The Mark of Merlin

CHAPTER ONE

I was aware that I should be more grateful. The train was after all headed in the right direction. Track was laid from Boston to the end of Cape Cod and eventually this train, too, would arrive at its destination. Maybe not on the day of embarkation, March 18, 1945, but sometime. Such vague reassurance didn’t make the journey from Boston to East Orleans in a frigid baggage car any less cold and dreary.

Not that this was the first trip I had made in a baggage car. Merlin and I had traveled that way all over the United States, including the territory of Alaska. But this time the ignominy of forcing a gentleman like Merlin among common crates, bales, and boxes, and having to have him muzzled and chained, was one more insult to the injuries of spirit I had already sustained. My rebellion was complete. The only living thing it did not touch was Merlin. He was, all totaled, the one being who cared for me, Carlysle Murdock. I should say, James Carlysle Murdock, driving that particular thorn deeper into my side.

Merlin sensed my rising inner turmoil and whined sympathetically, his tongue cramped up against the confines of that indecent muzzle. At Merlin’s remark, the imbecilic baggageman cast a nervous look in our direction. I ignored him. As I had ignored his attempt to bully me into confining Merlin in a cage.

I knew how useless it was to explain that Merlin had had the benefit of schooling under the leading canine trainers in the world. That he had far better manners than three-fourths the travelers today, including service personnel.

Merlin’s size and his breed predisposed people immediately against him. It is difficult, I agree, to reassure the timid that one hundred and twenty pounds of silver-black German shepherd was in actual fact a driveling coward. I could show his K-9 papers discharging him on the ground of “insufficiently aggressive behavior” and I would find people ready to discredit the word of the undersecretary of war.

Oh, I could have caged him and sat forward in comfort and warmth with the human passengers but some perverse streak in me reveled in the martyrdom of this segregation. I knew I was acting childishly, that I was not adhering to the strict “chin-up” code in which I had been raised, but that was another facet of this whole humiliating, terrible journey.

Tears, never far from my eyes these days, dribbled down my cheeks. Rather than let the baggageman misconstrue my weakness, I buried my head in Merlin’s ruff, choking back the lump in my throat. Merlin’s soft whine was more understanding than all the sympathy of the dean and the hospital staff at college, or the commiseration of my boardinghouse colleagues. None of these people had ever met my father so how did they know how much I was going to miss him? How could they understand this crushing loneliness that overwhelmed me?

Here I was, sick with grief and not yet recovered from the strep throat infection that had stricken me at midterms, advised by the dean to take the rest of the spring term off “to get my bearings,” on my way to meet a guardian whom I earnestly wished to hell.

And he had perpetrated the final indignity. He had not even had the grace to come get me, though he had certainly known from the dean’s letter how sick I had been. I refused to allow him the one benefit of doubt to which I knew, in my heart, he was entitled. He did, after all, believe me to be a boy. Who wouldn’t? With a name like James Carlysle Murdock? Was he in for a surprise! And, damn my dear father anyway, not only for inflicting such a name on me in the first place, but for not explaining to the friend he had happily conned into “guardianing” me that his beloved Carlysle - Dad had never called me “Carla” as my friends did - was actually a girl and not a boy. Major Regan Laird was in for a mighty big surprise at the station at Orleans. That is, if he condescended to come meet me there!

Remember, my better half reminded me, he’s just been invalided home himself. He might not be able to drive, assuming first, he has a car and second, he is able to wheedle gas out of the local ration board.

I was not to be mollified so easily. I was bound and determined to be as miserable, disagreeable, and awful as I could. That would repay the much decorated Major Regan Laird for his ridiculous letters, urging me to join the service and finish my college later.

“Apply for O.C.S. and be a credit to your father!” Indeed. What did the service ever do for Dad but kill him?

“Enlistees have tangible advantages over draftees.” Sure, Major, but I’d love to see your face signing a WAC application form as my guardian. I smiled to myself, smugly sure of startling the hell out of the patronizing, insufferable, egocentric major-my-guardian.

What had my father been thinking of? Couldn’t he have appointed someone I knew? Captain Erskine, for instance: He was in Fort Jay. For a year I could even put up with simpering Alice Erskine. But this unknown major? That rankled!

Now, said myself to me, your father has been mentioning this Major Laird ever since he wangled Laird’s transfer to his own regiment. Laird has been praised, appreciated, blessed by Dad for two years. Two soulmates, that’s what my father and the major had been. Two minds but with a single preoccupation - infantry: the proper disposition and use thereof in battle.

If it did nothing else for me, this line of thought kept me so agitated I did not feel the damp, raw sea-cold that seeped through the ill-closed baggage door as the train bucked and squealed slowly over the icy tracks. I heard the conductor calling “Yannis” at the next station. Not bad. A mere three hours late to Hyannis. Chatham would be next and finally, at long overdue last, Orleans. This endless journey to the long-delayed meeting with my unknown guardian was drawing to its conclusion.

I leaned into Merlin’s warm body as the baggagemaster swung open the door to the icy March evening. No appreciable effort had been made here to clear the depot or the street visible just beyond. Drifts were piled high around the baggage entrance; a narrow aisle, shovel-width, led to the passenger side of the station. Two Railway Express trucks were backed into four-foot drifts and a green mail truck was revving its motor noisily, gusts of its exhaust mingling carbon monoxide odors with the smell of overheated oily steam drifting back from the hardworking engine. My stomach churned spasmodically.

Immersed in this slough of self-pity, I envisioned myself trudging drearily, freezing cold, down the deserted, snow-heaped streets of Orleans, trying to find my way to Major Laird’s house, Merlin, his silvery coat white with snow, pacing wolflike behind me.

“Gawd, what is it? A wolf?” a masculine voice demanded in a broad down-east twang as the door creaked wide.

“Nar, the gul’s dawg,” the baggageman said, giving me a dirtier look than usual. He had been questioned at every stop and was as irritated by now as I.

“Should be caged. Reg’lations.”

Before the baggageman could open his mouth with another of his simpleton remarks, I answered.

“They don’t build cages that big.”

“Bulieve it. Better keep that’un chained down heyah, miss. Someone’d shoot’m fer a wuff. Would indeed.”

“He never leaves my side,” I replied coldly, looping one arm loyally around Merlin’s neck. He had watched the exchange, cocking his head right and left, ears pricking forward. He looked soulfully up at me and tried to lick his lips through the muzzle. Frustrated, he stretched his front paws out and eased his huge barrel down, resting his insultingly packaged head on his front legs.

There was the usual endless routine of waybills and did Mrs. Parsons’ package make this train and when did they expect the shipment for Brown’s and so on and on. I supposed acidly to myself that without the summer visitors to gossip about they had to make do with such banal topics. But it was driving me nuts. I didn’t want to get to Orleans and yet I couldn’t wait to confound Major Laird. I was supremely tired of train riding. I was thoroughly bored with baggage cars and I was exhausted, very cold and very hungry. Since we’d left South Station in Boston at eleven this morning I had had one single cup of lousy coffee and nothing else. The moron of a baggageman wouldn’t let me leave Merlin long enough to get so much as a sandwich.

The raw sea-cold chilled me despite ski pants, boots, and heavy mackinaw. I felt deprived of muscle and bone; I was a frozen amalgam of tissue, supported upright by solid ice particles within. I had to admit that the college doctor and the dean were correct in their insistence on a term-long convalescence. I had driven myself too hard at my studies, using them to dull my senses to the fact of my father’s death and my awareness of the loss of all familial relationship. I would rest now, hole up in the major’s lair, and come back for the summer term. It would be asinine to suffer the defeat of poor grades when I had made dean’s list every term so far.

I forced myself to ignore the exchange of platitudes between railroad officials until the baggage car was finally closed and I heard the conductor’s muffled “Ar board .”

Surprisingly, the train picked up speed between Hyannis and Chatham. And mirabile dictu there were only two crates to be unloaded at that small town. Either the threat of Nazi submarines had scared fishers inland to war plants or everyone was too poor to buy a thing. I didn’t really pursue the blessing.

“Ohleens, next,” the conductor intoned and I could see relief parade across the baggageman’s face. He even went so far as to assemble my battered bags at the rattling door to make it easier to speed his departing guest.

“That’s very kind of you,” I said so sweetly he didn’t get the sarcasm and mumbled a “You’re welcome.”

Merlin sensed the end of the journey and rose, stretching with majestic indolence. The baggageman made a strategic withdrawal to the far side of the car.

The train jolted to a stop, braked wheels spinning on the icy track. As the baggageman threw open the door, I slipped off the hateful muzzle and hand-signaled Merlin out of the car. The look of pure terror on the man’s face as Merlin, free, darted out, made up for some of the indignities we had endured according to the gospel of regulations. Merlin plunged around in the snow, tail lashing with pleasure at liberty. I jumped down from the lip of the baggage car, disdaining the help of the stationkeeper. I pushed him aside discourteously, lifting my bags down and staggering with them to the corner of the station which seemed somewhat protected from the winds. It was snowing heavily again and the wind gusted it like sand, hard and cold, into my face. I signaled Merlin to stay by the bags. I didn’t want him disappearing in a strange town on a stormy night no matter how much he needed some exercise.

The stationman and the baggagemaster were already deep in their endless trivia. The wind blew to fragments most of their sentences about soggy mailbags and frozen parcel posts. I peered up and down the platform, straining to see through the blown snow. In spite of my inner conversations, I knew I had counted heavily on the major meeting us. But there was no one in sight. As the wind tore at my legs, I felt the additional chill of disappointment.

A heavy woman, muffled in a Hudson Bay blanket coat of ancient vintage, struggled down the high steps of the single passenger car and trudged through the snow to the street. She ducked awkwardly under the roadguard and disappeared into the wind-driven snow and darkness.

Lights shown from a taxi office, a restaurant, and a stationery store lining the far side of the snowy street. Behind the station on my side of the road I could discern the cheerful snowclad rectangles and crosses of the town’s old cemetery. A lone truck stood outside the store but, as far as I could see in the darkness beyond, the street was empty of vehicles and pedestrians.

I swallowed against the pressure of more ridiculous tears. It would spoil my confrontation with the major completely if he were to find me weeping childishly. The sense of desolation and frightful loneliness was intense.

Merlin whined and rocked back and forth, yearning to break position. My gratitude for his company, much less his empathy, routed the tears. Merlin didn’t need explanations. Merlin was never away when I needed him. Yet had he been as wise as his namesake, he was still not a human and his wordless sympathy was not quite enough. Although he knows, I had no other.

So complete was the sense of abandonment that self-pity deserted me. I tried desperately to find excuses for the major’s absence. I had written him a week ago to confirm my coming. This morning I had wired him from South Station to expect me. I had to admit the train was a trifling matter of three hours and twenty-five minutes late but the weather was atrocious enough to account for a far longer delay. He would surely have had sense enough to call the station and check the e.t.a.

Well, I argued, he might not have a phone. He might have waited for hours and then gone home. It was past seven. No, he had gone home to eat and would be back. Home! How could I conceivably call the major’s house “home?” I was an army brat. Home was where my hat was, nowhere else. No, home was where Merlin was, I amended.

Perhaps the major didn’t have a car. I swung round toward the taxi stand. It was empty. Perhaps it had gone for him now the train was finally in. And if the major did have a car, it was possible, entirely probable, that he might have had engine trouble in this weather. Or got stuck in a drift on his way here. There were umpteen dozen reasons why the major was not here. None of them made much difference to the sick, cold, frightened lump in the pit of my empty, cold, churning stomach.

The train started up and pulled out of the station with metallic complaints about the effort required to pull its half-frozen cars along the icy rails. The roadguard went up. I peered into the gloom on the other side of the track and saw only the dark hulks of cars parked in the station lot. Just then I heard the station door open and shut with a bang. A figure came charging up to the stationmaster who was wrestling with the frozen mail sacks.

“Any passengers get off, Mr. Barnstable?” a muffled voice asked.

“List Miz Brewster, and a gal and a big dawg from the baggage car.” The stationman brushed by the figure with an apology, hurrying to get himself and his unwieldy sacks into the warmth.

The other man was the major. His stance was unmistakably military despite his bulky clothing. The relief I felt at knowing he had met the train was mingled unpleasantly with the distressing fact that he was not looking for a girl, or a girl with a dawg, and he was not happy.

“Damn young squirt’s missed the train after all.” His voice drifted towards me. He caught sight of me and hesitated, undecided by the sexless figure bundled in pants and mackinaw. Merlin whined and the major stamped back around the corner of the station. Just as he passed from my view, the flood of light from the window caught his face briefly. I was glad, then, that I was a distance from him, that the gusty wind covered my gasp of shock at the sight of his ruined face. Shrapnel, more than likely, had gouged through cheek and jaw. Raw heavy scar tissue drew the right eye down at the corner and twisted the mouth into a permanent half smile. No wonder he had never mentioned the nature of his wounds. No wonder he had not wanted to come to Cambridge to meet me. All plans for petty vengeance disappeared from my mind.

“Major Laird,” I cried, hurrying across the intervening space.

He stopped and turned, his hand already on the doorknob. This time I saw the other half of his face and experienced a second shock. It was obvious that the major had been a handsome man. Plastic surgery would repair most of the cruel scar on the right but that anyone, man or woman, should have to endure, however briefly, such disfigurement was the other side of enough.

He said nothing but waited til I reached him. Nor did he make any move to obscure the damaged profile as he, faced me.

“Major Laird,” I began and impulsively thrust out my hand, “I’m Carla Murdock.”

His eyes narrowed angrily and he frowned; at least, one side of his face frowned.

“Is this some kind of a joke?” he snapped.

“No, no joke,” I hurried to say. “At least, not on you. If there is a joke, it’s on my father for having a girl and giving her the name he planned for his firstborn son, James Carlysle Murdock.”

I resisted the impulse, prompted by the disbelief on his face, to reach into my shoulder bag and drag out the dogeared birth certificate, the baptismal papers, and the sworn statement of the commandant of Fort Bragg, addressed to all draft boards, that I was legally James Carlysle Murdock and unequivocally female.

He stared intensely at me as I was sure he had stared at incompetent junior officers and privates. Only I had seen my father use this unnerving technique too often to dissolve into the nervous stammer of self-defense it usually provoked.

“You had your fun, didn’t you?” he said finally in a cold scornful voice. I knew he meant the letters he had written to an unknown boy. It would have been far more polite of me to have disabused him of his error immediately.

“And why this lie about going to Harvard?”

“I do go to Harvard. Radcliffe College is a college of Harvard University,” I retorted, stung out of remorse by his unfair accusation.

“Your mailing address .”

“I can’t live on campus with him.” I pointed at Merlin. He interpreted the gesture as a release and came over.

“That doesn’t excuse you from deliberately misleading me.”

“You misled yourself,” I snapped, trying to keep my teeth from chattering. “My father may have called me Carlysle but I’ll bet at some time or other he had to use the female pronoun. You just didn’t hear. You just didn’t think, mister. Most of all, you wouldn’t want to be guardian to a girl! Sweet suffering Pete,” I cried, “do you think I haven’t wanted to be a boy, if only for Dad’s sake?” He blinked as I unconsciously used a pet expression of my father’s.

I stood glaring at him and, despite the firmest clamp on my jaws, my teeth began to chatter. Merlin whined questioningly, licking his chops, shifting his paws restlessly on the snowy platform. Almost absentmindedly, the major held out a gloved hand for Merlin to sniff and as offhandedly patted Merl’s head.

“We can’t stand here all night. You’ll have to come with me now,” the major said. “I’ll decide what to do later.”

He pulled me around, a rough hand under my elbow, and pointed towards the blurred but unmistakable outline of a jeep in the parking lot.

“The jeep’s mine,” he said, bending to pick up my suitcases. I tried to take one from him but he glared at me fiercely. “I’m not crippled,” he said with a definite accent on the final word.

Rebuffed and feeling that perhaps frozen solitude was preferable to his present company, I trudged behind him to the jeep. He tossed the bags easily into the back before sliding into the driver’s seat. With cold fingers, I fumbled endlessly at the stiff handle on my side. With an exclamation of exasperation he reached over and opened the door. Merlin, without order, leaped into the backseat, sitting straight up, his tongue out, watching first me, then the major. It infuriated me that Merlin appeared to have accepted the major at first sniff.

Expertly the major backed the jeep in the treacherously drifted snow. He bisected old frozen ruts and crossed the railroad track as the jeep’s four-wheel drive found what traction there existed on the bad surface of the unplowed road. He waited patiently for the traffic light to change although there wasn’t anything else moving anywhere on the abandoned road.

The jeep must have been standing forever in the parking lot for inside the car it was colder than outside. The isinglass curtains were none too tight and gusts of frigid air lashed in particles of snow. I sat huddled with my arms hugging my sides, trying to make myself believe I was warm. I shivered spasmodically. Whatever reception I had anticipated, I had got more than I’d planned. Actually I never had gone beyond the first moment when the major discovered my sex. That’s the problem with daydreams. They are not the least bit practical.

In all honesty I had to admit that the major had more justice on his side. I had had fun deliberately encouraging his misconception. Based on his information, he had given good advice in suggesting that his ward join the army. Faced with an inevitable draft, it would be smart for a young man to volunteer. The Allies had broken out of the Belgian Bulge and were racing across Germany to meet up with the Russian forces. Undoubtedly the war in Europe would end by spring. Then the entire concentration of Allied military strength would sweep over the Japanese positions and end the Pacific campaign. A man joining the service right now would get through basic and probably have a short tour in occupation forces. Then he’d have the G. I. Bill to see him through college.

I now realized that the major had very carefully thought out that first letter of condolence to a boy suddenly orphaned. It had been a kind letter, if devoid of emotion. He had, bluntly it is true, described the fatal injury my father had received on a routine trip at night between his command post and a bivouac he wanted to inspect. The major had gone into detail about the brief ceremony in the little Lutheran cemetery at Siersdorf where my father had been buried. Every man in the regiment who was not on duty had crowded in. The description might have read like the orders of the day but the picture evoked had been equally clear. The major had gone on to ask me what my immediate expenses were and how much I would need to finish the term. I was not to worry about staying in college, if that was what I wanted. He hadn’t seen my father’s will yet but there would be enough in the National Service Insurance to see to my education. If I had damned the major for insensitivity to my grieving I had done him an injustice, for he had done the courtesy of assuming the boy was a man. I knew, now I had seen the major, that he would have written an entirely different letter had he known I was a girl.

However, neither of us had entertained the possibility that he too might be wounded or that I would work myself into ill health. Dad had been killed November 18, 1944. The major was critically wounded on December 7 in the Sportplatz near Julich. I hadn’t known of that until mid-January when he wrote me from an English convalescence camp. Neither of us had thought of meeting before the summer when he expected to have enough points to get home. Now here we were, thrust together in late March under the worst of conditions.

I like to think that had he not been wounded, had I not gotten ill, I would have soon told him the truth. It was spiteful of me not to have told him. Whatever excuse I might hide behind, the fact remained I had put myself in a very bad light. My egotism had inflicted hurt on someone already badly injured. I was deeply ashamed of myself and I could think of no immediate way of convincing the major of that.

How he found his way I do not know for the full dark of deep winter was further complicated by the wind-driven snow, lowering visibility to a point just a few inches beyond the slitted headlights. The jeep growled in low gear as he inched it along. We had the road to ourselves. There weren’t so much as tire marks from previous travelers to guide us for the wind swept continually over the road.

Major Laird didn’t swear to himself as Dad would have, driving under such conditions. Against the isinglass window his profile was silhouetted boldly, the disfigurement hidden in the gloom. It was a strong face, dominated by an aquiline nose and a sweeping jawline, the sternness alleviated by a sensitive mouth and a full, sensuous lower lip. He was a lot more man than what drifted around the campus at Harvard.

I cast about in my mind, trying to think of something to say, some way to apologize, but I was sensible enough to realize his mood was unreceptive and the conditions of the night made silence valuable. I noticed he kept glancing down at the dashboard.

“I’ve either overshot the turn in this foul weather or it’s just ahead. You’ll have to walk point til we find that blank crossroad. It’s an oblique right.”

You don’t argue with orders given in that tone of voice. Not if you’re army raised. It doesn’t matter that you’re cold already. He knows that, because he is, too. It doesn’t matter you’re not quite over a bad illness and this could make you sicker. He’s taken that into consideration. I just got out and, with one hand on the right headlight, walked along the side of the road, peering through the sudden flurries, making out the black looming boxes of houses, the half-covered telephone poles, match-slim, until, fortunately not too far ahead of us, I found the turn. The brief walk had been stimulating. My toes burned and my fingers tingled. When I got back into the car, Merlin nuzzled my ear, crooning softly, deep in his throat.

The jeep proceeded a little faster until we reached another point predetermined by the odometer. Laird stopped the car and turned his head expectantly towards me. I got out, not even irritated with him when he held Merlin back from joining me. At the next crossroads we bore right again.

This road, even in the obscuring snow, had a different character: no houses, no trees, but, despite gusty winds, visibility improved. I could sense openness, could occasionally trace the horizon by the difference of the gray-white of land, the gray-black of wintry sky. Far on the left I caught a vagrant gleam of light quickly extinguished, for all Cape Cod observed strict blackout precautions. Once on the downslope to the right, I made out the tossing field of sea as it sent tentative fingers up coves on the forearm of Cape Cod. The road dipped here and there and we had to gun the car through drifts at the bottom. Sometimes the top of the road was swept clear, down to the macadam. Bay bushes thrust stark branches out to reflect the yellow slits of headlight. I don’t know how far we went along this road. It must have been some distance for the warmth exercise had generated in my hands and feet had dissipated. The snow, constantly thrown against the windshield, had a mesmeric quality to it. The crow-flight distance from Orleans to Pull-in Point was approximately eight miles, and only ten by road under normal conditions. No self-respecting crow was awing and these were not normal conditions. I only know that it had been about seven when the train pulled into the station. When we finally entered the kitchen, the clock said eight thirty-five.

I had one more short march as point for the final left-hand turn to Pull-in Point Road above Nauset Beach. The Laird house, which in fair weather had a full view of the sea over the tops of Nauset’s then substantial dunes, was partially protected by the lay of the land from the full brunt of the blizzard. Now its slanting saltbox roof was heavily laden with the accumulation of several snowstorms. It loomed blackly to our left, a solid bulk against the surrounding grayness.

“Find the driveway. There’s a post on the right-hand edge to guide you.”

I had trouble unbending my cramped knees. I got out very slowly, very stiffly. I came close to falling onto the post. Merlin bolted out the door as if he understood we had reached our destination. He promptly left a message at the beachplum bushes that formed the front hedge. As he barked ecstatically, snapping at the falling snow and rolling in it puppyishly, Major Laird revved the jeep for the dash up the rise to the garage I now distinguished in the gloom.

The major succeeded the second time. He gunned the motor peremptorily, recalling me to my senses, gesturing at the garage door. I slipped several times in the drifts, spitting out snow and cursing it as it leaked into my gloves and up my sleeves. I got a grip on the door handle and yanked. The top-hinged door stayed stubbornly shut. I made several more futile attempts and finally turned to the major, stretching my hands out in a show of helplessness. I heard him cursing with disgust as he crawled down from the jeep. There was some consolation in the fact that it took both of us, kicking and tugging, to loosen the frozen door.

He gave me a push towards the door in the rear of the garage. Unquestioningly I stumbled towards it as he drove the car in. My wet gloves slipped on the doorknob but I got it open the second time, gasping as warmth and light hit my face.

I lurched stiffly in, my entry hampered by Merlin who had had enough of playing around in the cold and barged past me. We entered a small back hall filled with fishing gear, hunting paraphernalia, oars, a well-greased motor, an imposing pile of cordwood, heavy-weather boots, and a filled meat safe high on the wall.

“Go on in,” the major ordered impatiently as I blocked his way to warmth.

I hastily opened the door and entered a welcoming kitchen. 1 hurried over to the huge black wood stove, drawn like a needle by the magnet of its heat-radiating bulk. A Dutch oven squatted at the back of the range and from it came the odor of rich meat stew. Turning to present the rear of me to the stove, I saw the major clump into a corridor. I found later that it ran along the back of the house, separating the kitchen, bathroom, and a small study from the living room, dining room, and front hall. From where I stood by the hot stove I could see only doors and an area for coats and boots.

The major beckoned to me. “Hang your wet things out here,” he said, less a suggestion than an order.

Mechanically I obeyed, fumbling with the ski-boot fastenings. My other shoes were in the suitcases which he placed just inside the dining room. I decided it was too much effort to rummage through luggage for mere shoes. I got my boots off. My socks were either very wet or very cold; my toes were too numb to know the difference. I hung up my heavy mackinaw and scarf and walked like an automaton back to the kitchen. I sat stiffly down at the old honey-colored table in the chair nearest the stove.

The major had filled two plates with stew and two mugs with coffee from a pot that had also been kept warm at the back of the stove. He served me and himself, then ladled out another bowl, splashing it with water to cool it quickly. He put this down by the hall door and whistled.

Merlin had gone on his own private reconnaissance through the house and, although he had never been whistled at in that particular arpeggio, he knew he was being paged. I heard his claws clicking against bare floors. He came into the kitchen, head high, eyes curious, darting, taking in everything in a sweeping gaze. He looked up at the major, at me, and then went to the bowl of food. He sniffed at it and sat down, tongue hanging out.

“Eat, Merlin,” I said and he rose and approached the food in earnest.

I had made it a point that Merlin should never accept food without my permission. I had trained him this way after two of his litter brothers were poisoned “by person or persons unknown.” Ha! I’d known. The disadvantage to this discipline was that I could not leave Merlin for more than forty-eight hours. He simply would not eat. When the strep throat had been at its worst and I was delirious, Merlin had stubbornly fasted for four days. Then one of my friends had brought him to the window outside the infirmary. Receiving my permission, though how he recognized me by the croak my voice had become I don’t know, the poor dog had wolfed down three pounds of horsemeat.

Right now he acted equally starved and I realized how hungry I was. Part of my depression must be due as much to hunger as cold. The stew had simmered into a semisolid mass, tasty, hot, restoring. The coffee, like any respectable army brew, was strong enough to have floated the stove. I cleaned my plate twice and felt infinitely more like facing the problem of the major.

In my concentration on the meal I had said nothing to him and had managed to forget his existence beyond the I click of silverware against china. My attention was drawn back to him when a pack of cigarettes was thrust under my I nose.

“Smoke?”

“I don’t.”

He lit one, the smoke he exhaled shadowing briefly the injured cheek. His look, without the disfiguration, would have been somber enough. I noticed that his hand bore scars, too, and I later learned that he had taken mine fragments all through the right arm and chest. He had, it turned out, been trying to drag the man in front of him out of the minefield.

“The situation is this, Miss Murdock,” he said bluntly, leaning forward slightly. “It was perfectly all right for me to extend hospitality to my male ward of twenty. Quite another thing when that ward is female. There is no one in the house but me. And while this may be wartime, there are still proprieties to be observed.”

“But we barely made it here,” I exclaimed, gesturing out at the whirling night.

He shook his head impatiently. “Not tonight, of course, you idiot. I’ll find you a place in the village tomorrow.”

“I’m sorry I was so silly not to tell you,” I babbled, unable to meet his eyes. “And I’ll be twenty-one in less than a year so you won’t be bothered with me long. Oh, the whole thing is ridiculous,” I cried, jumping up, annoyed because I couldn’t even make a decent apology to him.

He looked up at me with less rancor. He reached out one hand and reseated me.

“It’s not that I am bothered with you, my dear ward. To be truthful, I couldn’t do enough to repay the debt I owe Jim - your father. It’s just that it would be so much easier if you were a boy.”

“That’s what father always said,” I muttered sullenly.

“You make a much prettier girl or you would if you had some flesh on you. That dean didn’t exaggerate when she said you were run down.”

“Her!” I grated out between my teeth. I’d had my run-ins with Crab-eyes. Some of my resentment must have been reflected in my expression for he suddenly smiled at me.

“From the tone of her letter, I gather she considered me her contemporary,” he remarked dryly.

“Fatherly and white-haired, suitable guardian to a well-brought-up army brat,” I replied in a simpering voice, up to the last two words which I spat out.

“Brat is right,” he agreed firmly. “And as your guardian and by the few gray hairs I possess as of this moment, you get to bed.”

“It isn’t even ten yet,” I complained, glancing at the clock.

“The time is immaterial, the way you look. I’ll show you your room.”

“The way I look indeed,” I murmured to myself but I followed him.

“Which bag do you need tonight?” he asked and I pointed.

He led the way through the corridor into the dining room, to the front hall beyond. As I entered the foyer, I saw on my left the most unusually lovely stairway I have ever seen. A short flight of steps, parallel to the front door, ended on a low landing where the stairs continued, again parallel to the front door, to an intermediate landing, then switched on a short leg of a Z to the upper level. The balustrade over the stairwell was slightly bowed out, the spindles gracefully and unusually turned. It was a clever variation which fitted into a smaller space than conventional flights.

Major Laird noticed my surprise and pointed out the chandelier hanging over the stairwell.

“I mean to get the house electrified one day but not that. With candles in it, it is lovely to behold. Electricity would spoil it. This house is fairly old, added onto during the course of the eighteen hundreds. The oldest part is between the kitchen and the garage. I’ll show you tomorrow.”

We climbed the stairs and I stopped at each level, turning to see the effect.

The major shoved open an H-hinged door into a room at the front of the house, to the right of the stairs. Merlin padded in ahead and circled the room. The major ducked mechanically where the roof sloped down in front of the house. He lit the kerosene light on a massive old cherry bureau and laid my case at the foot of the four-poster spool bed with its quilted coverlet.

“It’s a lovely room,” I murmured, glancing around at the sparse but good furnishings, noticing the handmade braided rugs on the wide planked floors.

“My mother enjoyed this sort of stuff,” he commented, implying that he did not.

“Bathroom’s down the hall, second door on the right. Colder’n Croesus, I warn you. No way to heat it.” He turned to the fireplace in this room, its coals glowing warmly. He threw on more wood and the fire flared up obediently.

“More blankets in here if you’re cold,” he told me, tapping the blanket chest at the foot of the bed.

I sat down wearily on the high bed. Merlin jumped up and I was about to order him down, looking up at the major apprehensively. Even if he didn’t approve of the antiques, he might not want a dog on his mother’s patchwork quilt.

“I wish I had him to keep me warm tonight,” he said, grinning ruefully as he closed the door behind him. He stuck his head back in. “We’re on total blackout here, so keep your curtains drawn.”

“In a blizzard?”

“In a blizzard!”

I waited until I heard his footsteps on the stairs. Fatigue seeped through me. I pulled myself up by a bedpost and struggled to open the suitcase. I found slippers and a flannel nightgown. I shed my clothes and kicked them out of my way under the bed and the hell with them tonight.

I shuddered as the cold sheets chilled me even through the heavy flannel. Merlin did his usual act of stretching out beside me. He was longer than I. His warmth spread soothingly through the heavy blankets and he squirmed on his back to get comfortable against me. His warm moist nose prodded my ear in a canine kiss. Fine life when only your dog wishes you goodnight, I thought as I closed my eyes.