‘Yes; I want her and her daughter to come in for a month to help Alice.’
‘Yes, yes.’ Mrs Poulter was nodding. It was only this morning that she had told Miss Cartwright that the staff’s dresses were getting a bit shabby. By! She had been quick in taking it up; usually she would let months pass before getting Alice help in the sewing room. She didn’t like spending money, Miss Cartwright, and after all it wasn’t hers. But here she was getting down to it right away; and so she backed her strongly now by turning to Kirsten and saying, ‘That’s the very thing. It’s aimless just walkin’ and nowhere to go, and the little market will be on, and you can get there and back afore dark if you don’t linger too long looking about you.’
‘I…I have never been to Bywell, I wouldn’t know…’
‘Well, it’s about time you saw it then,’ said Mrs Poulter. ‘Never been to Bywell! And it having two lovely churches, an’ one as old as the hills going back and back, and a village cross. Isn’t that so, Miss Cartwright?’
‘Yes, indeed; it’s very historic. And you certainly can’t miss it, you just keep to the main road. When you leave the North Lodge you go straight along the road and if you’re going anywhere you’ll have to pass Bywell, and the Barkers’ cottage is the first one across the bridge…Go and get ready.’
Kirsten did not obey the command, but stood still. The master had said she must not leave the child and not take any leave until he came back. But Miss Cartwright said this wasn’t leave, this was a message. She’d have to go, she was being given an order. And Mrs Poulter was with Miss Cartwright in that she wanted her to take the air. She heard herself asking, ‘How long will it take?’
‘Perhaps an hour I should say each way. Isn’t that so, Mrs Poulter?’
‘Yes indeed, Miss Cartwright.’
Perhaps two hours; she might have to walk for two hours. Half an hour to do business, half an hour to get herself ready and out of the grounds, three hours altogether. It was twelve o’clock now, she could be back by three, well before dark. She bowed her head and turned away and went into her room to get ready.
Three
It was not unusual that Miss Cartwright should take a walk in the afternoon; and she walked in all weathers. Dressed in thick shoes and a long cape with a hood over it, she had been known to tramp from one end of the estate to the other, and it coming down whole water.
Miss Cartwright went out about two o’clock and, as Rose and Mrs Poulter had foretold, it was snowing heavily. She returned at three, just in time for dinner and to be met by Konrad, like a mad bull.
The master had been expected; yet his entry into the house had startled them all for there had been no sound of a carriage, not even the clatter of horse’s hoofs on the drive. The reason for this was that the coach he had hired in Newcastle had broken an axle when only half a mile from the South Lodge, and he had walked to the gates, startling the lodgekeeper by the sight of him, and because of his quick stride preventing the man from sending a boy on to warn the house.
His greeting to Slater had been an order informing him to tell John Hay to get the coach out as quick as possible and pick up his luggage from the broken-down vehicle on the road running from the South Lodge. Then throwing off his hat, long coat and gloves, he had mounted the stairs, crossed the landing, ignoring that end of the corridor where his wife’s rooms were, strode along the gallery, through the green-baize door leading into the east wing, and so down the long corridor to the nursery. When he entered, there was Mrs Poulter sitting in the rocking chair, her feet on the fender, enjoying a pleasant doze.
And why not! Dinner at quarter-past three was Slater’s business; the master was away from home, Miss Cartwright was out, the nursery was warm and very comfortable, and the child had fallen asleep on the mat at her feet.
Konrad had opened the door quietly, hoping to look on the double joy still left to him, the only brightness in a dark future, for his future had been stripped of hope by his visit to Sweden. And what met his gaze? The housekeeper snoozing, the child lying in a twisted position and directly opposite the unguarded fire which was giving off a great heat, and should the flames discover a piece of stone which they often did, they would send it flying in sparks of burning slate all over the child.
Where was she?
He was about to bellow, but instead went quietly through the night nursery towards Kirsten’s bedroom door and, turning the handle gently, looked in expecting to find her, too, resting. But a neatly made bed faced him; everything in the room was in its place, everything was there except her.
Rage and fear were fighting now each for a place within him, and as he let the bellow escape from his throat, Mrs Poulter screamed and sprang up from the chair, and the child, too, startled into wakefulness, opened its mouth and cried loudly, then catching sight of Konrad he swung drunkenly onto his feet and shambled towards him, crying, ‘Papa! Papa!’
Grimly Konrad lifted the boy into his arms while keeping his eyes on Mrs Poulter and demanded, ‘Where is she, the nurse?’
‘Oh…oh, master, she…she went an errand.’
‘An errand? What errand?’
‘Miss…Miss Cartwright sent her an errand to the seamstress in Bywell because…because she was looking peaky, I mean the girl…the nurse, she’d hardly been across the doors since you left, master; twice she’d had the child out an’, an’ then not more than for an hour. Miss…Miss Cartwright…’
‘And where is Miss Cartwright?’
‘She went for a walk, sir, but’—she glanced towards the clock on the mantelpiece—‘she should be back by now, it’s nigh on dinner time. I’ll…I’ll go and see, sir.’
‘Stay where you are!’ He put the boy onto his feet again and, ignoring the whimpering that was developing into sobs, he marched out and along the corridor again and now towards his wife’s room.
Outside her door he met a maid, whose surprise showed in her drooping jaw; then bending her knee deeply, she muttered, ‘Mistress is in the drawing room, master.’
As he turned about to make for the stairs there, crossing the landing towards him, came Bella.
‘Well?’
She stared into his blazing countenance; then her voice low and with a strange tremble in it, she said, ‘Welcome home.’ And after a moment of fixed staring she added, ‘I…I have been for a walk. Will…will you excuse me while I take off my things. It was very cold out.’
‘Out for a walk on a day like this! Are you mad, woman? And the girl, you sent her on an errand in the snow?’
Her back was turned towards him when she said, ‘It wasn’t snowing when she left; there was no sign of snow, the sun was shining.’
‘She should not have left the child, she had her orders.’
She turned her head over her shoulder but did not look at him as she said, ‘I knew of no such orders, you did not tell me that she must not leave the house.’
No, that was true, he hadn’t told her. But she herself had left the child with the housekeeper and he said this to her. ‘You had no right to go out and leave the child alone, at least not with Poulter.’
‘Not with Poulter?’ She was facing him fully again. ‘I should have thought Mrs Poulter was more capable of attending your child than…than the girl.’
‘Mrs Poulter, for your information, was fast asleep, and my son was lying exposed to the heat of a great fire that could have showered sparks on him at any moment.’
She gave him one long deep look, then said, still with that strange tremor in her voice, ‘I will go and change, my feet are damp and I’m rather cold.’
He watched her as she walked away and he judged that her feet would be damp, more than damp, wet, for the back of her cloak had dabs of snow and mud on it as if she had fallen into a ditch covered by a drift. But then there were no drifts, the snow, although lying and coming down thickly, was not deep enough yet for drifts. He guessed she had slipped and fallen but she would never say so, not Bella, not even if she were hurt.
He went do
wnstairs and into the drawing room and from the deep lounge chair before the fire Florence turned her head and looked at him and what she said was, ‘Oh! So you’re back.’
He could have just returned from a ride across the fells. He walked towards the fire, stood with his back to it and surveyed her. And now she said, ‘I didn’t hear the carriage; surely the snow isn’t so thick yet?’
‘I hired a cab,’ he said. ‘It broke down outside the gates.’
‘How exciting…and funny. You go to Sweden presumably without a hitch, you return from Sweden and the cab has to break down outside your own gates, how funny!’
He narrowed his eyes at her. She was laughing at him…When a wife laughed inwardly at her husband she was telling herself she was clever. Again he thought, she used to be afraid of me but she is no longer. He gave himself the answer to this when he asked, ‘Did you have company?’
‘Yes, oh yes; Gerald came to take me to the ball, you remember, and he stayed on, what was it’—she put her head on one side—‘four, five…six days.’
‘Seven, eight, nine, ten…when did he leave?’
‘Oh,’ She turned her face upwards and gazed at the deep painted frieze of the ceiling then she said, ‘The day before yesterday. Or was it the day before that? What is it today?’
He didn’t answer her question, but she had answered his. Gerald. That pale-faced nincompoop Gerald. She was laughing at him because she was having an affair with her cousin and she imagined that he was blind to it. Well, hadn’t he been? He hadn’t given the fellow credit for the amount of guts it took for a man to have an affair with another’s wife.
He looked hard at her. She was his wife. He had looked upon her up to this moment as a girl-wife, a girl with the mind of a child, and so he had forgiven her, at least in his sober moments, for the slights he had suffered at her hands, but now he saw that the girl had secretly grown into a woman, a stupid, cunning woman, a woman who had likely given to her lover what she had refused her husband, yet had not the expertise to keep it secret. But at this moment the affair was of secondary importance and he would deal with it later. What was of imminent importance was the state of their finances. How would she react when he told her that his future, and that meant hers, was bleak?
His grandfather, whom he had secretly relied upon to provide the means to meet all the financial difficulties, not only the heavy ones of the present but any that might occur in the years ahead, had left him nothing but his philosophy, together with the hunting lodge in the mountains, an eight-roomed timbered house glued to the side of a hill, miles away from any other habitation, surrounded by thirty acres of unconquerable land, and for his needs and only if he should take up his abode there the sum of one hundred pounds a year.
A hundred pounds a year! When those words had fallen on his ears he’d thought he’d have hysterics like any woman. He had not only imagined, but felt positive that he would be left the lion’s share of his grandfather’s money, for was he not the eldest of his grandsons, and his favourite into the bargain. But the bulk of the fortune had been spread over nephews and nieces and godchildren…and charities. To him had been left only a lodge and a hundred pounds, why?
He could still see the laughter behind the tight faces of the family, the laughter that he knew would explode the moment he left the house. Grandfather had done it down on the Englisher, and that was justice, the good Swedish krone would remain in Sweden.
And the market had fallen again. His last bulk of gold shares had dropped below the value of tin. But what was worrying him most at the moment was that he owed money in the region of twenty thousand pounds, in small sums and large, ranging from the chandler’s bill and his tailor to fifteen hundred guineas for his last two horses, together with certain gambling debts, and these last must be met whatever else went by the board.
A month ago twenty thousand pounds had caused him no undue concern; even if his shares all went bust there had always been his grandfather. Why, in the past his grandfather had advanced him numerous sums, large sums, one of fifteen thousand, one of ten thousand and one of seven thousand pounds, and never even asked what they were for. And now a hundred pounds a year and only if he lived in the lodge! The old man must have gone wrong in the head towards his end. Yet his last will had been made three years ago, just after his eldest son—Konrad’s father—had died. He just couldn’t understand it. It appeared like calculated spite. But no, his grandfather was incapable of doing a mean or spiteful action, he had been a wise man. A wise man? There came into his mind a great question mark, but his brain gave him no answer to counter it.
The dinner bell rang and Florence rose languidly from the sofa, saying, ‘I’d like to go to Paris in May.’ She did not say, as once she would have done, ‘Do you think we might go to Paris in May?’ or ‘Konrad, dear, wouldn’t it be lovely, lovely, to be in Paris in May!’ but she said, ‘I think I will go to Paris in May.’ And she turned her pale blue eyes on him as she added, ‘There are ducklings for dinner, you like ducklings.’
Paris and Gerald, and he could have ducklings. Huh! Huh!
When his head went back and he let out a bellow of a laugh that was devoid of mirth she turned to him, startled now, and her manner reverting to its natural unsureness and fear of him, she said, ‘What is funny? Why are you laughing like that?’ and he took her arm in mock gallantry and led her into the dining room and placed her in her seat before answering, ‘I was just thinking that I’d better save a little of the duckling for our trip to Paris because we may need it, as we’ll likely be going steerage. By the way, does Gerald like duckling?’
Four
It was nine o’clock the same night, the house was a blaze of lights, the stable yard as bright with hand lanterns; the house could have been set for a ball so bright was everything and so agog with servants. It was still snowing, lying deep now, but from the courtyard to the house and down the south drive it had been trampled hard.
Konrad came riding out of the darkness and towards the house; the light swinging from his saddle was lost in the main glare. Bainbridge helped him to dismount; even in an emergency such as this. Slater would not descend the steps but waited at the top of them. From the bottom of the steps Konrad looked up towards his butler and Slater shook his head twice, then said sadly, ‘No, master.’
Slater’s outward appearance was one of deep concern but inside he was fuming. All this fuss about a cross-eyed snipe, a road snipe at that, who was likely doing overtime in her business across the river.
The house across the river was in Konrad’s mind too, but all probing up till now had seemed to prove that she had not possibly gone across the river. The young Barker girl in Bywell had said she herself had set Kirsten to the bridge and seen her cross it; if she had had it in her mind to make for Flynn’s house then she would have kept on that side of the river and taken the ridge road, but this the girl discounted, saying she had watched her for some time until she could see her no longer through the flurry of snow.
There was one thing certain, she could not have crossed the river again except by the bridge; not even with Flynn’s help could she have got across the stones for the river had risen and the snow had been blinding all afternoon. And anyway, the road to the South Lodge was some way from the river and thick in parts with trees, and these entangled with low scrub down to the river edge. No, he could not see how she could have got across the river. Yet she wasn’t on this side for they had scoured every inch of the road and deep into the scrub from the bridge to the North Lodge gates. He himself had scoured the grounds. But she would not have lost her way in the grounds had the snow been twice as thick; nevertheless he had gone over the place as with a curry comb, in case she had collapsed with the cold.
So after all there would now seem to be only the house across the river.
He stamped through the hall towards the library, calling to Slater, ‘Get me a hot drink, soup, something. And…and tell Dixon I want him.’
Art Dixon arrived at the same t
ime as the soup and Konrad gulped deeply on the steaming broth before speaking to him.
Putting the bowl onto the tray that was resting on the desk, he looked at it for a moment before raising his eyes to his coachman and saying, ‘You’re a friend of the Flynns, Dixon, isn’t that so?’
‘That is so, sir; I have known the family since I was a lad and have had many kindnesses…’
‘I don’t want to hear on what terms your association stands, but I want you to take Wallace and Stratford and go over there and find out if’—he wet his lips—‘the nurse got that far.’
‘But…but I couldn’t get across the river, sir, not in this.’
‘I’m not asking you to go across the river, take the road to the bridge, and then the ridge road. It may take you some time. Take food with you, hot food; go to the kitchen and get what you want, and I will tell Slater to fortify it with a flagon of rum.’
Art looked at his master. His back was breaking with the rheumatics, he had only been on his feet and back at work three days. To go out on a night like this and such a journey would likely finish him. But what did the master care, with the obsession on him! All he cared about was finding the whereabouts of the lass. He, himself, was as anxious as the rest to know she had come to no harm because she was a canny lass and he was fond of her, but this man was going beyond all limits because of her, he was acting as if it were the mistress out there in the snow. Search yes, and keep on searching, but to carry on like he’d been doing, racing here, an’ racing there, wasn’t seemly. But who was he to say what was seemly and what was not? His job was to do as he was told even if it meant the finish of him. He nodded his head and then said, ‘Aye, sir,’ and was about to leave the room when Konrad’s voice stopped him, saying quietly, ‘If she’s there and unhurt, bring her back with you.’
The Slow Awakening Page 23