The Truant Spirit by Sara Seale Read Free Book Online Page B

remembering the fluent French which had momentarily so surprised her.
    “That is possible,” she replied carelessly. “If one has travelled, the name is well known, and M. Brockman is no stranger to France. He speaks the language like a native.”
    “Does he?” Sabina sounded surprised, then she added sleepily: “Then I can practise my own French while I’m here.”
    “You will not remain long enough,” Marthe replied sharply, wondering if, after all, the girl had not cherished some romantic notions from this unexpected meeting.
    “I suppose not,” Sabina said indifferently, and her eyes closed again. Her head was aching and she wished Marthe would go away and leave her to sleep.
    “ Alors —you are tired,” the woman said, speculating as to whether the unconcern was feigned or not. “I will leave you, for I, too, am tired. The journey was terrible, and this house—no lights, no heating and graves in the very garden! You will make haste and get well, mam’zelle, for I cannot stand many days of such an existence. At the door she paused to add with irritation: “The toilette , where it is?”
    Having explained, Sabina had the satisfaction of hearing
    Marthe fall down the bathroom steps, just as she herself had done in the night, and the knowledge comforted her. Comfort came too from the fine snow-capped summits of Kanchenjunga, the nearest photograph on the wall by her bed. It was the last thing she remembered before she drifted into a dreamless sleep.
    CHAPTER THREE
    BUNNY found the Frenchwoman a perpetual irritant. Marthe would give no help in the house that was not concerned with her own and Sabina’s welfare, and she refused to share the company in the kitchen of the daily woman who gave a few hours help in the mornings. She would sit by the fire in the living-room, complaining incessantly of draughts, and watch Bunny dust and polish with contemptuous indifference.
    “Why do you not let the woman do this work?” she asked, regarding her hostess’s efforts with a critical eye.
    “This is a big house and she has enough to do in the time,” Bunny replied, striving to be pleasant. “Besides, I don’t care to idle, and it keeps my hand in for the summer.”
    Marthe grunted, a comment very French and very ambiguous, and Bunny felt bound to explain:
    “In the summer I take a few paying guests; it all helps with the living expenses. Of course in the winter months no one comes to such a remote spot, and it’s then I like to catch up with household chores.”
    “This an ’otel!” exclaimed Marthe with such scorn that Bunny had to smile.
    “Well, scarcely that,” she said. “I can only take two or three people at a time and we are too much off the beaten track for casual holiday-makers.”
    “And Monsieur, your husband, he reconciles such matters with his work in the parish?”
    “My husband is dead,” said Bunny quietly. The woman probably did not mean to be impertinent; she merely had the insatiable curiosity of her kind.
    “Pardon ...” Marthe muttered, then added irrepressibly: “But I see no church, only the graves which, look you, cannot be healthy so near at hand.”
    “The church is modern and up on the hill,” Bunny replied. “After my husband died it was more convenient to build a smaller house close by for the new rector. The cemetery is here, yes, but in the Middle Ages the church was here, too. You can still see the ruins from the upstairs windows. Perhaps you would be kind enough to give me a hand with this bookcase,
    Marthe. It is rather heavy to move alone.”
    The woman got up reluctantly. She did not see why M. Brockman, who appeared to have so much time on his hands, should not be summoned to make himself useful in such matters, or the imbecile boy who worked in the garden, but she half-heartedly helped Bunny shift the bookcase away from the wall and stood watching while a long-handled brush was thrust behind it to remove cobwebs.
    “He is not strong, M. Brockman?” she