The Truant Spirit (13 page)

“Will we be snowed up?” asked Sabina, raising a flushed, expectant face from her work.

“I shouldn’t think so,” Brock answered, then smiled with

unexpected gentleness. “It’s all a great adventure, isn’t it, Sabina? You’ll be really disappointed if we aren’t besieged here?”

Her mouth curved into shy tenderness.

“It is an adventure for me,” she said, “But I wouldn’t like Bunny to be inconvenienced by the snow, of course.”

“Snow ... mountains ... I wonder why they hold such enchantment for you?” he said with the same strange gentleness.

“I don’t know,” she replied, her eyes wide and clear. “Perhaps those who can never experience achievements in high and snowy places can still share the magic—even if it’s only imagined.”

A log shifted on the open hearth, sending up a shower of sparks, and the peat which supported it crumbled into ash, filling the room with an aromatic scent.

“Yes .” said Brock reflectively. “Yes .”

Bunny cleared her throat and remarked that it was getting too dark for Sabina to see what she was doing, but even when the lamp was lighted and the curtains drawn against the snow-filled twilight, Brock’s mood lingered. He seemed fascinated by watching Sabina work. Her face bent over the snowy linen was charming in its unawareness. The soft hair fell forward in smooth sobriety over the sharp planes of her cheekbones, and the crescent curves of her downcast lids were full and tender in the firelight. He became a little hypnotised by the needle which flashed in and out under her fingers with the most delicate care.

His mood was unchanged when tea was brought, and he laughed at the butter running down Sabina’s chin as she ate crumpets with frank enjoyment and, afterwards, he fetched his books on mountaineering and spread maps on the floor to illustrate a climb.

He was very like a small boy displaying his treasures, Bunny thought, watching them, and as Sabina’s absorbed face caught her eyes, she gave a little sigh and removed the tea-things unnoticed by either of them.

To Sabina it was like entering a new world as he explained the technical terms of mountaineering to her. She was quick, he found, to grasp the significance of detours and weather conditions, and listened with rapt attention to his stories of the strange phenomena to be found in the mountains.

“You have the makings of a climber, I think,” he said, her enthusiasm taking him back to his own early days.

“No, no,” she said quickly. “I wouldn’t have the courage. To climb in the greatest sense must mean, I think, complete singleness of purpose.”

“I would have said you had that—or the makings of it. ”

“Not as you have. Perhaps it’s different for a woman— perhaps one’s sex is hampering. A woman would demand more of life, I think, than climbing mountains.”

She was still lying flat on her stomach on the floor, her elbows propped on the spread sheets of a map. He regarded her delicate face with a preoccupied air.

“You think, like Bunny, that mountaineering is not a complete form of fulfilment?” he asked.

“Does Bunny think that? But she is a woman. A man, I think, can more easily isolate things. You Brock, have had only one love, haven’t you?”

“Why do you talk with such assurance—you who have not known love at all?”

“I have no assurance, really, only—”

“Only what?”

“Somehow, one knows these things. It’s like knowing one’s own limitations, I suppose.”

The gaze he suddenly bent on her was dark and brooding. “Yet you are prepared to embark on one of the great adventures of life with no more perception than a schoolgirl,” he said.

Her eyes strayed from the map and searched his face uneasily. “It’s different for me,” she said. “I’ve grown up in a tradition, and perhaps I’m not born for great experience.”

“You’re born with the gift for talking a great deal of rubbish,” he said crossly. “Really, Sabina, I hardly know which I’m speaking to, sometimes—a child of unusual perception or an adolescent nitwit.”

“There’s no need to be rude,” Sabina said, and he laughed. “Well, it’s sixteen years since I was your age,” he said. “I expect I’ve forgotten how confused one can be at nineteen.” “Brock—Bunny said you wanted me to keep your room while I’m here, but I think you should have it back.”

“Do you? Why?”

“Because—well, because it’s stamped with your personality—the books and the pictures and things.”

He smiled a little crookedly.

“Well, live among the mountains for a little longer. I have

them within me,” he said. “Have you fed your robin again?” “Oh, no, I’d forgotten!” she cried, immediately diverted, and she scrambled to her feet, pushing the hair from her eyes. “Brock—when can I see Penruthan again—properly, I mean?” “Tomorrow, if you like,” he answered carelessly. “But this time you’ll come with me in the car.”

“Thank you,” she said and hesitated, and he remarked with his old indifference:

“I can wait outside if you want to go over it alone, but there’s nothing much to see. Only a few of the rooms are furnished.” She
fing
ered the handsome
armoire
which had first caught her attention in the crowded room.

“Is it French?” she asked, because, for some reason, she wanted to linger.

“Yes. It’s said to be by Boulle, if your French upbringing has included any mention of him.”

She shook her head, and he said with faint irony: “You should study the masters, Sabina. You will find furniture like that at the Chateau Berger. You mustn’t show your ignorance to Rene Bergerac.”

“Will he expect knowledge of such things?” she asked a little anxiously.

“Undoubtedly—unless he is the type of man who prefers to do his own educating, which I think he might be. Don’t look so alarmed. Haven’t you been told that reformed rakes make the best husbands?

“Y-yes. Is a rake the same as a roue?”

“It’s a matter of opinion, I should say. You’ll find out in due course. Now what about this starving robin?”

He was laughing at her again, but he also wanted to get rid of her, she thought. An hour of her solitary company was, doubtless, as much as he could manage without becoming disagreeable.

She went out to the kitchen, where she found Bunny cleaning silver, and started to heat some milk on the stove.

“Has Brock converted you to climbing?” Bunny asked, not interrupting her task of polishing.

“He’s a different person when he talks about mountains, isn’t he?” Sabina said, but she did not sound very sure of the outcome of the conversation.

“Well, that applies to us all when we can mount our hobbyhorse, doesn’t it?”

“I suppose so, only—”

“Yes?”

“I—I wish he wouldn’t sneer at M. Bergerac.”

“Perhaps,” suggested Bunny, “he hasn’t a very high opinion of M. Bergerac.”

“Oh!” said Sabina, discovering with surprise that Brock’s good opinion of the man she was to marry should matter.

She took the warm milk off the stove and sat down on the floor to feed the robin in silence.

It had stopped snowing by nightfall, and in the morning the sun would shine from a cloudless sky to lend a sparkling beauty to the white landscape, but it was still dark when Sabina ran downstairs in her dressing-gown to heat milk for the robin.

The house was bitterly cold and icicles clung to every window, but the kitchen still retained its warmth; the range must have been replenished. Copper and brass reflected a glow from the fire and a rosy pattern danced on the flags. It was a nice kitchen, Sabina thought, aware for perhaps the first time of the reality of a home that was not a hotel. When she had fed her bird she would make tea and take it up to Bunny as a surprise.

But the robin was dead. She found it cold and stiff in the workbasket, its beak a little open, and its claws stretched in mute defeat to the ceiling.

Sabina knelt on the bright rag rug and looked at the bird with a sorrow that was touched with bitter self-reproach. She had left it there to die and never thought to feed it through the night. She lifted it from the basket and held it between her breasts, trying vainly to warm it back to life, and her tears fell gently on the soft red feathers.

Someone came into the kitchen and she raised her face to Brock. He was unshaven and probably shirtless, for he had knotted a handkerchief round his throat and tucked the ends carelessly into his coat.

“It’s dead,” she said tragically; “I let it die.”

He knelt down beside her and took the robin from her cold hands, but she tried to snatch it back.

“If I warm it ...” she began, but he laid the little body back in the basket and closed the lid.

“My dear child, it’s quite stiff,” he said with faint impatience. “It must have been dead an hour or more. I told you yesterday that this would probably happen.”

“I let it die,” she said again. “If I’d sat up—or come down during the night to feed it—it might have lived. ”

The early light of day was beginning to filter through the windows, and his face looked hard and discouraging in the greyness.

“It would have made no difference, if that’s any comfort to you,” he said. “I fed it several times through the night and kept the fire up. I saw it wasn’t going to live.” Her tears fell faster. She had a forlorn desire to rest her head against his breast and

find comfort.

“Oh, Brock. ” she said, “Bunny told me how you used to bring maimed creatures into the warm and tend them when you were a boy. You are so much kinder than you want people to think, aren’t you?”

“Do you think so?” he said a little caustically. “You’re like most women—confuse kindness with sentimentality. For heaven’s sake! Why do you have to weep over such a trivial commonplace? The bird would have died in any case.”

His voice was still impatient, but his fingers as he brushed away her tears were curiously gentle, and when he next spoke, his voice was gentle, too.

“This is a personal loss for you, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she said, and no longer minded his impatience. “It was the first live thing that I have ever had—the first creature for which I’ve been responsible.”

“Yes, I see,” he said and he smiled with sudden tenderness. “You are one of the ones who will be hurt by life, you know. You should think of that when you contemplate marriage with a stranger.”

She blinked at him uncertainly, and for the first time Rene Bergerac, from being a nebulous, unreal character, became more sharply defined, a man whose desires were already spent and who did not really want her.

“I’m sorry,” she said stiffly. “I’m not usually emotional.” “Aren’t you? Well, perhaps half-past six in the morning is a little early. We’d better make some tea.”

He got to his feet and began to set out cups and saucers on a tray with the ease of long practice. She watched him fill a kettle and spoon tea into an old brown teapot, and the small domestic ritual made him seem friendly and familiar. Just so, she used to imagine, would a husband and wife share the small trivialities of marriage, a sharing which might not be for her. M. Bergerac, she felt sure, would never penetrate to his own well-staffed

kitchens, or pour tea carelessly into cups which did not match the saucers.

She sighed as Brock handed her one and he observed with unflattering raillery that her nose was pink and she had better swallow her tea as hot as possible.

“Crying is apt to make one’s nose pink,” she retorted with spirit. “And you aren’t looking your best yourself, if it comes to that. Your chin is blue.”

He laughed and ran a hand over his face.

“Quite right—I need a shave,” he said. “What an odd mixture you are, Sabina Lamb.”

“I think you’re an odd mixture yourself,” she replied. “I never quite know where I am.”

“Don’t you? Ah, well, you haven’t much experience as yet. Do you still dislike me, I wonder, or will you put me in my place again by saying you don’t know me?” “It can make no difference to you which I say. I don’t think you

mind what people think of you.” He sat on the edge of the table stirring his tea, and his eyes rested on her with amused questioning.

“You take me at face value, don’t you—just as you accept your aunt and Marthe and even the egregious M. Bergerac?” “I’ve never known any other way,” she said simply and his mouth softened.

“No, I suppose you haven’t. Shall we try to teach you a few values, Bunny and I?” She looked surprised and a little puzzled and he added inconsequently: “You look like a little girl sitting there in your long blue dressing-gown, a little girl meant for simple, homely pleasures—farmhouse teas, birthday cakes with candles, and a bosom to cry on when you’re tired.”

His words had an unexpected nostalgic beauty for Sabina and her eyes grew bright.

“How strange for you to talk like that,” she said and his eyebrows lifted.

“Why? Do you suppose I’ve never wanted such things myself?”

“Have you never had them?”

“I suppose in some measure—when I was small.”

“And a bosom to weep on, too?”

“No, perhaps not—and that’s the most important, isn’t it?” It was a strange conversation and somehow out of character with what she knew of him.