
"You are half a fairytale, anyway," he told her whimsically, "Let's keep it a fairytale and not resort to social occasions."
Now, he had no desire to meet Nicholas and see him in relation to Shelley. You could not, he argued to himself, feel any obligation to a man you had never met.
Nicholas, watching Shelley, knew a fresh hope. He had been wise, he thought, to give her time. There was a new spontaneity about her, now; a grave gaiety which he found very charming. In a few weeks his press of work would ease up, in a few weeks she would be ready for him. He was often touched by her solicitude for him. She would look now for signs of weariness in his face when he returned from the works, and if she put it down to press of work rather than the strain of his home conditions, he had only himself to blame.
He said to her once, his eyes suddenly searching:
"Shelley, are you at last feeling a little - kindly fondness for me?"
She looked gravely up at him. For the first time he sounded to her as if he was seeking that affection which he had said he would never demand.
"Don't you know?" she said.
"I'd like you to tell me. Sometimes I feel I've cheated you pretty badly."
She wanted to say to him: "Because you can't love me as you once loved Lydia?" But the habit of reticence which he had unconsciously imposed upon her regarding himself was too strong for her. She leant against him and said gently: "You're bound up, somehow, with my father. I love you for all the things my father was not... can you understand?"
"I think so. But - love, Shelley?"
"Yes. He didn't want it. You don't want it, either, do you?"
His hand tightened on her shoulder.
"The love of a daughter? No, I'm not sure that I do," he said a little wryly. "But perhaps it's a beginning, and I might have made you hate me."
"No, you would never make me hate you. You just shut me out."
"Do I, Shelley? The habit of years is very strong, I suppose.
But you aren't the only one to feel that. You and Martin used to shut me out, you know."
She raised her face to look at him. It was one of those moments when she felt close to him.
"But did you mind?"
His smile was a little twisted.
"Yes, I think I did. You see, just as you wanted to love your father, so could I have loved that boy."
Lydia's child, she thought, looking away; the son that should have been his.
"I'm sorry," she said flatly. "I - I didn't mean to shut you out. I just didn't know you."
"And do you know me, now?'.'
"No," she said on a little sigh, "not very well."
He gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze.
"And that's entirely my own fault," he said briskly. "Now change your shoes and come for a walk with me before tea."
Shelley scarcely met Colin at all during this period. If he came to the summer-house, she did not know of it; her mind was much filled with Nicholas and the weariness which seemed to weigh him down just then, and her own desire to bring him comfort.
He came home very tired these days. Sometimes she would coax him to her sitting-room after dinner, and play for him, sometimes she would just drive him to bed and sit with him until he slept.
"You're a strange child," he told her once. "One moment you're like my daughter, and the next you're all woman and I seem to be your child."
"Isn't marriage like that?" she said gently.
He sighed and smiled.
"Perhaps. Have you no regrets, Shelley?"
"For marrying you? None. Have you?"
He stretched out a hand to her.
"I have all I hoped for," he said. "Indeed, more than I expected."
"Perhaps you didn't expect very much," she said, and added impulsively: "Tell me about Lydia." For a moment the hardness came back to his face.
"What do you know of Lydia?" he asked. "Only what everyone knows," she said gently. "The things you've never told me yourself." He said a little wearily: "What do you want to know?" "Did you love her very much?" "I suppose I did. It's so long ago."
"How did it happen - you and she - after the accident? You've never told me."
His eyes closed for a moment as if in pain.
"She came to see me," he said, and the old harshness was back in his voice. "I was still in the nursing home. They had taken the bandages off that morning. I suppose I wasn't - a very pretty sight, then. I never forget the look in her eyes, the way she cried out, or how she shrank from just my hands touching her. She married Justin a few weeks later. They didn't tell me until they'd left the country.
Her fingers tightened on his.
"She didn't love you, Nick."
He opened his eyes.
"You've never called me that before. I like it," he said. "Why don't you think Lydia loved me?"
"Because, if she had, what you had looked like then would have made no difference."
"What a romantic point of view!" he said with his old cynicism. "But we are all human, you know. We can't control what revolts us."
She felt suddenly shy.
"But if you love a person, nothing about them could revolt you," she said.
He looked at her then with his familiar piercing regard.
"Don't you think so, Shelley?" he said, then added gently; "But, you see, you've never been put to the test."
Her heart cried out against Lydia's cruelty, and she said a little timidly, for she was still unused to questioning Nicholas:
"Do you - do you still love her ?"
He laughed.
"Good heavens, no! I told you once before, I think, it's very easy to forget."
"But you haven't forgotten," she said softly. His eyes were faintly mocking.
"Well, one has one's vanities. It's easier, I expect, to remember a hurt to one's pride than to one's heart."
She was silent, wondering how she might touch his hurt, not knowing how easily, already, she could hurt him. Her eyes went to the Bartolozzi print and she said with pain.
"Every time I look at it, I'm reminded of my crime. I wish you'd take it down, Nicholas."
His eyes followed hers.
"I'll do nothing of the sort," he retorted. "And I suppose you won't believe me if I tell you that I value the frame more than the print."
"Because I gave it to you?"
"Exactly. Because you gave it to me."
"How nice you are," she said shyly.
He sighed sharply, unaccountably.
"I'm too old for you, my dear," he said, and his smile was a little sad. "I've forgotten how to play." She put out a hand and touched him gently. "You could learn," she said, and lifted her face to kiss him.
It was a wet April. Growing weather, old Isaac said, and indeed the moor seemed to change from day to day, just as Colin had said it would. Shelley loved to find thedelicate fronds of bracken ready to unfurl as soon as the sun came out. She took a little plot for herself in the garden, and sowed mignonette and candytuft and all the homely seeds of her childhood's memory.
Once she wandered down to the summer-house and found a note from Colin which was nearly a fortnight old saying he was busy rehearsing and could not get over for a while. She smiled as she slipped it in her pocket, thinking how little he suspected she had not been there to look for him. Some day, she thought idly, she would ask him to tea to meet Nicholas, and then laughed at the idea of anyone coming to tea at Garazion.
She stood that evening, fingering the coat of arms carved above the mantelpiece in the study.
"It's funny it should be dragons," she said to Nicholas.
"It's so appropriate."
He looked up, amused and a little sardonic.
"Is it?" he said. "Yes, I expect it is, since I'm married to you. Dragons and Lindworms and enchanted beasts. What breaks the enchantment, do you suppose?"
"Usually," she said, tracing out the stone motto with one finger, "it's a princess. When she loves the beast enough he becomes transformed."
His eyes watched her with dark thoughtfulness.
"So you think there's a moral in fairytales, do you?"
"I think," she said simply,"that they only point out that if you love enough, there is no such thing as ugliness."
She turned then, and stood there looking down at him, and her eyes, under the soft, straight fringe, were grave and a little shy.
"No," he said shortly, instinctively moving his head so that the disfigured side of his face was in shadow. "There are some things which put too much strain on the affections."
She dropped to her knees on the rug beside his chair.
"You shouldn't think, because one woman hurt you badly, that we're all the same," she told him gently. "You - you build your own barriers, Nich."
The hard line of his jaw tightened.
"Yes, perhaps I do," he said. "Perhaps I've had to."
"Even with me?"
"With you more than anyone else."
She sank back on her heels and leant her head against his knee. She did not yet understand his reservations and his strange control with her was by now so familiar, that she accepted it with little surprise.
"I wish I could help you," she said. "I wish - you wanted more of me."
For a moment he was tempted to tell her how much he wanted of her, how much he still hoped for, but he was afraid of destroying that new delicate promise of the last few weeks. Only by infinite patience, he thought, could he create the relationship he desired, and let down the barriers which she had accused him of building.
He touched her hair lightly.
"You give me all I've asked for. Don't worry, Shelley," he said.
She sighed, and stretched up a hand to catch at his fingers.
"Are you happy?" she asked.
"Of course. And you?"
"I think I'm lonely."
His fingers closed for a moment on hers.
"I keep you shut up here too much," he said a little brusquely. "I have to go to London next week. Would you like to come with me?"
She looked up, surprised.
"How long will you be away?" she asked.
"Only a few days. I'll be fairly busy, but we could do a theatre or so in the evenings."
"I expect I'd be in the way," she said.
"Well, during the day you'd have to amuse yourself, but it would be a change for you."
"I think I'd rather stay here, if you don't mind," she said, thinking of the long days spent in a hotel with nothing to do.
He was a little surprised at her refusal, remembering the urgency of her request when he went north, but he was relieved in a sense. When he took Shelley away, he wanted time to devote to her.
"You're probably right," he said. "Later, we'll have a proper holiday."
"Will you be seeing Father?" she asked.
"I can do. Any special reason?"
"N-no. I had a letter from him this morning."
Nicholas' face was hard. So Lucius wanted money again.
"All right," he said, "I'll make a point of seeing him."
"Thank you," she said. "Nicholas -"
"Well?"
"It doesn't matter. Give him my love." He regarded her with tender enquiry. "I'm getting to know these half-finished sentences," he said "What is it?"
She smiled at him a little shyly. Through Colin she had come to notice small things.
"It was only that I thought you looked tired," she said.
He was silent for a moment, wondering if she realized what a strain the waiting had put upon him.
"It's been a long winter," was all he said, and she sighed. Yes, it had been a long winter.
"You work too hard," she said.
"Well, things will slacken up soon. Have I neglected you, Shelley?"
"Oh, no," she replied quickly, her eyes widening. "I don't expect -"
He looked at her with gentleness. Had she expected too little of him? In his decision to leave her alone, had he given her a wrong impression?
"You're so young," he said. "I'm apt to forget the difference in years between us. Do I seem old to you, Shelley?"
"Sometimes," she answered, thinking of Colin. "But I think it's because - you so seldom tease me."
"What a funny reason," he said, but he knew what she meant. He was not the playfellow she should have had, perhaps he never would be. "Perhaps I've forgotten how to tease," he said a little harshly. "You should teach me."
The day before he was to leave, she ran one of her temperatures, and he postponed his departure for twenty-four hours, making her fearful at his solicitude.
"Don't go," she said, suddenly fearful of his absence. He was sitting on the side of her bed, and she flung out both hands to his in the instinct to keep him with her.
"If you aren't going to be well, I could postpone it," he said, a little puzzled by her manner. "Though there are some rather urgent matters."
"I'm quite all right, really, but -"
"But what?"
"I'd like you to stay with me."
She did not know why she was-so insistent, but the sudden temperature had made her weak and prone to tears.
"It won't be for long," he said. "And I really ought to go."
"Yes," she said, and her hands in his slackened. "I expect so. But come back soon."
He bent to kiss her. It was the first time she had seemed anxious for his return.
"I will," he said. "And next time we'll go together - for a holiday."
When he had gone, she wandered round the house restlessly. He had said he would telephone her that evening to see how she was, and she found she was looking forward to the moment with a quite disproportionate anxiety to hear his voice again. She tried to while away the hours by helping Mrs. Medlar with the linen, but Mrs. Medlar had her own ideas where everything should go, and when it became plain she was simply in the way, Shelley left her.
It was too wet to garden, and she went to her own sitting-room and opened her piano. As she played, idly wandering from one piece to another without much concentration, she looked at Nicholas' portrait, where it now hung, over the mantelpiece. Looking at it, she thought that, perhaps, through this she might come to know her husband. Already she was used to his disfigurement, indeed, at times she scarcely noticed it. This was how he should be, and this was how he could be for her if he would only admit her to his real life and thoughts.
His call came through after dinner, but the line was bad. He sounded brusque and a little hurried, as he usually did over the telephone, and having assured himself that she was well again, rang off with a brief good night. She went to bed with a feeling of despondency and an irrational dread of the next few days as if by leaving her now, he had called down ill-luck upon them both.
But next day the sun shone, April put the spell of spring on the moor, and Colin called softly to her through the little gate in the wall.
"I was beginning to think," he said, as she came slowly to the gate, "that the ogre had gobbled you up, after all. Why have you deserted me, princess?"
"I've been busy," she said evasively, but she looked at him with swift pleasure and her spirits lifted as she saw the familiar gay raillery in his face.
"Well, I've been busy, too," he replied, "or haven't you noticed?"
She laughed.
"I found your note, but it was nearly a fortnight old," she said.
His eyebrows went up.
"Then I certainly haven't been missed! You're different, Shelley. Have you been falling in love with your grim husband, by any chance?"
She looked at him, startled for a moment, then said:
"One doesn't fall in love with Nicholas. He told me long ago that he didn't expect love from any woman."
His eyes were amused.
"Dear me! What a rash statement to make! May I come into your garden?"
"Of course." She opened the gate and he slipped inside. "Nicholas is away. He went yesterday."
"I know. I thought you might be glad of some company."
"Oh, very glad," she said happily. "I miss him."
His smile was a little wry.
"I don't know that I think that's quite the right answer." he said. "But anyway, let's make the most of a holiday. How about going to the Pixie's Hole again, and looking for a four-leafed clover?"
"Does it grow there?" she asked innocently.
He laughed and gave her hair a tug.
"I've no idea," he said. "But we could find out."
But he seemed to have forgotten about four-leafed clover when they arrived at the cave. He pulled her down beside him in the heather, and as he studiously lighted a cigarette, he wondered if she realized how much he was tempted to make love to her. That new, innocent indifference to his recent visits was a prick to his vanity and a spur to his curiosity. She had changed, his sleeping princess, subtly and elusively.
"I believe you're growing up," he told her.
For a moment her eyes were grave and enquiring.
"But I'm not a child," she said gently.
"Aren't you? What's made you different?"
"Am I different?"
"Yes, in some odd way I can't define. Are you sure that husband of yours has nothing to do with it?"
She clasped her hands round her knees and looked out across the moor.
"I've felt closer to Nicholas lately," she said, slowly. "Sometimes I've almost thought he needed me." He made a small, impatient gesture.
"Well, naturally he needs you. Why, otherwise, should he have married you? Just to add you to his collection?"
In the brief instant before she covered her face with her hands, her eyes were hurt and bewildered.
"Yes, I think he did," she said.
A little breeze stirred the soft fringe on her forehead, and he said with gentleness:
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean it seriously. Whatever sort of man he is, he'd scarcely just put you in a glass case and look at you."
She lifted her face and said:
"I think that's just what he has done. He seems to have no need of human relationships."
He looked at her oddly. "But, Shelley, no man married to you would be content to do without something more,"
She stared at him, and a deep unhappiness she had not before suspected welled up in her and made her answer, passionately, thoughtlessly:
"Nicholas has never asked anything of me - anything - do you understand?"
His blue eyes were suddenly bright and inquisitive.
"Not even the ordinary demands of marriage?" he asked softly.
"Nothing," she said again.
Colin felt a stir of excitement and a quite simple flood of incredulity.
"But, sweet, it's not reasonable, it's not human! What's the man made of?" he exclaimed.
"I don't know," she said forlornly. "I don't understand him. I don't even understand myself."
He moved then, pulling her into his arms.
"I understand you," he said quickly. "I think the princess is stirring in her sleep, and high time, too. My heavens! If I'd realized how things were between you and Penryn, I'd have woken you up long ago. You weren't made for the self-imposed celibacy of a crank."
He turned her suddenly to face him, and closed his mouth on hers. For a moment she resisted him, then her young body was pliant in his arms, eager for the comfort which, until now, she had not known she had missed.
"Well!" he said, smiling, and releasing her. "How you do surprise me, princess! To think of all the time we've wasted!"
All at once she was weeping.
"I didn't know ..." she said, "... I never guessed it was so easy..."
"But of course it's easy, it's human nature," he told her, half-laughing. "What a child you are, my sweet! And what a fool that husband of yours must be!"
She pushed Colin away.
"No!" she said vehemently, "No ..."
"But why?" he asked, genuinely puzzled. "You're not robbing Penryn. You said yourself he wants nothing of you."
Not robbing him? But Lydia had robbed him, Lydia and his own brother, between them, had robbed him cruelly.
"No," she said again. "I'm married to Nicholas, I bear his name, and - there are obligations."
He took her hands, turning them palm upwards and kissing them lightly, as Nicholas sometimes did.
"Not in this case," he said. "A man, twenty years your senior, marrying you without love, without even the expectation of love... what can you possibly owe him?"
She clasped her hands about her knees again and said desperately:
"I feel I owe him a great deal. It's difficult to explain, but - I think he feels he mustn't ask anything of women because of his disfigurement. He thinks he's - repulsive in that way. And in the beginning, you see, I think I let him see - my aversion, without meaning to."
He lay back in the heather regarding her curiously.
"Well, that's perfectly natural. You didn't love him, he must have been prepared for a certain amount of aversion."
"I don't know," she said. "I've never known what goes on in Nicholas' mind about such things. I only know that now he expects nothing and demands nothing, and that, somehow, hurts me."
He knew one of those foolhardy impulses which had overtaken him before at such moments.
"Leave him, Shelley," he said recklessly. "You're young, lovely - why should he make you into his own sterile pattern? Come away with me ... I'd never meant to say this - I've no money and very few prospects, but we'd manage ... Jake could fit you into the company somewhere... even if you can't act, you would look lovely ... come out of your fairytale and live the life of mortals for a change..."
She gave him a long, strange look.
"Do you love me?" she asked.
"Yes - I don't know," he replied. "I only know you're wasting yourself, and if wanting you is loving you, well, then, yes, I do."
Her smile was touched with a new, wise sadness.
"No," she said, "I don't think you love me, and even if you did ... well, I couldn't leave Nicholas. I couldn't run away from him, too."
Already he was relieved and a little alarmed at his own rashness. His suggestion had been madness. He could not marry her, even supposing Penryn divorced her; he had only what he earned, and no real wish to take a wife as yet.
"Then take what the gods offer," he said. "Even Persephone, carried off by Pluto, lived six months on Olympus, and
six months in Hades. Time is short, my darling. Let me teach you how to find yourself."
"I think I know," she said, and smiled, the tears still wet on her lashes.
"Do you, Shelley?" he asked, curious and a little piqued.
"Yes, you've shown me - at least you've shown me what I've wanted - what I've missed."
"Don't tell me I've simply paved the way for Pluto," he said, and she smiled again.
"Perhaps. Shall we go home?"
He got to his feet without replying, and they walked back to Garazion in comparative silence. At the gates he said:
"Do you want me to keep away after this?"
"Yes," she said, slowly. "I think so. Dear Colin, I've so much enjoyed our friendship."
"That's how you've always thought of me, isn't it?"
"Martin said you were a magic. I think it was -"
"And the magic's ceased to work?"
"No ... no ..." she said. "But it's worked a different way. Goodbye, Colin." Now that it was over, he was reluctant to let her go. "When does Penryn return?" he asked. "In three days. Why?"
"Then will you meet me once more, in the summer-house, say, the day after tomorrow - just to say good-bye?"
Her thoughts were not really with him.
"Of course," she said at once. "What time?"
"Five o'clock? We'll make it brief."
"All right, I'll be there. Goodbye, and - thank you."
He watched her slip through the gate and run along the paths back to the house. The end of an episode, he thought; perhaps. But he would much like to know how greatly his own part in the affair would affect the relationship of Shelley and the dark Penryn.
It rained the day she was to meet him for the last time. She slipped out after tea to the summer-house, a handkerchief tied hastily over her hair, and ran along the wet paths, over the soaking grass, and through the tamarisks and rhododendrons to the plantation. The conifers and young larches were already blotting out the remaining daylight, and she thought of Lydia and Justin, and shivered, glad that it was the last time she would go to the summer-house.
Colin was waiting for her, his face a vague blur in the dimness. She said quickly: "I mustn't stay."
"I was probably foolish to come," he said. "But I wanted to see you once again, if it's really good-bye. Is it good-bye, Shelley?"
"Yes, Colin - at least to meetings like this. When Nicholas comes back, we would both be glad to welcome you to the house, if you would care to come?"
"No, I don't think I should. Well, my sweet, I didn't expect you to turn conventional on me. Our little meetings were very harmless after all - hardly even clandestine."
"That was then," she said obscurely. "But this is now."
"Because I made you realize you're a woman?"
"Yes - and other things."
She shivered and he touched her hands.
"You're cold."
"I don't like this place," she said. "It has ghosts."
"The runaway lovers? Well, they say history repeats itself."
"No," she said violently. "I would never do that to Nicholas. Even if I loved you, Colin, I would never do that to Nicholas, after what happened before."
"I think," he said with unexpected gentleness, "you're half in love with him. How do you imagine the marriage of yours is going to work out as things are?"
She was silent for a moment, then she said:
"I don't know, but I think it's up to me. I think it's been up to me all along only I didn't realize it. I think I may have mistaken chivalry for indifference. Nick is a strange person."
"Very strange," Colin said a little shortly. "Well, it was nice while it lasted. Shelley - " He paused, and found to his own surprise that the parting really hurt him. "I want to say this, and, oddly enough, I mean it. If things don't work out - if you should ever need a friend - well, remember me. Here's an address that will always find me. You're different from the others, you strange, extremely trusting child. I'm very fond of you, Shelley."
She took the piece of folded paper he offered her, and put it in her pocket without looking at it.
"Thank you," she said gravely. "And I'll always be fond of you, too, Colin - my first friend. Goodbye."
She lifted her face with childlike simplicity, and he kissed her gently and was gone.
She remained in the summer-house for a time, watching the dusk descend and the raindrops dripping off the conifers. How strange it was, she thought, that, by sheer chance, one man could waken desire for another. She knew now that what she had sought in Colin had been only the gay companionship which she had never known, the laughter, the understanding which was not to be found at Garazion by simply expecting it.
She remembered that hot evening at Gull Cottage when Nicholas had come for his answer. It had not in the end been her father who had persuaded her, but something in Nicholas himself, for she had meant to refuse him. Even then she had been swayed by that compelling quality which she had not recognized as attraction, and, in expecting so little of her, he had denied her so much.
A small gust of wind blew through the plantation, and she realized it was nearly dark. She made her way back to the house, thinking with pleasure of Nicholas' return on the morrow. The front door shut with a little slam behind her, and, as she crossed the hall, she saw Nicholas standing in the doorway of his study, watching her.
"Nick!" she cried. She was startled, glad, and profoundly shy at seeing him so unexpectedly. "I didn't expect you till tomorrow."
"I know you didn't," he said.
"Did you get through your business sooner than you thought? Why didn't you let me know?"
"Would it have made any difference if I had?"
She did not understand his manner. There was something cold and remotely hostile about him, and he made no move to come and greet her.
"Well, I would have been here, waiting for you, if I'd
known," she said a little blankly, and he replied with sardonic courtesy:
"I'm sure you would have, Shelley."
She took an uncertain step towards him.
"Is anything the matter?" she asked.
He watched her gravely.
"What should be the matter?"
"I don't know, but you seem different."
"I'm no different," he said.
She searched in her mind for something to say to him, but could only remark that she had better tell Baines about dinner.
"I've already given orders," he replied, and she said rather helplessly that she would go upstairs and have her bath and change. He made no effort to keep her but returned to his study and shut the door.
She took time over her dressing, wondering what had upset Nicholas. She was accustomed to accepting him in all his moods without question, and thought only that some business problem was worrying him, but her first spontaneous pleasure at his unexpected return had given place to a chill of disquiet. Not thus had she wanted to greet him, not thus, with her inexperienced hands, try to break down his resistance.
She put on the black velvet dinner gown because he had always liked it, and went downstairs.
At dinner, she was reminded of the strain of that first evening at Garazion. He sat at the head of the table, grave and a little sardonic, as she first remembered him, making polite conversation, and the candlelight spilled on his steady hands, those firm, beautiful hands which more than once had brought her comfort. She felt nervous, and when, the meal over at last, they sat together in his study, her nervousness increased, and she said a little desperately: "Is anything wrong, Nicholas?"
He looked across at her, observing with an impersonal eye the whiteness of her skin against the black velvet, the soft, shining fall of her hair.
"Yes, I think there is," he said, quite gently.
"Something I've done?"
Her voice was a little bewildered and his mouth hardened. "You do it very well," he said. "What, Nicholas?"
"The innocence. All right, let's have it. Who's this man you've been meeting behind my back?"
Her hands, which she had been twisting in her lap, relaxed with relief.
"Oh, you mean Colin."
"Do I? And what's Colin to you?"
When she did not immediately answer, he repeated his question, adding, "I'd rather you didn't lie to me." The quick colour stained her cheeks. "I don't lie, Nicholas," she said.
"Yes, I used to think you didn't, either. But deceiving, acting a he, is just as bad you know."
Her hands began twisting nervously again.
"There was nothing wrong in my friendship with Colin," she said, and he gave her his old penetrating glance.
"If there was nothing wrong in it," he said with sudden harshness, "why didn't you mention the fact that you knew him? Why didn't you have him to the house in the normal way?"
All at once she perceived the difficulty of explaining to Nicholas those innocent meetings which must, in his eyes, look so furtive. How explain, that Colin had at first been just a childish secret between herself and Martin, just as when children are little they cherish a hiding-place discovered only by themselves?
"I don't know why I didn't tell you," she said, searching for the right words, and finding only foolish-sounding excuses. "It began with the carol-singing - you remember I told you."
"You didn't even tell me that, if I remember. Baines did. Well, it began with the carol-singing."
"You were away, and he and Martin and I used to play in the snow. Martin liked him. He was good with children - " His mouth tightened and she said quickly, "I mean, he's young, you see, and played with Martin - " She was blundering.
"And did you tell Martin not to mention this young man, either? Did you teach the boy to lie?"
"Of course not, but he thought of Colin as a sort of secret - we both did. It must sound silly to you."
"It does," said Nicholas grimly. "It sounds so damn silly that I'm afraid I don't believe a word of it."
Her flush deepened.
"How can I try and explain if you won't believe me?" she asked.
He looked at her ironically.
"Very well. Tell your story your own way, only don't take me for a complete fool. The young man went away, you were saying. But I think you met him only this afternoon."
"He came back when you were in the north. He's staying at Polzeal for a month - acting at the theatre."
"Oh? And when is your next assignation, if it wouldn't be tactless to ask?"
"Oh, Nicholas," she pleaded wretchedly, "please don't be sarcastic about it. We - we've said good-bye. I'd decided not to see him again."
"Until my next business trip, I suppose. I understand now why you were reluctant to come away with me this time. Where used you to meet?"
"On the moor, sometimes in the summer-house."
"The summer-house!"
All at once Nicholas' patience broke. The summer-house where Lydia and Justin had first betrayed him. He got to his feet and towered over her, dark, bitter, and icily angry.
"The least you could have done for me, Shelley, was to conduct your affair away from my house and my servants."
She began to tremble.
"You can't think," she said, "that I was having an - affair with Colin."
"Do you take me for a fool? What else would you call it? The man was, presumably, your lover." "Oh, no!"
He was too angry, too bitterly hurt, to heed the pain in her voice.
"Don't go on lying to me," he said with acute distaste. "I realize perfectly well that I've brought this situation on myself
by my very misguided forbearance, but I would at least appreciate the rather poor compliment of the truth."
She got up and faced him. The black velvet of the dress he had particularly liked accentuated her extreme pallor. The flush had faded, and even her lips were white.
"I'm telling you the truth, Nicholas," she said. "Colin and I were never lovers. I -I wouldn't have done that to you."
"You wouldn't deny that he made love to you?"
"No, I suppose he did."
He looked at her as if she were a stranger to him, and the scar showed lividly on his cheek, drawing lip and eyebrow into ugly distortion.
"You've inherited your father's gift for making a lie sound sincere," he said bitingly.
"My father is not a liar."
"Oh, yes he is, my dear. He's one of the biggest liars - or shall we say, twisters of the truth - it's ever been my fortune to meet. But in this case, for once he was speaking the truth."
Her eyes were wide and strained.
"In this case?" she repeated. "You mean Father told you about Colin?"
"I mean just that. You shouldn't have confided your shoddy little secret to someone who uses everything for his own ends."
She was winding a long strand of the fine, silky hair round and round her finger with nervous concentration.
"But if Father told you he would have made you understand there was nothing wrong in it," she said.
He remembered Lucius' derisive voice, the malicious pleasure in his face as he had retaliated to Nicholas' refusal to lend him more money, letting drop those little barbs of poison, delighted that his own daughter was making a fool of him.
"Your father didn't give me that impression at all," he said suavely. "In fact, he took care to draw a very comprehensive picture of what was going on in my absence."
Tears stung her eyelids and she turned away. Not Lucius ... not her own father twisting her foolish confidences into a false, mischievous pattern in order to hurt a man he disliked.
"I don't know why Father should have done this to me," she said wearily. "I think you must have misunderstood him. I think you very easily think ill of us both."
"I've never thought ill of you, Shelley, until this moment," he said evenly. "You had for me a quality of innocence and truth all the more remarkable since your father was a charlatan and a trickster."
She wheeled round on him and the colour was back in her cheeks.
"Whatever you think of me, you've no right to call my father that," she said. "Because he owed you money, it doesn't give you the right to call him dishonest."
For a moment he could almost believe in her, and because he was angry with himself as well as with her, because, after twelve years, the old treachery was again being enacted at Garazion, he spoke bitterly and irrevocably.
"I have every right to call Lucius dishonest," he said harshly. "He lived by his wits, often criminally, battening on the misfortunes and sympathies of others. It wasn't because he owed me money that your father agreed to your marriage with me. It was because, if I had chosen, I could have brought a prosecution against him."
"You don't know what you're saying," she whispered.
He had no pity for her.
"I know only too well what I'm saying, and I think it's time you learnt the truth, my dear. Your father first came to me with a pathetic story of a crippled daughter who, for lack of money, would never walk again - you, Shelley. He played delicately on my own handicap in life, and almost I was deceived. I came to see for myself, and found you, charming, apparently innocent, and anything but crippled. That, Shelley, is known as obtaining money under false pretences, and is punishable by law."
She was as white as paper again.
"Father did that?" she said.
"He'd been doing it for years, trading on infirmities, and disfigurements such as mine. We struck a bargain that evening, your father and I. In exchange for you I agreed to bring no action, and further than that, I settled an income on him for life. Now you know why he was so anxious to get you married to me."
"My own father was willing to - to sell me?"
"Oh, yes. He was quite prepared to let you go cheap, too. He didn't demand marriage for you. Not very pretty, is it? I told you once before that there's very little in human relationships worth remembering."
She put her hands over her ears in an unconscious, desperate little movement.
"Oh, stop, stop!" she cried. "What were you trying to do to me, both of you? What were you trying to do?"
For a moment his face softened, and even then, in the midst of his own bitter disillusionment, he could have taken her in his arms and comforted her.
"Shelley - " he said, but she turned from him and made a quick movement towards the door.
"You don't have to say any more." Her voice was high and unsteady, choked with the storm of tears which would not be denied much longer. "I understand just how you must feel, how things must look. I - I'll go away. I'll go away tomorrow..."
The tears came then, and, weeping, she ran from the room.
Flung across the big tester bed, she wept as she had seldom wept before. That her father should have so betrayed her, that Nicholas should think such ill of her were blows which crushed her so completely that reason was swamped. Dies irae, dies ilia, they had sung in the convent during Holy Week ... day of wrath, O day of mourning ... She remembered the melancholy chant, the black-veiled nuns, the chapel statues shrouded and hidden, and herself, a solitary child, left behind for the Easter holidays.
How did one know the pitfalls? She thought bitterly. No one had warned her that her father was dishonest, no one had told her how to treat a husband who was virtually a stranger; no man had ever taught her that loving could be so easy until Colin had kissed her and her heart had turned to Nicholas ...
At last, spent, and drained of emotion, she got off the bed and began to undress, folding her clothes neatly and putting them away with the automatic tidiness she had learnt as a child.
Then she sat on a low stool by the fire, brushing her hair. It was very late when she heard Nicholas come up, and she put another log on the fire, watching the sparks fly upwards, catching the fine layer of soot in the chimney with a myriad little points of light. There must be a frost after the rain, she thought, listening to the owls calling to one another in the plantation, and looked up, suddenly taut, as Nicholas came into the room without knocking.
"You should be in bed," he observed. "It's late."
She could not tell now if he was still consumed with that icy anger which frightened her so much. He came to the fire and stood, warming his back, his hands thrust into the pockets of his dressing-gown, but his face was in shadow. Because it gave her something to do, she began to brush her hair again.
"I'm sorry," he said, without looking at her, "that I told you the truth about your father. I had never meant you to know. If I hadn't thought you were lying to me I would never have told you. But I'm sorry, all the same."
"Do you still think I was lying?" she asked.
He looked at her then. She had brushed the fringe off her forehead, and it gave her a young, defenceless look.
"I don't know, Shelley," he said, wearily. "I don't know. I can scarcely blame you, I suppose. I left you too much alone, and - was too forbearing in other matters. I should have known you would be easy money for the first good-looking man who came along."
She dropped the brush into her lap, and sat, staring into the fire, her hands clasped about her knees.
"That's not how it was," she said.
He pressed his fingers against his eyelids for a moment.
"Well, however it was, makes very little odds, now," he said. "We have to work things out from here."
"What do you want me to do?" she asked.
"First," he said, "I must make you understand that my good name, and my regard for anyone who bears it is extremely important to me."
Anger began to mount in her.
"You don't have to tell me that," she said. "Your name,
your glass, your china, they're all important in a way no human being could be."
"What do you mean by that?"
"You've so often told me that human relationships meant nothing to you, I'm not likely to forget it." For a moment his face softened.
"You're very young," he said. "Perhaps I'm apt to forget it."
"On the contrary," she flashed back, "you treat me like a child, or - or part of your precious collection. You've never talked to me like an adult person; you've never wanted me to share your life. You've only cared about giving me a suitable setting and - and owning me - like a piece of porcelain."
"Do you really think that?" he asked, then added a little sadly: "I've never owned you, Shelley. That's been my punishment."
Her anger died.
"Punishment? For what?"
"For marrying you, perhaps. Or, having married you, for being so - undemanding."
"You've never wanted anything of me," she said.
Something of the strain of months snapped in Nicholas.
"Never wanted anything of you!" he exclaimed. "For heaven's sake, child! What do you think I'm made of? What do you suppose any man wants of the woman he marries? I'm no celibate, even though my face may not be pretty to look at."
She blinked up at him, startled by the storm she had raised.
"I never knew," she stammered. "You - you never gave me any idea..."
"Because," he said roughly, "like a fool, I hoped you'd come to me naturally. Because, that first night, you couldn't quite hide your aversion. I kept away, I gave you the time I thought you needed to grow up - to get used to me - and all I was doing was making a rod for my own back."
She stood up, and the folds of her long, blue dressing-gown fell softly against her slender limbs.
"I wouldn't have denied you, Nicholas," she said. "At first - you should have understood. I didn't love you. But I
wouldn't have denied you -I wouldn't deny you, now." His eyes were bitterly hurt again.
"No?" he said. "But then you've a little more experience, now."
She drew back as if he had struck her. "Is it so difficult for you to believe I've never had a lover?" she asked. His smile was cynical as he replied:
"I'd like to believe you, Shelley, but I've found there's not much honesty in women."
The bitterness had gone very deep. These past weeks of fresh hope had been a fool's paradise. That new, soft awareness, the little flashes of happy radiance had not been for him, but for another.
Shelley saw the bitterness and was defeated. She wanted to weep but she had no tears left. She wanted to put her arms round him, to hide the scarred face on her breast, to bring him the comfort which the years had denied him, but she could not reach him. He was a stranger, a dark Pluto, carrying off Persephone into Hades.
"If you want me, Nicholas, you can have me," she said steadily.
He looked down at her, and for almost the first time he saw the weariness in her face, the marks of the tears she had shed, the effort she was making to steady her lips.
"What do you take me for?" he said in a voice harsh with defeat. "Go to bed, Shelley. In the morning, perhaps things will look different."
He turned, and without saying good night, went back to his own room and shut the door.
Half the night she lay awake, watching the firelight die, and listening to the owls, too exhausted to weep any more. In this great bed where Penryns had died and been born, she lay and knew she had never belonged to Garazion. She lay there, an alien stranger, and the house rejected her. Of Lucius' shameful betrayal, she would not think, or of Nicholas who could believe such ill of her; she thought only of the morrow and the need for flight, the need for escape. She and Lucius, living on Penryn bounty and giving nothing in return; that must end. In the morning, she would go.
Just before she fell into a troubled, uneasy sleep, she remembered Colin saying: "If things don't work out - if you should need a friend ... remember me ..." She would go to Colin, she thought, on a long, defeated sigh; there was no one else left in the world...
She woke late to find a breakfast tray had been sent up to her, and on it a brief note from Nicholas.
"I'm going away for a few days," he wrote, without any preliminary. "When I return we will both have a clearer view of things. - N."
Well, thought Shelley wearily, that made things easier. By the time he came back, he would be free of her, and Lucius -he must make his own terms with Lucius.
She remained in her room all the morning, making her plans, and packing a small suitcase with bare necessities. She would take as little as possible of the things which Nicholas had bought for her. She opened cupboards and drawers, arranging everything she was to leave behind neatly and without regret. They were no longer part of her, the silks and chiffons, the exquisite stuffs of his choosing; they were simply a setting, a compliment to his good taste and care for his treasures. Only the little sable muff she stroked with loving fingers, and before she put it gently away, remembered his saying: "One day I'll have you painted like that, with a muff held against your face." No painting of her would ever hang at Garazion, just as there was none of Lydia.
No one disturbed her, and she sat idly in the window and watched the rain. The garden looked sad and deserted, and she remembered Martin playing tag with her among Nicholas' rose-trees, and the charming tippets of snow the trees had worn at Christmas.
The gates were open and the car stood at the front door. Presently she saw Nicholas come out of the house and fling a suitcase on to the back seat. He did not look up at her windows, and she watched his tall figure with a feeling of pain which suddenly twisted her heart and made her want to cry out to him. He got into the car and drove away, and old Isaac closed the gates after him.
Shelley pressed her forehead against the chill hardness of the window pane, and anger mounted in her. He could go like that, without farewell, thinking only ill of her, leaving her to shame or repentance until he should have decided what he would do. For the first time in years rebellion shook her, and she knew that all her life she had submitted to authority, and never questioned; the nuns, her father and Nicholas; and authority was not always right, or very kind.
She lingered for a few minutes more, warming her hands at the fire, then she collected her few belongings and softly closed the door behind her.
She met Baines in the hall and asked him to ring up the village garage for a car. She had no money and the taxi must go down to Nicholas' account.
"You are going away, ma'am?" the old man said with faint surprise.
"Yes, for a little while," Shelley said, flushing under his enquiring look. "I - I'm going to my father." She disliked lying to him, but Baines knew she had no friends and had never before been away from Garazion.
The old man's eyes were troubled.
"Will you be back before Mr. Nicholas, ma'am?" he asked. "No - I don't know," she said quickly, "I'll leave a note, in case."
He gave her a long thoughtful look, but said no more and went to telephone the garage, and Shelley sat down at the desk in Nicholas' study and pulled paper and pen towards her.
What could she say, she thought, save that she was running away from him, that she was sorry for the trouble she and her father had caused, that would he, please, forgive and forget her. It took her a long time to compose her stiff little note, but it was done at last, then she slipped off her wedding-ring and dropping it into the envelope, sealed it, and propped it on the mantelpiece under the portrait of the child.
Baines handed her into the taxi when it came, then stood in the wet, his old eyes troubled and a little dim.
"Come back to us, soon, ma'am," he said gently, and Shelley stretched out a hand to touch him.
"You've always been kind to me," she said, her eyes suddenly bright. "Thank you, Baines."
He blinked, and his hand shook under hers.
"Polzeal station?" he asked, shutting the door of the car.
"Yes, Polzeal," she replied, and did not look at him again as the car moved off.
She knew he was puzzled and a little troubled. The fast London train had left Polzeal long ago, and there was not another until the evening, neither could the small case he had lifted in beside her possibly hold more that a night's bare necessities. Well, she thought bleakly, the servants must think what they would. Nicholas, on his return would, doubtless, offer his own explanation.
The driver set her down at Polzeal station and drove away, and she stood uncertainly beside her suitcase and wondered what to do next. She did not know how to find Colin except through the theatre, and that would be closed at this hour. She picked up her case, and wandered slowly into the town which was shuttered and empty during the lunch hour. She had a few pounds in her purse, and she thought she would find a teashop and get a cup of coffee while she considered her next move. She passed the arts and crafts extablishment where she had bought the frame for Nicholas, and, almost next door she found a little shop called Anne's Pantry, and went in thankfully, out of the rain. It was late, and the place was dark and nearly deserted. She found a table in the shadows, and ordered a plate of baked beans and a cup of coffee. She was beginning to feel very tired and an air of unreality engulfed her and would not, as yet, let her realize that there was no return to Garazion. She put her elbows on the rickety little table and rested her chin on her hands, waiting indifferently for the food to be brought. "Shelley!"
She looked up and blinked in a dazed fashion at Colin so suddenly materialized beside her.
"What on earth are you doing here?"
"Oh! Oh - Colin!" she said, and he sat down opposite her.
"I was at that table in the window," he said, "but you never saw me. We're at sixes and sevens in the theatre; our leading lady's gone down with appendicitis, and we're at our wit's end to know what to put on next week. We're doing Charley's Aunt as a stop-gap."
"I'm sorry," she said, and he looked at her sharply.
"You don't sound too bright, yourself," he said. "What are you doing in Polzeal on such a filthy day? I thought you never ventured out of the dragon's fortress."
"I've run away," she said.
"What!" he exclaimed.
The waitress brought Shelley's baked beans and slapped the plate down in front of her.
"Did I understand you to say you had run away?" Colin enquired when she had gone."
"Yes. I was coming to see you."
He lit a cigarette and observed her shrewdly through the smoke.
"I see," he said carefully. "Am I also to understand that you've left your husband for me?"
"Not exactly," she said, looking a little dazed. "I thought, perhaps, you would give me a job. You did once say Jake could fit me into the company. I could be a maid, or prompt, or play the piano for you - anything."
"I see," he said again, "Or rather, I don't. What's made you decide to leave Penryn?"
She began half-heartedly to eat the beans.
"Nicholas found out about us," she said wearily. "He thinks you were my lover. He - there's a lot more involving my father, which you wouldn't understand. Nicholas no longer believes in me. I had to go."
"Did he turn you out?"
"Oh, no. He doesn't know. He's gone away, himself."
He watched her in silence for a moment, trying to make up his mind exactly how the situation was going to affect him. He remembered that he had once asked her to run away with him, and felt a little uneasy. He wanted Shelley, yes, but could he afford the publicity of a divorce, or the future responsibilty of a wife? She was a girl one would definitely have to marry, indeed one would want to if one was contemplating marriage at all.
"Have you thought this thing out?" he asked gently.
She raised her wide, grave eyes for a moment.
"Oh, yes," she said. "All last night after - after he's left me and - didn't want me."
He gave her a swift glance which held a suggestion of amusement.
"Were you trying to make amends?" he asked. "When a man is angry and believes he's been made a fool of is scarcely the moment to offer your favours, you know."
She pushed the plate from her, without finishing the beans, and sat, stirring her muddy-looking coffee.
"I always seem to have done the wrong thing with Nicholas," she said, and he saw how very tired she looked.
"Poor sweet," he said, "You were too young - too inexperienced for someone like Penryn. But, Shelley - don't you think you should go back, all the same - now, before he knows anything about it?"
"No," she said, and sounded as if she might cry. "No, I can never go back - my father and I - we - we've cheated him, and - I can't, Colin - I can't live at Garazion any more, shut up in a glass case with all the other exhibits."
She was nearer to breaking point than he had realized, and he said quickly:
"All right, all right, I won't try to persuade you, but you must realize that if you come to me, you've burnt your boats. We'll both have to go through with it."
She smiled at him and touched his hand across the table.
"Dear Colin, I don't mean to embarrass you," she said
gently. "I'm very fond of you, but I don't want - I mean I hadn't thought of being unfaithful to Nicholas. I just thought you might help me to be independent by giving me a job."
His smile was half tender, half exasperated.
"You mean you don't want me for a lover, in spite of having run away?"
"No - not any man," she said. "Don't be hurt, Colin. I don't think you would really want the responsibility of me."
"But, my dear child, don't you see that the fact that you've come to me will only confirm your husband's suspicions? He's bound to take the appropriate measures."
"Would you mind very much? You see, then he'd be free of me, and - and it doesn't really matter what he believes, now."
He stubbed out his cigarette and lit another. "I don't know what to say to you, Shelley," he said. "I could find a place for you in the company, yes, but - " "But what?"
"Well, I'd thought you were getting fond of the dragon, you know."
"Perhaps that's it. Don't you remember? 'The love I fear to lose, the love I find: Those who might miss me - those who I might miss..."'
His face changed.
"By heavens, Prunella!" he exclaimed' "We could put on Prunella, with you in the name-part! Even if we find you aren't much of an actress, you'll look enchanting, and it would see us through until Betty comes back. Come on, we'll go and see Jake."
Already his thoughts had left her problems for his own more pressing ones, and he could think only of the theatre. He paid her bill, picked up her suitcase and bustled her out into the rain.
As they hurried through the wet streets to the theatre, he talked enthusiastically. His earlier dejection had completely vanished. Shelley's difficulty and that of the company could be resolved together.
They found Jake, whom Shelley only vaguely remembered, sitting on the empty stage, gloomily reading a script while
someone hammered in the flies. The little theatre looked shabby and forlorn in the dim light.
"This is no good," Jake said as Colin hailed him from the orchestra pit. "It fairly creaks. I thought of Daddy-long-legs or one of those old romantic comedies to ring the changes, but poor Moira Sheridan's a bit long in the tooth for ingenues. Curses on Betty and her inconvenient appendix!"
"Never mind," Colin said. "I've brought you the perfect ingenue to fill the gap."
Jake peered down at them short-sightedly.
"Who is it?" he asked.
"Miss Shelley- ?" Colin paused enquiringly. "Wynthorpe," said Shelley, reverting quite naturally to her old name.
"Shelley Wynthorpe? Never heard of her. What experience have you, dear?"
"None, I'm afraid," she faltered. ""An amateur!" Jake exclaimed, and turned to Colin impatiently. "Really, Colin, as if we hadn't got enough on our hands! I'm sorry, Miss - er - Wynthorpe, but what we lack at present is a leading lady."
"Well, have a look at her," Colin said, and picking Shelley up, deposited her on the other side of the footlights.
She stood nervously before Jake, and the light from the one batten overhead, flooded down on her.
"H'm," said Jake, frowning heavily. "The right type. Pity you've no experience."
Colin climbed on to the stage.
"She can play Prunella," he said. "She's word-perfect, and it's no tax on her abilities. She just has to be herself. It wouldn't want much rehearsing. The others all know it."
Jake's frown deepened.
"Fantasy won't go over in a place like this," he said. "They want something they can understand."
"Well, where's your choice? You can't play Charley's Aunt for the rest of the season."
"We'll have to think of something else, or pack up early and go."
"Where's the need? Give Prunella a chance. It's a charming little play, and even if the child can't act, she'll look right, and won't forget her lines. She's played it before."
"Where?"
"At her convent school - all right, all right, don't go off the handle! Give her a trial. Come along, Shelley, let's give him the scene with Pierrot when Prunella comes down from her window."
"Now?" She looked at him with startled eyes. "Yes, now. Stop that hammering back there! She opens her window and sees Pierrot below in the garden - remember ?" She said, almost as if she was sleep-walking: " 'Who is there? Who are you?' "
" 'The man in the moon' " answered Colin. "Go on - that's fine. Forget Jake, forget me. Remember only Pierrot and that you're running away."
Running away ... Her eyes closed for a moment on tears.
" 'Why have you come back?' " she said.
They played the little scene out. Sometimes she forgot the words and Colin prompted her, but she was too tired to be nervous. She remembered only that she was running away, to Colin, to Pierrot...
"Good girl," Colin said, when they had finished. "Well, Jake, you see what I mean?"
Jake was looking at Shelley curiously.
"Yes, she has something," he said slowly. "Haven't I seen you somewhere before, Miss Wynthorpe?"
"Yes," she said. "You came and sang carols with Colin outside Garazion."
He blinked.
"Of course. But in that case you're - "
"Yes, she's Mrs. Penryn of Garazion, but she's gone back to her maiden name and wants to try her luck on the stage," said Colin quickly.
Jake glanced at him. He knew Colin of old, and he had known, too, there was some girl with whom he had been having an affair since they had come back to Polzeal.
"I hope," he said, "you're not getting involved in something, Colin, not that it's any business of mine, of course, but - "
"Don't worry," Colin said. "As you say, it's no concern of yours. The point is - will you take her on?"
"Well," Jake said a little ungraciously, "an attractive amateur is better than nothing, I suppose. I'll give her a trial, but I don't know about Prunella. I can't help feeling it would be too big a risk all round. And I'll have to fix it with Equity."
"We'll see," said Colin cheerfully. "Now, the first thing we must do, Shelley, is to fix you up with somewhere to stay. I've got it! You can have Betty's old digs at Mother Tregenna's until she comes out of hospital. Come on - we'll go and see the old girl."
It seemed to Shelley, by the time she was able to get to bed, that she had never spent such a strange day. Colin arranged everything with, or without her consent. Mrs. Tregenna proved to be a hard-faced elderly woman who viewed her with suspicion but consented to let her the room while the other girl was in hospital.
"Though I'll say to you what I say to all of them," she added. "Rent in advance, and no gentlemen upstairs. When you come back late you'll please to be quiet, and towels used to wipe off greasepaint will be charged for."
Colin paid the week's rent, which made the woman sniff disapprovingly as she sook it, and told Shelley to come back to the theatre when she had unpacked her things.
"We have a bite at about five," he told her, "and Moira makes cocoa after the show for anyone who want's it."
When she got back to the theatre, most of the company were there. Colin, who had, in the meantime, evidently persuaded Jake to put Prunella into rehearsal, thrust a script into Shelley's hands and bade her brush up her words. They would start rehearsing tomorrow. The other members of the company accepted her without curiosity. They were used to people coming and going. She thought they took her lack of experience with slightly contemptuous resignation, but on the whole they were tolerant and kindly disposed.
She listened silently while they talked their endless "shop" and squabbled amicably among themselves, and later watched from the wings the performance of Charley's Aunt to a half-filled indifferently disposed house.
Sitting in Moira Sheridan's dressing-room, drinking cocoa when the performance was over, Shelley had her first experience of the unforgettable back-stage atmosphere which was soon to become as familiar as the beeswax and incense of the convent cloisters. The smell of greasepaint, and the property clothes, the cigarette smoke, the half-finished glasses of stout were, tonight, unfamiliar and a little nauseating. Moira's shrill laughter made her head ache, and sleep weighed down her smarting eyelids.
"The child's all in," Colin said suddenly. "Come on, Shelley, I'll take you home and tuck you up."
"Not at old Mother Tregenna's you won't!" screamed Moira.
"Well, night-night, dearie. You'll get used to us in time."
It was a relief to breathe the wet cold air on the seafront. The rain had stopped, and out at sea, the lights of some small craft twinkled in the darkness. Shelley thought of the China Queen and the Star of Persia, and her throat constricted. Those very lights might belong to one of the coasters carrying the Penryn clay to its destination.
Colin felt her shiver and said:
"You're very tired, aren't you? It will seem strange to you at first, but, as Moira says, you'll get used to us." "Will they get used to me?" she asked dispiritedly. "Why shouldn't they? They're a good lot, really." "I think they resent me."
"Well, all pros resent the amateur - that's natural. But you'll be one of us in no time."
He spoke confidently, but he knew he was lying. Shelley would never become one of them.
"You've been so kind, Colin," she said. "Thank you very much, indeed. I'll try and repay you by doing my best."
He gave her arm a little squeeze.
"You'll repay me best by snapping out of it," he said. "We're going to have fun, Shelley. W're going to have a lot of fun and forget all about ogres and sleeping princesses. You're down to earth, now, my sweet, and you must live as other mortals do."
"Yes," said Shelley meekly. "I'll try."
She did try. She wanted them to like her; she wanted to be part of their careless, casual life, but it was difficult, she found, to adapt herself. She had lived too long with Nicholas to take easily to informality, and theirs was the sort of freedom she had never desired for herself.
"There's something old-fashioned about you," Colin told her, laughing. "I don't believe you'll ever make a trouper."
Yet they liked her, and in their own fashion, protected her from her own ignorance, teaching her kindly, what was done and not done in the theatre, helping her with her parts, allowing good naturedly that she was a good choice for Prunella even if she must learn to speak up.
Every day they rehearsed the play, and Shelley lost her initial awkwardness on the stage. She was shy, but she was not self-conscious, and the character was so much part of her that she instinctively knew what Jake wanted of her.
"She's going to be good," Colin said, with surprise. "You may have a find there, after all, Jake."
Jake gave him a quiet, thoughtful look.
"She isn't acting, that's why she's good," he said slowly. "She's just playing herself, running away from security and a sheltered life."
"Perhaps," Colin admitted, and thought that this was probably true. He did not, in his heart, believe Shelley was an actress, although coupled with experience, she would have enough natural grace and beauty to make a career.
"You know - " began Jake, but at Colin's enquiring glance ended: "Well, it's none of my business."
The day after Shelley had come to Polzeal, she had written to her father. She was reluctant to get into touch with him at all but she felt she owed it to him to acquaint him with the fact that she had left Nicholas and he must therefore be prepared for any course of action which Nicholas might decide to take in relation to them both.
The result was surprising. She received by return of post, the longest letter Lucius had ever favoured her with. Was she quite mad, he wrote, even to contemplate throwing away comfort and security on account of some silly romantic notion? He begged her to return immediately, if Nicholas would have her, and was sorry if any unguarded remark of his had driven her to such extremes. He was, himself, writing to his son-in-law to explain. Whatever her own feelings, would she kindly consider his and not make matters awkward for him.
Shelley's mouth twisted into unaccustomed bitterness as she folded up the letter. He had been quite unconcerned with her happiness, and although, by now, she had recognized his extreme egotism, she found he could still hurt her. She replied briefly that the matter was entirely between herself and Nicholas, and her mind was made up. In answer she got a lengthy telegram, and, on the following day, Lucius arrived, himself.
They had just finished the morning rehearsal when the message was brought to her, and for a moment she knew panic.
"Who?" she asked, her eyes suddenly strained.
"Says he's your father. He's waiting at the stage door."
"Oh!"
For a moment she wanted to laugh. Lucius must indeed be concerned if he would come all this way to argue with her. She fetched her coat and went down to meet him.
"Well, Father," she said.
Her surveyed her indignantly.
"Really, Shelley! I think you must have taken leave of your senses," he exclaimed. "And of all abominable places!"
"Yes, Polzeal isn't very attractive," she replied with composure. "St. Bede was nicer, wasn't it?"
"Is there anywhere we can get a reasonable lunch?"
"Well, we always feed in teashops, but there's quite a good hotel on the front."
He shuddered.
"Take me to it. I've been travelling ever since seven o'clock."
They walked along the seafront to the hotel, and Lucius ordered himself a double whisky.
"Anything for you?" he asked as an afterthought.
"Yes," she said. "I think I'll have a martini."
He seemed puzzled by her manner and a little disconcerted, and when the waiter had brought their drinks, he began at once:
"Now, Shelley, what's the meaning of all this nonsense?
You hadn't led me to suppose that your feelings for this young actor were in any way serious."
She sipped her drink and looked at him thoughtfully.
Even after his long journey, Lucius was dapper and elegant, with a flower in his buttonhole.
"But that," she said gently, "was not the impression you gave Nicholas."
He flushed slightly.
"Well, as I told you in my letter, if anything I inadvertently said, caused trouble between you, I'm anxious to put it right."
"But why," she asked, "did you give the wrong impression? You knew there was nothing between Colin and me." He looked at her quizzically.
"Well, my dear, I confess the whole thing struck me as rather dim and phoney at the time, but who was I to grudge you a little fun if that was the sort of thing that amused you?" He fidgeted a little under her grave stare, and continued: "The fact is, your husband's rather righteous attitude over money annoyed me, I simply wanted to prick his colossal self-sufficiency. Don't tell me the poor fool believed the worst of your innocent little idyll!"
"Isn't that what you meant him to do?"
"Of course not. I imagined he was too much of a man of the world to be really disturbed. If, between us, we've driven you into this present situation, I'm quite sure I can persuade Nicholas that the fault was his, not yours."
She looked at him gravely. He really believed what he was saying, she thought. It would be quite useless to attempt to make him understand.
"Let's not talk about it, Father," she said, putting down her empty glass, and watching him embark on his second double whisky. "In any case, I'm not living with Colin, if that's what you mean by the present situation. He is simply a friend who has found a job for me, so that I can at least keep myself."
He drained his drink and ordered another.
"Then," he said irritably, "I fail to see what all the fuss is about. You can't like this sort of life after what you've been used to - a shoddy little fifth-rate company who feed in coffee bars!"
She smiled.
"They haven't much money, that's why they feed in coffee bars! And they're real people. I like them."
"The trouble is Nicholas kept you too penned-up," he said as if that explained everything. "I can understand you might want to kick over the traces. I shall be able to make him see that, I'm sure, though you can't blame the chap if he thinks you've left him for another man."
"I don't blame anyone," she said a little wearily. "Oughtn't we to be going into lunch, Father? It's getting late."
They went into the dining-room, and Lucius suddenly decided to abandon the r61e of parent. He ordered wine, made a fuss of her, and produced an easy spate of amusing anecdotes.
"You really are developing into rather an exquisite creature, Shelley," he told her. "If you were anyone else's daughter, I should want to be showing you off to half London."
"And there's not the same interest attached to your own daughter?"
"Well, there isn't, is there? No one would look at us and say: 'There must be something about that old rip to have captured a girl like that!'"
"And yet," she said slowly, "some fathers are proud of their daughters."
"Of course," he replied easily, "but not in public. Such a boring relationship, don't you think?"
She sipped her wine in silence. He had often before hurt her by remarks of this kind, and he could hurt her even now, but she was beginning to understand him. His artificiality cloaked nothing that was not there for all the world to see. He meant exactly what he said.
When the coffee came, he lit and cigar and eyed her tolerantly.
"Now, we're not going to have any more nonsense, are we?" he said. "I shall see Nicholas tonight and straighten everything out."
"Tonight?" She looked startled.
"Well, you don't suppose I'm going to face that dreary
journey twice in one day, do you? It's obvious I shall go to Garazion. Have you heard from Nicholas?"
"No. He went away."
"He comes back today. I rang up."
"He doesn't know you're coming, then?"
"Oh, Baines will tell him, unless I get there first."
"Father - " She stirred her coffee with care. "I would rather you left things as they are. Go to Garazion if you must, but please don't discuss me with Nicholas."
"Well, it's hardly likely that either of us can avoid it, is it?"
"Nicholas could. He's very adept at - concealing his conclusions."
He gave her a sharp glance.
"You know, my pretty, you've changed," he said, frowning. "You've grown up, and I'm not sure I like it." She felt a stab of anger.
"Yes, I've grown up," she said. "You and Nicholas, between you, saw to that." He looked puzzled.
"Nicholas, certainly - one would expect marriage to effect some alteration, but I can't see that I - "
"Nicholas told me of your not very attractive bargain with him," she said gently.
For a moment he looked taken aback.
"Then he had no right to tell you," he replied quickly. "And moreover, he was a fool. He - he drove me into a corner at the time. I had no option but to fall in with his proposition. I needed money and - well, if you hadn't married him, it would have been awkward."
"If I hadn't married him," she said, "he might have sent you to prison. He didn't spare me, Father. He told me everything."
He flushed angrily, and, for a moment, had nothing to say. So well had he always been able to deceive himself as well as others, that he had already begun to believe that he had never lived dishonestly.
"That," he said, flustered, "was surely unnecessary. He had no right to betray that confidence, no right at all."
"I don't think," Shelley replied quietly, "he ever would
have done so if you hadn't made him believe that I, in my turn, had betrayed him. You can't have it all ways, Father."
"I utterly fail to understand you," he exclaimed. "If you no longer care about Nicholas, you might consider me. Anything I may have done in the past, Shelley, I did for you. That's a small debt to repay, isn't it?"
"Oh, Father!" She had to smile. "You know you've never really troubled about me. Why, I even spent my holidays at school!"
"There were very good reasons for that."
"Yes, I'm sure there were," she said gently. "No, Father, I won't go back to Nicholas simply to ensure your allowance not being stopped. You can tell him so, if you like."
"But my dear child, can't you see - "
"You don't mind whether I'm happy or unhappy with him, do you?"
He began to recover his self-possession.
"In heaven's name! Why should you be unhappy?" he demanded impatiently. "You have money, luxury, everything you could want. Nicholas may not be an easy husband, but he's generous enough to you, and no marriage is perfect."
"No," she said, "I never expected it to be."
He paid the bill in silence, then looked at his watch.
"Well, there doesn't seem much object in prolonging this, does there?" he said with an attempt at recapturing his old easy manner. "I must say, I don't understand your attitude at all. The whole thing would seem to be a storm in a teacup, but I'm really forced to believe that this actor chap must mean something to you, after all. There's no other reasonable explanation."
She put on her coat.
"You must believe what you will, Father," she said, and he missed the tired unhappiness in her voice. "I think, perhaps, all men believe what they want to. Will you be going straight on to Garazion, now?"
"Alight as well," he said, collecting his change. "There's nothing to do in this one-horse place. Is there a garage where I can hire a car?"
"Yes, I'll show you."
Outside the garage, she stood in the wind waiting to say good-bye to him.
"Can I give you a lift anywhere?" he asked absently. "I'll have to stop at the station to pick up my suitcase."
"No, thank you. I shall go back to the theatre."
"Very well. Have you any message for Nicholas?"
The hair whipped across her eyes.
"No," she said. "No message."
"Well, good-bye, my dear. I'm sorry we couldn't have got together on this. I'll write to you when I get back to London."
She looked at him, and, for perhaps the last time, knew an impulse to fling herself into his arms. He was her father; she had the right to demand understanding, to beg for a little tenderness, but she knew he was lost to her. She knew him now for what he was, and she saw that there was no kindliness in Lucius, only that brittle charm which, even now, could tug a little at her heart-strings.
"Goodbye, Father," she said quietly. "And thank you for coming."
She walked back into the town, aware, now, of what a strain the meeting had put upon her. She wanted to be alone for a little, and evade Colin's inquisitive glances, and she turned into the small Catholic church which was close to the theatre. No one was there, and she slipped into one of the pews, and stared at the candles burning in the Lady Chapel. What had they done to her, Lucius and Nicholas, between them? What had Nicholas been thinking of when he made that infamous bargain with her father? Tears stung her eyes, and the candle flames became little starry Catherine wheels of light.
Shelley hid her face in her hands and prayed disjointedly. She prayed to St. Joseph and St. Anthony, those old friends of her childhood, then she threw in St. Mewan for good measure, because he had once killed a dragon.
Jake was putting on Prunella the following week, and the days were filled with rehearsing and the fitting of costumes. Shelley went to bed tired out each night, and slept dreamlessly. She was grateful to Colin who had not tried to force an issue of any kind between them, but had proved to be as hard a task-master as Jake, taking her through their scenes together at all odd hours of the day, making her eat proper meals, telling her absurd stories to make her laugh.
Only once, he asked her whether she had heard from Nicholas, and when she told him she had not, remarked:
"Don't you think it's odd?"
"No," she said, without surprise. "He's been away. But he must have got Mrs. Medlar to pack me up some clothes. They arrived yesterday."
"He's probably consulting his lawyer before he acts."
"Probably. These things take time, I believe."
He glanced at her a little sharply.
"Are you as indifferent as you sound?" he asked. "Well, it's probably a good thing. You know, my sweet, later on, things will have to change."
"How?"
"Well, I shall make love to you, for one thing. Didn't you expect that?" She laughed.
"I don't know what I expected. But yes, Colin, when I think about it, I suppose you will eventually want to make love to me."
"You've changed," he said, as Lucius had. "You're growing up. I'm glad to see you're at last getting sensible ideas."
"Are they sensible? Colin, you've been very good to me. I'm grateful."
"That's all right. My time will come, I hope. I'm very fond of you, Shelley."
"But not in love with me."
"Of course I'm in love with you. That goes without sayings but I've also been in love before."
"Pierrot," she said softly. "Pierrot is always in and out of love."
"But you, you see, are not Pierrette," he told her seriously, "You're Prunella who left a home and wanted it back again."
"I don't want it back again," she said. "Garazion wasn't a home."
"Well," he said lightly, "home is where the heart is, so they tell us. Let's go and eat tea and shrimps."
The dress-rehearsal was on Sunday, and on Monday they were to open with the new play. Shelley, now that her moment had come, found she was nervous. This was not school theatricals, this was adult and serious; if she forgot her lines it would matter. Even in such an unimportant town as Polzeal, she was suddenly conscious of her amateur status, and the slow conviction that she would never make an actress.
"Just first night nerves," Colin told her soothingly. "And a very good sign, too. It shows you have the makings of a trouper."
"Does it? But I don't feel I'll ever - I mean, sometimes I don't feel I've even got the urge to act."
"Well, time will show," he replied, remembering Jake's observations. "But, whatever other parts you try your hand at, Prunella is yours. Remember that. I promise you you can't go wrong in this."
He was right. The first performance went smoothly enough, although, the house, as usual, was only partly filled, and the audience apathetic. Shelley, after her first entrance, lost her fear of forgetting her lines. She was quite charming as the young girl who is enticed away from her sheltered home by Pierrot and the mummers, and her return to the deserted garden in the last act had a moving quality which had nothing to do with her slender gifts as an actress.
She looked a little bewildered as she took the last curtain call alone and listened to the desultory applause, and Jake patted her on the back and said she was doing all right.
"Not that you were really acting, darling," he said. "And not that we'll be able to keep the piece on. I told you, Colin, fantasy was no good, here. The audience are more dead than usual. They don't understand a word."
"Who cares," retorted Colin. "It's a nice play, anyway."
Shelley was almost the last to leave the theatre after the performance. She had told Colin that she was tired and would go straight home, and she idled over the process of changing and removing her make-up. It seemed very dark as she emerged from the stage door, and she was surprised to see the glow of a cigarette. Colin must have waited for her, after all.
"Colin! I thought you'd gone," she said. "I think I'm the last."
"I've been waiting for you, Shelley," a voice replied, and she remained where she was, frozen into silence, aware as soon as he touched her that it was Nicholas.
"I'll take you home," he said.
"Home?"
She moved away involuntarily, and his fingers closed instantly on her wrist.
"To wherever it is you're staying," he said quietly. His car was outside, and she said like an automaton: "It's quite close. I like to walk." "Very well."
His hand under her elbow, they began to walk. "Were you in front?" she asked, feeling she must say something.
"Yes," he replied briefly, and did not speak again until they had reached her lodgings.
"Is there anywhere we can talk?" he asked, and she answered, feeling it sounded absurd:
"We're not allowed to have men in our bedrooms."
She thought he smiled a little grimly in the darkness.
"Very right and proper," he observed, "but all the same I have to talk to you. Where would you suggest?"
She sighed, and felt a faint stirring of alarm. It had never been any good trying to evade Nicholas.
"Everything shuts down here so early," she said a little helplessly. "We - we could walk on the front."
He took her arm again.
"By all means let's walk on the front," he said. "It's a fine night."
The front was deserted. It was not yet warm enough for courting couples, and only a dog stirred on the beach, scavenging among the refuse. Their feet rang on the asphalt, and Shelley walked in silence beside Nicholas and waited for him to speak. But he only enquired if she was cold, and presently he stopped by one of the glass enclosed shelters.
"We'd better go in here and sit down," he said.
He sat for a moment in silence looking at her with the old piercing regard. The light from a street lamp fell fully on his dark, scarred face, and she saw that he looked ill and very tired.
"Well?" he said, and she knew that, for once, he was waiting for her to take the initiative.
She thrust her hands nervously into the pockets of her coat. This was a very different interview from the one she had had with her father. With Lucius she had found it quite easy to be cool and mature, but with Nicholas she was again the inexperienced child he had always thought her.
"How long does a divorce take?" she asked baldly.
He said quite calmly:
"I'm not thinking of divorcing you, Shelley. Or were you, by any chance, proposing to divorce me?"
She thought there was a faint twinkle in his eyes, and replied quickly:
"Of course not. But I've left you, haven't I? I thought - " "You thought running away from me justified a final separation?"
She looked at him a little helplessly.
"Then what do you want me to do?" she asked.
"Well, naturally, I want you to come home," he replied unemotionally. "But I realize that perhaps it isn't quite as easy as that. Do you want me to apologize for my behaviour that night, or do you know in your heart that I couldn't think ill of you for long?"
She thrust her chin lower into the collar of her coat, and knew then with bitter clarity how much she had missed him. Colin, Jake, all the members of the kindly, casual little company had befriended her and she was grateful to them, but Nicholas, with his meticulous care for her, and the dark compelling quality of his personality, had touched something hidden and unsuspected in her heart. Even if she left him, she would still be bound to him in some strange fashion.
"I suppose it was Father who made you see you were wrong," she said wearily.
"No. I knew I was wrong long before your father came to see me. I've been wrong in so many things, haven't I, Shelley?"
"I don't know. I've never understood you very well."
The sea lapped gently on the beach. It was high tide, and she could hear the soft drag of the pebbles as each wave washed them.
"Tell me," he said, "if you were free, would you marry this young actor?"
She met his eyes with her old grave look.
"No, I don't think so. No, I'm sure I wouldn't."
"I just wanted to know."
"Colin has been - still is - my good friend," she said. "I'm sure he is," he replied gently. "Tell him I'm grateful to him, will you?" Her eyes filled with tears.
"Do you understand now how it was?" she said. "I didn't tell you about Colin because -I find it difficult to explain, even to myself, but - anyhow, not because we were deceiving you."
He did not move.
"I understand. It was a secret, wasn't it? Just as you and Martin used to have secrets from me in the early days." She smiled at him then. "It was silly, wasn't it?"
"It was my own fault," he said a little harshly. "Shelley -I want you to know that - whatever happens, your father won't be the sufferer. I'm not contemplating cutting off his allowance."
Her eyes were hard.
"Why shouldn't you? You owe us nothing - either of us. I told him that." He smiled faintly.
"I think you told him several things that ruffled him," he remarked dryly. "But don't be bitter, my dear. Bitterness can
sour so much, as I know to my cost. I'm so very sorry that, in a moment of anger, I told you the truth."
"I would have found out," she said, and he replied thoughtfully:
"Yes, I think you would. There's an honesty in you that will break through dreams in the end. But it's worried me all the same. I'm not sure that one has the right to destroy all illusions."
"Isn't the truth always best?"
"I don't know. But I'm sorry - sorry to have taken the first illusion from you." He saw her shiver. "I ought to take you back. It's getting late."
Even as he spoke, the lamp outside the shelter went out, leaving only the starlight. He took something from his pocket and reached for her hand.
"Haven't you missed your wedding-ring?" he said.
"Yes - no - does it matter?"
"I think so." She tried to draw her hand away, but he held it firmly and slipped the ring over her finger. "You're still my wife, Shelley. I'd like you to wear your ring."
He stood up and she rose, too.
"What next?" she asked forlornly, and the strain of the long evening culminated in a sense of great exhaustion.
He stood looking down at her, and thought for a moment. He could have made an emotional appeal, allowing her a glimpse of his own unhappiness, or even taken her in his arms and told her harshly not to be so foolish. But he only said, with a faint smile: "Well, you could come back with me tonight, you know."
Immediately he knew he had been right to forbear with her a little longer. Her whole body stifflened under his hands and she cried vehemently:
"No, no! I can't come back and live in a glass case. I won't be just another exhibit."
He let her go at once.
"What makes you think you are?" he said, and realized that she was worn out with the double strain of the evening. "Come, I'll take you back."
As they walked back along the seafront, he said quite quietly:
"I'm selling my collection, Shelley. I thought you'd like to know."
She stood stock still and looked up at him. "Selling your collection!" she exclaimed incredulously. "You can't be serious!" "I'm perfectly serious. Some of the stuff has gone already." "But why?"
"It failed to please me any longer. You always said, didn't you, that you didn't care for inanimate beauty?"
"But, Nicholas - all those lovely things - they were your life."
"They were substitutes. That's not the same thing."
"I don't understand," she said, and he put a hand under her elbow and made her walk on.
"Don't you? Think it out when you're not so tired."
They walked on in silence, and he was aware of her feet dragging with weariness as she tried to keep step with him. When they reached her lodgings he put a roll of banknotes into her hand.
"In case your salary isn't sufficient, and I don't suppose it is," he said.
"Oh, no, Nick, no . . ." she said quickly.
He closed her fingers over the money.
"It's still my right," he said a little brusquely. "I shall send you a cheque each week."
She thrust the notes into her pocket, then touched his cheek uncertainly.
"You - you look tired," she said. "I hope Baines looks after you properly."
"Tired?" His eyes held an odd expression. "Yes, well, perhaps I am. We've been having a little trouble at the works. I've had to sack one of the men."
"I'm sorry," she said politely.
"You're very tired, yourself, aren't you? Go in to bed. I enjoyed your play, Shelley." "Did you?"
He would not tell her how much she had touched him, how
much she had unconsciously explained to him.
"Very much. You were charming, but you'll never make an actress."
"Oh, why?"
"You haven't been in the least interested to know what I thought of your performance," he said, with a twinkle, and was gone, walking quickly down the road.
She said nothing to Colin of Nicholas' visit, and during the next day or so there was little time in which to reflect on all that Nicholas had said. Jake had decided to keep Prunella on for another couple of performances, but after that, he said, it must go. They were rehearsing a new piece in which Shelley only had a very minor part, but even so, she was not at her ease. She was not a quick study, and the ways of repertory appalled her. How could one ever remember so many different parts, she thought, dismayed, as she looked at the bunch of dog-eared scripts which Jake had trust upon her. But Colin's eyes were sharp.
"You're wearing your wedding-ring again, I see," he said.
"Yes." She hid her hand out of sight. "Colin, I can't think of myself as a bright young thing with a taste for gin."
"Neither can I," he said, grinning. "But you'll have to forget Prunella. She's a young lady who came naturally to you, but you must learn other disguises. What made you put on your ring?"
" Well, I'm married - why not?" she answered a little lamely.
"No reason, I suppose. Look, my sweet, are you sure this is the right life for you?"
She looked at him a little doubtfully.
"I don't know," she said. "But it's the life I've chosen."
"Is it? I should have said it was the life you were pitchforked into, which isn't the same thing at all. Darling, let's get married."
She pushed the hair back from her forehead. "Oh, Colin!" she said, half-laughing. "I have a husband already."
"So you have," he replied cheerfully. "But he'll have to take some action soon, won't he? I mean, if you don't hear anything
from him, presumably you will from his lawyer."
She was silent for a moment. It was hardly fair, she thought, to keep Colin in ignorance of Nicholas' visit.
"He was in front last night," she said, quietly. "Afterwards we - sat in a shelter on the front and talked."
Colin's eyes were very bright and enquiring.
"Hence the ring, I suppose," he said. "Won't he let you go?"
"He - understands about us, now," she replied. "He - was very kind and gentle."
For a moment she thought he was going to burst out into extravagant speech, but, instead, he gave her an odd look, and said they had better run through her part in the new play.
She did not hear from Lucius, as he had promised, and she supposed that as he knew now that his allowance was safe whatever happened, he was no longer interested in what became of her. She would forget him, but she would not forget Nicholas' generosity. Some day, in some way, she would repay him.
After the last performance of Prunella, the members of the company sat in Moira's dressing-room, drinking cocoa, and looking a little dejected. The house had been half-empty, and Jake had decided to put Charley's Aunt back into the bill until they could get a new play together.
"Betty will be out of hospital in a week, but she'll have to go slow," he announced. "I can't get anyone from the agencies to take her place, and Shelley is hardly experienced enough, yet. I think we'll have to cut our losses and pack up."
There were a few half-hearted protests, but they knew they were beaten. Polzeal was a disheartening town in any case. They would do better, as Jake suggested, to disband for a time and get together again for a tour with more profitable bookings.
"I'm so sorry," Shelley said, as she and Colin walked back together to her lodgings. "It must be so disheartening for Jake - for all of you."
He smiled, noticing that, quite unconsciously, she did not include herself as one of them.
"Yes, it's tough, but I think Jake is used to running his company at a loss. But he never would go in with other managements, and we - well, we like working together." "What will you do?"
"Oh, find something as a stop-gap. It may not be necessary, anyhow, if the agencies send someone down."
He did not immediately remind her that she, too, would be out of a job. She had clearly never thought about it.
"Have you been happy with us, Shelley?" he asked as they reached the door.
"Yes, Colin," she said, touching his hand. "You've all been so kind."
He looked down at her a little quizzically. "Have you thought what you'll do?" he asked. "Me?"
"Yes. You'll be in the same boat as all of us, if we do pack up, you know."
"Yes." Her forehead wrinkled. "Yes, of course. Would I have any chance of finding a - stop-gap, did you call it?"
He shrugged.
"Possibly. You have the looks." "You'll help me, Colin, if we have to leave here?" "Do you want to leave? Polzeal is near Garazion, you know."
"What's that got to do with it?"
"Nothing, perhaps. Do you know what I think?"
"What?"
"You should go back to the dragon." She flushed faintly. "I wish you wouldn't call him that." His fair eyebrows lifted.
"I'm sorry. I think, then, you should go back to your husband."
"No ..." she said. "No ..."
"Well, you know best. Good night, my sweet."
The following day was wet. No rehearsal had been called for the morning, and Shelley idled the time away in her ugly little bedroom, washing tights, and polishing her nails. She felt restless and out of tune, and she thought of Garazion and the empty cabinets in Nicholas' study, and knew a strange desire to return just once more and hear the iron gates swing safely shut behind her.
There was a battered old book of fairytales on a shelf by her bed, left behind by some other tenant of the room, and she took it up now and leafed through it, renewing acquaintance with the familiar illustrations, which some child had crudely chalked over. Here was Cinderella gazing at an emerald green pumpkin, here was Jack climbing an impossible beanstalk, and here was Beauty, with bright yellow hair, finding the beast dying in the rose-garden.
Her eyes scanned idly down the page, and she remembered how she had told the story to Nicholas that first evening he had come to Gull Cottage, the evening he had bargained for her with her father. Beauty could not help fretting for the sorrow that she knew her absence would give her poor beast; for she tenderly loved him, and much wished for his company again....
She closed the book and gazed out on to the wet streets. Did she love Nicholas, she wondered at last, despite the strangeness of their marriage, despite the fact that his own love had been given and rejected so many years ago? She remembered his gendeness with her, and the firm comfort of his hands, and she thought of him saying: "I'm selling my collection, Shelley. I thought you'd like to know."
She put the book back on its shelf, and went out to meet Colin for their usual coffee-shop lunch.
"What a day!" he observed as she joined him. "It doesn't exactly cheer one's spirits, does it? I've never known such a wet spring. You look a bity peaky, my child - do you fancy dried egg or corned-beef hash?"
She chose the hash without enthusiasm, and he gave their order to the waitress.
"Oh, by the way," he said, "You've had a write-up in the local paper. Quite a nice little puff, too. I brought it along to encourage you."
He pushed across a paper folded at the right column, and she read it indifferently.
"Well?" he said, "Aren't you pleased? Doesn't it inflate the ego for you?"
"Not particularly," she replied, and began idly scanning the rest of the news.
She was just going to put the paper down, when a small paragraph caught her eye, and he watched her slowly turn white as she read it.
"What is it?" he enquired curiously. "An 'orrible murder?"
"Listen," she said. " 'Mr. Nicholas Penryn of Garazion, was found unconscious yesterday in the grounds of his home. It is believed he was attacked by a man recently discharged from the Penryn china clay works. The extent of Mr. Penryn's injury is not, as yet known.'"
She sat staring at him, and if it was possible for her to grow any paler, she did so. Even her lips were colourless.
"Here, drink some water," he said quickly, and poured some into a glass for her.
"I must go to him," she said. "Colin, I must go to him at once."
Foolishly, maddeningly, a passage from the old story which she had read only that morning, ran through her dazed thoughts. The beast lay dying in the rose-garden .. .forgetting all his ugliness she threw herself upon his body, weeping and sobbing the while ... But she could not weep, she could not move, She could only stare at Colin and repeat: "I must go to him."
He looked at her with a twisted little smile.
"It hits you, doesn't it?" he said. "It hits you right in the solar plexus. Well, I expect that's as it should be."
"Yes, it bits me," she said with dry lips. "Suppose -suppose I'm too late, Colin..."
"Now don't dramatize," he said sharply. "If it had been anything serious, they would have let you know."
"You don't know Nicholas," Shelley said distractedly. "He never tells you anything. He wouldn't want - he wouldn't try, and-"
"What you're trying to say is he wouldn't try and get you back that way," Colin said. "No, I don't suppose he would. I think he's probably an extremely proud and sensitive man, from all you tell me. Now, come on. Eat your hash. It looks revolting, but it'll do you good."
She half-rose to her feet.
"But don't you understand, I must go at once. I must hire a car."
"When you've had something to eat, I'll borrow Jake's car and take you there myself, but not before," said Colin firmly. "Now be sensible, Shelley. It does no good to face an emotional scene on an empty stomach."
She tried to eat, but the food only made her feel sick, and in the end, he gave up trying to persuade her, and took her back to her lodgings.
"I'll have the car round in a jiffy," he said. "Don't bother to pack anything. You can come for your things later."
"Yes, of course," she said in a dazed voice. "I'll be coming back, won't I?"
He smiled.
"No, my sweet, I don't think you'll be coming back," he said, and went away to the garage where Jake kept his car.
She remembered little of the drive, aware only of the rain which spattered on the cracked windscreen, the harsh, wheezy sound of the engine and the speedometer which never seemed able to climb above forty.
Now she knew pain, she thought dully, now she knew that aching sense of void that life without Nicholas must become. And she knew, too, that even if he had no love to give her, it did not matter so long as she could be with him.
Mist lay over the moor, and the high wall of Garazion rose suddenly to meet them. The gates, for the first time she could remember, stood wide open.
"Shall I drive up to the house?" Colin asked, breaking the long silence.
"No," she said, "put me down here."
They stood for a moment in the rain, while he took her hands in his.
"Well, it's good-bye this time, I think, Shelley," he said gently. "I think, too, you've come to love the dark Penryn, haven't you?"
She was not paying attention, and her eyes had the dazed look of a sleep-walker's. "Run home," he said. "God bless!"
Her eyes focused on him then, and she reached up and kissed him.
"God bless..." she replied. "And - thank you..."
She turned then and ran from him up the drive, and the mist closed in behind her. The quietness of death lay over the rose-garden, and not even a bird rose at her approach. In the rain she had left Garazion, and in the rain she returned, under the weeping skies. She pushed open the heavy front door, and the stillness flooded out to meet her.
In the hall she stood, listening, but she could only hear her own blood pounding in her ears, and she began to run through the rooms looking for Baines ... Beauty ran from room to room, calling out, Beast, dear Beast, but there was no answer ... No answer, no answer, her heart cried, as she fled up the stairs.
She ran into her bedroom, and stood for a moment, listening, but the door leading into Nicholas' room was wide open and there was no one there. The bed was smooth and neat, his brushes were ranged precisely on the dressing-table just as she remembered them, and the room had an empty, unused look.
He was not here, he was not anywhere in the house. Panic-stricken, she pulled the bell-rope, jerking it up and down, then tugged at the one in her own room, and ran out onto the landing and down the shallow stairs, calling: "Baines ... Baines..."
The old man hurried into the hall in his shirt sleeves, a baize apron round his waist, a piece of silver and a leather still in his hands, and looked up at her with startled eyes.
"Baines! Where is he?" she cried.
His old eyes softened.
"Mrs. Penryn, ma'am! You've come back. When I heard the bedroom bells, I was startled ... excuse me, ma'am, while I fetch my coat."
"Tell me quickly - where have they taken him?"
"Taken who, ma'am?"
"Mr. Nicholas. What hospital? Why wasn't I told?" The old man looked at her quietly.
"Dearie me, what tales have you been hearing?" he said. "There's Mr. Nicholas, just come in."
Shelley wheeled round. The front door had opened quietly, and Nicholas stood there, dark and very still, looking at her. He saw the strain in her attitude, the distraction in her eyes, then her face crumpled like a child's. She fled across the hall to him, and, sobbing bitterly, flung herself into his arms.
"Oh, Nicholas ... Nick ..." she cried, "I thought ..." She could not finish, but, weeping, hid her face against his breast.
Over her head, Nicholas looked at Baines. The old man smiled and nodded, and went softly back to his pantry.
For Shelley, the relief was too great. She wept in his arms, beyond all explanation, and for a little while he held her without speaking, then, gently, he disengaged her clinging hands and closed the door behind them, shutting out the damp and mist.
"Come into the warm," he said, and led her into bis study and put her into a chair by the fire.
"Now, tell me what's happened," he said quietly.
She looked up at him, her lashes wet and stiff with tears.
"I thought," she said, "you were hurt. I -1 drink I even thought you might be d-dead."
He looked puzzled.
"But why on earth should I be dead?" His eyes narrowed. "Did something go wrong at Polzeal?" She shook her head.
"It was in the paper, about you, and I thought - "
"Do you mean that crack on the head I had? I'd no idea they had reported it." A strange expression came into his face. "Shelley, is all this heartache and distress on my account?"
"I ran all over the house and couldn't find you ..." she said forlornly. "I thought they had taken you away."
"I was only knocked out," he told her gendy. "Beyond a cracking headache, I was none the worse. Is that what brought you back?"
She nodded, and he sat down, never taking his eyes off her.
"Shelley, if you come back to me, it's final," he said quietly. "I won't let you go again. I want that to be clearly understood."
She nodded again, and her eyes wandered slowly round the room. The cabinets had gone, and most of the glass and china.
The unknown child still looked gravely down above the mantelpiece, and the Bartolozzi print remained.
"It looks odd without the cabinets," she said slowly.
"Do you like it better?"
"It's more - more friendly, but - "
"But what?"
"Well, I could have become fond of your collection now." "Why now?"
"Because - because it means a lot to you." "It meant nothing to me after you had gone," he said, and her eyes widened. "Is that why the gates were open?" she asked. "The gates?"
"Isaac always kept them shut - to guard the collection, I thought." He looked at her strangely.
"The gates have been open ever since you went - in case you should return," he said, and she flung back her head.
"Then you've wanted me?"
"Yes, I've wanted you. Did you think I wouldn't?"
She slid out of her chair and came and knelt on the floor beside him.
"I thought you would want to be free of us both - Father and me," she said humbly, and he put both hands over hers, and regarded her with his familiar, searching look.
"I could never be free of you, Shelley," he said strangely. "And you, I'm beginning to think, don't want to be free of me."
"No," she said on a quick little intake of breath. "I knew that before - before - Did they find you in the rose garden, Nicholas?"
For a moment he looked puzzled.
"As a matter of fact, they did. Why?"
Her fingers curled round his.
"Don't you remember the story of Beauty and the Beast?" she said, "Beauty went away and, when she returned, she found her poor beast dying in the rose garden."
His eyes held a curious expression.
"And what happened then?"
"Then she knew she loved him."
He did not move, but she felt him stiffen.
"What are you trying to tell me?" he said a little roughly.
Her eyes were suddenly shy.
"I'm trying to tell you that's what happened to me," she replied in a very small voice.
His dark eyes searched her face, seeing there a new maturity and a heartbreaking plea for acceptance.
"Do you know what you're saying?" he asked with a quietness that deceived her.
"Yes." She could not meet his eyes, but, suddenly, she could talk to him, could tell him at last what she wanted of him. "I know you don't love me as you once loved Lydia, but that doesn't matter ... you've told me you don't expect love, but - let me love you, Nick, a little... let me in behind the bitterness and the old hurts ... You see" - she raised her eyes to his - "you made such a - a bogy out of your poor old face that I forgot the ending of all fairy-stories, when the beast is disenchanted ... you forgot, too, but perhaps you thought I couldn't love you..."
She reached up and drew his face down to hers, and turning the disfigured cheek towards her, kissed him gendy.
She felt him tremble, then the long control of months broke in him, and he pulled her up into his arms with a passion which startled her.
"I've loved you ever since I married you," he told her in a voice which shook. "Even from the time I first saw you dabbling your feet in a pool on the shore ... from the time when I brought you home, and you looked at me with those grave child's eyes and thought me a stranger... I couldn't tell you that I loved you so deeply that any small gesture of repugnance from you was gall and bitterness to me because I believed I was the sort of man no woman could love ... If I shut you out, my darling, it was because I didn't dare admit you, because you seemed to want nothing of me, because I felt that your father and I, between us, had cheated you. Now can you understand?"
She turned her mouth to his, stopping the fierce torrent of words, no longer afraid, no longer unsure of how best to bring him comfort, but remembering, even then, to send up a silent prayer of thanksgiving to St. Mewan, slayer of dragons.
Beasts and dragons, it was all the same, she thought, resting against Nicholas' breast. The triumph of faith in the fairytales ... the little miracle of faith in common life...
Here, Penryns had lived and died, here their children would be born, and their children's children ... This was Garazion, stronghold of the dragon, the beloved prison. This was home.

