Bride of Pendorric

by Victoria Holt

I knelt by the bed and took his hand in mine; I kissed it, feeling desolate. I had found him such a short time ago. Was I to lose him so soon?

  “I’m here, Grandfather. I came as soon as I heard you wanted me.”

  I knew by the slight movement of his head that he understood.

  Althea Grey was at my side. She whispered: “He’s not in pain. I’ve given him morphia. He’ll be feeling the effect of it now. Dr. Clement will be here at any moment.”

  I turned to look at her and I saw from her expression that his condition was very grave. Then I saw Roc standing some little way from the bed. Althea Grey moved back to where he was and I turned my attention to my grandfather.

  “Favel.” It was a whisper. His fingers moved in mine, and I knew that he was trying to say something to me so I brought my face nearer to his.

  “Are you there … Favel?”

  “Yes, Grandfather,” I whispered.

  “It’s … good-by, Favel.”

  “No.”

  He smiled. “Such a short time … but it was a happy time … the happiest time … Favel, you must be …”

  His face puckered and I bent nearer to him.

  “Don’t talk, Grandfather. It’s too much of an effort.”

  His brows puckered into a frown. “Favel … must be … careful … it’ll be yours now. Make sure …”

  I guessed what he was trying to tell me. Even when he was fighting for his breath he was preoccupied with his money.

  “It’s different …” he went on, “when you have it … can’t be sure … can never be sure … Favel … take care …”

  “Grandfather, please don’t worry about me. Don’t think about anything but getting better. You will get better. You must …”

  He shook his head. “Couldn’t find …” he began; but his battle for breath was too much for him; his eyes were closing. “Tired,” he murmured. “So tired. Favel … stay … be careful … it’s different with money. Perhaps I was wrong … but I wanted … be careful … I wish I could stay awhile to … look after you, Favel.”

  His lips were moving now but no sound came. He lay back on his pillows, his face looking shrunken and gray.

  He was very near the end by the time Dr. Clement arrived.

  We sat in the room where I had played so many games of chess with him—Dr. Clement, Roc, Nurse Grey, and myself.

  Dr. Clement was saying: “It’s not entirely unexpected. It could have happened at any time. Did he ring the bell?”

  “No. Or I should have heard him. My room is next to his. The bell is always by his bed for him to ring if he wanted anything in the night. It was Dawson who went in. He said he was locking up when he saw Lord Polhorgan’s light on. He found him gasping and in great pain. He called me and I saw that it was necessary to give him morphia, which I did.”

  Dr. Clement rose and went to the door.

  “Dawson,” he called. “Are you there, Dawson?”

  Dawson came into the room.

  “I’ve heard that you came in and found Lord Polhorgan in distress.”

  “Yes, sir. He’d snapped on the light and seeing it I looked in to make sure he was all right. I saw he was trying to ask for something, but I didn’t know what for a while. Then I found out it was his pills. I couldn’t find them then so I called Nurse and came back with her. That was when she gave him the morphia.”

  “So it seems as though this attack developed into a major one because he had no chance of holding it off.”

  “I’d always impressed on him the need to have his pills at hand,” said Althea Grey.

  Dawson was looking at her scornfully. “I found them after, sir. After his lordship had had the morphia, that was. The box was lying on the floor. It had come open and the pills was scattered, sir. The bell was on the floor also.”

  “He must have knocked them over when he reached for the pills,” said Althea Grey.

  I looked at Roc, who was staring straight ahead of him.

  “A sad business,” murmured Dr. Clement. “I think I ought to give you a sedative, Mrs. Pendorric. You’re looking all in.”

  “I’ll take her home,” said Roc. “There’s no point in waiting here now. We can do nothing till the morning.”

  Dr. Clement smiled at me sadly. “There was nothing we could do to prevent it,” he told me.

  “If he had had his pills,” I said, “that might have prevented it.”

  “It might have.”

  “What an unfortunate accident …” I began; and my eyes met Dawson’s and I saw that his were gleaming with speculation.

  “It couldn’t be helped,” Roc was saying. “It’s easy to see how it happened … reaching out … in a hurry … knocking over the box and the bell.”

  I shivered and Roc put his arm through mine.

  I wanted to get out of that room; there was something in Dawson’s expression which frightened me; there was something too in the calm, beautiful features of Althea Grey.

  I felt as though I were outside looking in on all that had happened since Roc and I came into this house. I saw myself leaning over my dying grandfather; I heard his voice warning me of some danger which he sensed ahead of me. Roc and Althea were standing together in that room of death. What words did they exchange while my grandfather told me to take care? What had been the expressions in their eyes as they looked at each other?

  Dawson had done this with his hatred of the nurse, with his groundless suspicions. But did I really know that they were groundless?

  I felt the cool night air on my face and Roc’s tender voice beside me.

  “Come on, darling, you’re quite worn out. Clement’s right. It has been a terrible shock to you.”

  Those were sad weeks which followed, for only when I had lost him did I realize how fond I had become of my grandfather. I missed him deeply; not only his company, I began to understand; not only the complacent joy I had felt because I had brought so much pleasure into his lonely life; but he had given me a sense of security, and that I had lost. I had subconsciously felt that he was there—a powerful man of the world to whom I could go if I were in trouble. My own flesh and blood. I could have trusted him to do anything in his power to help me … should I have needed his help.

  It seemed strange that I should have felt this need. I had a husband who could surely give me any protection I wanted; but it was the loss of my grandfather which brought home to me the true relationship between myself and my husband. To have lost him would have been complete desolation; he could amuse and delight me, too, but the truth remained that I was not sure of him; I did not know him. Yet, in spite of this uncertainty I loved him infinitely, and my entire happiness depended on him. I was wretched because I must be suspicious of his relationship with Althea Grey, Rachel Bective, and even Dinah Bond. And I had begun to feel—since I had discovered that I had a grandfather—that he was someone who had for me a deep and uncomplicated affection. Now I had lost him.

  I was his heir and there were many visits from his solicitor. When I heard the extent of the fortune he had left I felt dizzy at the prospect of my riches. There were several bequests. The Dawsons had been left a comfortable pension; there was a thousand pounds for the nurse who was employed by him at the time of his death; all the servants had been remembered and rewarded according to their length of service; he had left a sizable sum to be used for the benefit of orphans—he himself had been an orphan—and I was very touched that he had remembered this charity. Death duties, I was informed, would swallow up a large proportion, but I should still have a considerable fortune.

  Polhorgan itself was mine with all its contents; and this in itself was worth a great deal.

  My grandfather’s death seemed to have changed my whole life. I was so much poorer in affection, so much richer in worldly goods; and I was beginning to be afraid that this last fact colored people’s attitude towards me.

  I fancied people like the Darks and Dr. Clement were not quite so friendly; that the people in the village whispered about me
when I had passed. I had become not merely Mrs. Pendorric, but the rich Mrs. Pendorric. But it was in Pendorric itself that I felt the change most and this was indeed disturbing. I felt that Morwenna and Charles were secretly delighted, and that the twins watched me a little furtively as though they had overheard gossip which had made them see me in a different light.

  Deborah was more outspoken than the others. She said: “Barbarina was an heiress, but nothing of course to be compared with yourself.”

  I hated this kind of talk. I wished that my grandfather had not been such a rich man. I wished that he had left his money elsewhere, for I was realizing now that one of the facts which had made me so happy at Pendorric was that, although the old house and estate needed money, Roc had married a girl without a penny. I could no longer say to myself: “He could only have married me for love.”

  It was with my grandfather’s money that the canker had touched our relationship.

  It was some weeks after my grandfather’s death that I had an interview with his solicitor and he brought home to me the advisability of making a will.

  So I did so and, with the exception of one or two legacies, I left the residue of my fortune to Roc.

  September had come. The evenings were short and the mornings misty; but the afternoons were as warm as they had been in July.

  It was two months since my grandfather’s death and I was still mourning him. I had done nothing about Polhorgan, and the Dawsons and all the servants remained there; Althea Grey had decided to have a long holiday before looking for a new post and had taken a little cottage about a mile from Pendorric, which, during the months of June, July, and August, was let to holiday makers.

  I knew I should have to do something about Polhorgan and an idea had come to me. It was to turn the house into a home for orphans—such as my grandfather must have been—the deprived and unwanted ones.

  When I mentioned this to Roc, he was startled.

  “What an undertaking!” he said.

  “Somehow I think it would have appealed to my grandfather because he was an orphan himself.”

  Roc walked away from me—we were in our bedroom—and going to the window stared out at the sea.

  “Well, Roc, you don’t like the idea?”

  “Darling, it’s not the sort of project you can rush into.”

  “No, of course not. I’m just thinking about it.”

  “Things aren’t what they used to be, remember. There’d be all sorts of bureaucratic regulations to be got over … and have you thought of the cost of running a place like that?”

  “I haven’t thought about anything very much. It was just a faint idea. I’m brooding on it though.”

  “We’ll have to do a lot of brooding,” he said.

  I had a notion that he was not impressed with the idea, and I shelved it for the time being, but I was determined not to give it up easily.

  I often called on Jesse Pleydell, who always seemed delighted to see me apart from the tobacco I took him. Mrs. Penhalligan said I kept him supplied and he was grateful, though it was my visits that meant as much to him as the tobacco.

  I shall never forget that September day because it brought the begining of the real terror which came into my life, and it was at this time that I began to understand how the pleasant picture had changed piece by piece until I was confronted with the cruelest of suspicions and horror.

  The day began normally enough. In the morning I went down to Mrs. Robinson’s and bought the tobacco. Knowing that I was going, Deborah asked me to buy some hairpins for her, and Morwenna asked me to bring some bass she needed for tying up plants. I met Rachel and the twins as I was setting out; they were going on a nature ramble so they all three walked with me as far as the shop. When I came back I met Roc and Charles going off to the home farm together.

  But I didn’t leave for the cottages until after tea, and when I arrived Jesse was sitting at his door, catching the last of the sun.

  I sat beside him for a while and, because I thought it was getting a little chilly, I went inside with him and he made me a cup of tea. It was something he enjoyed doing and I knew better than to offer to help. While we sat drinking the thick brew, Jesse talked of the old days and how the Pendorric gardens had looked in his time.

  “Ah, madam, you should have been here forty years ago … that was the time. I had four men working under me all the time, and the flowers in the cliff garden was a picture … a real picture.”

  He would go on and on in this strain and, because he enjoyed it, I encouraged him to do so. I learned a good deal about life at Pendorric forty or fifty years ago when Jesse was in his prime. It was a more leisurely life, but even so the beginning of change had set in.

  “Now when I were a boy things were different.”

  That would have been about eighty years ago. Very different indeed, I thought.

  “There was no talk then of not being able to keep up like,” mused Jesse. “There was no thought that things ’ud ever be different from what they always had been. Polhorgan House wasn’t here then … nor thought of, and all Polhorgan meant to us was the little old cove down there.”

  I listened dreamily, staying rather longer than I had intended, and it was six o’clock when I rose to go.

  It was always gloomy in the cottages on account of the small, latticed windows, so I hadn’t noticed how dark it had grown. The sea mist had been lurking in the air all day, but now it had thickened. It was warm and sea-scented and not by any means unpleasant; it hung in patches and in some spots was really thick. It was especially so near the church; and as I paused at the lych gate to look at the gravestones with the mist swirling about them, thinking how strangely picturesque everything was, I heard it; it seemed to be coming from inside the graveyard—singing in that strange, high voice, which was slightly out of tune.

  “How should I your true love know

  From another one?

  By his cockle hat and staff

  And his sandal shoon.”

  My heart began to beat fast; my hand on the lych gate trembled. I looked about me but I seemed to be alone with the mist.

  Someone was in there singing, and I had to find out who, so I opened the lych gate and went into the graveyard. I was determined to know who it was who sang in that strange voice, and because I was sure that it was someone from the house, instinctively I made my way to the Pendorric vault. I was almost certain now that it must be Carrie. She brought wreaths for her beloved Barbarina and she would have heard her sing that song; what more natural than that hearing it often she had learned it by heart?

  It must be Carrie.

  As I reached the Pendorric vault, I drew up short in astonishment because the door was open. I had never seen it open before and was under the impression that it would never be opened except when it was prepared to receive those who had died.

  I went closer and as I did so I heard the voice again.

  “He is dead and gone, lady,

  He is dead and gone;

  At his head a grass-green turf,

  At his heels a stone.”

  And it appeared to be coming from inside the vault.

  I went down the stone steps. “Who’s there?” I called. “Carrie. Are you in there?”

  My voice sounded strange at the entrance of that dark vault.

  “Carrie,” I called. “Carrie.” I put my head inside and saw that four or five stone steps led down. I descended, calling: “Carrie! Carrie! Are you there?”

  There was silence. Because of the light from the open door I could see the ledges with the coffins on them; I could smell the dampness of the earth. Then suddenly I was in darkness and for a few seconds I was so shocked and bewildered that I could not move. I could not even cry out in protest. It took me several seconds to understand that the door had closed on me and I was shut in the vault …

  I gave a gasp of horror.

  “Who’s there?” I cried. “Who shut the door?”

  Then I tried to find the steps, bu
t my eyes were not yet adjusted to the darkness, and, groping, I stumbled and found myself sprawling up the cold stone stairs.

  Frantically I picked myself up. I could make out the shape of the steps now, and I mounted them. I pushed the door but it was firmly shut and I could not move it.

  For some moments, I’m afraid, I was hysterical. I hammered on the door with my fists. “Let me out of here,” I screamed. “Let me out of here.”

  My voice sounded hollow and I knew that it would not be heard outside.

  I lay against the door, trying to think. Someone had lured me into this dreadful place, someone who wanted to be rid of me. How long could I live here? But I should be missed. Roc would miss me. He would come to look for me.

  “Roc!” I called. “Oh … Roc … come quickly.”

  I covered my face with my hands. I did not want to look about me. I was suddenly afraid of what I might see, shut in this vault with the Pendorric dead. How long before I became one of them?

  Then I thought I heard a movement near me. I listened. Was that the sound of breathing?

  The horror was deepening. I did not believe in ghosts, I tried to tell myself. But it is easy to say that when you are above ground in some sunny spot, some well-lighted room. Very different, buried alive … among the dead!

  I had never known real fear until that moment. I was clammy with sweat, my hair was probably standing on end. I did not know because there was no room in my mind for anything but fear, the knowledge that I was locked in with the dead.

  But I was not alone. I knew it. Some breathing, living thing was in this tomb with me.

  I had covered my face with my hands because I did not want to see it. I dared not see.

  Then a cold hand touched mine. I screamed, and I heard myself cry: “Barbarina!” because in that moment I believed the legend of Pendorric. I believed that Barbarina had lured me to my tomb so that I could haunt Pendorric and she might rest in peace.

  “Favel!” It was a sharp whisper and the one who said it was as frightened as I was.