Page:Weird Tales Volume 44 Number 7 (1952-11).djvu/15

 been that impatient he's been ringing me all day on the phone. I told him I'd be along just as soon as I'd finished the clearing up."

"Yes, yes," said Charles hastily. "We'll try not to keep you. Er—my wife, Mrs. Bunty."

Moira thought she saw an odd look of compassion on the housekeeper's face as she turned toward her. It lasted only a second, while Mrs. Bunty civilly acknowledged the introduction and withdrew, but still it was somehow disconcerting. My own servants to be sorry for me! She thought with a trace of anger, of which she was immediately ashamed.

Dinner was a rather silent meal, served with an expedition quite new to Moira but to which she was later to become accustomed. The dog lay in a corner by the empty stone fireplace, chin resting on her outstretched paws, watching them steadily as they ate.

"Mrs. Bunty's the salt of the earth," Charles said once. "Good yeoman farmer stock. Husband's an invalid—that's why she needs the job."

"I like her looks," Moira admitted, "but I have a feeling that she thinks employers should be kept in their places. Sh—here she comes now with dessert."

They fell silent again. The dog continued to watch them from her corner.

Strangely, the constraint which Moira had mentally attributed to the intermittent presence of Mrs. Bunty still persisted after she had gone.

I've never felt like this with Charles before, she thought. I must be crazy. For a fleeting instant she saw the lighted coziness of their room at the hotel, felt again the warmth and gay intimacy that had so lately been theirs, saw Charles' face bright with eager longing, heard the rumble and the clatter of traffic in the streets below that intensified their delicious isolation. Already it seemed half a lifetime away.

It's a long way to Picadilly, she thought ruefully. But it wasn't; the trip had taken them less than two hours. That was why Charles had bought the house, he told her: close enough to London for him to keep up the necessary contacts with agencies and advertisers, remote enough to provide die solitude that his work demanded. Moira felt a little homesick when she thought of tiie office; she wondered if they missed her. She might not be so gifted an artist as Charles, but she had carved a nice little niche there for herself all the same.

They'd tried to scare her out of her impulsive marriage, of course.

"My good girl, what do you know about the man?" Bill Conway had demanded, weaving his pipe. "He comes, he goes, he sells, he gets commissions—and dwells in some Godforsaken hole in the rocks along the Cornwall coast. What do you think you'll do down there—count bats?"

Involuntarily now her gaze strayed to the dark beams. No bats.

"I'm going to inspire him to higher things," she had retorted. "And for your information I love solitude and I'm fond of rocks and I grow all pink and merry on sea air. And I'm going to—" she had hesitated, "make up to him a little, if I can."

For Caroline. But why had Caroline killed herself, she wondered now, looking across the room at Charles. Why, and how?

He was absently stroking the dog that lay at his feet. Looking up, he caught her eye and smiled.

"Lonely old place," he said apologetically. "Think you'll be happy here?"

Moira perched on the arm of his chair and ruffled his hair.

The dog gave her an inscrutable glance, got slowly to its feet and walked away. Charles' eyes followed it, but he said nothing.

"Of course I will, silly! Especially if Mrs. Bunty goes with it."

ATER that night she was not so sure. When they went up to bed, the dog followed as a matter of ourse, and Moira lost her temper.

"Charles, really! You're not going to tell me that animal stays in our room all night!" Charles looked gently obstinate.

"But she'll get lonely! She always has slept in the bedroom, Moira. Even when—"

Moira wanted to cry, "Even when