Patricia Wentworth - Pilgrim’s Rest

Judy thought it was time to apply the brake.

“How do you know, if you don’t sleep in?”

Gloria tossed her head. The red unruly mop flew out.

“Nor wouldn’t!” she said. “Not if they was to go down on their bended knees! But Ivy, the other girl that was here, the one that’s been called up to go in a factory, she slept in till she couldn’t bear it no longer, and then my mum give her a bed, and we’d come and go together. Ever such a nice girl she was. But of course you’d never think it to look at Mr. Jerome. He’s ever so quiet to look at, only he don’t like you to look at him, because of his face. My mum says he didn’t ought to be give way to about it. It isn’t nothing to be ashamed of, she says, and he did ought to be roused up and got to come off of it- that’s what my mum says.”

Judy had a feeling that she was going to hear more than she wanted to about Gloria’s mum. It was a relief when she departed kitchenwards. But oh, what a lot of cleaning there was to be done, and what a little time there was going to be to do it in!

When she heard the click of the door along the passage and saw out of the tail of her eye something large and male in a dressing-gown limp over to the bathroom, she went hurriedly in to do the room.

Rooms are interesting. They tell you a lot about the people who live in them. This one told her something about the Pilgrims. Because it was, she thought, the nicest room in the house, and only nice people would give the nicest room in the house to a more or less penniless cousin who had been landed on them as a permanent invalid. It had two windows looking over the garden, and a deep alcove nearly all glass, so that as long as the sun was out at all there would be some of it in this room. She stood looking out, and saw a garden with high brick walls. Most of it seemed to be paved, with round, square, and rectangular beds in which dwarf conifers made a green contrast with the brown winter twigs of what she thought were flowering shrubs. There were snowdrops in bloom, and all manner of bulby things coming up. All the walls were covered with neatly trained fruit trees, with here and there the stark spread shoots of a climbing rose. The end wall was pierced by a really beautiful pair of wrought-iron gates leading to a second walled garden beyond. She was to discover that there were four of these gardens, one behind the other, each larger and less formal than the last.

She turned back to the room and looked at it between curtains gay with flowers. There were a couple of deep, comfortable chairs, and a spacious sofa, as well as the bed, which had a most expensive and up-to-date spring mattress. There were bookshelves against the walls, books piled on the bedside table, a radio set-everything, in fact, that kindness could suggest to soften an invalid’s lot.

As Judy got on with her work she felt pleased about this. She thought slightingly about Frank Abbott, who had tried to put spokes in the wheel and stop her coming down to such nice people. These feelings were confirmed when she presently ran out into the garden to see how Penny was getting on and found her playing ecstatically on a sand-heap. She had a trowel and a lot of three-inch pots provided by old Pell, and she was turning out rows and rows and rows of lovely castle puddings and decorating them with white pebbles and scarlet berries, while Miss Collie, vast in navy slacks and a fisherman’s jersey, sieved earth into seed-boxes and sowed her early onions. The sun shone, and a great ramshackle greenhouse kept off the wind.

The sun shone for two days. Roger Pilgrim went away up to town. Penny played in the garden. Judy worked harder than she had ever done in her life. Then it poured with rain. Penny had to stay indoors. Judy gave her a little dustpan and brush, and a duster. But when Gloria departed downstairs Penny’s interest in house-work waned. She came and stood in front of Judy and turned a commanding gaze upon her.

“It’s bored of being a little girl. It’s a lion-it’s a very fierce, stamping lion. Make it a tail to go swish, swish!”

Judy pinned on the duster, and for about half an hour all went miraculously well. The lion swished, and growled, and pounced. She got Jerome Pilgrim’s room done, so that was off her mind, and managed to get Penny to the far end of the corridor before he came out of the bathroom.

A few minutes later Miss Janetta called her, and she found herself involved in looking for a ring which had fallen and rolled. Miss Netta, in a pale blue dressing-gown, continued to arrange her elaborate curls, and to say at intervals, “I can’t think where it’s gone,” or, “It must be somewhere.” By the time Judy had found it and emerged into the passage she was hot and dusty, and Penny was nowhere to be seen-not in the corridor-not in their bedroom-not in any of the other rooms whose doors she opened as she passed them. With a feeling of horror she realized that the last door on the left was open-the door of Captain Pilgrim’s room. If the little toad had gone in there-

She had. Before she reached it Judy could hear the growling noise which meant that Penny was still being a lion. She looked round the edge of the half-open door and saw the duster tail being vigorously swished, whilst Penny proclaimed in the hoarsest tone she could manage, “It’s a very fierce lion. It can roar and it can bite. It’s the most fierce lion in the world.”

Jerome Pilgrim sat forward in his chair. He wore a camels-hair dressing-gown, and he looked very large. One side of his face was handsome still, but drawn and haggard. The other, partly screened by a lifted hand, showed a long puckered scar which ran from temple to chin. The eyes which looked from those hollow sockets were dark and moody. The hair above the frowning brows was almost black except for a long white streak which carried on the line of the scar.

Penny stopped halfway through a growl, came a step nearer, and said in an interested tone,

“Did something bite your face? Was it a lion?”

The deep, rather harsh voice said,

“Something like that. You’d better run away.”

Penny advanced another step.

“It’s not a fierce lion any more. It’s a kind lion. It won’t bite. Does it hurt where the bad lion bit you?”

“Sometimes.”

Penny said, “Poor-” in a cooing voice. And then, “Didn’t they kiss the place to make it well?”

Judy heard him laugh. It wasn’t a merry sound.

“Well, no-they didn’t.”

“Silly people!” Penny’s voice was full of scorn. She tugged at the screening hand and stoop on tiptoe. A soft, wet kiss was planted solemnly upon the scarred cheek.

Jerome Pilgrim sat up with a jerk as Judy came round the door. She said in the most matter-of-fact voice she could manage,

“I’m so sorry, Captain Pilgrim-Miss Janetta called me and she got away. She isn’t really used to being in somebody else’s house yet. Come along, Penny!”

As she spoke, his hand had gone up to his cheek. Penny tugged it down again.

“Not come-stay. Man tell story-’bout lion-”

“Penny!”

Judy got a frown, Jerome Pilgrim an enchanting smile.

“It wants a story. ’Bout a fierce pouncy lion.”

Judy could see him slipping. She thought it would be frightfully good for him to take Penny off her hands whilst she finished the rooms. She said in a brisk, friendly way,

“She’d love it if you would-and I’d get on about twice as fast. But not if it would be a bother-”

There was a spark of bitter amusement in the dark eyes.

“She gets her way a good deal, doesn’t she? But you’d better take her away-I don’t want to give her bad dreams.”

He wasn’t prepared for the bluntness with which she came back at him.