Bride of Pendorric (6 page)

” How charming!” I said.

” Ah yes, one of the Brides of Pendorric,” Morwenna told me. There it was again—that phrase which I had heard so often. ” She looks beautiful … and so happy.”

” Yes, she’s my great-great-great… one loses count of the greats . grandmother,” Morwenna said. ” She was happy when that was painted, but she died young.”

I found it difficult to take my eyes from the picture because there was something so appealing about that young face.

” I thought, Roe,” went on Morwenna, ” that now you’re married you’d want the big suite.”

” Thanks,” Roe replied. ” That’s exactly what I did want.” Morwenna turned to me. ” The wings of the house are all connected. You don’t have to use the separate entrances unless you wish to. So if you come up to the gallery I’ll take you through.”

” There must be hundreds of rooms.”

“Eighty. Twenty in each of the four parts. I think it’s much larger than it was in the beginning. A lot of it has been restored, but because of that motto over the arch they’ve been very careful to make it seem that what was originally built has lasted.”

We went past the suit of armour and up the stairs to the gallery. ” One thing,” said Morwenna, ” when you know your own wing you know all the others; you just have to imagine the rooms facing different directions.”

She led the way, and with Roe’s arm still in mine we followed. When we reached the gallery we went through a side door which led to another corridor in which were beautiful marble figures set in alcoves, ” Not the best time to see the house,” commented Mor wenna. ” It’s neither light nor dark.”

“She’ll have to wait till the morning to explore,” added Roe. I looked through one of the window down on to a large quadrangle in which grew some of the most magnificent hydrangeas I had ever seen. I remarked on them and we paused to look down.

” The colours are wonderful in sunlight,” Morwenn’a told me. ” They thrive here. It’s because we’re never short of rain and there’s hardly ever a frost. Besides, they’re well sheltered in the quadrangle.” It looked a charming place, that quadrangle. There was a pond, in the centre of which was a dark statue which I later discovered was of Hermes; and there were two magnificent palm trees growing down there so that it looked rather like an oasis in a desert. In between the paving-stones clumps of flowering shrubs bloomed and there were several white seats with gilded decorations.

Then I noticed all the windows which looked down on it and it occurred to me that it was a pity because one would never be able to sit there without a feeling of being over looked.

Roe explained to me that there were four doors all leading into it, one from each wing.

We moved along (he corridor through another door and Roe said that we were now in the south wing—our own. We went np a staircase and Morwenna went ahead of us, and when she threw open a door we entered a large room with enormous windows facing the sea. The deep red velvet curtains had been drawn back, and when I saw the seascape stretched out before me I gave a cry of pleasure and at once went to the window.

I stood there looking out across the bay; the cliffs looked stark and menacing in the twilight and I could just glimpse the rugged outline of the rocks. The smell and the gentle whispering of the sea seemed to fill the room.

Roe was behind me. ” It’s what everyone does,” he said. ” They never glance at the room ; they look at the view.”

” The views are just as lovely from the east and west side,” said Morwenna, ” and very much the same.”

She turned a switch and the light from a large chandelier hanging from the centre of the ceiling made the room dazzlingly bright. I turned from the window and saw the fourposter bed, with the long stool at its foot, the tallboy, the cabinets—all belonging to an eariier generation, a generation of exquisite grace and charm.

“But it’s lovely!

“I said.

” We flatter ourselves that we have the best of both worlds,” Morwenna told me. ” We made an old powder closet into a bathroom.” She opened a door which led from me bedroom and disclosed a modern bathroom. I looked at it longingly and Roe laughed.

” You have a bath,” he said. ” I’ll go and see what Toms is doing about the baggage. Afterwards we’ll have something to eat, and perhaps I’ll take you for a walk in the moonlight—if Acre’s any to be had.” I said I thought it was an excellent idea, and they left me.

When I was alone I went once more to the windows to gaze out at that magnificent view. I stood for some minutes, my eyes on the horizon, as I watched the intermittent flashes of the lighthouse.

Then I went into the bathroom, where bath salts and talcum powder had all been laid out for me—my sister-in-law’s thoughtfulness, I suspected. She was obviously anxious to make me welcome, and I felt it had been a very pleasant homecoming.

If only I could have thought of Father at work in his studio I could have been very happy. But I had to start a new life;

I must stop fretting. I had to be gay. I owed that to Roe; and he was the type of man who would want his wife to be gay. I went into the bathroom, ran a bath and spent about half an hour luxuriating in it.

When I came out. Roe had not returned, but my bags had been put in the room. I unpacked a small one and changed from my suit to a silk dress; and I was doing my hair at the dressing-table, which had a three-sided mirror, when there was a knock at the door. ” Come in,” I called, and turning saw a young woman and a child. I thought at first that the child was Lowella and I smiled at her. She did not return the smile but regarded me gravely, while the young woman said:

” Mrs. Pendorric, I am Rachel Bective, the children’s governess. Your husband asked me to show you the way down when you were ready.”

“How do you do?” I said, and I was astonished by the change in Lowella.

There was an air of efficiency about Rachel Bective, whom I guessed to be around about thirty, and I remembered what Roe had told me about a schoolmistress looking after the twins’ education. Her hair was a sandy colour and her brows and lashes so fair that she looked surprised; her teeth were sharp and white. I did not warm towards her.

She seemed to me to be obviously summing me up, and her manner was calculating and critical.

” This is Hyson,” she said. ” I believe you met her sister.”

” Oh I see.” I smiled at the child. ” I thought you were Lowella.”

” I knew you did.” She was almost sullen.

“You are so much like her.”

” I only look like her.”

” Are you ready to come down?” asked Rachel Bective. ” There’s to be a light supper because I believe you had dinner on the train.”

” Yes, we did and I’m quite ready.”

For the first time since I had come into the house I felt uncomfortable, and was glad when Rachel Bective led the way along the corridor and down the staircase.

We came to a gallery and I did not realise that it was not the same one which I had seen from the north side until I noticed the picture there and I knew that I had never seen that before.

It was the picture of a woman in a riding jacket. The habit was black and she was very fair; she wore a hard black hat, and about it was a band of blue velvet which hung down forming a snood at the back. She was very beautiful, but her large blue eyes, which were the same colour as the velvet band and snood, were full of brooding sadness.

Moreover the picture had been painted so that it was impossible to escape those eyes. They followed you wherever you went, and even in that first moment I thought they were trying to convey some message.

” What a magnificent picture!” I cried.

” It’s Barbarina,” said Hyson, and for a moment her face was filled with vitality and she looked exactly as Lowella had when she had welcomed us.

“What an extraordinary name! And who was she?”

” She was my grandmother,” Hyson told me proudly. ” She died … tragically, I believe,” put in Rachel Bective.

“How dreadful! And she looks so beautiful.”

I remembered then that I had seen a picture of another beautiful woman in the north hall when I had arrived and had heard that she too had died young.

Hyson said in a voice which seemed to hold a note of hysteria: ” She was one of the Brides of Pendorric.”

” Well, I suppose she was,” I said, ” since she married your grandfather.”

This Hyson was a strange child; she had seemed so lifeless a moment ago; now she was vital and excited.

“She died twenty-five years ago when my mother and Uncle Roe were five years old.”

“How very sad!”

” You’ll have to have your picture painted, Mrs. Pendorric,” said Rachel Bective.

” I hadn’t thought of it.”

” I’m sure Mr. Pendorric will want it done.”

” He hasn’t said anything about it.”

” It’s early days yet. Well, I think we should go. They’ll be waiting.”

We went along the gallery and through a door and were walking round the corridor facing the quadrangle again. I noticed that Hyson kept taking covert glances at me. I thought she seemed rather a neurotic child, and there was a quality about the governess which I found distinctly disturbing.

I woke up in the night and for a few seconds wondered where I was.

Then I saw the enormous windows, heard the murmuring of the sea, and it sounded like the echo of voices I had heard in my dream. I could smell the tang of seaweed and the freshness of the ocean. The rhythm of the waves seemed to keep time with Roe’s breathing. I raised myself, and leaning on my elbow looked at him. There was enough moonlight to show me the contours of his face which looked as though it had been cut out of stone. He appeared different in repose, and, realising how rarely I saw him thus, again I had that feeling that I was married to a stranger.

I shook off my fancies. I reminded myself that I had sustained a great shock. My thoughts were so often with my father, and I wondered again and again what he must have experienced in that dreadful moment when the cramp had overtaken him and he realised that he could not reach land and there was no one at hand to help him. He had come face to face with death, and that must have been a moment of intense horror;

and what seemed so terrible was that at that moment Roe and I were laughing together in the kitchen of the studio.

If Roe had only stayed with him . I wished I could stop thinking of my father, sitting in the lonely studio in the darkness, of the anxiety I had seen on his face when I had come upon him and Roe together.

I must have been dreaming about the island and my father, for what was disturbing me was the memory of relief I had fancied I saw in Roe’s face at the time of the tragedy. It was almost as though he had believed it was the best possible thing that could have happened.

Surely I must have imagined that. But when had I started to imagine it? Was it that hangover from some dream?

I lay down quietly so as not to disturb him, and after a while I slept. But again I was troubled by dreams. I could hear a murmur like background music and it might have been the movement of me waves or Roe’s breathing beside me; then I heard the shrill laughter of Lowella, or it might have been Hyson, as she cried out: “Two Brides of Pendorric died young…. Now you are a Bride of Pendorric.” I remembered that dream next morning, and what had seemed full of significance in my sleep now seemed the natural result of a day crammed with new experiences.

The next day the sun was shining brilliantly. I stood at a window watching the light on the water, and it was as though some giant had thrown down a handful of diamonds.

Roe came and stood behind me, putting his hands on my shoulders. ” I can see you are coming under the spell of that Pendorric as well as this one.”

I turned and smiled at him. He looked so concerned that I threw my arms about his neck. He waltzed round the room with me and said: ” It is good to have you here at Pendorric.

This morning I’m going to take you for a drive and show you off to the locals. You’re going to find them very inquisitive. This afternoon I’ll have to go into things with old Charles. I’ve been away a long time—longer than I planned for—and there’ll be a little catching up to do. You can go off and . explore on your own then, or perhaps Lowclla will join you. “

I said: “The other child is quite different, isn’t she?”

“Hyson?

Thank heaven. We couldn’t do with two like Lowella. There’d be no peace. “

” And yet they’re so alike I couldn’t tell which was which.”

“You get to know the slight difference after a while. Perhaps it’s in the voices. I’m not sure, but we can usually tell. It’s strange, but with identicals you sometimes get two entirely different temperaments.

It’s as though characteristics have been divided into two neat little piles—one for one, one for the other. However, Rachel takes good care of them. “

” Oh … the governess.”

” That makes her sound rather Victorian, and there’s nothing Victorian about Rachel. Actually she’s more a friend of the family. She was an old schoolfellow of Morwenna’s. Ready?”

We went out of the room and I followed where Roe led, realising that I must expect to be a little vague as yet about the geography of the house.

We were on the third floor and it seemed that there were linking doors to all wings on all floors. I looked down at the quadrangle as we passed the windows. It was true that it was quite charming in sunlight. I imagined myself sitting under one of the palm trees with a book. It would be the utmost peace. Then I looked up at the windows.

” A pity,” I murmured.

“What?” asked Roe.

” That you’d always have the feeling of not being alone down there.”

“Oh … you mean the windows. They’re all corridor windows, not the sort for sitting at.”

” I suppose that does make a difference.”

” I had not noticed that we had come round to the north wing until Roe paused at a door, knocked and went in.

The twins were sitting at a table, exercise books before them; and with them sat Rachel Bective. She smiled rather lazily when she saw me, reminding me of a tortoise-shell cat who was sleeping pleasantly and is suddenly disturbed.