The Silver Sty Read online

  THE SILVER STY

  Sara Seale

  Sarah had all kinds of names for the guardian she hadn’t seen for years—the G.I. (Guardian of Innocence), The Myth, Poor Fish—just as she had all kinds of ingenious plans to get rid of him when he came. She wanted no interference in her young life.

  Unfortunately, in a mistaken moment of confidence, she told James Fane all about them, before she knew who he was.

  James was amused—but as her guardian, he was quite prepared to be firm!

  CHAPTER ONE

  Someone was playing “I Could Have Danced All Night.” It was odd, thought James, waiting for the front door to be opened, how that particular tune cropped up at critical moments of his life. That night, three years ago, when Clare had thrown him over. It had been a night like this, a still summer’s night on the river, with the strains of someone’s record player drifting over the water.

  And now, here he was, on another summer’s night, ringing his own front doorbell, looking at the cars parked in the drive and wondering who they all belonged to.

  As the door opened, the music grew louder. Someone was crossing the hall with a heavily laden tray of drinks which were greeted with loud cheers from the drawing-room, and James was aware of Pepper, a little more bent, a little more shortsighted, peering up at him, probably the one familiar face he would find at Fallow.

  “Hullo, Pepper,” he said. “Got a party on?”

  The old man’s face changed.

  “Mr. Fane, sir!” he exclaimed. “We weren’t expecting you till tomorrow, sir, Come in, and I’ll tell Miss Brand at once.”

  James stepped into the familiar hall with its deplorable collection of armour weapons and stuffed animals. The place wore a dishevelled air. Someone had placed a silk hat rakishly on the helm of a suit of armour at the foot of the stairs, and tied a stiff collar round its neck.

  Pepper followed James’s enquiring gaze and remarked solemnly:

  “That, sir, is Sir Halibut—in his gala dress. No doubt you remember him, sir.”

  James smiled. “I remember him, but not his name or his gala dress.” A crash of broken glass came from the drawing-room, followed by a feminine shriek. “The party seems to be getting rough, Pepper.”

  “Yes, sir, it generally does,” the old man said with resignation, and added naively: “It would all have been cleared up by tomorrow—the day you were expected.”

  A girl’s mischievous face suddenly peered at him through the banisters.

  “O-oh! A gate-crasher—with luggage!” she shouted.

  “I’ll go and find Miss Brand,” said Pepper hurriedly.

  James put out a detaining hand.

  “No, don’t do that,” he said thoughtfully. “Take my stuff upstairs and get out my dinner jacket. I think I’ll join the party.”

  Pepper opened a door and switched on the light.

  “We’ve put you in Mr. Silver’s room, sir,” he said. “No one’s slept here since he went.”

  James left the door of the adjoining bathroom open and talked to Pepper while he washed.

  “How have things been here all this time?” he asked.

  “Well, so-so, sir,” Pepper’s cautious voice replied. “If I may say so, sir, we hadn’t reckoned on you being away such a long time.”

  James thought he heard mild rebuke in the old man’s tones, and said apologetically:

  “Yes, I suppose three years is a long time.”

  Three years; time for many changes in a property without a master, time for a child to grow up. And yet three years ago it had seemed too much to ask. With his uncle’s death, freedom had suddenly come to him, freedom from years of poverty, freedom to do all those things which had been denied him at the start. If Clare had kept her promise, he would have claimed his inheritance at once, but it was one of Fate’s little ironies that had decreed that Clare should throw him over only a month before he became a rich man. James wanted a holiday—a long holiday to cancel out the years of struggling, to wipe away the bitterness of that ill-paid city job, of Clare’s gentle failure. He had been in England only three times during the next three years, and only twice had he come to Fallow.

  He became aware that Pepper had said something. “What was that?” he asked.

  “I was saying, sir, that I hope that this time you have come for good.”

  “I shouldn’t be surprised, Pepper,” he said, and glanced at the old man curiously. “It seems I’m needed here.”

  “Yes, sir. You see, Miss Sarah—”

  “Ah!” said James, shutting the bathroom door behind him. “Miss Sarah—now we’re coming to it. I’ve had letters, Pepper—letters of reproach, letters of annoyance. What is the trouble with Miss Sarah?”

  Pepper laid out a black tie carefully on the bed and straightened his thin back.

  “There’s no trouble, sir,” he said with a smile. “That’s to say, there’s nothing wrong with Miss Sarah. She’s growing up—grown up, she would tell you herself. I did it on my own, Pepper,’ she often says to me, ‘No one helped me,’ and that’s the truth, sir, no one has.”

  James began to put on his shirt and trousers.

  “I see,” he said. “I seem to detect reproof in your words.” Pepper smiled apologetically.

  “Well, Mr. Fane, sir, all young growing creatures want a helping hand,” he said. “Someone wiser than themselves to keep an eye on them. You can’t do that through a pack of lawyers, you know, sir.”

  James frowned. “What do you suppose I know about bringing up a young girl? Surely Miss Brand was an adequate enough guardian. After all, it’s a woman’s job.”

  “Miss Sarah wasn’t brought up in the first place by a woman,” Pepper said gently. “Mr. Silver was the only one who could do anything with her, and he spoilt her, I’m afraid. Miss Brand—well, Miss Brand is a very nice lady, but nobody listens to her very much, if you’ll pardon me saying so, sir, least of all Miss Sarah. Miss Brand is such a forgetful lady.”

  James smiled. He hadn’t seen much of Sophie Brand. She had always struck him as vague but kind, and since she had been established at Fallow in his uncle’s time, ostensibly as housekeeper and companion to Sarah, he had left her where she was.

  “Stick up for her, don’t you, Pepper, unlike some of our more uncharitable neighbours?” he said.

  “We all like Miss Sarah, sir; she has a warm heart,” Pepper replied. “She’s just run a little wild. No schooling and no discipline isn’t good for young growing creatures, sir.”

  James frowned. “But if I remember rightly I paid some exceedingly expensive school fees from time to time.”

  Pepper sighed. “Well, sir, you may have done in the beginning, but as I said before, you can’t keep check on things through a pack of lawyers. I don’t doubt you paid the bills through them and left it at that.”

  “Well, naturally, I could hardly see to such things myself when I was on the other side of the world.”

  “Exactly, sir. After the first year, Miss Brand gave up looking for schools. It seems Miss Sarah didn’t take kindly to a pack of women, as she called them. Miss Sarah is rather high-spirited, sir.”

  “H’m, is she?” James remarked a trifle grimly. “That is a term that covers a multitude of sins, Pepper.”

  “Not altogether her fault, sir,” said Pepper gently. “If you had come home sooner and kept an eye on things—but there, you know your own business best, sir.” He hesitated, then added with the kindly privilege of the very old servant, “You wouldn’t hold the past against Miss Sarah, would you, Mr. Fane, sir?”

  James wheeled round from the dressing-table.

  “What do you mean, Pepper?”

  “Well, I’ve sometimes wondered, sir, if you didn’t come back because of her father. It would be only
natural to feel resentment, sir, under the circumstances.”

  James stared at the old man with genuine amazement.

  “Good lord, of course not!” he exclaimed quickly. “That didn’t enter into it. I had my own worries at the time—Miss Sarah was only a child in whom I’m afraid I wasn’t particularly interested, and—well, what with one thing and another, I thought there was plenty of time before I took over the immediate responsibilities of a young ward. I dealt with all the financial arrangements, and thought that was sufficient for the moment. I see I was wrong.”

  “Yes, sir.” Pepper turned towards the door. “It’s the personal touch that is needed. Miss Sarah was very fond of Mr. Silver. I think she missed him. Is there anything more you require, sir?”

  “No, thanks. Pepper—does Miss Sarah know who her father really was?”

  The old man paused, his hand on the door handle.

  “No, sir. Mr. Silver never wanted her to know. It seemed unnecessary since she was only two years old at the time he adopted her.”

  “I see. Well, don’t tell anyone I’ve arrived. I think I’d rather like to find my own way about this party.”

  Pepper smiled conspiratorially.

  “Very good, sir. Miss Sarah is wearing black, but, of course, a good many of the ladies are wearing black, too.”

  James grinned back.

  “I’ll find her. There’s always that red hair, you know, Pepper.”

  When he was alone again, he strolled to the window and pulling the curtains back, stood in his shirt-sleeves looking out on to the moonlit park.

  Pepper’s last remarks had made him thoughtful. Had there, after all, been a grain of truth in the suggestion that he had resented Sarah’s presence at Fallow? Never consciously, perhaps, though it was certainly true that he owed nothing to any child of Handley Grey’s. Handley Grey, that most unscrupulous financier of modern times, who had ruined thousands when his own crash came, including the Fanes. Handley Grey, who had died in prison a year later, whose wife had, in despair, committed suicide; Sarah’s notorious father.

  James never understood why his uncle had adopted the child. He had been a close friend of Grey’s and, it was rumoured, had been in love with his wife. John Silver, who, gossip had it, had not been above sailing pretty near the wind himself upon occasion, had got out before the crash came. He had taken the child, given her his own name, and brought her up in complete ignorance of her origin.

  He had spoken of Sarah a little wistfully.

  “If she’d been my own child she’d have come into all this. I’d have liked a child—something with guts like young Sarah. As it is, I’ve left her enough to be independent of you once your term of office is ended, but she won’t be a rich woman. Help her all you can, won’t you, James? It isn’t now that matters. School and Sophie can look after the next year or so. But later on she’ll need a man. She’s headstrong, and with that history—well, you’ve got your head screwed on the right way. You’ll have to give Sarah values—hers may be all wrong.”

  A month later he was dead.

  It was curious, James thought a little uneasily, that in all those ensuing three years he had never remembered that last conversation with his uncle as clearly as he did now. He tried to visualise the child on the only occasion on which he had seen her, and remembering the circumstances, smiled involuntarily. He had been extremely angry at the time and there had not been much opportunity for anything but a brief impression of long thin legs which kicked violently, and a mop of bright red hair. He should have made some attempt to see her during his short returns to England and not allowed her to grow up a complete stranger to him.

  “A great pity you don’t take the trouble to get to know the girl. She might amuse you if she didn’t turn your hair grey! She’s a nice child and it’s a pity that people should gossip.”

  That had been Grace Hervey. Grace was tolerant and levelheaded, but even she had hinted at gossip. It was her letter as much as anything else which had decided him to come and see for himself, although he had no idea what had prompted him at the last minute to arrive a day earlier, unannounced, and take them all by surprise. And last of all, Pepper. “We all like Miss Sarah; she has a warm heart.” Perhaps the truest comment of them all.

  James got into his dinner jacket, surveyed his tall lean figure in the glass with a grin of anticipation, and went downstairs to join the party.

  Things had reached the somnolent stage. Couples sat about indulging in desultory petting. A good many seemed to be in varying stages of intoxication and only a few dancers gyrated aimlessly round the floor of the big drawing-room.

  Almost at once he saw her. She was sitting on an upturned flower-pot, her black skirt well above her knees, while with great concentration she spat cherry-stones into an empty cut-glass punch-bowl. She heard his step on the gravel, spat out another stone which went wide of its mark, and turned round expectantly. In the moonlight her slightly slanting eyes were as green as any cat’s.

  “Hullo!” she said with surprise. “Who are you?” She didn’t wait for his reply, but said seriously: “What sort of range can you spit at? I’ve tried farther away, but I can’t get any of them in.”

  “It’s easier standing up,” he said equally seriously. “Give me one.”

  For a few minutes they both ate cherries and spat the stones into the punch-bowl. James won easily.

  “It’s a dull party, isn’t it?” she said when the last cherry was eaten. “You needn’t mind saying it is. I’m Sarah, you know—Sarah Silver—but it’s really Peronel’s party.”

  He smiled to himself.

  “Who’s Peronel?” he asked.

  Her eyes opened widely.

  “Don’t you know Peronel? I thought she must have brought you down. She’s Peronel et Cie. You must have heard of Peronel. She dresses me.”

  “Oh, does she?” said James, and glanced at Sarah’s frock. It was sinuous and sophisticated, what he could see of it in the moonlight. Above it her mop of red hair tied in place with a black ribbon looked charming and quite incongruous. She had the appearance of a little girl dressed up in her smart mother’s clothes.

  “Do you like it?” she asked naively. “Peronel didn’t want me to have it. She said it was much too—too—” She waved thin little hands vaguely.

  “Well perhaps a little too—too,” he said critically.

  “Peronel’s always right about clothes, but you see this was bought entirely for the G.I.”

  James was just going to ask who or what was the G.I. when she said plaintively:

  “I’ve hardly danced at all. The don’t seem to enjoy it much, do they?”

  “They seem to have other fish to fry, most of them,” he said a little shortly.

  The music had started again and she stood looking at him enquiringly.

  “What is it?” he asked, wondering who this Peronel person was who had turned his house into a species of night club.

  “Well, you haven’t got a wooden leg, or anything, have you?”

  “No, what made you think that?”

  “I want to dance.”

  James laughed. “I’m terribly sorry. I shall be delighted to dance with you, though you may find me a bit rusty on modern steps.”

  They had the room pretty well to themselves, and as they danced, James took advantage of the bright lights to study her upturned face. She was small-boned and delicately made, with that very white skin which sometimes goes with red hair. Her nose was tip-tilted with a faint powdering of childish freckles, and her mouth too large, but yes, some men might find beauty there.

  He became aware that she was studying him just as intently and with less pretence of indifference. When the music stopped she said:

  “Let’s go outside.”

  “Was I as bad as that?” he laughed, but she replied quite seriously:

  “No, you dance very nicely. You’re older that I thought you were outside. You’re different from the others, too. Who brought you?”

&nbs
p; “No one brought me,” he said, and found he wanted to keep the secret of his identity a little longer. She clearly didn’t remember him.

  “Funny I don’t seem to have seen you about,” she said. “And yet there is something vaguely familiar. Oh, well, it doesn’t matter. Shall I take you to the pool? They may not have discovered my particular bit.”

  He followed her out on to the terrace again, and she led the way across the smooth lawns where they dropped to the stream which wound through a strip of woodland. He remembered the pool well, a natural deep basin with a waterfall running into it, where he had bathed often as a boy.

  A swing seat had been hung between two trees just where the waterfall cascaded down in noisy jubilance, and Sarah curled herself up in one corner.

  “Nice, isn’t it?” she said.

  He wondered a little that she didn’t ask him his name, but almost immediately she said:

  “You haven’t been down here before, have you? I suppose I must have met you somewhere else. One never knows half the people who turn up at one’s own parties, does one?”

  “Don’t you?” said James with amusement. “I think I generally know who I’ve invited.”

  “Yes, but then everyone brings someone else and it becomes awfully confusing,” she said, and for the third or fourth time hitched her dress into place. Her shoulders were still too slender and immature to support such a confection, and James smiled.

  “You seem to be having trouble with the dress,” he teased.

  “I’ll have got used to it by tomorrow,” she said surprisingly, “Tonight’s only a try-out.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t quite understand.”

  “I told you it was bought to impress the G.I.”

  “Oh, yes,” said James with interest. “What is this G.I.?”

  “It isn’t a thing, it’s a person,” Sarah said, and frowned as if the thought displeased her. “The G.I. is the Guardian of Innocence. Didn’t you know I had a guardian?”

  “Oh, I see.” James repressed a smile. “Is that what you call him?”

  “He’s got lots of names. The G.I., Poor Fish, the Myth.”