way things had turned out. Damask was a good girl, and she had been rewarded; far better off, she was, than that slatternly Sally Ashpole, with a baby on her hands, a husband back in his old wild drinking ways, and the whole family with notice to quit at Lady Day next March and at their wits’ end where to go. It was, Julie reflected with fustian philosophy, very queer how things that looked bad turned out for the best after all—and the other way about, come to that!
So on Christmas Eve she welcomed Damask with joy and accepted all the gifts in the basket with expressions of pleasure, and Damask, walking back to Dower House, was well pleased with herself.
Just before he left for London again Richard said, ‘Oh, by the way, a box will arrive. Have it put, just as it is, in Alec’s room—they’re some things he wants us to store for him.’ The box arrived a few days later; a heavy black iron-bound trunk, furnished with solid locks. It was carried up as Richard had ordered and she thought no more about it. She had a new interest in life.
Three or four days after Richard’s departure, when Hadstock, still holding one arm in stiff immobility, came for his evening interview, he said:
‘Do you like dogs, my lady?’
‘Oh yes, very much.’
‘But not in the house, perhaps?”
She was embarrassed, hesitated, and then decided to be frank; after all, there was nothing unnatural about disliking dogs and she need not go into any detail.
‘I do,’ she said, ‘but Sir Richard objects to them in the
house.’
She remembered, with distaste, that time when, the enchantment over, she had tried to free herself of slavery; Richard was set to subject her then against her will and had found, in her pet spaniel, a tool ready to hand. Twice she had given the dog away, twice it had found its way home—once from a considerable distance. She had then
paid somebody to shoot it, and had never since had any pet, unless the golden pheasants could be so regarded.
‘I rather thought,’ Hadstock said, ‘that a dog’d be company for you on your walks and evenings when you’re alone here. And I had the chance of getting hold of something rather unusual—but of course if Sir Richard …’
‘What is it? What kind?’
‘Would you care to look at it, my lady?’ He went to the door, opened it and spoke, and in walked, with immense dignity, a dog that seemed, to Linda’s astonished eyes, as large as a donkey; it was pure white all over and had a thick glossy pelt.
‘How perfectly beautiful,’ Linda said as the animal paused just inside the room and took stock of its new surroundings. At the sound of her voice it looked at her and then moved over to Hadstock and laid its head for a moment against his hand.
‘He’s used to me now. I’ve had him since Christmas Eve. I had thought … for Christmas, my lady; but perhaps in the circumstances it was just as well.”
‘Oh, but I should love to have him. He’s so beautiful and would be such company. But it is… I mean dogs get fond of you and then it is rather difficult to find them a place where they can be happy when someone who doesn’t care for them … Oh, you know what I mean, Hadstock.’
A glimmer of understanding, more profound than was justified by anything she had said, showed for a moment on Hadstock’s face, and then, impassive again, he said:
‘Well, he knows me now, and I’ll see him every evening. I could always take him home with me if that seemed desirable.’
‘Oh, on those terms I could have him. That would be such pleasure. Thank you, Hadstock, thank you. Now do please sit down and tell me all about him, his name and everything.’
Of the dog’s breed Hadstock spoke freely. His grandparents were foreign dogs, of a kind originally bred in
the Pyrenees to protect sheep from wolves; their courage had been proved time and time again. The name of this one was Simon; he was eight months old and wouldn’t grow any larger, though he would thicken out somewhat. How and where he had come by him Hadstock seemed to slur over—someone he knew, he said, had imported two of the dogs and hoped to make the breed popular in
England–-
‘But in that case … I mean anything new is always so very expensive,’ Linda said.
‘He didn’t cost me anything, my lady. And even if he had I should still be very deeply in your debt.’
‘Oh, nonsense,’ Linda said. ‘I am now very deeply in yours—for the kind thought as well as the dog. Will he come to me, do you think? Simon. Simon.’
‘Go to her,’ Hadstock said, speaking to the dog as though it were a person. ‘You belong there now.’
A faint, far echo of something that same voice had said about belonging, something that the man did not know he had ever said, stirred in Linda’s mind. She felt the colour in her face again and was glad that at that moment the dog left Hadstock’s side and walked towards her. She bent over him until she was composed enough to go through the silly evening ritual.
After that the dog went with her everywhere and slept on a rug beside her bed. His allegiance was soon entirely transferred to her, and though he greeted Hadstock in a friendly fashion he would not leave Linda’s side even when Hadstock entered.
He was by her side one morning as she came out of her own room and saw that the door of Mr Mundford’s— ordinarily closed—was open and that a maid was within it, giving it the ‘turn out’ to which even empty guestrooms are subjected in well-regulated households. Linda remembered that she had something to say to the maid, so she went into the room and began, ‘Oh, Annie, I wanted to tell you …’ She broke off and sniffed. ‘What a peculiar smell. Is it the polish you are using?’
The girl, who had been polishing the floor, had risen to her feet, still holding the cloth.
‘No, my lady. It’s wearing off now—the smell, I mean. It was something the gentleman used. It used to be awful in the mornings when he was here.’
‘Open the window.’ The girl turned to do so and let
out a startled exclamation. Linda turned to her and,
following the direction of the gaze, saw that Simon was
advancing towards the trunk. His attitude was strange, he
crouched down so that his belly fur almost brushed the
carpet as he advanced; his ears were flat to his head, his
tail low. Within a foot of the trunk he paused and began
to growl, far back in his throat; then, as Linda and the
maid watched he made a different sound, a shrill kind of
yelp, twirled about and dashed from the room.
Seeing the girl’s pallor, Linda said as steadily as she could, ‘I suppose he has never seen a trunk before. Let me see … we were going to open the window, weren’t we?’ The girl fumbled and Linda went to help her, noticing with shame that her own hands were not quite steady. ‘There,’ she said, ‘that will freshen the air.’
Simon was in the corridor waiting for her, lifting his
paws, thrashing his tail and trying to lick her hand as
though he had committed an offence and were making an
apology. It was merely fanciful, Linda told herself as
they went side by side down the wide shallow stairway,
to think that he had sensed something sinister about Mr
Mundford’s trunk and had committed what must, in his
sheepdog eyes, be the worst crime—deserted in the face
of danger. Merely fanciful. (But on her way to bed that
night she paused by the door of the guestroom, opened
it, reached inside for the key and locked the door on the
outside.)
The moment Linda had gone down the corridor in one direction, the maid emerged from the room and bolted in the other, towards the back stairs. And the next time that room was dusted and polished, two maids, both eyeing the trunk and competing with one another in suggesting what gruesome objects were contained therein,
did the least possible amount of work there in the least possible time.
The year turned and began the slow climb upwards to summer. A few snowdrops, strangely immaculate, pushed their way through the black soil at the edges of the shrubberies; a few yellow aconites stood stiffly in their little frilled ruffs at midday—but most noticeable of all was the change in the quality of the afternoon light. Sometimes, even when snow lay on the ground, the sky, just before sunset, would take on a luminous look, palely green and full of promise. It was winter still, but spring was on the way.