The Truant Spirit (25 page)

“It was Rene Bergerac you hoped to marry, so I understood yesterday. I thought I had made it clear that I was no longer in the way.”

Bunny’s distress was now plain for all to see, and she made a small, futile gesture towards Jeanne.

“Madame... ” she said, but Jeanne took no notice of her. Her long, brilliant eyes travelled over Sabina’s slender immature body, then she flung back her head and laughed.

“Oh, my poor innocent!” she said. “So much in love with the good Blaireau, and what will you say when you find how you have been deceived? What will you do when you find that, after all, a heartless man can win in a few short weeks the final seal to a bargain?”

“I don’t understand you,” said Sabina, moving instinctively nearer to Bunny who put out a distressed hand.

“No? Well, you have been used very cleverly,
ma petite,
and I, for one, will have much interest in finding out how far you can be tricked in this affair.”

Brock had not spoken, and she turned to him suddenly, with an amused air of exasperation.

“How much longer is this farce to continue, Rene? Until Lucille Lamb returns with the marriage settlement and there is no turning back?”

There was an instant’s pregnant silence while the wind rattled at the windows and the shabby, old-fashioned furniture and the faded papered walls of the parlour had a moment of unreality.

“Rene?” said Sabina, her voice sounding curiously loud.

“Yes, my child,” said Jeanne with a careless snap of the fingers. “It is as well to know which of them you are marrying, for Rene Bergerac and our good Blaireau are one

and the same person.”

C HA P T E R T E N

NOBODY spoke, then Brock knocked out his pipe with a sharp sound of finality and Sabina looked at him.

“Is that true?” she asked.

He put his hands in his pockets and surveyed her reflectively. He was neither disconcerted nor in any hurry to offer explanations.

“Yes,” he replied. “Should it make any difference?”

“But I don’t understand,” Sabina said. “Why did you call yourself by a different name?”

“The name happens to be mine,” he said. “I’m old Rene Bergerac’s stepson, of which fact your otherwise careful aunt was apparently unaware. Would you prefer it if I were French?”

His tone was light and ironical, as if the whole question was of no importance, and Sabina’s young mouth looked suddenly hurt.

“Did you do it for amusement—to see how far you could upset Tante’s plans before telling me the truth?” she asked.

“He did it because he knows well his attraction for women and wished to be quite sure of Penruthan,” observed Jeanne, enjoying the situation she had created. “It was not difficult to fall in love with him, was it, mademoiselle? You know nothing of men, my poor child, or the lengths they will go to for something they want. As you suggested yourself, it will have had its amusing side, too.”

Bunny spoke for the first time, and her voice was a little unsteady.

“You have done enough damage by your interference, madame. I would be glad if you would go now,” she said.

“But perhaps I am not ready to leave,” Jeanne retorted with lazy insolence, and Bunny replied:

“This happens to be my house, and I do not care to have you any longer under my roof.”

Even Jeanne recognised the old schoolroom authority and rose to her feet without hurry.

“As you please,” she said with a shrug. “Au ’voir, mademoiselle. Perhaps I have saved you from making a fool of yourself, hein?”

“You can say the rest to me—outside,” said Brock quite pleasantly, and placing a hand under her elbow thrust her firmly from the room.

Sabina’s face still had that frozen look of helplessness which Jeanne’s remarks had put there. Seeing it, Bunny said:

“Don’t take it badly, my dear. She’s gone now. When Brock comes back he will explain things to you.”

“There’s nothing left to explain, now, is there?” Sabina answered with careful politeness, then the stillness went from her face and gave place to pain and a bitter humiliation.

“You
knew, Bunny,” she accused. “You could have saved me from making a fool of myself, instead of Madame Jouvez, only you didn’t choose. Like Brock, I suppose you wanted to be sure of Penruthan.”

Bunny’s eyes were suddenly reproving, and she automatically felt for the pince-nez which were normally pinned to her dress.

“That does not seem logical, dear child,” she observed. “When you came here you were resigned to marrying a man you had never met, knowing the position about Penruthan. The fact that he and Brock are the same person should make things easier, surely? You had not, after all, reckoned on falling in love with Rene Bergerac.”

“But can’t you see—can’t you
see
what he’s done to me?”

“I cannot see, except for the untimely interference of a malicious woman, that it can make the smallest difference. Brock would have told you himself today.”

Sabina was crying, rubbing the tears from her cheeks and lashes with helpless, impotent gestures.

“It was different before,” she said. “But to make me love him, and laugh at me all the time, was—was—”

Bunny touched her gently.

“Oh, my dear, that’s not true. I confess at the beginning I had doubts because—well, I’m afraid your aunt had read more into the situation than was warranted. We kept you here because—well, because we thought you deserved a chance of finding your own feet, and then—he fell in love with you.”

“No. He realised that, as Madame Jouvez said, a heartless man can accomplish more in a few short weeks—when he has someone young and inexperienced to deal with,” said Sabina bitterly.

Bunny sighed. The young were so headstrong, so ignorant of shades and subtleties.

“Listen, Sabina—let me tell you something of Brock’s early life,” she said, and stopped automatically to make up the fire. The familiar homely gesture brought fresh tears to Sabina’s eyes and she knelt on the hearth to help.

“Brock was only three when his mother married M. Bergerac and took him to France. The old man delighted in the child, insisted on giving him his name and, no doubt, spoilt him. Later, when the marriage had not turned out well, Madame Bergerac returned to England to live at Penruthan. I was governess there, and I think the boy, too young to understand his mother’s situation, fretted for the Chateau Berger and his gay, wealthy stepfather. The Brockmans were poor, and Brock and his mother lived in one wing of the house, and she, poor lady, became a recluse with less and less time to give to a growing child. When Brock was older he insisted on spending a portion of the year with his stepfather, who looked on him as his own son, hoping he would follow him in the business. He took pride in being known in France as young Rene Bergerac and when, later, he came into the business it was quite natural and better for trade to be known by his stepfather’s famous name. There are probably few people in France who remember that Brock is not old Rene’s son, and when he is over here— well, he finds it restful to be himself and revert to his proper name. You see, he realised too late that all his boyhood he had sided against his mother, and her action in leaving Penruthan away from the family was not spite, as many people think, but a final renunciation of everything she had thought belonged to her and her child. Not very logical, you think, perhaps, but she was very melancholy towards the end, poor thing, and there was no one to advise her.”

Sabina listened, still kneeling on the hearth, an apple-bough in her hands. So much was explained: the pair of
armoires,
one at Penruthan, one at the rectory, Brock’s strange familiarity with the house, his oblique defence of the mother he had misjudged, his contempt for Lucille Faivre, who had contributed so much towards misunderstanding in two generations. Above all, was not the explanation of Tante’s behaviour plain? Tante entering into the conspiracies, taking orders from the man who had so strangely crossed their paths ... But she could not see, in the raw state of her shocked mind, that, for Brock, what had started as a diversion and an irresistible urge to upset the apple cart might have ended, as it had for her, in a more serious engagement of the emotions. He had never said he loved her; he had not, even now, sought in any way to soften the shock of Jeanne’s disclosures.

Sabina placed the wood carefully on the fire and immediately the nostalgic scent of burning apple filled the room, reminding her of those snowy evenings when she and Brock had sat alone by the fire and her love had blossomed shyly and begun to grow.

“Were there, then, no negotiations? Did Tante invent it all?” she asked wearily.

“Not all,” replied Bunny gently. “Your aunt had made tentative proposals, and Brock, familiar with the old tradition, was willing to meet her, but he is not French, and certainly not the man to take a wife in order to acquire a house.”

“Then why couldn’t he have said so when that Jouvez woman was making things so hideously plain?” Sabina said, springing suddenly to her feet. “He stood there as if nothing mattered—as if all she said was true!”

“My dear Sabina!” Bunny reproved. “Brock would scarcely indulge in—er—tender scenes in front of a woman of that kind.”

“Why wouldn’t he?” demanded Sabina. “Because he was once fond of her? Because he doesn’t really care what happens to me? He’s never told me once he loved me. He doesn’t—he only loves the mountains and—and himself!”

She ran out of the room before Bunny could reply, desiring now only to get out of the house and into the wild March weather before Brock returned. But she was not quick enough. She met him in the living-room, and he took her by the wrist as she tried to slip past him. “Running away again?” he said.

His black hair was ruffled by the wind and his hands felt cold and harsh. Whatever the outcome of his private intercourse with Jeanne, his dark face was forbidding, with no hint of tenderness for Sabina as he forced her to meet his eyes.

“Running away? Yes, why not?” she said, accepting the suggestion with defiant relief.

“Because a clever woman can make trouble for you so easily?

I thought you were more sane than that, Sabina.”

“You thought I was a fool,” she said. “You thought it would be amusing to shake my faith in Tante’s arrangements and get what you wanted at the same time.”

“Is that what you really think?”

“What else should I think?” she cried. “You and Bunny playing a game of your own, and I young enough and silly enough to fall for it!”

The familiar room seemed forbidding and unfriendly with the cold ruin of the morning’s fire and a thin trickle of light coming from the hall. The smell of soot still hung in the air and the wind roaring down the vast chimney brought fresh falls to settle on the hearth. She felt Brock’s fingers tighten on her wrists, drawing her closer, and she was unable to resist, though her body instantly stiffened.

“Yes, you are young and silly, my foolish lamb,” he said, his voice suddenly gentle. “Why should the truth make any difference? You didn’t love poor M. Bergerac—you hadn’t even met him, though you were willing to marry him.”

But M. Bergerac was no longer a joke he could fall back upon when it suited him.

“That’s Bunny’s argument,” she said with hardness. “Neither of you seem to understand that falling in love alters everything.”

“Does it?”

“Yes, it does. At least you never pretended you loved me— at any rate not really, but now—well, everything’s different. I suppose there’s nothing to stop me making over Penruthan to you, is there?”

His eyes were frosty and unrevealing in his dark face. “Do you not intend, then, to honour your part of the bargain?” he asked coolly.

“No,” she said, and the bitter humiliation of her hurt swamped the earlier felicity of the day. “You and Tante laughing together over my silly letters which cost such a lot to write—when all the time you knew it was a game ... No wonder Tante was so obliging ... no wonder poor faithful Marthe couldn’t understand ... Willie Washer wasn’t so simple when he thought Penruthan should belong to you, was he? These country people have known and accepted you all along, I suppose. Only I was the credulous fool ...”

He was silent, watching her tears, then he put out a gentle hand to brush them away.

“I’ve hurt you very much, haven’t I?” he said.

She made no answer and suddenly, abruptly, he let her go. “Finish your weeping alone,” he said wearily. “This, it would seem, is no time to reason with you.”

He watched her run from the room and listened to the sound of her light feet on the stairs, then he went back to the parlour and Bunny.

The governess sat by the fire on one of the hard, upright chairs, her hands folded impotently in her lap. She had lighted the lamp, and in its radiance her face looked tired and pinched. She had heard Sabina’s raised voice in the next room and the abrupt slamming of the door.

“Well, Brock,” she said, “I’m afraid you took too many chances. You should at least have made sure that Madame Jouvez had returned to France.”

“Is that your oblique way of saying ‘I told you so?” he asked. “No, but I never did approve of this deception. Have you made no effort to explain your own feelings to the child?” she asked.