The Black Benedicts

  THE BLACK BENEDICTS

  Anita Charles

  When Mallory accepted the job of governess to Raife Benedict’s niece and arrived at Morven Grange, his beautiful house on the romantic Welsh Borderland, she had no idea how much the ‘Black Benedicts’—all of them as dark as gipsies, and strikingly handsome—as they were called, were to affect her own future.

  There was Raife, her employer, arrogant and unapproachable—Adrian, the music-lover, who had been badly injured in an accident which had deprived him of his wife—and Adrian’s daughter, Serena.

  The three of them wove a kind of spell about Mallory and drew her, inextricably, into the pattern of their lives.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The housekeeper’s black dress made a faint, whispering noise as she moved along the gallery. The bunch of keys at her waist jingled a little. At the head of the great carved oak staircase, with its shallow shining treads, she sent a house-keeperly glance of approval along the glistening handrail, failed to detect so much as a particle of dust clinging to it, and beneath the eyes of the men and women in the portraits behind her descended to the well of the hall.

  Phipps, the butler, had already caught the sound of a car coming along the drive outside, and with the air of one performing a ritual he strode solemnly to the door and flung it open. Phipps would have made an excellent Archbishop had circumstances permitted him to follow the Church as a career, and, as it was, his; bearing and his dignity were magnificent. Not by so much as the flicker of an eyelid did he betray any signs of interest, as, with Mrs. Carpenter, the housekeeper, standing complacent and vaguely expectant at his elbow, he watched Fordyce the chauffeur hold open the rear door of his master’s long, grey, expensive-looking car for a young woman to alight.

  Mrs. Carpenter’s eyes showed a faint glimmer of approval as the young woman stood for a moment looking up at the house, clasping a neat dark handbag and a chubby umbrella to her bosom.

  She was not very tall, and the hair that escaped like floss-silk from under the brim of her small but captivating hat (misty blue like the fleck in her sensible tweed coat) was as pale as the primrose light that was rapidly replacing the orange glow of sunset in the western sky. There was a half-smile on her lips, and between them her teeth gleamed white as almonds.

  Young, thought Mrs. Carpenter—accustomed to making quick valuations, and assessing character and potentialities all in a single glance—but sufficiently ladylike. Looks bright and alert, too, which is important!

  Doesn’t look like a governess, or so thought Phipps—without revealing that he was thinking anything at all by his expression.

  Mallory Gower continued to gaze up at the front of the house while the chauffeur extricated her cases from the boot of the car, and her expression revealed that she was quite genuinely pleased by what she saw.

  It was certainly much more impressive and attractive than she had either expected or hoped for, for her mother had spent years of her life before her marriage on this debatable Welsh borderland and had pictured for her a far more rugged setting, with, houses which still suggested the anxious eye of the English covering the Marches for signs of the black-haired marauding men from the hills. But even on a late February evening such as this, when the dusk was beginning to descend, and the surrounding trees were still bare of leaf, this remote corner of Herefordshire Which she had first glimpsed from the train seemed to be nothing but an exquisite patchwork of fields and woods and valleys, with the view towards the west made up of the amiable Welsh giants brooding through the haze upon the scene.

  And the house itself was more than enough to arouse admiration in any case. A house of obvious and carefully preserved antiquity, a mellowed poem in serene grey stone, long, low and gracious, with mullioned windows and an iron-bound front door, and terraces falling away from it on all sides. Below the terraces there were lawns, a rose-garden, a sunken Dutch garden, an Italian garden, as well as kitchen gardens and orchards and acres of rolling parkland. Nothing at all to suggest, as she had half anticipated, a bleak fortress in the watchful hills, and even the moat was now filled in and covered with turf like specially textured velvet.

  Morven Grange...! A romantic and beautiful-sounding name, and a beautiful and romantic house in a perfect setting...!

  But Mrs. Carpenter was awaiting her at the head of the steps, Phipps having withdrawn once more into the centuries-old hall where he passed so much of his dignified time, being comfortably aware that this was no important visitor who would require or desire any display of subservience on his part. And Phipps was not subservient to mere fellow employees, even if they were not underlings!

  Mrs. Carpenter, however, had a warm hand held out to welcome the newcomer. Looking at her, Mallory was immediately pleased by what she saw. In her black dress, with her beautifully-ordered grey hair, her smooth, unwrinkled complexion and her level eyes, she had as much poise, and even elegance, as the chatelaine of the house might have been expected to possess.

  “My dear,” she said, “I’m afraid you’ve had a very long and tiring journey.”

  Mallory smiled at her, and when she smiled her face came alive with enthusiasm, and her grey eyes, that were very clear and direct in their gaze, seemed to hold some special sparkle of exuberance.

  “It was worth it,’ she replied without hesitation, “to arrive at such a place as this!”

  Mrs. Carpenter looked almost as pleased as if she personally had been paid a compliment.

  “Morven is beautiful,” she agreed, “but at this time of year it is not at its best. In the spring, and in the summer ...!” Her pause and her expression indicated that at the right season of the year Morven was really quite breathtaking. “We do our best to maintain it in the old tradition, but it is not always easy nowadays, with domestic and other problems. Rose!” She summoned a smart young parlourmaid from the rear of the hall and instructed her to relieve Miss Gower of her coat and hat, and to convey them and her luggage upstairs to her room. “And I expect your greatest need at the moment is a cup of tea, isn’t it?” with a smile at Mallory. “I thought we would have it together in my sitting-room, and then if you have any questions to ask I will do my best to answer them.”

  “Thank you,” Mallory returned gratefully. “I am dying for a cup of tea. I had one on idle train but somehow tea in a restaurant-car never actually tastes like tea.”

  As they passed through the hall she caught a glimpse of Phipps the butler bending a most imposing back to add another log to the ones that were already crackling on the wide hearth, and a scent like burning apple orchards—delectable and pungent—filled all the space between the polished rug-strewn floor and the great open timber roof which seemed so many miles away above their heads. There were crossed broadswords on the panelled walls, and a series of heraldic shields let into the enormous west window admitted the last of the light tinted like the many hues in the rainbow. A long oak refectory table occupied the entire centre of the hall, and on it was a great gleaming copper bowl filled with golden sprays of mimosa—colour and perfume from the South of France!

  But when Mrs. Carpenter’s sitting-room door was opened—a little room not far from the butler’s pantry, and conveniently close to the green baize door which shut off the kitchen quarters—a picture of much more homely comfort met and charmed the eyes. Here leaping firelight played in the solid depths of good old-fashioned furniture, and there were chintz covers and cushions and photographs, and all the little things and the knick-knacks which help to make attractive a room in which it is possible to relax.

  The tea when it came was set out on a gleaming gate-legged table in front of the fire, and the service was silver, of William and Mary pattern, the traycloth lace-edged, the china flowered porcelain. There wer
e crumpets and tea-cakes in a silver chafing-dish, and an assortment of tiny sandwiches and little cakes besides.

  Mrs. Carpenter pulled forward her most comfortable chair for her visitor, and did the honours at her own tea-table.

  “Tea first, and talk afterwards?” she suggested, with her barely perceptible smile, poising the sugar-tongs inquiringly above the sugar-basin.

  Mallory was more than content that it should be so. It was good, after her rather wearisome journey from London, to lie back in the comfortably sprung chair and absorb all the luxury—the dainty, highly civilized luxury—of this most agreeable room, and let it seep into her innermost being. And in her mind she could not help comparing it with the condition of comfortable disorder which prevailed in her small cottage home on the fringe of a London suburb, where her mother coped with three still quite young children and ran a boarding kennels and bred Siamese cats in order to eke out a living and the small pension she received from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners as a mark of distinction for being a clergyman’s widow.

  The comparison, however, was almost ludicrous, for at this hour her two brothers, having arrived home from school, would be occupying the sitting-room and littering it with their homework, and her fourteen-year-old sister Angela would be arguing about the right to listen to a favourite programme on the wireless. And her mother wouldn’t dare to interfere, because already there would be a chaos, and she disliked interfering, anyway.

  The Gower family, even when her father was alive, had a strong tendency to assert themselves, but on the whole they were a good-tempered family. They probably each inherited the amiability in their dispositions from their mother, for she was amiability itself, and disliked any form of domineering.

  Mrs. Carpenter, not naturally a woman of a great many words, thought it best to remove from the new governess’s mind any preconceived notion she might have formed that she would be interviewed on her arrival by her employer. And catching sight of her studying a photograph on the mantelpiece, which was actually a photograph, when young, of the present master of the place, in the usual cricket cap, and wielding a cricket bat, she accepted it as a directive, and a fitting start to essential conversation.

  “That,” she informed Mallory, quietly, “is a photograph of Mr. Raife when he was about ten years of age. He is”—she paused—“a very busy man nowadays, and it is scarcely likely that you will meet him to-night, and perhaps not for a few days. He has, however, a great deal of confidence in the agency who sent you here—they supply, as a matter of fact, all our indoor staff—and I have no doubt at all that your references and so forth were most carefully checked?”

  “I expect so.” Mallory permitted herself a faint smile, and her eyes twinkled a little. “But what I was more concerned about,” she confessed—“and this is a point the agency did not make at all clear it to me!—is who, and what, is Mr. Benedict...? Mr. Raife Benedict? Is he the father of my prospective pupil?”

  “Oh, dear me, no!” Mrs. Carpenter sounded suddenly almost prim. “Mr. Benedict is not married.”

  “Then, who...?” Mallory puckered up her slim eyebrows a trifle. “A niece, perhaps, or a ward...? Is there no Mrs. Benedict...?”

  “There is no Mrs. Benedict,” the housekeeper stated, in her clear, clipped tones, “not since my late mistress died the year after Mr. Raife inherited the property. Miss Serena, whom you also will probably not see until to-morrow, is Mr. Adrian’s daughter, and Mr. Adrian is Mr. Raife’s younger brother, and a widower.”

  “But Mr. Raife is my employer?”

  ‘Mr. Raife, is the head of the house,” with a quite noticeable touch of old-fashioned pride. “Mr. Adrian lives here only because of Mr. Raife’s generosity, and his sense of, the fitness of things would never allow him to live anywhere else, and that goes for Miss Serena as well. It is not entirely a satisfactory arrangement.”

  “But, surely”—Mallory was thinking of the wonderful setting she had glimpsed outside, the ancient beauty of the house, the evidence of a great deal of wealth inside it—“surely it is an absolutely perfect place for a young child to be brought up in? There is so much room—such freedom for growth and development! I would have said that Serena is a very lucky girl indeed to live here.”

  “Would you?” Mrs. Carpenter glanced at her a trifle obliquely while she handed her a second cup of tea. “But there are other things besides growth and development—physical growth, that is! You will find that Serena is a little bit—well, forward, is the best word I can use, for her age. She has been more than a little spoiled—but that is largely the fault of her uncle. Otherwise she is quite a pleasant child, and you’ll probably find her quick to learn.”

  “I hope then in that case I’ll be able to keep pace with her requirements,” Mallory observed with her sudden, charming smile. “I’ve never done this sort of thing before, you know,” she confessed. “I’ve had plenty of experience coaching my brothers and sister, and I know a lot about all forms of pet dogs, and I can even cook quite well if necessary. But I’m not really a governess.”

  “However, the agency must have thought you were suitable,” Mrs. Carpenter remarked looking at her as if she herself had formed the opinion, after such a brief acquaintance, that there were other things besides scholastic attainments when dealing with a precocious small girl, and that this Miss Gower probably had them. At least she had naturalness and charm, and a certain quiet poise, and that well-developed little chin of hers had not been bestowed upon her for nothing.

  “Well, my father was a bit of a stickler for cramming his children’s heads with as much of the information he thought should go into them as he could manage during his lifetime,” Mallory admitted. “And I think it’s quite true to say I cut my first teeth on the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and took my first steps with the classics, so I should be able to cope with a ten-year-old. But that remains to be proved,” she ended modestly.

  “And in the meantime your mother is going to miss you a great deal?” Mrs. Carpenter suggested shrewdly.

  Mallory looked unconsciously rather wistful.

  “Well, one of us had to go forth from the fold and earn some money,” she explained quite honestly. “There is very little profit to be made out of pedigree household pets these days, and we are quite a large family. I was the one to do the launching out, and governessing seemed the only thing as I can’t even type or do shorthand.”

  The housekeeper looked suddenly rather thoughtful.

  “I hope you won’t find it too lonely here,” she said. “We’re rather isolated where we’re situated, and a very quiet household, except when Mr. Raife entertains—which he does do sometimes. And then we’re often uncomfortably crowded.”

  “It’s a wonderful house to entertain in,” Mallory remarked with enthusiasm. “I’m sure if it belonged to me I should love to fill it with people who would admire it as much as I did.”

  Mrs. Carpenter remained silent.

  “You said that it is unlikely I shall see my pupil to-night?” Mallory reminded her. “But if she’s nearly ten it’s hardly likely that she has gone to bed yet?”

  Again Mrs. Carpenter seemed to hesitate. “I’m not sure whether Darcy would wish you to see her to-night—she may even have to put her to bed early.”

  Mallory looked astonished, f “Surely not! And who is Darcy?”

  “Darcy has been with Miss Serena for the last five years,” the housekeeper explained. “I suppose you would describe her as a kind of nannie.”

  “But isn’t Serena a little too old for a nannie?”

  Mrs. Carpenter made a slight movement with her black-clad shoulders.

  “Darcy is not the typical kind of nannie,” she explained. “She is quite young, and she has been all the close companionship the child has had for years.”

  “I—I see...” Mallory said slowly, not really seeing at all.

  Mrs. Carpenter pressed a bell.

  “I will send for Rose to show you to your room,” she said. “I expect you w
ill be glad to unpack and have a wash after your journey. And, by the way, don’t hesitate to make use of Rose to help you with your unpacking, and I hope you won’t mind having your meals served in your own sitting-room. Otherwise it is a little awkward...”

  “Oh, of course,” Mallory agreed at once, anxious that no one should think she had imagined even for an instant that she would have meals with her employer. And her educational pretensions made it just a little incorrect for her to appear in the servants’ hall...

  A light tap came to the door and it swung open before the housekeeper could even grant permission.

  Oh, hullo, Carpie,” said a man’s voice vaguely. “I thought I might find you alone...”

  He was quite a young man, and very slenderly built, with dark—intensely dark—hair and eyes. His skin was pale, with a hint of olive, and the corners of his mouth had a melancholy droop. In the little sitting-room, with the firelight playing on white panelled walls, and an atmosphere of warm cosiness and intimacy, he stood looking a little uncertain and slightly fragile, with his back to the silent, shadow-filled hall.

  “What is it, Mr. Adrian?” Mrs. Carpenter stood up, and there was a certain amount of deference in her manner, perhaps also a shade of rebuke, but her voice was also extraordinarily gentle. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

  “No, nothing, thanks.” He was staring at Mallory as if more than astonished to see her there, and then gradually his look became tinged with the merest suspicion of comprehension, a slow dawning as of recollection, and all at once he smiled It was a curiously charming smile, adding lustre to his extraordinary lustreless eyes; that were large and deep and long-lashed. “You must be Serena’s new governess!” he said. “How do you do?”

  Mallory gave him her hand, and he retained it within his for a second or so longer than was strictly necessary, as if he liked the feel of it. And then he let it go, smiling afresh.

  “Have you seen Serena yet?”

  “Not yet.”