The Mark of Merlin

CHAPTER TWO

It was a combination of the cold and the wind that roused me. And once half conscious, I felt a vague nausea develop rapidly from chronic to acute. I staggered from the bed, barely aware of my surroundings. Merlin was instantly alert, whining a concerned question. I fumbled for the door latch, managed to open the door, and ran down the hallway. The upper hall was narrow and I barely avoided tumbling down the stairs, dizzy with nausea as well as sleep.

“Second door, second door,” I heard myself mumbling and swallowed against the rising substance in my gorge. I slammed open the door and saw the gleam of the toilet bowl. I just made it.

Merlin thrust an inquisitive nose at my arm and I pushed him away impatiently. He was no use to me. I heard his nails scrabbling against bare floor. I kept on being ill. I kept on being ill and then I started to shiver, because the bathroom was indeed colder’n Croesus. I started to shiver and I couldn’t stop and it was a toss-up between shivering and dry-retching. I didn’t have the strength to crawl back to bed. I huddled weakly against the toilet seat.

My eyes had just become accustomed to the dark when I caught a glimpse of a light over my shoulder. I groaned at the humiliation of having the major find me in such a condition. I groaned and my teeth chattered and I retched futilely.

“God, what next?” I heard him say as he paused on the threshold. I felt his warm hand on my forehead, the skin rough with the uneven scar tissue.

“You’re freezing.”

I chattered back at him.

“Through being ill?”

I nodded, swallowing against the reflexive spasm that seized my diaphragm. He took my hand in his and drew me to my feet. His wool bathrobe was warm under my hands. He slipped an arm under my knees and picked me up. He also cracked my head against the door frame as he maneuvered me out.

“For the love of webfooted friends in the forest,” I complained. His hands tightened spasmodically on my knees and shoulder. It was another of my father’s favorites.

Laird was more careful angling me into my room but he stopped halfway in. I was shivering uncontrollably now, grabbing tightly at his neck and arm to try to still the shakes.

“Colder’n hell in here,” he muttered and backed out.

Downstairs, through the dining room, out into the corridor he carried me, kicking open a door into what had been the original house. The room was about twenty feet square, narrow windows high in the walls just under the ceiling. A huge fireplace, its coals banked for the night, radiated tremendous warmth. As the major lowered me to the studio couch, I had a revolving impression of doors and bookshelves and Merlin sniffing around the room.

The major covered me tightly with the blankets, holding them down against my shaking body.

“Chilled riding that goddamfool baggage car with your overgrown wolf. Made a pig of yourself with stew so what else can you expect from a half-well organism like your body,” he muttered.

I tried to will myself to relax to the warmth that surrounded me. He pressed the covers more tightly to me. Then, with that queer whistle he could make without compressing his lips, he ordered Merlin up beside me. In the variable light from the dying fire his face assumed satanic qualities, the flames alternately flaring to illumine the scarred surface, then dying to cast it completely in shadow.

With a snort of impatience he turned to the fireplace. He came back with a shot glass full of liquor.

“If you haven’t started drinking, you’re about to learn at the insistence of your guardian.” He held the glass against my lower lip and tilted it deftly, so that despite my chattering the fluid got into my mouth. I gulped it down, grateful for the burning stuff although I’m not fond of Scotch. It always tastes to me the way ants smell formic acidy.

“It’s a dog’s dose,” he remarked, “but I’ve got to warm you up. You’re so thin you’ll break bones shaking like that.”

He poured another stiff drink, and disregarding my weak protest, propped my head in the crook of his arm and kept forcing the Scotch down my throat.

By the third shot I couldn’t focus and I didn’t bother to resist. But the shivering had stopped and I felt exceedingly warm and cozy. I was also sure that there was, somehow or other, a coating of ice, smooth and unbreakable, over my entire body. I told him so. I suggested that he stand me upright in the fireplace. If I put my head in the chimney I’d fit and then the ice would melt before I could get burned.

I remember he had a very pleasant laugh which was the first pleasant thing I had noticed about him. I told him so and was rewarded by another laugh. Something caught me by the back of the neck in one convulsive jerk and I remember that he held me against him and patted my head gently. He talked about a girl who had a curl in the middle of her forehead. I felt insulted enough to point out that I had too damned many curls all over my head and he was welcome to all he wanted to help hide his scar. I remember his hand over my mouth and that I was very very warm and very very sleepy.

Something heavy lay across my chest and my right arm was asleep. I woke up. I must not have been completely sober at that point because I looked down, quite calmly, at the major’s arm across my breasts. It didn’t seem at all improper that I was in the same bed with him because I was warm. This had been terribly important some long past time ago.

A kerosene lamp, flickering as the wick used up the last of the fuel in the well, gave a feeble light from the shelf over our heads. The major’s pajama sleeve had slid up and I could see the terrible gashes, rawly red, where shrapnel had sliced through the fleshy part of the arm. Yet his hand was long-fingered, well shaped, and strong, the nails flat, deep, and well kept. My father had always watched a man’s hands as he saluted or shook, not the face. Dad always maintained he could separate men into categories by the shape and care they took of their hands.

Regan Laird would surely have passed that test with honors. So his face didn’t matter and the surgeons would work their minor miracles and put him back together again. In repose his right profile lost some of the distortion it had in waking. The eye did not seem so drawn nor the grin such a travesty. He had lost half his right eyebrow, which gave him a curiously bald look. The scar tissue extended up into the hairline but his thick black hair had been carefully cut to hide most of it. The worst furrows of keloidal tissue stretched across the cheekbone down to the jawline. I remember my father mentioning how Regan took care of the petticoat problems in the regiment. An ambiguous statement. Now I had seen the major’s good side, I imagined all manner of interpretations.

Scarred or not, Regan Laird was muy hombre as old Turtle Bailey would have said in that gravel-pit voice of his. So different, I sighed to myself, from what infested the campus. Irresistibly tempted, I carefully twitched a long piece of hair away before it tickled his nose and roused him. His hair was unexpectedly fine and silky under my fingers and, feeling foolish, I stroked his hair back over the scar. He moved and, startled, I withdrew my hand. But I didn’t remove the arm he had thrown across me. Big warm heavy Merlin was firmly planted along my left side so I was wedged between two male bodies. Would Merlin constitute a chaperon in Mrs. Grundy’s eyes, I wondered?

The kerosene lamp flickered and went out. The quiet hiss of the fire lulled me. Warm and feeling safe for the first time since Dad had shipped out three years before, I slept.

A loud crack-pop woke me. A log had split on the fire. I looked around, startled to find neither the major nor Merlin in the room. The kerosene lamp, filled and trimmed, burned brightly on the shelf. Gray light filtered in from the high windows, the gray light of a stormy day, not early morning.

I was warm but the memory of last night’s chill had not receded far enough for me to want to rise from the comfort of the bed. I heard Merlin’s nails clicking. I heard a door open to the accompaniment of Merlin’s glad barking.

I pictured him outside, trying to bite snowflakes, leaping and twisting his big frame in an awkward return to puppy-hood. I imagined him sniff-casing the yard, leaving “sign” on every likely bush and stone.

The door to the back hall opened, letting in a billow of frigid air. The major entered, his hands occupied with a tray, adroitly kicking the door closed with a deft foot.

“Is there anything that dog doesn’t know about you?”

“Hmmm?”

“He’s been sitting in front of the door for the last hour,” the major explained as I struggled to a sitting position so he could put the tray on my lap.

“Tea?” I cried in horror.

“Better for your stomach after last night. Yes, Merlin told me in plain language you were awake. He considered he could be relieved of sentry-go and he wanted out.”

I grinned at the major.

“Dad always said Merlin had more sense than most sergeants even if he didn’t take to K-9 training.”

The major raised his left eyebrow questioningly. The right one did not move. His face, plainly visible in the daylight, did not seem so grotesque. I suppose you can get used to anything to the point where you don’t even see it.

“Yes,” I went on, stirring plenty of sugar in the tea to take the curse off it, “Merlin chickened out of K-9 training. He wouldn’t attack.”

” ‘Damn all sugar in our tea?’ ” the major asked, pointedly watching the teaspoonfuls I ladled into the cup. “So they discharged him, huh?”

“Yes, insufficiently aggressive for active duty was the euphemism. Dad said the dog had too much sense to attack a stuffed dummy that hadn’t done anything. Merlin is fast enough if a live’un raises a gun, though.”

Major Laird snorted sympathy for the fine distinction.

“I might not believe you if I hadn’t seen his performance this morning. But I do. I’m sure I’ll agree more as our acquaintance deepens. But the dog must have complicated your life no end. No, eat all of it!”

“I don’t like eggs in the morning,” I said, enunciating clearly. “Particularly soft-boiled eggs.”

“I don’t care what you don’t like. This diet is designed to reintroduce your stomach to solids. I’ve a suspicion you’ve ignored all basic convalescent rules or you wouldn’t have got so ill last night.”

“Your cooking!”

“My cooking my sainted aunt,” he replied, frowning as I laughed over his hurried substitution of a politer phrase. But his face told me he would shove the eggs down my throat if I demurred so I gagged the mixture down, hoping it would regurgitate and annoyed because it tasted surprisingly good.

“I had quite a row with the college about Merlin,” I remarked, picking up the original subject. “That’s why I ended up at a boardinghouse instead of a dorm. And I had a helluva time finding - “

“You don’t need to swear.”

“If I feel like it, I will - a house that would accept him.” I chuckled smugly. “When I was sick, Mrs. Everett was very glad he was in her house. Someone tried to burgle it twice. Merlin nearly broke the window in my room when the thief tried to get in from the roof.”

The major looked at me sharply, frowning. “Into your room?”

“Eyah. My room gives onto the back porch roof.”

The Major’s frown deepened, on the left side, that is. “I gather Merlin dissuaded him thoroughly?”

I grimaced. “No. He got away. Now if Mrs. Everett had had the sense God gave little apples, she’d have let Merlin loose and told him to go get the man. But,” and I shrugged philosophically, “she didn’t and he did.”

The major was thoughtful as he refilled my cup.

“I don’t want any more.”

“Immaterial. You need fluids. You’re dehydrated. Stir hard. I don’t mind the noise and you’ve two months’ rations on the bottom of the cup.”

“I am not dehydrated.”

“Want a mirror?”

I closed my mouth with a snap and sullenly spooned more sugar in the cup, stirring with as much noise as I could make.

“Bathroom’s down the corridor,” the major said, throwing a heavy wool bathrobe on the bed. “You’d better stay here today. I can keep it warmer.”

“But I thought “

“Blizzard!” and he took the tray back to the kitchen.

Snowbound with the major. How romantic! I thought acidly.

By the time I finished the second mug of oversweet tea, common sense had asserted itself. I knew that I had been outflanked and outranked and it didn’t happen often enough to sit well. But I would snitch some coffee. Him and his tea! No one as thoroughly indoctrinated in army ways as I was could consider starting a day without coffee. I slid down under the covers again, gathering warmth for what was surely going to be a cold dash for a freezing bathroom.

The corridor was really frigid but not the bathroom. It backed against the kitchen and a vent from the stove kept the room, probably converted from an old shed, luxuriously warm. A huge raised tub, pull-chain toilet, and ornate lavatory indicated that someone in the Victorian era had preferred not to brave the rigors of Cape Cod winters for trips to the outhouse. I was deeply grateful. And mirabile dictu! hot water steamed out of the spigot. I jerked my hand back in time to avoid being scalded. I’d have preferred a bath but, in view of my weakened condition and the chilly corridor back to the warm study, decided against it. It was morally comforting to know the facilities existed.

A mirror, badly in need of resilvering, told me I was no Cinderella. As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t have made it as Apple Witch. My eyes were dark holes in my face, my cheeks drawn and gaunt. Perhaps it was the effect of the shot-silver. I’d never looked that desiccated before!

Men’s toiletries took up the small shelf above the sink. I made bold to pull the major’s comb through the tangle of my hair. Great wads pulled loose as they had ever since my fever. I’d be bald, I was sure, despite the doctor’s reassurance that there would be new growth coming in. All fringe benefits of the high fever. Maybe my hair would grow back in straight, I mused hopefully, and pulled at a curl experimentally. It flopped back into place with disgusting resilience. I made a face at my reflection which was almost an improvement. Why did my lipstick have to be up under my bed? I needed all the color I could get.

When I opened the bathroom door, a smell of coffee wafted up the corridor. I could go back to the study by way of the kitchen. I had been a good girl and I had kept my eggs down. Maybe I could have coffee as a reward.

A muted thudding caught my attention and I ducked back to the window, parting the blind. The major, bundled up in a bright hunting coat, was right outside splitting kindling. He threw a piece out towards the scrub bushes for Merlin to retrieve. The major’s good profile was towards me and I could see his grin, the flash of his even teeth as he watched my idiot dog romping. Given half a chance by people who are not cowed by his size and apparent ferocity, Merlin was as agreeable a companion as you’d want. The major was not the least intimidated and Merlin was taking full advantage of the relaxed atmosphere.

I thought of Mrs. Everett who never quite trusted him in the same room with her. Merlin was always the gentleman in her house, instinctively aware of her anxiety. On campus he knew which of my classes he could sneak into, lying quietly under my chair. He also knew which lecture halls to avoid completely, returning after the hour was up to escort me home or to the next class. He had become, very shortly, as much a campus feature as the two legitimate seeing-eye dogs. He ignored them studiously. They were working.

Of course, Mrs. Everett’s attitude had changed after Merlin had routed the prowler. She had even unbent enough to pat his head tentatively as she accompanied me to the taxi the day before. Day before! It seemed like years ago. Time had been suspended during that incredible train ride and that ageless drive in the jeep.

“You will be coming back, won’t you, dearie?” Mrs. Everett had asked anxiously through the taxi window.

I had roomed with her for two years, summer and winter. She had been kind and comforting when she discovered my lack of family. I would always remember the terrible stricken look on her face when she brought me the telegram informing me of Dad’s death. She had known instinctively what news that telegram contained. She’d had one herself for her navy son. She and Mr. Everett had done more than true relatives would have for their “poor orphaned lamb.” Kay Alexander who roomed down the hall told me that’s what the Everetts called me.

I was not above milking such reactions. To tell the truth, kindly boardinghouse ladies had been mother surrogates since my own had died when I was five. What none of them would admit was that I was perfectly capable of taking care of myself. Dad had seen to that. However, when I occasionally needed a female ally against some of Dad’s purely masculine directives, I was bald-faced enough to use any nearby sympathetic soul to achieve the ends in mind: dating, long dresses, less childish clothes, more spending money, dancing lessons, and the rest of these absolutely essential items an army colonel could not have imagined. Consequently I had a handpicked string of courtesy aunts and uncles all over the country. There were few cities near large army installations in the United States and its territories where I could not find a roof to shelter me off base. And Dad had to name Laird my guardian!

But those people had only been buffers against Dad’s idiosyncrasies. He had always been there, somewhere, on maneuvers, on duty, but there. Alive. Now I was really on my own, despite the legal farce of Major Regan Laird.

I wondered how old the major was. The war had graven such terrible marks on him it was impossible to guess accurately. Late thirties? Perhaps. Old!

I heard him pounding snow off his boots on the back porch and I cleaned my hair from his comb, putting it back precisely in the military brush from which I had filched it.

I scampered down the hall, to the kitchen, hoping to snag some coffee before he reentered. He had come straight to the stove with his armload of kindling.

“Close the damn hall door, girl,” he ordered as I stood there, thwarted. I slammed the door and stayed firm. He might leave.

He dumped his burden into the woodbox and poked several sticks into the stove. He glanced up and caught me staring at the coffeepot. He grinned.

“Stomach feel normal?”

I nodded.

“All right then. Fix me a cup, too. It’s hmmmm it’s cold out there and snowing again.”

“Sorry to cramp your style,” I remarked sweetly as I found cups in the cabinet beside the kitchen sink. I couldn’t quite reach the shelf so I hoisted myself onto the counter. The major’s long arm intercepted my grasp and I glared around at him.

“You are a little bit of a thing,” he said, handing me the cups.

He looked at me as though seeing me clearly for the first time. He would pick right now when I looked ghastly. I tugged for him to release the cups to me. He held onto them, regarding me steadily. It was difficult for me, in returning his gaze, to resist the compulsion to drop my glance slightly to the furrows of his wounded cheek. He smiled, the smile echoing in his gray eyes.

“A little bit of a cocky thing,” he repeated. He meant it, as Turtle Bailey, Dad’s sergeant, always did, as a compliment.

He let go of the cups and, picking me up at the elbows, lifted me off the counter. “Next time, use the step stool by the door,” he commented, nodding in its direction. “Like mine black and sweet.”

“And we are grad-u-ally, fading away,” I warbled as I poured the coffee.

Merlin, who had crawled under the table, flipped on to his side with a great groan, as if deploring my singing. He let out a huge sigh and fell asleep.

“Are we really snowbound?” I asked mischievously.

“Yes, indeed. We were damned lucky not to go off that road last night. Coast Guard had plowed, fortunately, right up to the final turnoff or I’d never have made it out. Damn train being late nearly sewed us up in town. There’s only the one inn in Orleans.” He reflected a moment. “Probably been better if we had stayed there though it’s no Waldorf.”

“You’re a good guardian, protecting my virtue,” I taunted him.

“Don’t kid yourself about that,” he snapped, annoyed by my flippancy.

“I can take care of myself,” I lashed back. “I’m a colonel’s daughter and the day I can’t handle a mere major“

He saw the humor in the situation quicker than I did and threw back his head to laugh. He sobered as quickly.

“All kidding aside, Carlysle“

“Carla,” I corrected him automatically.

“I’m too used to thinking of you as ‘Carlysle’ - and male to change both at once . All kidding aside, it’d be better for you not to stay on here any longer than the storm.”

I got the feeling then that it was not the proprieties that worried him. I couldn’t imagine what did. Then he confirmed a nagging doubt I’d had.

“You said there were two attempts to enter your rooming house? Was it the first or second time that Merlin interfered?”

“The second. Why do you ask?”

“Oh, nothing.”

“That’s the kind of nothing that’s something,” I replied with exasperation.

He raised an eyebrow but made no explanation.

“Did you bring everything you own with you?” he asked, nodding towards the corridor where my other suitcase still lay. “Or did you leave things with Mrs. Everett?”

“I left all my college books,” and I grimaced sullenly. “And my summer clothes are stored in a trunk in her cellar.”

“You’ll be back in the summer and you’ll make up this term. For Christ’s sake, the dean was justified,” he exploded as I turned obdurately sulky over that hotly contested decision. “You’re nothing but skin and bones. Worn out. Mentally, too, I’ll wager. Book fatigue, nothing more. Tired minds make mistakes and risk lives.”

“I’m not in a position to risk lives,” I replied angrily.

“No, you’re risking more. Your education and your future.”

“You know so much about it?”

He glared back at me, refusing to budge an inch. “In that letter, your dean - “

“Oh? Really, and you never tumbled from her letterhead that I was at Radcliffe, not Harvard .” I sneered.

“I thought it was a wartime exigency. So many professors drafted, the Radcliffe faculty pitching in to fill the gaps .”

“A likely tale. You didn’t want me to be female any more than my father did.”

“Damn well told,” he shouted, his carefully contained temper erupting, “and it’d be a piece of infantile foolishness for you to jeopardize a dean’s list record with your bullheadedness.”

The fact that he was absolutely right and rational only infuriated me more. The decision had been forced on me and I resented coercion bitterly.

“You’ll obey me in this, young lady. Legally I’m your guardian, and I’ll decide what’s right for you when you’re too stubborn blind stupid to see the forest for the trees. You’ll take this term off if I have to lock you up.”

“I’m not in the goddamned army,” I yelled, jumping to my feet.

“Too damned bad you’re not. You’d’ve learned to obey if you were!”

There we were, both on our feet, glaring at each other, our faces inches apart. The tension reached Merlin’s sleeping senses and he barked sharply twice. That brought us to our senses. I blinked at the major’s angry face, the cords of his neck taut and the ridges of the keloidal tissue red and angry-looking.

I was instantly heartily ashamed of my outburst. He was assuming a disagreeable responsibility and I was being a silly little fool not to make things as easy as possible for him. I sat down abruptly, stirring my coffee vigorously.

“I’m sorry,” I said, sincerely contrite. “I am behaving childishly. I’m being unfair to you. You’re right. I am worn out. I’ll behave.”

He remained standing for a moment so I couldn’t see his face. He sat down slowly. His unscarred left hand covered mine with a brief reassuring squeeze.

“I’ll make an arrangement for you in town and then you’d better go back to the Everetts after I leave.”

I looked at him stupidly. “After you leave?”

“I’m to report to Walter Reed in a few weeks,” he said tonelessly. In spite of myself my eyes went to his scarred face. He returned my startled look expressionlessly.

“But I could stay here then.”

He shook his head violently, frowning savagely.

“You can’t stay here alone.”

“Why not?” I insisted. “Merlin won’t let anyone he doesn’t know .”

Major Laird closed his mouth with a snap.

“You said” and he leaned forward to me, angry again, “you said you’d behave. Just leave it that I have good and sufficient reason for wanting you in town.” He hesitated just enough to clue me he was evading. He knew I caught it but refused to give me the satisfaction of a direct answer or an explanation. I was forced to bide by my agreement to behave.

I swallowed the hasty words I wanted to say: that I was well able to take care of myself. He’d’ve tossed them back to me.

“How long will you be gone?” I asked instead.

He shook his head, a curt negative. I couldn’t see why he wouldn’t welcome the plastic surgery which surely must be the reason for his hospitalization. He couldn’t like looking this way. Why else had he come to such a remote place as this? He had been a very handsome man before his injury. Vanity, self-respect alone - unless his personality had unexpectedly warped - would demand that he take advantage of a facial restoration. It was incomprehensible why he was reluctant to go to Walter Reed. I wondered if he just didn’t want to leave Pull-in Point.

“When the snow stops,” he said heavily, “I’ll make arrangements for you in town. Or maybe over hi Chatham.” He gave a short mirthless laugh. “They have a movie house. Runs a show every weekend.”

“And church bingo on Thursdays. Big deal!”

We finished our coffee in rather a strained silence. The cold of the house was suddenly more preferable. I jumped to my feet, trying to act normal, and walked with unnaturally stiff legs to rinse my cup out in the sink.

“I’ll get dressed and wash these up,” I said in a falsely bright voice as I added the mug to the stacks on the drain-board.

“I’d appreciate it,” and his voice had a rueful sound. “It’s rather ahem beneath the dignity of a major,” he mocked his rank in an effort to lighten the atmosphere of the room, “to do KP.”

I gave him a grin that was not too off-center normal and plunged out into the cold hall.