The Truant Spirit (19 page)

“Does she put that on a postcard?” asked Bunny with a frown of distaste.

“Oh, Tante never writes letters—at least to me,” Sabina replied, and Brock, who had been paying no attention, remarked:

“I shall have to return—at least for a time.”

“Is your letter from Madame Jouvez?” Bunny inquired, showing no surprise.

“No,” he replied, frowning.

“Well, mine is. She is in England and wishes to know if you are staying here. She tried the old address and was given mine.”

“Jeanne Jouvez? Well, I’ve been expecting to hear.”

“Do you want me to reply?”

“Yes—no, I’ll write myself. You wouldn’t care for her to invade your prim rectory, Bunny. Jeanne is very feminine and a little exacting. She wouldn’t fit with your routine.”

But he did not speak of the unknown Madame Jouvez as if news of her displeased him, thought Sabina, trying not to appear to be listening. They had clearly forgotten her.

“As you wish,” said Bunny a little coldly. “But if you are going away—”

“I’m going where she can easily find me,” he said, and Sabina felt a small chill creep round her heart!

“I, too, will have to go soon,” she said clearly. “I don’t think you were listening, Brock, but I have heard from Tante that

she has settled everything with M. Bergerac and I may expect them soon.”

“Really?” he said politely. “Well, that must please you, Sabina. M. Bergerac’s intentions have been none too clear to date, have they?”

She flushed at his tone and Bunny said:

“That was not kind, Brock. It is you who have put doubts in the child’s mind, if she has any. I have understood lately that if Sabina is willing to marry a man she has not met, there is no objection on his part.”

Sabina’s knuckles showed suddenly white as she clenched her fists on the breakfast table.

“And supposing I’m not,” she cried unexpectedly. “Supposing I decide to work for my living and then marry someone of my own choice, whether he has any money or not! I could let the house to cold-blooded M. Bergerac if that’s all he really wants, couldn’t I?”

“Well, now,” said Brock with interest, “that is an idea!” “You’re upset, dear child,” Bunny said, recognising hysteria when she saw it. “I should go and lie down, if I were you.”

“Of course I’m upset!” shouted Sabina, thumping on the table. “I’m sick and tired of the name of Bergerac and I never want to see him as long as I live! I won’t lie down, either—I shall go out on the moor and fall in a bog and drown.”

She pushed back her chair with such violence that it crashed to the floor, and ran out of the room, her shoulders shaking with sobs.

“She probably will, too,” said Brock, getting to his feet. “Dear me, scenes so early in the morning! Still, it’s heartening to see the worm turn at last, isn’t it, Bunny?”

But Bunny looked distressed.

“It may be heartening for you, having achieved what you set out to do, but I don’t like any of this—I don’t like it at all,” she said.

Brock, looking out of the window, paid little attention. “There she goes,” he said, “and without a coat, too, the little fool! Why it always has to be me to go after her when she runs away, I don’t know.”

He left the room with his stiff, dragging gait, and snatching up a coat from the hall-stand, went out of the house. Willie, his mouth hanging open with surprise, leant on his hoe and watched.

Sabina ran, the March wind stinging her ears. Over the gravestones and rickety wall she sprang, careless of footholds, and as once before, she took a direct line over the moor, ignoring paths and sheep tracks. She was running away, this time not only from Rene Bergerac and his complacent plans, but from Bunny’s disapproval and Brock’s heartless mockery.

She heard him behind her, shouting, and ran faster, her skirt tearing on gorse and thorn bush, her stockings slashed and the tender skin beneath. He would not catch her with that stiff leg of his, and it gave her an empty but wild sense of satisfaction to know that he must suffer for his pursuit of her.

Brock kept the flashing scarlet jersey in sight, but she ran too fast for him and he cursed the crippling infirmity which held him back, the coat he carried hampering his movements. She was heading for the bog into which she had childishly threatened to fall and drown, and he shouted again. But it was not the bog that Sabina fell into, indeed she scarcely recognised the smooth and lovely patch of brilliant emerald for what it was. A loose boulder slipped beneath her flying feet and she was thrown down into a clump of bracken which hid the stony bed of a little stream.

The breath was knocked out of her and she lay there gasping and sobbing while the chilly water soaked into her shoes. When Brock caught up with her she was trying to rise and blood was trickling from a little cut on the rounded forehead.

“Well!” he observed, looking down at her grimly. “See what you get for running away.”

She did not answer or look up, and flinging the coat in the bracken he knelt awkwardly beside her, his stiff leg at a painful angle.

“Are you hurt?” he asked and ran his fingers over her slender bones.

“Of course I’m hurt,” she gasped, “I think I’ve broken all my b-bones.”

He was breathing heavily himself, for the sudden exertion had been great and he was out of training for such a spurt over rough ground.

“Not you,” he said. “You’re winded, that’s all. Stay quiet till you get your breath back.”

He spoke roughly but his hands were tender as he dipped his handkerchief in the stream and bathed the cut on her forehead. He took off her shoes and laddered stockings and washed the scratches on her legs, then lifted her gently onto her feet. She was still crying and every so often she drew a deep, painful breath.

“What goaded you so abruptly?” he asked with sudden gentleness. “Was it your aunt’s postcard or my regrettable teasing, or a bit of both?”

“Teasing!” she cried. “Do you call it that?”

But the dark face was no longer forbidding, and as he shifted his position in the bracken she knew that his leg was troubling him.

“Oh, Brock ...” she said and bowed her head against his breast, weeping afresh.

His arms closed round her and he held her close, supporting the light weight of her body while his cheek brushed her hair. “Poor child ...” he said. “Poor little driven lamb ...” She heard only the stream chattering over stones, and the harsh, hard breathing beneath her head. The March wind swept over scrub and heather, buffeting them gently, but it was a kindly wind and spring was under their feet and in the distant bleating of lambs across the moor.

“Come,” he said. “Come and sit down for awhile before we start home.”

There was a small sheltered hollow in the boulders close by, and he lifted her over the stream and the rough stones which would have been harsh to bare feet. He picked up the coat and wrapped it round her and they sat together, their backs against a flat boulder, the thin sunshine warm on their faces. “You haven’t answered my question,” he said. What made you run out of the house like that?”

Her head on the slender, childish neck drooped against his shoulder.

“I think it was because you were going away—to Madame Jouvez,” she said.

He smiled above her head.

“But if you thought that, why should it matter if you married Rene Bergerac?”

“I don’t know,” she said and sighed. “But the two were connected in my mind. You see—until I met you I had no knowledge of men. Tante’s arrangements seemed natural, for I had grown up with them, but now—”

“Now,” said Brock with an indulgence that had a bitter tinge, “the first man you meet can show you you are a woman and not a child.”

“Yes,” she said, “but for you that wasn’t so. For you I have just been a child to tease and not take seriously.”

“Do you think so? Can’t you understand that under the teasing I’ve been concerned for your ignorance?”

“Possibly,” she answered with grave politeness, “but it was hardly your affair, was it?”

“Well, perhaps more than you think,” he said. “I know the Bergerac family, you forget.”

“I don’t forget,” she replied. “But you’ve never given me a picture of Rene Bergerac that means a thing. He might be fat, but he is not like a head waiter; he is famous but not attractive, and he has poor health of which nobody seems to know the cause.”

“True, not an encouraging portrait,” he said. “And what now?”

“Now?”

“Well, you announced at breakfast that you aren’t prepared to marry a man you have never met—that you would work and marry the man of your choice, whether he had any money or not. Do you still feel that way?”

“Yes,” she said. “I know now that what you once said to me is true. You shouldn’t go into marriage expecting the worst. I didn’t, of course, expect anything—I’d never thought much about such things, but now—”

“And what’s made you grow up?”

But she was not prepared to reveal all her growing pains to Brock, so gentle in this hour of crisis, so careless of what he took and what he gave.

Different things, I suppose,” she answered evasively. “When will you be going, Brock?”

“Probably tomorrow.”

Her forehead creased in pain.

“So soon? When you come back I will have gone, too.”

He slipped an arm round her shoulders.

“No, you won’t,” he said. “I shall be gone a week, not more. When I come back—”

“Yes? When you come back?”

His fingers tightened suddenly on her shoulder, and he swung her abruptly round into the circle of his arms.

“When I come back would you marry me—or don’t I qualify for the man of your choice, with or without money?” he asked surprisingly.

She looked up into his dark face and knew him for a stranger still. She had no defence against him, but what should he want of her, this man who loved the mountains, cheated by nature of his rightful heritage?

“Well?” he said. “Do I offer no more attractive alternative to the elderly M. Bergerac?” “Oh, don’t,” she said, shutting her eyes, “don’t joke about him, now.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I wasn’t joking. I had thought that for me you had developed a small fondness that was a better starting point than that other, but I wasn’t sure. Open your eyes, Sabina, and tell me if you think you could be happy with me.”

Her lashes fluttered in the two little crescents which gave such innocence to her face, and her mouth curved tremulously into another.

“Yes, I could be happy with you,” she said and sighed, for what, after all, was happiness? If one person could love enough, she thought, that perhaps would do.

“Then look at me.”

She opened her eyes and saw his face, lean, hard and dominant, but with a fleeting tenderness about the twisted mouth which filled the empty places of her heart. She slipped her arms about his neck drawing herself closer to him, and lifted her tired face for his kiss.

“Am I engaged to you now?” she asked, still uncertain as to whether she had been proposed to or not.

“No,” he said. “You can’t be, as the good Marthe would have it, promised to two men at once.”

“But that other—I’m still waiting to hear from Rene Bergerac.”

“I daresay, but we’ll take one thing at a time. You will write to your aunt?”

It was more a statement than a question.

“Yes,” she replied. “But it won’t be easy, Brock. I’m under age and Tante has set her heart on this marriage.”

“But you are prepared to fight?”

“If it will do any good, but you don’t know Tante. I have never been able to stand up to her about anything that mattered.”

“Well, she can’t force you to marry against your will.”

“No, but—Brock, could we not—elope—before she returns from France?”

The old-fashioned expression sounded prim and rather absurd and he gave her hair a tweak.

“Running away is your solution for everything, isn’t it?” he said. “Eventually, I shall see your aunt myself, but in the meantime you must write yourself, and I think to Bergerac too.” “To Rene? But we have never communicated.”

“I daresay, but from what we can gather now, the deal has been completed. Don’t you think you owe him an explanation?”

“I suppose so. Do you think—if I suggest letting him Penruthan for a nominal sum, he would be content?”

He shrugged.

“Who knows? The place needs a packet spending on it before it’s habitable as a hotel, and he may not feel the expense is justified for a property he doesn’t own, besides—he may have fallen for that glamorous photograph and your aunt’s glowing descriptions.”

The old mockery was back in his voice and she said unhappily:

“It must all sound a joke to you, but I wish—I wish I could have returned Penruthan to the Bergeracs all the same. It belongs in the family.”

“It belongs to the English branch,” he said. “It was the property of Rene Bergerac’s wife to do with as she pleased.” “Yet he married her for it, just as the present Bergerac would marry me.”

“And that, for all you know, may be another of your aunt’s little fabrications,” he said shortly. “Mary Bergerac was a beautiful woman. Old Rene, I think, was a fool. He played around with women of no consequence until it was too late to mend his broken marriage—but that, as your aunt seems fond of telling you, is the French way.”