Dorothy Eden (12 page)

‘There’s someone in this house, too, walking about. You’ll have to look.’

Dundas laughed.

‘Well, that was me. That’s the easiest explanation of all. I’m a very poor sleeper. I often walk about at night, as Margaretta will tell you. I’m so sorry I frightened you.’

By the time Dundas came back with two glasses of hot milk on a tray Alice had grown calmer. Dundas’s very sanity reduced her panic. He did not believe Camilla was at the Thorpes’, but even if she were there she would be perfectly all right. That was what his quiet confident manner told her. After all, it was true that nothing could be accomplished at two o’clock in the morning. And nothing at all could be accomplished while one remained ill. It was her duty to get well as quickly as possible so that she would be able to go back to that tall elegant house of the Thorpes and find out what really went on inside it.

She realized now that she shouldn’t have run away. Felix would despise her for it. Did Felix know what had happened?

Dundas helped her up on her pillows. He wrapped a woolly bed-jacket round her shoulders, fussing like a woman.

‘There you are, nice and cosy,’ he said in the voice that was like thick black velvet, warm and soft and comforting. ‘Drink this up and stop thinking. Plenty of time to think when your head is functioning again. Eh?’

‘You’re very good to me,’ Alice murmured weakly.

‘Not at all. Glad to be. It was heaven-sent that I found you.’

Alice sank into the comfort of his voice and his care. It was with a sense of disloyalty that she asked the question at the surface of her mind.

‘Does Felix know about this? Felix Dodsworth?’

‘The bus-driver? Yes, indeed.’ Dundas laughed, not altogether with appreciation. ‘He came in here like an avalanche. I’m afraid he thinks women make a habit of disappearing from the schoolhouse. He was relieved to find you were all right. Or comparatively all right. You talked a good deal of nonsense.’

‘What did I say?’ Alice asked guardedly.

‘Mostly what you’ve been saying to me now about this idea that Camilla is a prisoner at the Thorpes’.’

‘Oh,’ said Alice, glad that that was the only nonsense she had talked. She sipped her milk, and wondered if Felix had really been upset. Of course, he would be sad if anything had happened to her, but would he suffer an agony that could not be comforted?

It was almost absurd, the thought that Felix could be comfortless. There would always be some woman to stroke his brow…

‘That’s better,’ said Dundas in a pleased tone. ‘You’re smiling.’

‘Am I?’ Had she really smiled about a thing like that? Then perhaps she, too, was the kind who could be easily comforted. She looked at Dundas’s round beaming face, and suddenly she wanted to draw her hand softly down his cheek. He was so kind.

She drank her milk and the nightmare receded more and more. Her head ached less and all at once her eyelids drooped.

‘You’re very sweet,’ said Dundas softly, ‘but you must go away.’

Who else had said that she must go away? With an effort Alice opened her eyes wide.

‘Why?’

‘Because it’s not right for you to stay here alone. Tomorrow or, if you’re not well enough by then, the next day I’ll drive you into Hokitika and you must catch the train home. I’m sure your brothers wouldn’t like to know you were staying here alone and having accidents like this.’

‘My brothers?’ said Alice perplexedly.

‘Didn’t you say you had six brothers?’

Alice remembered and was filled with remorse.

‘Oh, I was very naughty. I was teasing you.’

‘Teasing me?’

‘All my life I have wished I had brothers. So has Camilla wished she had. So when we were saying she had no family I couldn’t help pretending I had. I’m sorry, Dundas. It was quite silly of me.’

His light-coloured eyes with their enlarged pupils were on her.

‘Then you haven’t any family?’

‘Not in New Zealand. I have parents in England. My father designs aeroplanes. I’m the only child and a little superfluous to the life they lead. Besides, I don’t care for money—not lots of it.’

Dundas took the empty glass from her. He placed it carefully on the tray.

‘How very interesting,’ he said. ‘Aeroplanes. Well, you do hide your light under a bushel.’

‘Not mine. Daddy’s. I’m a very disappointing daughter, but one has to be the way one is. It’s no use to pretend.’

‘None at all,’ said Dundas, suddenly brisk. ‘I think you’re entirely right. I admire you more than ever now. But we’ll talk of all this again. Just now you’re in no state of health for a discussion on behaviour or morals or anything else. I’ve let you talk far too much already. You have to sleep.’

Alice lay back thinking that even the bed was velvet. Now she had to make no effort to keep her eyes open.

‘You’re nice,’ she murmured. ‘You’re not going to send me away, are you?’

He leaned forward to pat her cheek. ‘You shall stay as long as you wish. I can assure you—’

His words were cut short by a heavy footstep at the door. Startled into wakefulness, Alice saw Margaretta standing just within the doorway. She had on an old faded blue dressing-gown. Her hair hung lankily about her face. Her expression was even more forbidding than usual.

‘I could smell burning,’ she said shortly. ‘I came down to see what it was.’ Her gaze swept over her father and went scornfully to Alice.

‘Look how much better Alice is,’ Dundas said, apparently unaware of his daughter’s anger or scorn. ‘She’s quite wonderfully recovered. It was that sleep, of course. The doctor said what she needed was rest. I gave her some hot milk and I was just leaving her to sleep again.’

‘What’s burning, Margaretta?’ Alice asked.

‘I don’t know. That’s what I came down to see.’

‘Oh, that,’ said Dundas. ‘I was just burning some old things out of a drawer. I potter when I can’t sleep. Good gracious, child, I’m not likely to set the house on fire. Go back to bed.’

‘Oh,’ said Margaretta. She lingered a moment as if she were not entirely satisfied. Then, without another word, she turned on her heel and went.

‘She has a nervous temperament,’ said Dundas. ‘She always has had. Fancy the smell of my old climbing sweater burning waking her. Though I admit it stank. It didn’t worry you?’

‘No,’ said Alice. She hadn’t smelt anything, she had only heard those slow footsteps that seemed to betoken anxiety, great anxiety that permitted no sleep.

‘Then good night, dear. Sleep well. You’ll be quite better tomorrow.’

‘Yes,’ said Alice. ‘Thank you.’

Dundas switched the light off, and the pink-striped wallpaper disappeared and the moonlight was back across the floor. The door remained open and now she had no nightmares. But her drowsiness had vanished and her headache had come back. She was trying to remember the expression on Margaretta’s face as she had stood at the door, trying to remember her tone of voice, trying to tell herself that the girl was only angry and scornful, not afraid. Surely not afraid.

A
BED MADE FOR
an expected guest, a wardrobe full of clothes, a starving cat, a fur coat locked in a tin trunk, a blithe diary full of innocent intrigue, a passionate note from a lover, a whispered voice in the night, a dead magpie…

Those were the airy clues on which she had to base her uneasiness about Camilla.

She had awoken with her brain clear, her body cool and rested. It was broad daylight and the sun was shining. If it hadn’t been for that web of bewilderment in her mind she would have taken intense pleasure in the glimpse she got through the window of mountain peaks, white and brilliant above the intensely green bush. A black fantail was sporting in the tree just outside her window, poising like a ballet dancer and flirting the delicate fan of its tail. The air was alive with notes of music. She lay identifying the shiver of bells of the mako-mako, the long golden note of the tui, the twittering of the bush robins, the cosy purring quality of the wood-pigeons, and occasionally the discordant note in the orchestra, the screech of the drab-breasted kea.

Just as her pleasure in this comfortable pink-striped room was spoilt by her constant apprehension about Camilla, so was the bird song made discordant by the voice of the kea—the kea with his bird-of-paradise colours hidden under his closed wings and death in his cruel beak.

Webster, the magpie, had had a long cruel beak, too. But he had used it for making his quaint uncanny utterances. Indirectly, by giving significance to his remarks, she had been responsible for his death. Dundas said he had been badly pecked in a fight. It was true that wild magpies attacked and killed tame ones. But unless she saw his body she could not believe that her first impression that his neck had been deliberately wrung had not been true.

Even if Camilla had, for some reason, been imprisoned at the Thorpes’ they would have had time to shift her by now. They would know, too, that Alice’s fantastic story could scarcely be believed. Even gentle honest Dundas had humoured her. He had brought her hot milk in the night and told her to go to sleep. As for Felix, he must have attributed her story to the wanderings of delirium, for he had shown no further interest.

Alice resolutely kept Felix’s black-browed face out of her mind. She turned her head and suddenly saw, on the dressing-table, one of Dundas’s Dresden figures. It had not been there the night before. He must have crept in with it before she was awake, thinking that its delicate beauty would give her pleasure. It did, too. She was conscious of deep pleasure not so much at the full lacy skirt and exquisitely tiny wrists and ankles of the figure as at Dundas’s thoughtfulness.

She remembered Margaretta’s words that her father liked small women and she lifted her own arm and looked at her little drooping hand and childish wrist. Felix once in a rare moment of praise had said, ‘With a few more inches we’d make a Bernhardt of you. But you’re too miniature for the stage, my sweet. Too miniature for everyone but me.’

Now it was just Dundas who admired her smallness…

Still contemplating her upraised arm, Alice was suddenly aware that Margaretta was at the door. She had a tray in her hands, and when she saw that Alice was awake she came and set it on the table beside the bed. She didn’t speak. Alice looked at her lowering face and determined not to be intimidated by this mentally immature girl.

‘Good morning, Margaretta,’ she said. ‘I feel such a lot better this morning. I’ll get up shortly, and then I won’t have to be a trouble to you any longer.’

‘Doctor’s coming this morning,’ Margaretta told her briefly. ‘You can’t get up till he says so.’

‘Oh, he’ll let me, I’m sure.’ She raised herself on her pillows. The breakfast tray, she saw, contained a plate of thick porridge, some toast which had absorbed its butter and gone cold, and a cup of weak tea. Dundas had said that his daughter was a good housekeeper. No doubt he had wanted to encourage the girl. But did he really always have this kind of fare?

Alice made an effort.

‘Thank you, dear. I’ll just have a little toast. One doesn’t get hungry lying in bed.’

She saw Margaretta’s eyes on the Dresden figure and involuntarily sighed. Margaretta did not approve. That was clear. It was a pity Margaretta’s jealous scowl had to spoil her pleasure in Dundas’s little act of kindness.

‘What time is the doctor coming?’ she asked.

‘Ten o’clock.’

‘Then could I tidy myself a little?’

‘I’ll fix you after breakfast,’ Margaretta said grudgingly.

Sure enough, half an hour later, she came back with a basin of water and a towel, and a brush and comb. She refused to let Alice attend to her own toilet, saying her father had insisted that Alice wasn’t to lift a finger until the doctor came. But Alice privately concluded that Margaretta, the peculiar person, was a little of a sadist. She obviously took pleasure in slapping soap in her eyes, spilling water down her neck, and pulling her hair quite violently with the comb. Alice strove to keep her temper. It was only for this single time. After that she would be able to get up, and never again would Margaretta lay a finger on her. Perhaps the girl meant to be kind. She was overgrown and clumsy, and likely to spill water, anyway. But she might have made some pretence of an apology.

‘You haven’t ever thought of going in for hairdressing, have you?’ she asked, as Margaretta gave a particularly vicious pull.

‘No,’ the girl answered, the sarcasm of Alice’s remark apparently lost on her.

‘I had a ribbon somewhere,’ Alice said. ‘It keeps my hair tidy.’

Margaretta grunted. Of course, she thought Alice was merely frivolous and conceited to want a ribbon in her hair in bed. But she found the crumpled blue ribbon and tied up her curls with a clumsy yank.

‘Thank you,’ said Alice. ‘I know you don’t like my being here, but truly I can’t help it for a day or so.’

Margaretta looked at her for the first time. Her eyes were suddenly bright.

‘You’ll go then, won’t you? When the doctor says you can.’

‘Of course I will. Back to the schoolhouse.’

A veil seemed to fall over Margaretta’s eyes. She turned abruptly away. She had the towel over her arm, and it swung with her movement. Whether it was intention or not, it caught the Dresden figure on the dressing-table and swept it to the floor. Alice gave a little cry of distress. The figure had broken into innumerable pieces.

For a moment Margaretta looked frightened. Then some inner triumph seemed to fill her and she muttered, ‘Well, that’s one less, anyway.’

‘Oh, it’s a shame,’ Alice said. ‘It was a lovely thing.’

Margaretta glared at her.

‘It was an accident. You can’t help accidents.’ She crouched to pick up the fragments. Now Alice was almost sure that she had knocked over the figure deliberately. Did it annoy her so much that Dundas had put it in here? What a funny girl!

‘If I hadn’t been here in bed your father wouldn’t have brought it in. So really it’s my fault.’

Margaretta let the pieces fall with a clatter into the waste-paper basket. Over the sound of broken china Alice heard her muttered voice, ‘You silly fool, why don’t you go?’

The doctor was pleased with Alice’s progress. He was a small elderly man whose slightly trembling hands did not inspire her with confidence, but on the other hand neither did he make her nervous.