“Her name is Althea Grey.”
He shook his head. “Can’t recall the name. The face is familiar though. Seem to connect her with some law case or other … I thought I had a good memory for such things but it seems I’m not so good as I thought.”
“I should think if you’d met her you’d remember her.”
“Yes. That’s why I was so sure. Well, it’ll come back I expect.”
“Why don’t you ask her?”
“As a matter of fact I did. She absolutely froze me. She was certain she had never met me before.”
There was a tap on his shoulder, and there was Roc waiting to claim me.
I was very happy dancing with my husband. His eyes were amused and I could see that he was enjoying himself.
“It’s fun,” he said, “but I don’t see half enough of the hostess. I expect she has her duties though.”
“The same thing applies to you.”
“Well, haven’t you seen me performing? I’ve had my eyes on every wallflower.”
“I’ve seen you on several occasions dancing with Althea Grey. Was she wilting for lack of attention?”
“At things of this sort people like Althea and Rachel could be at a disadvantage. The nurse and the governess! There’s a certain amount of snobbery still in existence, you know.”
“So that’s why you’ve been looking after Althea. What about poor Rachel?”
“I’d better keep my eye on her too.”
“Then,” I said lightly, “as you’re going to be so busily engaged elsewhere I’d better make the most of the time that belongs to me.”
He squeezed my hand. “Have you forgotten,” he asked, his lips touching my ear, “that the rest of our lives belong together?”
Supper was very gay. We had arranged that it should be served in three of the larger rooms which adjoined the hall; they all faced south and the great French windows opened onto terraces which looked over the gardens to the sea. There was plenty of moonlight and the view was enchanting.
Trehay’s flower scheme was as beautiful in the supper rooms as it was in the ballroom; and no effort had been spared to achieve the utmost luxury. On the overladen table were fish, pies, meats, and delicacies of all description. Dawson and his under-servants in their smart livery took charge of the bar while Mrs. Dawson looked after the food.
I shared a table with my grandfather, John Poldree and his brother, Deborah and the twins.
Lowella was as silent as Hyson on this occasion; she seemed to be quite overawed and when I whispered to her that she was unusually subdued, Hyson answered that they had made a vow not to call attention to themselves, in case someone should remember that they weren’t really old enough to go to balls, and tell Rachel to take them home.
They had escaped Rachel, they told me, and their parents; and so would I please not call attention to them in case Granny Deborah noticed?
I promised.
While we were talking together, some of the guests strolled out onto the terraces and I saw Roc and Althea Grey walk by the window.
They stood for a while looking out over the sea, and seemed to be talking earnestly, and the sight of them threw a small shadow over my enjoyment.
It was midnight when several of the guests started to leave, and finally only the Pendorric party remained.
Althea Grey hovered while we said good-by and congratulated each other on the success of the evening. Then she wheeled my grandfather’s chair to the lift, which he had had installed some years before when he had first been aware of his illness, and he went up to his bedroom while we went out to our cars.
It was half past one by the time we reached Pendorric, and as we drove under the old archway to the north portico, Mrs. Penhalligan opened the front door.
“Oh, Mrs. Penhalligan,” I said, “you shouldn’t have stayed up.”
“Well, madam,” she said, “I thought you’d like a little refreshment before settling down for the night. I’ve got some soup for you.”
“Soup! On a hot summer’s night!” cried Roc.
“Soup! Soup! Glorious soup!” sang Lowella.
“One of the old customs,” Morwenna whispered to me. “We can’t escape them if we want to.”
We went into the north hall and Mrs. Penhalligan led the way into the small winter parlor, where soup plates had been set out; and at the sight of them Lowella danced round the room chanting: “There was a sound of revelry by night.”
“Oh Lowella, please,” sighed Morwenna. “Aren’t you tired? It’s after one.”
“I’m not in the least tired,” insisted Lowella indignantly. “Oh, isn’t this a wonderful ball!”
“The ball’s over,” Roc reminded her.
“It’s not … not till we’re all in our beds. There’s soup to be had before that’s over.”
“You’d better let them sleep late tomorrow, Rachel,” said their mother.
Mrs. Penhalligan came in with a tureen of soup and began ladling it out into the plates.
“It was always like this in the old days,” said Roc. “We used to hide in the gallery and watch them come in; do you remember, Morwenna?”
Morwenna nodded.
“Who?” asked Hyson.
“Our parents, of course. We couldn’t have been more than …”
“Five,” said Hyson. “You’d have to be, wouldn’t you, Uncle Roc? You couldn’t have been more, could you?”
“What memories these children have!” murmured Roc lightly. “Have you been coaching them, Aunt Deborah?”
“What soup’s this?” asked Lowella.
“Taste it and see,” Roc told her.
She obeyed and rolled her eyes ecstatically.
We all agreed that it was not such a bad custom after all, and that although we should not have thought of hot soup on a summer’s night there was something reviving about it, and it was pleasant to sit back and talk about the evening.
When we had finished the soup no one seemed in a hurry to go to bed, while the twins sat back in their seats, desperately trying to keep awake, looking like daffodils which had been left too long out of water.
“It’s time they were in bed,” said Charles.
“Oh Daddy,” wailed Lowella, “don’t be so old-fashioned!”
“If you’re not tired,” Roc pointed out, “others might be. Aunt Deborah looks half asleep and so do you, Morwenna.”
“I know,” said Morwenna, “but it’s so comfortable sitting here and it’s been such a pleasant evening I don’t want it to end. So go on talking, all of you.”
“Yes, do, quick,” cried Lowella; and everyone laughed and seemed suddenly wide awake. “Go on, Uncle Roc.”
“This reminds me of Christmas,” said Roc obligingly, and
Lowella smiled at him with loving gratitude and affection.
“When,” went on Roc, “we sit round the fire, longing for our beds and too lazy to go to them.”
“Telling ghost stories,” said Charles.
“Tell some now,” pleaded Lowella. “Do, please. Daddy, Uncle
Roc.”
Hyson sat forward, suddenly alert.
“Most unseasonable,” commented Roc. “You’ll have to wait a few months yet, Lo.”
“I can’t. I can’t. I want a ghost story … now!”
“It certainly is time you were in bed,” commented Mor , wenna.
Lowella regarded me with solemn eyes. “It’ll be the Bride’s first Christmas with us,” she announced. “She’ll love Christmas at Pendorric, won’t she? I remember last Christmas we sang songs as well as telling ghost stories. Real Christmas songs. I’ll tell you the one I like best.”
“‘The Mistletoe Bough,’” said Hyson.
“You’d like that, Bride, because it’s all about another bride.”
“I expect your Aunt Favel knows it,” said Morwenna. “Everyone does.”
“No,” I told them, “I’ve never heard it. You see, Christmas on the island wasn’t quite like an English Christmas.
”
“Fancy! She’s never heard of ‘The Mistletoe Bough.’” Lowella looked shocked.
“Think what she’s missed,” mocked Roc.
“I’m going to be the one to tell her,” declared Lowella. “Listen, Bride! This other bride played hide and seek in a place …”
“Minster Lovel,” supplied Hyson.
“Well, the place doesn’t matter two hoots, silly.”
“Lowella,” Morwenna admonished; but Lowella was rushing on.
“They were playing hide and seek and this bride got into the old oak chest, the lock clicked and fastened her down forever.”
“And they didn’t open the chest until twenty years later,” put in Hyson. “Then they found her … nothing but a skeleton.”
“Her wedding dress and orange blossom were all right though,” added Lowella cheerfully.
“I’m sure,” said Roc ironically, “that must have been a comfort.”
“You shouldn’t laugh, Uncle Roc. It’s sad, really.”
“A spring lock lay in ambush there,” she sang. “And fastened her down forever.”
“And the moral of that,” Roc put in, grinning at me, “is, don’t go hiding in oak chests if you’re a bride.”
“Ugh!” shivered Morwenna. “I’m not keen on that story. It’s morbid.”
“That’s why it appeals to your daughters, Wenna,” Roc told her.
Charles said: “Look. I’m going up. The twins ought to have been in bed hours ago.”
Deborah yawned. “I must say I find it hard to keep awake.”
“I’ve an idea,” cried Lowella. “Let’s all sing Christmas songs for a bit. Everyone has to sing a different one.”
“I’ve a better idea,” said her father. “Bed.”
Rachel stood up. “Come along,” she said to the twins. “It must be nearly two.”
Lowella looked disgusted with us because we all rose; but no one took any notice of her and we said good night and went upstairs.
The next day I went over to Polhorgan to see how my grandfather was after all the excitement.
Mrs. Dawson met me in the hall and I congratulated her on all that she and her husband had done to make the ball a success.
“Well, madam,” she said, bridling, “it’s a pleasure to be appreciated, I must say. Not that Dawson and I want thanks. It was our duty and we did it.”
“You did it admirably,” I told her.
Dawson came into the hall at that moment and when Mrs. Dawson told him what I had said, he was as pleased as his wife.
I asked how my grandfather was that morning.
“Very contented, madam, but sleeping. A little tired after all the excitement, I think.”
“I won’t disturb him for a while,” I said. “I’ll go into the garden.”
“I’m sending up his coffee in half an hour, madam,” Mrs. Dawson told me.
“Very well, then I’ll wait till then.”
Dawson followed me into the garden; there was something conspiratorial about his manner, I thought; and when I paused by one of the greenhouses he was still beside me.
“Everyone in the house is glad, madam, that you’ve come home,” he told me. “With one exception, that is.”
I turned to look at him in astonishment, and he did not meet my eyes. I had the impression that he was determined to be the good and faithful servant, dealing with a delicate situation because this was something I ought to know.
“Thank you, Dawson,” I said. “Who is the exception?”
“The nurse.”
“Oh?”
He stuck out his lower lip and shook his head. “She had other notions.”
“Dawson, you don’t like Nurse Grey, do you?”
“There’s nobody in this house that likes her, madam … except the young men. She being that sort. There’s some that don’t look beyond a pretty face.”
I thought again that probably Nurse Grey gave orders in the kitchens, which they did not like. It was not an unusual situation. And now that they knew I was Lord Polhorgan’s granddaughter, they regarded me as the mistress of the house. This was the Dawsons’ way of telling me I was accepted as such.
“Mrs. Dawson and I have always felt ourselves to be in a privileged position, madam. We have been with his lordship for a very long time.”
“But of course you are,” I assured him.
“We were here, begging your pardon, when Miss Lilith was at home.”
“So you knew my mother?”
“A lovely young lady and, if you’ll forgive the liberty, madam, you’re very like her.”
“Thank you.”
“That’s why … Mrs. Dawson and I … made up our minds that we could talk to you, madam.”
“Please say everything that’s in your mind, Dawson.”
“Well, we’re uneasy, madam. There was a time when we thought she would try to marry him. There was no doubt that was what she was after. Mrs. Dawson and I had made up our minds that the minute that was decided on we should be looking for another position.”
“Miss Grey … marry my grandfather!”
“Such things have happened, madam. Rich old gentlemen do marry young nurses now and then. They get a feeling they can’t do without them and the nurses have their eyes on the money, you see.”
“I’m sure my grandfather would never be married for his money. He’s far too shrewd.”
“That was what we said. She would never achieve that, and she didn’t. But Mrs. Dawson and I reckon it wasn’t for want of trying.” He came closer to me and whispered: “The truth is, madam, we reckon she’s what you might call … an adventuress.”
“I see.”
“There’s something more. Our married daughter came to see us not long ago … it was just before you came home, madam. Well, she happened to see Nurse Grey and she said she was sure she’d seen her picture in the paper somewhere. Only she didn’t think the name was Grey.”
“Why was her picture in the paper?”
“It was some case or other. Maureen couldn’t remember what. But she thought it was something very bad.”
“People get mixed up about these things. Perhaps she’d won a beauty competition or something like that.”
“Oh no, it wasn’t that or Maureen would have remembered. It was something to do with the courts. And it was Nurse something. But Maureen didn’t think it was Grey. It was just the face. She has got the sort of face, madam, that once seen is never forgotten.”
“Did you ask her?”
“Oh no, madam, it wasn’t the sort of thing we could ask. She would be offended and, unless we’d got proof, she could deny it, couldn’t she? No, there’s nothing we can put a finger on. And now you’ve come home it doesn’t seem the same. His lordship’s not so likely to get caught—that’s how Mrs. Dawson and I see it, madam. But we’re keeping our eyes open.”
“Oh … it’s Mrs. Pendorric.”
I turned sharply to see Althea Grey smiling at me, and I flushed rather guiltily, feeling at a disadvantage to have been discovered discussing her with the butler. I wondered if she had overheard anything. Voices carried in the open air.
“You don’t look as if you’ve been up half the night,” she went on. “And I’m sure you must have been. What an evening! Lord Polhorgan was absolutely delighted with the way everything went off.”
Dawson slipped away and I was left alone with her. Her hair, piled high beneath the snowy cap, was beautiful; but I wondered what it was that made her face so distinctive. Was it the thick brows, several shades darker than her hair; the eyes of that lovely deep blue shade that is almost violet and doesn’t need to take its color from anything because it is always a more vivid blue than anything else could possibly be? The straight nose was almost Egyptian and seemed odd with such Anglo-Saxon fairness. The wide mouth was slightly mocking now. I felt sure that even if she had not overheard our conversation, she knew that Dawson had been speaking of her derogatively.
It was a face of mystery, I decided
, a face that concealed secrets; the face of a woman of the world, a woman who had lived perhaps recklessly and had no desire for the past to prejudice the present, or future?
I remembered that the young man with whom I had danced had mentioned something from the past too. So Dawson’s suspicions were very likely not without some foundation.
I felt wary of this woman as I walked with her towards the house.
“Lord Polhorgan was hoping you’d come this morning. I told him you most certainly would.”
“I was wondering how he felt after last night.”
“It did him a world of good. He enjoyed feting his beautiful granddaughter.”
I felt that she was secretly laughing at me, and I was glad when I was with my grandfather and she had left us alone together.
It was a week later that there was a call in the night.
The telephone beside our bed rang and I was answering it before Roc had opened his eyes.
“This is Nurse Grey. Could you come over at once? Lord Polhorgan is very ill, and asking for you.”
I leaped out of bed.
“What on earth’s happened?” asked Roc.
When I told him he made me slip on some clothes and, doing the same himself, said: “We’ll drive over right away.”
“What’s the time?” I asked Roc, as we drove the short distance between Pendorric and Polhorgan.
“Just after one.”
“He must be bad for her to ring us,” I said.
Roc put his hand over mine, as though to reassure me that whatever was waiting for me, he would be there to share it.
As we drove up to the portico the door opened and Dawson let us in.
“He’s very bad, I’m afraid, madam.”
“I’ll go straight up.”
I ran up the stairs, Roc at my heels. Roc waited outside the bedroom while I went in.
Althea Grey came towards me. “Thank God you’ve come,” she said. “He’s been asking for you. I phoned as soon as I knew.”
I went to my bed, where my grandfather lay back on his pillows; he was quite exhausted and I could see that he was finding it difficult to get his breath.
“Grandfather,” I said.
His lips formed the name Favel; but he did not say it.
Bride of Pendorric Page 21