An Introduction To The Eternal Collection Jubilee Edition (134 page)

“Yes, I expect so,” Lord Brecon said heavily. “You have a draught if she gets violent?”

“Oh yes, m’lord, but I don’t like to give it to her unless she is really bad. Sometimes she is as sweet as sweet, it was only the bird that set her off this morning.”

The nurse glanced towards Cassy as she spoke and Caroline saw there was real affection on her face. Cassy suddenly threw down the doll she had been holding and came shunting across the room. She went towards Caroline, and now her fingers were bent as if she would claw at her.

“Where’s Cassy’s dicky-bird?” she said fiercely. “Have you got the dicky-bird? Give it to Cassy, give it to Cassy!”

Instinctively Caroline recoiled, but Nanny was between her and Cassy, a protective barrier.

“Come along, Miss Cassy,” she said quietly. “I have got something nice to show you.”

She took the idiot’s hand firmly in hers and spoke over her shoulder to Lord Brecon.

“You’d better go, m’lord. I don’t like your lordship to see her like this, nor the lady who is with you.”

Lord Brecon opened the nursery door, and pale and shaken, Caroline slipped from the room. Even as the door closed behind them, they heard Cassy cry again,

“Cassy wants the dicky-bird. Cassy wants to feel its blood drip – drip.”

In silence Caroline went down the stairs. When they reached the hall, Lord Brecon opened the door at the foot of the stairway.

“Shall we talk in here?” he asked.

The room into which he showed her was almost identical with the nursery above it, save that the windows, only began above eye level. It was comfortably arranged but had the air of not being used. Caroline looked round her and then her eyes returned to the windows.

“They are built specially high so that no one from outside can look in,” Lord Brecon said, as if he guessed her, thoughts.

“I understand,” Caroline said in a low voice.

The old man came hurrying through the door.

“Shall I light the fire, m’lord? You will find if powerful cold in here. The room is seldom in use.”

“Yes, light the fire,” Lord. Brecon commanded.

Caroline sat in silence while the old man kindled the flame, talking all the while.

“I wish I’d a-known you were a-coming, m’lord. We would have turned this room out. ‘Tis seldom you pay us a visit these days. Nurse was remarking only the night before last how it was since we’d seen your lordship. But there, you have much to occupy you, one can be sure of that, and when your lordship does come we should not grumble, for we have much to be thankful for.”

“You get your food all right?” Lord Brecon said.

“Oh yes, m’lord. My wife’s own niece is giving us a hand now. She’s a sensible girl and not a word would she say to anyone. She brings us our provisions from the village and of course we get game from the keepers and vegetables from the garden as we always have done.”

“That’s all right then,” Lord Brecon said. “I will let you know when I am leaving, Miggs.”

“Thank you, m’lord. I’ll be a-waiting in the hall, m’lord.”

The old man shuffled from the room and closed the door behind him.

Lord Brecon stood with his back to the crackling fire, looking down at Caroline’s bent head as she sat in the chair.

“Now that you know my secret I hope you are satisfied,” he said in a bitter voice. “Now perhaps you will understand why I commanded you to leave the Castle, why I tried to save you from the consequences of your own impetuosity.”

Caroline raised her face, and it was white and drawn.

“Who – who is she?” she asked, and her voice trembled on the words.

“Cassy is my sister,” Lord Brecon replied. “You would hardly credit it, but she will be four-and-twenty this year. Born a monstrosity, she developed gradually the murderous tendencies that you have just heard. It is impossible for her to see anything living but she desires to kill it. The physicians suspected early in her life that she might be that way inclined and all animals were kept from her, but unfortunately the caretaker’s cat got into the nursery one day when Cassy was about six years of age. She killed it and sat there bathed in its blood, enjoying a satanic orgy. Since then she has wanted to kill and to go on killing.”

Caroline put her hands to her face.

“It is unbearably horrible,” she whispered.

“But Cassy is not the only skeleton in the family cupboard,” Lord Brecon said, and now there was a terrible veneer of lightness overlying the bitterness of his words as if it gave him pleasure to torture both Caroline and himself.

“When I was-twenty-five, my trustees handed me the management of my estates and also entrusted me with the secrets of the Castle. Cassy was the first of them. Until then I did not know of her existence, but worse than Cassy, or so it seemed to me, they told me the truth of my father’s death.”

’Your father?” Caroline asked.

“Oh yes, he was mad too,” Lord Brecon replied. “When he was a comparatively young man there was some scandal while he was up at Oxford. A friend of his was found dead in extremely peculiar circumstances. Nothing could be proved and my revered parent was obviously more careful in the ensuing years. But when I was three years old, Cassy was born and I am informed that when he saw her the sight of her seemed to rekindle in him the madness which had been dormant for years. My mother was desperately ill after Cassy’s birth and the baby’s deformities were kept from her. When she was well enough to bear the truth, she was told that her child was dead. Only Nanny and old Miggs and his wife were entrusted with the dread secret that she was alive. The Tower was prepared for her and she was shut away here in the hope, of course, that she would die quickly. But lunatics live far longer than sane folk and Cassy is in actual fact extremely healthy.

“But as I was saying, after her birth I am told my father became very peculiar. He began to take an almost fiendish delight in sport. He never seemed to have enough of shooting, hunting and cock-fighting. He also took to wandering about the grounds at night. A poacher was found dead in the wood and there was no doubt at all that he had been murdered. One of my trustees was an eminent physician. He has since died, but on my twenty-fifth birthday he told me how he gradually began to suspect my father, how he had invited himself to stay here, anxious if possible, to save an old friend from himself. Then in a fit of temper, because his boots had been badly cleaned, my father killed his valet. It was a deliberate murder. He flogged the man with a hunting crop and then, when he was unconscious, stabbed him with a knife. It was the physician who found the dead man in my father’s bedchamber and realising what must be the consequences to my father, he took upon himself to advocate what I well believe was the only honourable solution.”

“What was that?” Caroline asked.

“He persuaded my father to take his own life. He told me that he loaded the pistol with his own hand and then, having told my father what he must do, withdrew from the room. When he related the story to me, he said that he had never welcomed anything in his life as he did the sound of that pistol shot. With my father dead it was easy to hush up the crime. Fortunately the valet was a foreigner whose relations were not likely to make enquiries or cause a fuss. My father was buried with great pomp and ceremony, and no one except the trustees knew the whole truth of his death although it was impossible to prevent a certain amount of local gossip. Every possible care was taken to keep it from my mother and just as they had managed to hide from her the fact of Cassy’s existence, so they managed to conceal the knowledge that her husband was a murderer. I did not know it either until two years ago, and since then I have wished over and over again that they had had more of a respect for my feelings and had kept silent. Now at last you can understand what the future holds for me, Caroline - madness and the knowledge that I shall go the same way as my father went. Soon I shall want to kill and go on killing until far less fortunate than him, the gallows will claim me.”

Caroline gave a little cry.

“Oh no, Vane! No.”

“It is true,” he said grimly, “and I am not afraid to face it. Now perhaps you will understand why I am not particularly interested in saving my life. The sooner I die the better, for I would rather die cleanly than with my hands stained with blood.”

“Vane! Vane! Don’t say such things.”

There were tears running down Caroline’s cheeks, but she paid no heed to them. Instead she got to her feet, and standing beside Lord Brecon laid her hand on his arm.

“There must be some way out of this,” she said. “There must be something we can do.”

“Do?” he questioned. “There is nothing save to wait patiently for the end.”

“I won’t believe it, I won’t,” Caroline stormed suddenly. “It is cruel and unjust. If there is a merciful God, He – ”

“Can you believe in a God who would permit such things as Cassy?” Lord Brecon enquired.

“Yes,” Caroline answered quickly, “for Cassy does not know, does not feel. It is not for Cassy that I ask justice, but for you, Vane. You are young, you are not mad!”

“Not yet.”

There was something so grim in his answer that Caroline could for the moment only sob uncontrollably. If her tears moved him, he showed no sign of it.

“Come, your ladyship,” he said after a few seconds. “This has been a morbid revelation, I admit, but it need not disturb you unnecessarily. You have nothing to fear and the gaieties of London Society will soon dispel such horrors from your mind. My London mansion is at your disposal. It shall be opened, and my purse fortunately is long enough for you to indulge in whatever whims occur to you.”

Caroline raised her face from her hands.

“How can you speak of such things?” she asked quickly and in utter scorn. “Do you think that frivolities could make me forget all this – and you.”

Her voice softened on the last word, but Lord Brecon remained unmoved.

“Perhaps I can understand your feelings,” he said, “for I find it difficult to forget Sir Montagu Reversby.”

Caroline started as if he had struck her.

“How can you dare to speak of that man – now at this moment?” she asked. “Once and for all, Vane, I insist on your hearing what occurred between him and me.”

Lord Brecon straightened his shoulders, and it seemed to Caroline as if he became immeasurably taller. His face was like marble as he said,

“I beg you to spare me, Caroline, for I am not interested.”

To Caroline’s overwrought nerves this was almost the last straw. She stamped her foot.

“Very well then, if you prefer to believe defamations against me, which I could disperse in a few sentences, believe them. You say you are not interested, my lord, very well, I am not interested either.”

Lord Brecon bowed.

“For once we are in agreement,” he said. “May I now escort your ladyship to more habitable parts of the Castle?”

He offered her his arm, but Caroline refused it with a disdainful glance. She was angry - angry with a fury which seemed to run through her veins like fire. The shock of what she had seen, the horror of Lord Brecon’s revelations were all submerged for the moment in a feeling of intense rage because he would not hear her. Then as they walked down the long passages, Lord Brecon unlocking and re-locking the doors as they went, Caroline felt her anger ebbing from her and her love for him sweeping over her again in a warm flood. She loved him. What could it matter what his father had done or that the ghastly monstrosity which was his sister would for ever haunt her? What did it all matter beside the fact that Vane was Vane, the man she loved, the man for whom her whole being yearned. Nothing could quench such a love as hers, nothing could alter it.

And at last she could understand so many things. Now she understood why he had vowed for himself a life of celibacy, for he would not risk bringing into the world a creature such as Cassy. Now she understood why, in the full flood-tide of their revelation of their love one for another, he had made the supreme sacrifice of wanting to send her away from him, deliberately choosing loneliness and misery for himself that she might be saved from unhappiness. Only by her own persistence had she defied his determination, a determination which had been overcome by the blind jealousy that had been aroused in him when he learned of her association with Sir Montagu Reversby.

As they walked down the passage past the doors of the Chapel where they had been married the night before Caroline suddenly knew something extremely surprising. It was that, strange though it might seem, she was grateful to Montagu Reversby. Yes, grateful, for had his very name not spurred Vane into wild, unconsidered action, she might at this moment have been driven from the Castle.

What she had learned was horrifying and unutterably ghastly. Vane’s secret had indeed surpassed anything that she could have imagined even in her wildest fancies and yet one simple fact remained, a fact unaltered, unchanged by everything which had occurred this afternoon. She loved him!

They reached the hall. They had not spoken since they left the sitting-room in the Tower, but it was easy to see where Lord Brecon’s thoughts had been, for suddenly he pointed to the long line of oil paintings hung on the walls and said,

“These are my ancestors, from them I have inherited this Castle and my blood.”

Caroline looked up at the pictured faces. They were mostly of men - men in Elizabethan ruffs, in splendid uniforms and in picturesque robes. They were all dark-haired, Caroline noted, and in one or two of the portraits there was an almost uncanny resemblance to Gervase Warlingham. As if her thoughts conjured him up, Caroline turned and saw him standing at the drawing-room door.

“Are you admiring our most illustrious family?” he asked Caroline with his usual sneer.

“I was just thinking, sir,” she replied, “that in several of these pictures it is easy to trace a remarkable likeness to yourself.”

Mr. Warlingham laughed.

“Yes, the Warlingham characteristics are often strongly accentuated,” he said. “Which reminds me, Vane, ‘tis the exception for there to be a blond Warlingham. You must be a changeling.”