"Then it's a bargain. Shake hands on it. When will you be ready for the first lesson?"
Caroline said quickly: "You forget, Fermor, you're going back to London next week."
"I'll stay a little longer. There's nothing I have to go back for. I'll wait until Mademoiselle Melisande is cantering round the paddock before I leave."
"I think," said Caroline, "that as Mademoiselle St. Martin is employed by my father, and you propose teaching her to ride on my father's horse, it might be advisable to ask his permission first."
"You are right, of course," said Fermor.
Caroline smiled faintly. "I'll ask him if he approves."
"I'll do the asking," said Fermor. "Perhaps to-morrow, Mademoiselle Melisande, you shall have your first lesson."
"Thank you, but I should not wish to if it were not the desire of Sir Charles and Miss Caroline."
"Leave it to me," he said. "I'll see to it."
Then smiling, he went out with Caroline, leaving her alone in the library caught up by her intermingling emotions, deciding that life in the outside world was more complicated than life in a convent.
As they rode out of the stable Fermor said: "What a bad temper you are in this morning!"
"I?"
"Certainly you. Weren't you rather rude to that poor girl?"
"I thought what I said was necessary.*'
"Necessary to hurt her feelings!"
"I wonder whether you would have been so solicitous of her feelings if she had had a squint and a hare lip."
"Would you have been so anxious to hurt her feelings if she had?"
"That is not the point."
"My dear Caroline, it is the point."
"You can't teach her to ride."
"Why not? I'm sure she'll make an excellent horsewoman."
"You forget she is only employed here."
"I may have forgotten, but you reminded me . . . remember . . . right there before her."
The tears filled her eyes. She said: "I can't help it. It makes me so unhappy to be . . . slighted . . . like that ... to be humiliated before a servant."
He could be very cold sometimes; he was cold now. He said: "It was you who humiliated yourself, treating her as you did."
He rode on in advance of her; she stared at his straight back and blinked away the tears. She thought: I am so unhappy. He does not love me. He never did. He will marry me because-, the marriage has been arranged. I would marry him if the whole world were against us.
They had reached the cliff path and she was glad that they had to pick their way carefully.
"We'll get down on to the beach," he said. "We'll have a gallop over the sand."
"All right," she answered.
She was thinking: Perhaps she'll be no good on a horse. Perhaps she'll have a violent fall . . . spoil her looks. She might even break her neck. That was a terrible thought and she was sorry she had had it. She did not mean to be unkind. If only her father had brought
her a poor middle-aged woman who needed kindness, how kind she would have been!
She was more composed when they were on the beach, and she came level with him. He turned his head and seeing her thus was greatly relieved.
"Come on," he said; and they were off, past the great rocks in which were streaks of pink quartz and amethyst, sending the seagulls squawking out of their path.
He began to sing for very enjoyment.
"On Richmond Hill there lives a lass ..."
She heard his voice mingling with the drumming of hoofs on the sand.
Melisande had been in the house six weeks when the thought came to her: I must not stay here. I must go away.
She was panic-stricken at the thought, for where should she go? How could she be happy away from here ? If Caroline had wanted her she could have been happy; but Caroline showed her so clearly that she had no right to be here. The French lessons continued— they were more or less a command from Sir Charles—and they played duets on the piano, but this Caroline could do as well as she could and so, as far as music was concerned, Melisande could teach her nothing. They did a little embroidery together, but here again Caroline was so much more efficient with the needle. Sometimes in the evenings she would join in a game of whist, taking Miss Holland's place if that lady was too tired to play or was suffering from one of her frequent headaches. But even that had to be taught her, for she had never played the game before. She and Sir Charles would be partners on these occasions; she wished that Fermor would partner her. Sir Charles would admonish her gently: "Oh, Mademoiselle, that was rather impetuous playing. You see, had you waited I could have taken that trick ..." She had the impression that he wished to be indulgent but that he was afraid of seeming too eager to excuse her; whereas Fermor would come boldly in to her defence. Whist did not therefore ease the tension; and she often wondered what she had to offer for her board and lodging, for a place in this lovely mansion.
To her it seemed such an exciting place with its great hall which, she had heard, had done service as a ballroom, and in which, in the old days, the whole family including the servants had taken their
meals; she could have spent many interested hours in the galleries with the portraits of long dead Trevennings; there were parts of the house which had not changed since the days of Henry VIII; there was the magnificent carved staircase, and the large lofty rooms with their latticed windows and diamond-shaped panes, and those fascinating deep window seats. The servants* quarters were the most ancient; to descend to the great stone-floored kitchen with its huge fireplace and cloam oven, to see the cellars, the pantries, the butteries, was indeed to step back into the past.
There was so much that she had grown to love. She enjoyed rising early, leaping out of bed to stand at her window and watch the sun rise over the sea which seemed different every day. Sometimes it sparkled as though an extravagant god had scattered diamonds on its surface; sometimes it was overshadowed by mist, a creeping thing that seemed to be coming slowly onwards, but never came; she was excited to see it angry, lashing the rocks, contemptuously throwing up a broken spar, a mane of seaweed; to see it in a merry mood, tossing up the spume on the summit of its wave, catching it as a child catches a ball. She would look out across the sea to the Eddy-stone Lighthouse, like a slim pencil in the clear morning light, away towards Plymouth in the east and Looe Island in the west. It was a joy to ramble over the rocks, to stand alone watching the effortless flight of seagulls, to wander in the fields and lanes; she found great pleasure in walking down into the town and along by the quay, calling a greeting to the fishermen sitting at their cottage doors mending their nets, to walk out on the jetty and feel the salt sea air in her face; she liked to look back at the grey houses of the towns, the cottages on both sides of the river, some little more than huts, some much grander with their ornamental ridged tiles which she had learned were called the pisky-pows because they had been made so that the piskies might dance there during the night; and the piskies were friendly to those who gave them an alfresco ballroom.
There was so much to know, so much to learn; she was the friend of them all because they knew how anxious she was to be their friend. They would call her in to drink a little metheglin or mead, blackberry or gilliflower wine, to taste a piece of raisin cake, which they called fuggan—but that was for special occasions; there was always a piece of heavy cake or saffron cake for the young foreign lady at any time.