Child Friday (3 page)

“That’s a hard view,” she said a little primly. “All women aren’t the same, besides—one never knows all the ins and outs of a broken love affair.”

“Says you!” retorted Shorty rudely. “Miss
Larne
give him the air because he went blind, see? Might ’ave changed her tune if he’d come into his money earlier. It only goes to show, don’t it?”

“Oh, that was cruel!”

“Of course it was. Like I was telling you, there ain’t no ’eart in females. Well—’ere we are. The governor wants to see you at once. ’E’s ’ad ’is dinner, of course. You’ll get yours later on a tray.”

A high stone wall had risen suddenly out of the darkness , and the car turned in through a gateway and circled a short I drive to the front of the house. Emily had an impression of a long, gaunt building, unlighted and shuttered. The wind had piled snow against the buttressed walls, and the steps
which led to the front door were already covered. As she followed Shorty up them, Emily could feel the snow seeping through the shoes which so badly needed resoling, and the sensation of cold matched the chill round her heart as she stood on the threshold of this new, unknown venture.

The man pushed open the heavy front door and did not stand aside for her to enter first, but impatiently beckoned her in so that he could shut it. The hall was unlighted except for the glow of a log fire at the farther end. The silence matched the darkness out of which the dim shapes of tall presses and chests loomed with the half-seen menace of shadows.

“Is there no electricity here?” Emily asked, wondering why, at least, an oil lamp had not been left burning.

“Oh, yes, but we forgets in this part of the ’ouse,” replied Shorty carelessly, and flicked down a switch somewhere near the door. A blaze of illumination sprang suddenly from a vast crystal chandelier hanging high above them and Emily stood blinking in the light.

“You’ll get used to the darkness. At least, if you don’t you’ll be no different to the others,” Shorty grinned, but he left the lights on and Emily saw that the hall soared to the roof of the house, and a shallow stone staircase mounted to a short gallery where doors stood open to the darkened bedrooms beyond.

“This way,” Shorty said, and jerked his head towards one of the ground-floor rooms. “I’ll take up your traps while you’re saying your piece to the governor.”

Emily would have liked time to wash and remove the traces of her long journey, before being interviewed by her new employer, but Shorty was already opening a door and announcing her.

“The young lady, sir,” he said in the suddenly expressionless voice of the well-trained servant, and quietly shut the door on Emily.

CHAPTER
TWO

SHE stood just inside the room, feeling suddenly nervous. There were no lights here, either, but the glow from the fire flickered on walls lined from floor to ceiling with
books, so it was, presumably, a library. The quietness and the knowledge that a stranger sat somewhere in the shadows, waiting for her, gave Emily a rising sensation of panic.

“Well?” A voice spoke suddenly and impatiently out of the darkness. “Come to the fire and get acquainted.”

She had to feel her way across the room, unfamiliar with the placing of the furniture, and as she approached the circle of firelight, a low growl halted her. She could see the bright eyes of an Alsatian bitch watching her from where she lay beside a chair by the fire and her lip lifted threateningly.

“It’s all right, Bella.” The man sitting in the chair spoke caressingly. “Are you nervous, Miss Moon?”

“No,” said Emily, who liked dogs. “Though I imagine her job is to guard and—and guide you.”

“So you’ve heard of the Guide Dogs’ work, have you? Come and speak to her, then. If you don’t get on with Bella it will be no use your remaining here, I’m afraid.”

Emily went up to the bitch and put a hand lightly on her head.

“Good girl, good Bella,” she said softly. “I won’t hurt your master—so please be friends.”

The bitch sniffed her hand suspiciously, then laid her long muzzle down between her paws and sighed deeply.

“She’s accepted you; your approach was the right one and she likes your voice,” said Dane Merritt, and rose then to shake hands.

He was a tall man with an abrupt, rather clipped way of speaking; his grasp was firm and impersonal and he did not appear to fumble for her hand, although when she tried to withdraw it his fingers tightened on hers.

“No, leave it there for a moment,” he said a little impatiently. “I can tell a great deal from hands.”

He traced the shape of her fingers lightly and swiftly with his own, turning her hand over to touch the lines of her palm.

“Are you wearing a hat?” he asked when he had released her, and when she answered that she was, told her to remove it
.

“Do you mind?” he said, his hands running over the bones of her face and the shape of her skull.

“No,” she said nervously! “But I feel rather like a horse being vetted.”

He laughed and dropped his hands at once.

“How young you sound,” he said, again
with that hint of impatience. “I told Louisa Pink than young things with the bloom still on them wouldn’t suit, but she seemed to
think
—
How old are you, really?”

‘Twenty.”

“H’m ... she told me twenty-four.”

“I don’t see that my age need worry you, Mr. Merritt,'” said Emily gravely. “I’ve been earning my living since I was seventeen and bloom gets rubbed off very soon, you know, when you have to fend for yourself.”

“That has a bitter sound,” he observed. “Hasn’t life been kind to you?”

“It wasn’t meant to be bitter,” said Emily with honest surprise. “I was only trying to convey that some people have to learn to accept life as it is earlier than others. I was one of them, so the fact that I am only twenty shouldn’t matter to you.”

“Dear me!” he remarked
a
little dryly. “Louisa has certainly picked me a change this time. Sit down over there and we’ll get down to business.”

She sat in the chair he indicated on the other side of the fireplace, wondering if he was already being put off by the unguarded speech which before now had found disfavour with other employers, and even with Miss Pink, whose name she had never before known to be Louisa.

Dane did not continue speaking at once but sat in his chair looking at her. In the dim light it was difficult to believe that he could not see her. His eyes were apparently clear and unscarred and his regard steady. She studied his face curiously and with a faint sense of trespass, seeing that the skin was stretched a little too tautly over the prominent bones, and that the mouth had the same look of tautness, as though acceptance had been hard to learn and was still, perhaps, not always quite under control. The dominant, high-bridged nose, gave his face a faint suggestion of arrogance.

‘Well?” he asked suddenly, and Emily jumped.

“I always know when people are watching me,” he informed her with cynical tolerance. “You may find it uncomfortable living with a blind man, Emily Moon, for all your boasted experience of life as it is.”

“I’m sorry,” she said and hastily averted her gaze. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”

“Or to pity, I trust,” he retorted dryly, and her eyes went again to his as though he must see the swift denial in her face.

“Pity is never welcome,” she said, remembering her own youthful smarting under the unthinking tolerance of others. “And in your case quite unnecessary, I should think, Mr. Merritt
.
”

He changed his position, crossing one long leg over the other.

“You sound a remarkable young person,” he observed with an undertone of mockery. “I almost think you might do—that is, if you can return the compliment where I am concerned.”

“That hardly arises,” said Emily, a little amazed that one’s prospective employer should consider a detail of that kind. “I shall be very happy to work for you, Mr. Merritt. Miss Pink has told you all about me, I imagine. My—my qualifications are—are adequate, I suppose, but not at all exceptional.”

“Which qualifications are you referring to?” he asked with amusement
.

“Well, typing and shorthand, driving a car, running a house—all the things you stipulated.”

“You make it sound alarming. It that all Louisa told you I required?”

“Oh, to look after the little girl in Holiday time, of course, and be—be generally helpful, I think she said.”

“I see.”

He began to tap the arm of his chair with impatient fingers and Emily was conscious of a change in him. It was as if, in some way, either she or Miss Pink had cheated him. “Was there something more?” she enquired timidly.

He looked across at her, and only then, in that long, unfocusing stare, was she conscious that he did not see her
.

It gave her a faint feeling of disquiet, as if she had no right to spy on him when she herself was unobserved.

“Yes, I’m afraid there was,” he replied a little shortly. “But we’ll come back to that later. Tell me about yourself, Emily Moon. It’s an absurd name, isn’t it, by the way? Old-fashioned comfortable homeliness harnessed to a mystery of the heavens. But perhaps that’s the secret of your personality.”

“I’m very ordinary,” said Emily, who thought this rather extravagant. “I was christened after a great aunt—I’ve never liked her name. My mother’s name was Seraphina. Seraphina Moon—that matches, doesn’t it?”

“Very fanciful,” he replied without enthusiasm. “No doubt your mother had a
revulsion of feeling when you were
born
. Are you like her?”

“
Oh, no,” said Emily simply. “My mother was beautiful.”

He smiled.

“And you were in chains?”

“In chains?” It seemed a strange conversation.

“Beauty so often enslaves, but I’ve n
o
doubt you’re pretty enough in your own right,” he said carelessly, and Emily remained silent, remembering Miss Pink’s observations.

“Well, do you care to give the job a trial?” he asked abruptly. “I must warn you that Pennyleat is lonely. I don’t entertain and in bad weather, when the mist comes down on the moor, we are very isolated.”

“I don’t think I should mind th
at,” replied Emily gently. “I’m not used to gaiety.”

“That would certainly have its advantages,” he retorted dryly, then added unexpectedly: “No admirers? No young man waiting to marry you?”

She thought of Tim who had taken and rejected her foolish heart so casually.

“No,” she said clearly. “Young men don’t interest me —nor I them.”

He raised his heavy eyebrows. “Then you would sound to be the ideal
person for my purpose,” he said crisply.

She moved uneasily and the bitch,
which had been watching her all the time, moved too.

“Miss Pink said that should I prove satisfactory, the job might be a permanency,” she said, wanting assurance on that point. “I wouldn’t suddenly leave you to—to get married, Mr. Merritt, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

His voice, when he next spoke, held a mixture of
i
mpatience and resignation.

“Louisa cheated,” he said strangely.

The fire had sunk low. They were each of them reduced to vague shapes in the shadows and Bella’s watchful eyes the only living points of light. The wind blew in a sudden gust against the windows and then was still and Emily cleared her throat nervously.

“Don’t I suit you, after all?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he replied with apparent indifference. “But a month should show me that, don’t you think?”

II

The room was very quiet. For an instant Emily was conscious of being found wanting and she half rose to her feet
.
Immediately the bitch sprang up, snarling.

“Don’t make sudden movements,” Dane said irritably. “Quiet, Bella—lie down, and you, Miss Moon, please be seated again.”

Emily obeyed and the bitch lay down at her master’s feet.

“Why should that alarm you?” asked Dane a little sardonically. “You will remember there was to be a month’s trial on either side—or didn’t Louisa mention that either?”

“Yes, she told me,” replied Emily, trying to ignore the implication that more important things had been left unsaid. “I hope—I mean, if at the end of
a
month you haven’t found me suitable
—
”

“Then you are no worse off,” he retorted carelessly. “You might, you know, decide that I wasn’t suitable, either.”

She moistened her dry lips.

“I haven’t the same freedom as you to pick and choose,” she said then, and his eyebrows rose.

“True,” he agreed with a certain dryness. “Well, whether you suit me or not is surely up to you. You will stay your month, I hope, since you’re here, and after that we shall see. Tell me—do you dislike the look of me?”

“I can’t see you very well.”

“I’m sorry. I’m apt to forget about the light. You’ll have to remind me,” he said, and feeling for a lamp at his elbow, pressed the switch and the room sprang to normality.

It was a rather sombre room, she saw, with dark hangings and heavy, carved furniture, but it suited the man who sat there, surrounded by the books he could never read. In the bright light, the prominent bones of his face were boldly emphasized, his dark hair was already touched with grey, and as he turned remorselessly towards the light, she could see the slight blurring of his pupils, the only indication of the scarred and damaged lenses.

“Well?” he said as she did not speak.

Despite Miss Pink’s warning, Emily felt a surge of pity which she could not entirely keep from her voice.

“Can nothing be done?” she cried and saw the sudden arrogance in his face.

“Nothing,” he replied curtly and shaded his eyes with his hand. “Are you repelled, Emily Moon? I’ve been told that I’m not unsightly, but people will tell you’ anything.”

“They didn’t lie,” she said gently. “It’s only in a strong light that you can see the scars. There is nothing that could repel anyone.”

He smiled then, and for a moment his mouth took on a tenderness it might have had when he was younger.

“Yes, I think you would be honest,” he said. “You have good bones—true bones—your voice has a child’s directness. You’re tired, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And hungry. These matters can wait till tomorrow. Ring the bell, will you? It’s on the right of the fireplace.”

“
Didn’t the others suit?” she asked as she rose to find the bell.

“The others?”

“Well, there were others, weren’t there?”

“Oh, them. No, they didn’t suit
.
There were only two of them, as it happened.”

“And didn’t they—weren’t they
—
”

“What difference does it make? They’ve gone. I hope you’re not addicted to awkward questions, Miss Moon. I
thought when you first came into the room
—
” He broke
off as he heard the door open and said enquiringly: “Shorty?”

“Yes, sir, it’s me.”

The little man stood just inside the door, glancing curiously from one to the other of them. Emily became aware again that he resented her, but in the new light of Dane’s revelations, it was perhaps scarcely to be wondered at Shorty was more than likely in his master’s confidence.

“See that Miss Moon has some dinner at once, then show her to her room. I shan’t be wanting you till the morning,” Dane said.

“But you’ll be needing me at bedtime,” Shorty said in injured tones.

“I can manage, thanks, as you very well know,” his employer replied and the little man glanced at Emily as if she were responsible for this sudden whim.

“Good-night, Emily. Speak to Bella as you got out. You must learn to be friends with her,” Dane said, and leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.

“Good-night, Mr. Merritt,” Emily replied, and stooped to pat the bitch at his feet. Bella lifted her head but made no further response and Emily went out of the room with Shorty.

“The last female wot come ’ere got nipped on the bazooka,” he remarked sourly. “Are you staying—miss?”

E
mily was tired of the little cockney’s near insults, and could understand, very well, her predecessors’ threats to get rid of him should they become mistress at Pennyleat
.

“How long I shall be staying is entirely mine and Mr. Merritt’s affair,” she replied a little sharply. “Now I would like something to eat, please, and then I shall go to bed.”

He took her to the dining-room where a cold supper was already laid and, with a bad grace, set a bowl of soup before her. The fire was out and the big room felt cold; the soup, too, was none too hot. Shorty evidently considered that the comfort of yet another threat to his independence was not important

“Are there no women here?” Emily asked, wondering if the disagreeable little man did all the work of the house.

“It’s the cook’s evening out,” he replied disobligingly. “We employs a daily help besides and that’s all, but it’s me wot runs this ’ouse and don’t you forget it. Mr. Merritt don’t require much waiting on and what he do I does meself.”

He left her alone with the forbidding solemnity of old-fashioned mahogany and sombre, heavily framed oil-paintings. The room’s appointments belonged to an earlier generation, she thought, and remembered that Dane Merritt had been left the house and its contents only a year or so ago. For the first time she began to think of the little girl who, like the furniture, had passed
w
ith the house into other hands, and her heart suddenly warmed to the unknown Alice whose home life seemed at a glance so ill
-
adapted to childhood.

It had already turned ten o’clock when Shorty took Emily upstairs. Her room was in the far wing of the house and had clearly been a servant’s bedroom. A can of hot water had been placed in the old-fashioned wash-basin but no fire burned in the grate. The air struck very cold.

“Bathroom and doings opposite,” said Shorty laconically. “But don’t expect no hot water of a morning. Boiler only heats the other bathrooms.”