Bride of Pendorric (24 page)

” So you’re showing Mrs. Pendorric the house,” she said.

” Well, it looks like it, Nurse.” Mrs. Dawson’s voice was tart. ” If you like I’ll take over. I expect you have work to do.”

” As housekeeper I reckon it to be my duty to show Mrs. Pendorric the house, Nurse.”

Nurse Grey smiled at me and shrugged her shoulders; but as though defying Mrs. Dawson to challenge her right to be there, she remained with us.

Mrs. Dawson was put out, and behaved as though she were unaware of the nurse’s presence. I wondered what Althea Grey had done to make herself so disliked.

We walked up a beautiful staircase and inspected the rooms on the first floor of the mansion with their enormous windows and those superb views to which I had become accustomed at Pendorric. Mrs.

Dawson uncovered some of the furniture and showed me beautiful pieces, mostly antique, which I guessed must be worth a great deal.

“Jewelled in every hole,” murmured Althea Grey, her lovely blue eyes mischievous.

The obvious hostility between them made me a little un comfortable. ” I hear we’re to have about sixty guests, Mrs. Pendorric,” said Althea Grey. ” It’s a good thing we have a sizeable ballroom, otherwise we should be treading on each other’s toes.”

“Well, Nurse,” put in Mrs.

Dawson with a twitch of her nose, ” that shouldn’t worry you, should it?”

” Oh but it will, I hate having my toes trodden on.” She laughed. ” Oh, you’re thinking that as I’m merely Lord Polhorgan’s nurse I shan’t be there. But you’re wrong, Mrs. Dawson. Of course I shall be there. I couldn’t let him go without me in attendance, could I?” She was smiling at me as though inviting me to join in her victory over Mrs.

Dawson, who looked extremely put out; and I supposed this was the usual tug-of-war between two servants each of whom thought herself in a higher position than me other. That must be the reason for the animosity.

” Of course not,” I said hastily; and Mrs. Dawson’s face was grim. ” I reckon, madam,” she said, ” that Nurse Grey could show you the upper rooms.”

I thanked her and assured her that I should be pleased if she stayed with us, but she muttered something about having things to see to, and left us.

Althea Grey grinned when we were alone. ” She’d make life a trial if I’d let her. Jealous old witch.”

” You think she’s jealous of you?”

“They always are, you know. I’ve come up against this sort of thing before, nursing in private houses. They don’t like it because they have to wait 0^1 us. They’re anxious all the time to tell us that they’re as good as we are.”

” It must be awkward for you.”

” I don’t let it bother me. I can manage the Mrs. Dawson characters, I can tell you.”

In spite of her delicate beauty I was sure she could. We had come to my grandfather’s room, and when I went in with her he gave me his warm and welcoming smile, and I felt my spirits rising when I realised what a difference my coming had made to him. Nurse Grey ordered tea and the three of us had it together. Conversation was all about the ball, and before she left us Nurse Grey warned my grandfather that he was becoming far too excited. ” You have your pills handy?” she said.

For answer he took the little silver box from his pocket and showed her.

” That’s good.”

She smiled at me and left us together.

I had had a busy morning, and after lunch, because the sun was shining and it was a long time since I had been in the quadrangle, I went there and sat in my favourite spot under the palm tree. I had not been there more than five minutes when the north door opened and a twin came out.

I was always a little ashamed of my inability to distinguish which was which when they were not together, and tried to discover without exposing my ignorance.

She came and stood before me.

“Hallo. How you like mis place! But you haven’t been here lately, have you?”

” I’ve been too busy.”

She regarded me solemnly. ” I know. It is a busy business, suddenly finding you’re Lord Polhorgan’s granddaughter.”

She stood on one foot and hopped a few paces nearer. ” Just fancy! You might have been here always … if your mother and father hadn’t gone away. Then we should always have known you.”

“That could easily have happened,” I admitted.

” But it was more exciting the other way. There wouldn’t have been this ball perhaps … if you’d always been here. There wouldn’t be any sense in giving a fatted-calf sort of ball if you’d never been away, would there?”

” Would you say this was like the prodigal’s return?” She nodded vigorously.

“You’re rich now, aren’t you; and you must have been poor, though perhaps you didn’t eat the husks that the swine did eat.”

I was sure it was Lowella now. She had started to hop all round my seat, and when she was immediately behind me she stood close, breathing down my neck. ” Everybody wasn’t pleased when he came home, were they? There was the brother who’d stayed at home. He didn’t see why the fatted calf should be killed for the brother who’d run away when he wanted to.”

” Don’t worry. I haven’t got a brother who’ll be jealous of my having a welcome.”

” There doesn’t have to be a brother. A parable’s different, isn’t it?

It doesn’t always mean exactly what it says. You have to work it out—Becky says so. Carrie’s waiting for me to try on my dress for the ball. “

” She’s making it for you, is she?”

” Yes, it’s gold colour. She’s making two—exactly alike. It’ll be fun. They won’t know which is Hy and which is Lo.”

“You’d better go if Carrie wants to fit on your dress, hadn’t you?”

” You come with me and see it. It’s very pretty.” She started to hop towards the west door and I rose and followed her into the house, unsure again whether I had been speaking to Hyson or Lowella.

She started to hum as we went up the stairs, and the song she hummed was the tune that I had heard in that strange, off-key voice which had startled me so. This humming was quite different, though, rather monotonous and tuneless.

“What’s that you’re singing?” I asked.

She stopped, turned slowly and looked down on me, for she was standing several stairs above me. I knew then that she was Hyson.

” It’s Ophelia’s song in Hamlet.”

” Did you learn it at school?”

She shook her head.

“Did Miss Bective teach it to you?” I was becoming too anxious, I realised; and she guessed it and found it amusing. Again she shook her head. She was waiting mischievously for the next question.

I merely continued: ” It’s a haunting tune,” and started up the stairs.

She ran on ahead of me until she came to the door of Carrie’s sewing room.

Carrie was seated at an old-fashioned sewing machine and I saw that she was working on a gold-coloured dress.

There were two dressmaker’s dummies in the room, one a child’s and the other an adult’s. On the smaller one was another gold-coloured dress, on the larger a mauve evening dress.

” Ah, there you are. Miss Hyson,” said Carrie. ” I’ve been waiting for you. Come here, do. That neck don’t please me.”

” Here’s Mrs.

Pendorric, too” said Hyson. ” She wanted to see the dresses so I brought her up. “

I went over to the dummy on which the other gold-coloured dress had been arranged.

” It’s lovely,” I said. ” This is Lowella’s, of course.”

“I fitted it on Miss Hyson,” mumbled Carrie.

“Miss Lowella can’t stand still for more than a second or two.”

“It’s true,” said Hyson primly.

“Her mind flitters and flutters like a butterfly. She can’t concentrate on anything for any length of time.

Becky says it’s deplorable. “

” Come here, then,” said Carrie, snipping a cotton and withdrawing the dress from the machine.

Hyson stood meekly while Carrie slipped off her dress and put on the gold-coloured silk.

“It’s delightful,” I said.

” The neck’s wrong.” Carrie was breathing heavily as she purred and clicked over the neck of the dress. I went over to the mauve dress and examined it. It was beautifully made, but like all Deborah’s clothes it had that slightly old-world look. The rows of flounces in the long

skirt would have been iqj fashionable many years ago, so would the lace fichu at the neck. It was like a charming period piece.

” I thought you were going to make up the pink,” I said. ” Ur,” grunted Carrie, her mouth full of pins.

” I suppose Deborah changed her mind, but when I was here I thought she said she would have the pink.”

Hyson nodded at me vigorously and inclined her head towards a dress hanging behind the door. I looked and saw an exact replica of the dress, this time in pink.

I stared in astonishment.

” Carrie made two, didn’t you, Carrie?” said Hyson. ” She made two gold dresses … one for me, one for Lowella, and she made two like that—one pink and one mauve—because ever since they left Devon they never had the same colour. It was different after they left Devon, wasn’t it, Carrie?”

Hyson was regarding me almost triumphantly and I felt impatient with her.

” What on earth are you talking about?” I demanded. Hyson became engrossed in the tips of her shoes and would not answer me.

” Carrie,” I insisted, ” I suppose Miss Deborah has had the two dresses made up. Perhaps it’s as well if you’ve had the material for a’ long time—which I believe you said you had.”

” The pink’s for Miss Deborah,” said Carrie. ” I like her in pink.”

” And the mauve …?”

Hyson darted away from Carrie and ran to me; she laid a hand on my arm and smiled up at me.

“The pink was made for Granny Deborah,” she whispered, ” and the mauve for Granny Barbarina.”

Carrie was smiling at the mauve dress as though she saw more than a dress; she said quietly: “Mauve were your colour, my dear; and I always say there weren’t two prettier maidens in Devonshire than my Miss Deborah and Miss Barbarina.”

I-was suddenly impatient with the stuffy sewing room. I said: “I’ve things to do,” and went out.

But when I had shut the door I asked myself what motive lay behind Hyson’s strange behaviour. I could understand that

Carrie’s mind wandered a little; she was old; and she had clearly been devoted to Barbarina. Deborah had said that she had never recovered from the shock of her death. But where did Hyson come into this? She was just a mischievous child, I suspected; could it be that for some reason she resented my coming to Pendorric? That talk about the fatted calf—what had been the meaning behind that?

I looked over my shoulder and restrained the impulse to go back into the room. Instead I went along the corridor until I came to the door of Deborah’s sitting-room.

I hesitated for a moment, then I knocked.

“Come in,” said Deborah.

She was seated at a table reading.

” My dear, what a pleasant surprise. Why, is anything wrong?”

” Oh no nothing. I’m just a little puzzled, that’s all.”

” Come and sit down and tell me what’s puzzling you.”

” Hyson’s a queer child, isn’t she? I’m afraid I don’t understand her.”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“It’s not always easy to understand what goes on in the mind of a child.”

” But Hyson is so very strange. Lowella is quite different.”

” It’s the case of the extrovert and the introvert. They are twins of entirely different character. Tell me what Hyson’s been doing to upset you.”

I told her about the dress I had seen on the stand in Carrie’s sewing room.

Deborah sighed.

“I know,” she said.

“She’d done it before I could stop her. I’d decided on the pink and the pattern; then I found that she was making up not only the pink but the mauve.”

” Does she really think that Barbarina is still alive?”

” Not all the time. There are occasions when she’s as lucid as you or I. And at others she thinks she is back in the past. It doesn’t matter. The dresses are exactly alike, so that I can wear either of them. I never scold her.”

“But, what about Hyson?” I said.

“Does Came talk to her?”

“Hyson understands perfectly the state of affairs. I’ve explained to her.

But I’ve told her that she must never hurt Carrie’s feelings. Hyson’s a good child. She does her best. You look disapproving, my dear. “

” I think it’s a little … unhealthy,” I said.

” Oh, it does no harm, and it makes Carrie happy. While she can believe that Barbarina is still with us she’s contented. It’s when she faces up to what really happened that she is depressed and sad. It’s easier in Devonshire. There, of course, she is often under the impression that Barbarina is in Cornwall, and that we shall shortly be visiting her. Here it’s not so easy, because she thinks Barbarina should be here.”

I was silent and she laid her hand over mine.

” My dear,” she went on softly, ” you’re young and bursting with sound common sense. It’s difficult for you to understand the vagaries of people whose minds are not quite as normal as your own. Don’t let Carrie upset you. She’s been like this for so long. I couldn’t bear to make her unhappy … that’s why I humour her. So I let her say: Miss Deborah shall go to the ball in the pink dress and Miss Barbarina in the mauve. It’s of little consequence. And talking of dresses-tell me, what are you going to wear?”

I told her that it was a green and gold dress which I had bought in Paris during my honeymoon. I had so far had no chance to wear it and the ball seemed the ideal occasion.

“I’m sure you’ll look wonderful, my dear, quite wonderful ; and your grandfather and your husband will be so proud of you. Oh Favel, what a fortunate woman you are to find a husband and a grandfather all in a few months 1” ” Yes,” I said slowly, ” it’s certainly very strange.” She laughed merrily. ” You see, strange things are beginning to happen to you since you came to Pendorric.”

It was arranged that Roe and I should go to Polhorgan half an hour before the guests were due to arrive, so that we should be there, with Lord Polhorgan, to receive them.

I bathed and dressed in good time, and was rather pleased with my appearance when I put on my dress. It was a sheath of green silk chiffon billowing out from the knees into a frothy skirt; there was a narrow gold belt at the waist and a gold tracing showed through the chiffon from the satin underskirt.