“She doesn’t mind, does she?”
“No, no. I’m sure she doesn’t. I’m sure she’s just as fond of you all as you are of her.”
Cousin Edith paused.
“I don’t know whether you can understand what I mean. I’m not a very good hand at expressing myself, at any time. But to have your life chopped into two bits, like that, makes a lot of difference, especially if you’re young when it happens. Kate was only twenty. Coming here again is bound to bring it all back to her, and I expect it’ll be easier for her to talk to you about them than about anything else.”
The horse had stopped again, this time in front of a stone archway beneath which was a big double door.
There were no curtains at the windows, and grass was growing right up to the door.
Water was pouring and splashing down from a pipe that ran up the wall.
A drift of brown leaves and little twigs lay round a rusted door-scraper.
“Dear, dear,” said Cousin Edith, fumbling in her pocket. “I’ve got a key.”
Callie looked up at the house, and then back at the drive up which they had driven. Enormous bushes, still covered in green, spread on either side of the avenue, sometimes almost meeting overhead.
“Those rhododendrons are a perfect sight, when they’re in blossom,” said Cousin Edith Newton.
Then she produced a key and put it into the lock.
“There they are — they came up by the short cut through the stables. We’ll wait.”
Aunt and Cousin Joe came up.
“I suppose the last time you saw the place as it used to be, Kate — —” began Cousin Joe.
Callie saw Cousin Edith frown at him and shake her head, and felt that she understood why.
Aunt stood with her hand on the key, not turning it.
“This very moment,” she said, “is the last time I shall ever see the place as it used to be.”
Then she opened the door, and they went inside.
5
They had seen all over the house, Aunt stalking ahead by herself, old Cousin Joe remaining behind her for long periods, staring at walls on which stains of damp were showing, and poking with a walking-stick at loose floor-boards, and Cousin Edith making occasional curt, quietly-spoken explanations to Callie.
“This is the big drawing-room. It used to be hung with yellow brocade.”
“But it’s enormous!” cried Callie, looking at the immense length of uncarpeted parquet floor and the four French windows all in a row. “And there’s still some furniture in it.”
There was a heavy marble-topped table jutting out from one of the walls, with carved gilt legs — and in a corner stood a glass vase nearly as tall as Callie herself, and there was also a jardiniére like the one the Misses ffillimore had — only it was broken and empty.
Over the marble mantelpiece was a great mirror, set in a ponderous gilt frame. It was so high up that Callie could not even see into it.
“It’s much bigger than the drawing-room at The Hall, where the ffillimores live,” she said, awestruck. “It would be fun to live here.”
And she thought how she and Awdry and Juliet and Reggie would have enjoyed running and sliding the length of the enormous room.
Upstairs, there were plenty of other rooms — all of them empty, except for one or two old-fashioned beds hung with faded curtains — and some long corridors, and a queer little hidden staircase covered with a very threadbare carpet, that Callie found for herself, and that led into a large closet, or very small room. In a corner on the floor, very unexpectedly, lay a small conch-shell with a very finely-pointed tip and a beautiful pink glow inside. Callie held it to her ear, and tried to believe that she heard the roar of the ocean.
There was something exciting and mysterious in having found a shell, just like that, all by itself in an empty room that even had a secret entrance to it. Perhaps it had even been there for hundreds of years, and no one had known anything about it until Callie herself found it.
An idea flashed into her mind.
Would the shell please Elisabeth for a Christmas present? Callie felt certain that she’d understand what a frightfully special thing it was, and how one wouldn’t ever have given it away to anybody else in the world.
Excitement possessed her.
Then she remembered that the shell wasn’t really hers at all. She would have to ask whether she might have it.
If it belonged to Aunt — and it must, if the whole house did — then it would probably be all right.
Callie put the shell into the pocket of her blue serge coat, where it stuck out strangely — took an unspoken farewell of the little room, and went to look for the grown-up people.
She could hear their footsteps echoing upstairs, and after pushing open a little swing gate at the top of the second flight she went up three steps more and then turned down another long passage.
“Callie!”
“Yes, Aunt, I’m coming.”
Aunt was by herself, in yet another empty room, so that this would be a good moment to ask her about the shell.
She was standing by the window, which had heavy, half-open shutters and a deep window-seat and looked out over the garden.
“This room was the schoolroom,” said Aunt, gazing all round her. Callie’s eyes faithfully followed hers, but saw only an unfurnished, empty space between four high walls on which were many faded oblong patches, as though a number of pictures had once hung there.
A chair with a broken leg lay on its side in a corner and there was a stack of old newspapers piled on the floor beside the empty grate.
“I expect,” said Callie timidly, “that it looked awf’ly nice when it was furnished.”
She wanted terribly to say something that would please Aunt, and yet it was difficult to know what to say about the bare room that had once been a schoolroom.
“I remember — —” began Aunt, and then she stopped.
“I used to sit over the fire here, with Fanny and the two boys. The piano was over there”
“Used you to play the piano?”
Callie knew that Aunt wasn’t musical, but anything might have happened all those ages and ages ago, and then changed altogether.
Aunt, however, shook her head.
“No. Fred did, by the hour.”
“But he still does!” Callie exclaimed, surprised.
She heard the old Newton cousins coming along the passage and wanted to ask about the shell, but she felt that Aunt, who was thinking about such long-ago things, wouldn’t want her to just then.
So she pushed her hand into her coat pocket, against the smooth bulge and the sharp point, feeling a growing happiness rise within herself at the increasing conviction that she had, miraculously, found a present special enough to be given to Elisabeth.
6
“Really, Fred!”
For there was Uncle Fred, looking like a giant in the tiny little dark hall of Cousin Joe Newton’s house, when they got back there for lunch.
“I told you I’d join you,” said Uncle Fred calmly, and he kissed Cousin Edith and Kate and Callie.
“But you never said — Well, you’ll have to stay at the hotel with us,” Aunt declared.
Uncle Fred, however, did not stay at the hotel. Old Cousin Joe and old Cousin Johnny — who was simply exactly like Cousin Joe, only more bent and with a very yellow skin — both declared that Fred was not going to any hotel.
“He can have the room his father had before him, when he was a schoolboy and used to spend half his holidays here,” said Cousin Joe. “There’s never been a Lemprière yet that had to put up at a pub, in any part of the world where there was a Newton with a roof over his head.”
“That’s all right,” Uncle Fred returned amiably, and it sounded, thought Callie, quite as though it was he who was being kind to Cousin Joe, instead of the other way round.
However, perhaps he was being kind in his own way because he’d brought them a present of a case of wine, which was taking up a g
reat deal of room in their small dining-room.
“What did you think of it all?” Uncle Fred enquired of Aunt. “Gone downhill pretty badly?”
“I don’t see how it’s ever to sell.”
“It might, if anyone had a little money to spend on doing it up a bit. Really, what poor dear Mama was thinking of, all those years!”
“Or you either, Fred. You could very well have”
“The gong is just going to ring for luncheon,” interrupted Cousin Edith. “You can talk about business afterwards.”
She took Aunt and Callie upstairs and Callie was told to wash her hands and leave her hat and jacket on the bed, but she had no chance of saying anything about the shell.
She thought about it nearly all through lunch, for the food, though nice, was not at all exciting.
The conversation was mostly about trying to sell The Grove, or letting it on a long lease, and executing repairs to the roof and having the water in the well tested.
Callie afterwards only remembered two things that had been said, as having been in the least interesting.
One was Aunt’s announcement that she wanted to go up to St. Brinvels after lunch and that, since it had stopped raining, Callie could come too if she liked.
“How?” asked Cousin Edith. “Will you have the pony and cart?”
She didn’t offer to drive them, and Aunt, when she thanked her and accepted, didn’t suggest that she should come too. So that would be an opportunity, at last, of asking about the shell.
Unless Uncle Fred, who always liked driving, wanted to take them. But he only said that he’d talk business with Cousin Joe if that was convenient.
Perfectly convenient.
But when Aunt and Callie were told that the pony-cart was ready, and Cousin Edith had said that tea shouldn’t be kept waiting for them but would be ready any time they got back, Uncle Fred was strumming on the piano in the drawing-room, enveloped in clouds of cigar smoke, and Cousins Joe and Johnny were sitting in silence in two armchairs.
The other thing that Callie heard and remembered was said by Uncle Fred.
“What happened to Mrs. Troyle?” he suddenly demanded, of no one in particular. “Is she still with us?”
This was the phrase in which Uncle Fred invariably enquired after anyone whom he felt doubtful of numbering amongst the living.
Cousin Edith shook her head.
“She died in London, several years ago.”
“Curious woman,” said Uncle Fred thoughtfully. “She seemed to me to say all the right things for all the wrong reasons.”
Callie, amused by this, laughed.
“You don’t remember her, do you?” asked Cousin Edith.
Callie — who had never, so far as she knew, so much as heard of Mrs. Troyle before — said: “Oh no.”
How many more times were they going to ask her if she remembered people and things and places that belonged to some remote age before she was ever born?
It was rather a shock when Aunt said:
“Mrs. Troyle was your great-aunt, Callie. Your mother’s Aunt Maude.”
Aunt Maude!
In that case, of course, Callie had heard of her, and had even received one or two birthday and Christmas presents from her, sent out to Barbados. Only she’d heard of her as Aunt Maude, not as Mrs. Troyle.
And anyway she’d died years ago, and one had never thought of her as being a real person at all.
Callie said “Oh yes, I know now” in a dutiful way and returned again to her preoccupation with the shell, upstairs in her pocket, and the things that she must remember to tell Awdry and Juliet about the waterfall, and the enormous mirror in the empty drawing-room at The Grove, and the little hidden staircase that she had found all by herself.
7
Callie had thought so much about the shell for Elisabeth, still in her pocket, that it was becoming almost impossible to speak about it.
Yet the slow drive up the hill to St. Brinvels afforded many opportunities. It was, however, accomplished almost in silence.
When they reached a little village, dominated by a square church tower set in the midst of bare, tall trees with branches interlaced against the grey, drifting sky, Aunt pulled up.
“Do you want to come with me, or would you, rather wait out here?”
Callie remembered how Aunt Fanny had said, “She ought to visit the churchyard at St. Brinvels,” and that it was here that her mother was buried.
“May I come, please?”
They passed through the lychgate, under the naked trees.
Callie had expected to follow Aunt’s guidance but Aunt didn’t know where the graves were. She said “I don’t even remember — —” and walked up the little path, looking from side to side.
It was Callie who first saw the solid grey slab with the names of Bertha Meredith, also John, husband of the above, carved upon it. And on a tall cross was the name of Rosalie, their only child, wife of Lucian Lemprière, aged twenty-six years.
For the first time Callie realized how short had been the span of her unknown mother’s life.
“Twenty-six!” she said in an awed voice. “It was rather young for her to die, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Aunt. “But whatever age she’d been, I believe one would always have felt that Rosalie had died young.”
Chapter VIII
1
They did not stay very long in St. Brinvels, although they went for a few minutes into the church, and saw a marble memorial to Aunt’s father, called Lorimer Charlecombe Esq., J.P.
“Your father and mother were married here,” said Aunt, looking round and round the cold, empty church as though wondering what had happened to it.
“Were you one of the bridesmaids, Aunt?”
“Yes. There were only two.”
“Who was the other one?”
“A cousin of Rosalie’s whom I’d never met before. The odd thing is that I can’t remember her name.”
It didn’t seem at all odd to Callie. It must have been so long ago — before she was born. Then, Aunt suddenly brought it all much nearer by saying that Cecil had been a little page at the wedding, dressed in white satin.
“Oh!” cried Callie, in joyous recognition. “There’s a photograph of him dressed like that, at home. I knew he’d been a page and carried the bride’s train, but I never knew who the bride was, before.”
“But didn’t Cecil?”
“I don’t know. I never asked him.”
“No, I suppose not. Let’s come.”
They went out to the pony and trap again and drove off down the hill.
Callie remembered what Cousin Edith had said, about hoping that Aunt might talk to her about the old times, and conscientiously wondered if she ought to wait any longer before asking about the lovely shell that she wanted so much to give to Elisabeth. But she couldn’t wait any more — and she really had waited ages already.
So she asked, pulling the shell — not without an effort for it was tightly lodged — out of her pocket, “I found it on the floor, in a room that was quite empty, and I thought that as the house is really yours the things in it belonged to you too, and that perhaps you mightn’t want this?”
“Would you like to have it?”
“Oh yes, please.”
She added, feeling that it would be dishonest not to do so:
“It’s to give to Elisabeth for a Christmas present.”
Aunt glanced at her quickly and Callie knew at once that she had understood how much nicer the shell would be than any ordinary present.
“You may have it,” said Aunt gently.
Her voice sounded sad, and Callie was appalled.
“Oh, Aunt, are you sure you don’t want it? I wouldn’t have asked if I’d thought you wanted it. Please keep it.”
“No, no. It’s all right, Callie dear. I should like you to have it.”
“Used it to be in your room?” Callie asked. “I wouldn’t have asked you to give it to me if I’d known.”
“Then how did it get into that room where I found it?”
“Probably it dropped from some table or cabinet when the furniture was moved. People used to collect things like that, and keep them as curiosities.”
“Like the things the Misses ffillimore have at The Hall.”
“Yes.”
Callie carefully returned the shell to her pocket.
“Thank you very much,” she said gratefully.
The question that had really preoccupied her mind ever since leaving Rock Place, was now settled. She had hoped all along that perhaps going away to a new place — a thing that none of them ever did unless one counted the boys’ going to school — might solve the problem of a present for Elisabeth.
And, it had, miraculously, done so.
“I’m so glad we came here,” said Callie joyously.
(2)
The next morning was to be spent by Aunt and Cousin Joe in Chepstow, in the lawyer’s office. Uncle Fred, who was to have been there too, put in no appearance.
“He and old Johnny made a night of it,” said Cousin Joe. “It’s quite cheered up poor old Johnny. He doesn’t often get anyone who’ll spend a regular West Indies night with him, nowadays.”
“I hope he’ll turn up later, perhaps,” Aunt said. And old Cousin Joe hoped so too, but neither of them sounded very sure about it. And no wonder, thought Callie, remembering the way in which Uncle Fred always talked about starting, and then never actually did so until long after one had left off expecting him at all.
She wasn’t surprised, when she had gone with Cousin Edith to the little house where she was to spend the day, to find Uncle Fred — looking rather yellow — playing the piano.
“Fred, are you going down to Joe’s office?”
“Presently.”
“Kate’s there now, and they’re expecting you.”
“Right you are,” said Uncle Fred, and he hummed a song with which he had often entertained them at Rock Place, called “Daddy Wouldn’t Buy Me a Bow-Wow.”
Callie came up to the piano. She disliked her own piano lessons with Tansy — scales, and five-finger exercises, and Tansy vigorously singing: “And one-and-two and three and four — mind that G sharp in the treble” — and she didn’t particularly care to listen to the “pieces” with which Awdry and Juliet were supposed to entertain Aunt Fanny and Uncle Tom in the winter evenings. But there was something about Uncle Fred’s strumming of simple airs, that nobody else ever seemed to play, that fascinated her.
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 495