Well, it was now far too late to ponder strategy, and it was up to her, she supposed, to overcome what she could only assume to be Lester's shyness in regards to his role as a husband. She had always assumed, up to that time, that conquest was the male's prerogative, and that a woman's duty was to remain mysterious and elusive, even after she was “claimed,” as they said. But where was the profit in being elusive when nobody came looking? Shyness on the part of one's husband sometimes seemed to amount to a kind of panic, as when she had gone to the door and called him by name on the fifth night of her marriage, and asked his assistance in freeing the top hook of her corsets that had become entangled in a loose thread of the brace.
Even now she did not know what to make of his attitude on that occasion. He had appeared almost instantaneously, looking very red about the face, and had remained standing just inside the door, a door he seemed reluctant to close, while she had recrossed the room to stand before the spotted mirror of her dressing table in a half-shed corset, voluminous white drawers and a rucked-up chemise she had been pulling over her head when the hook had caught on the thread.
Attempting to make allowances for his obvious embarrassment, she had said, over her shoulder, “Please, Lester… the top hook, it's caught…” and had waited, almost willing him to make a joke about it—as Phoebe Fraser or one of her sisters would have done—and then, who knew, to embrace her from behind and lower his lips to her shoulder, so that she would at least feel married, even if what he did afterwards was frightening or a little painful, as her mother had hinted during that one rather embarrassing conversation they had had a day or two before the wedding.
But when she felt no touch and heard no movement she turned to see that the door was shut, and that he was on the far side of it and scuttling along the corridor to his own quarters, and she had felt so rejected that she tore the corset free, burst into tears, and sat half-undressed on the lumpy, uncomfortable bed. She admitted to herself then that he was as much a stranger as he had been when Mrs. Halberton had introduced him to her at the fete organised in aid of Polynesian lepers, although what a man like Lester could have been doing there was more than she could say.
After that things had drifted from bad to worse. Ponsonby, whose very presence she came to detest, was hardly ever absent from the house—a tall, foppish, ever-smiling young man about Lester's age, with a very fresh complexion and mocking greenish eyes that played over her with a kind of contemptuous amusement, as though she had been an awkward puppy continually falling over its own blundering feet. Every night about ten ennui would drive her upstairs to bed and she would lie awake, listening to the rustlings in the house and the owls hooting in the limes about the lodge gates; around midnight or later, she would hear Lester's boots clump past the door to his room down the corridor and once or twice, when they had been drinking too much, the honking laughter of Ralph Ponsonby.
Once or twice she half made up her mind to go to him and force him to discuss this curious and altogether unprecedented situation, but she never quite summoned enough courage, knowing that another rebuff on his part would drive them even farther apart, or that he might read into her approach experience with men she did not possess. Then again, when the cheerless Christmas had passed, she toyed with the notion of seeking Sir Gilbert's advice, but soon realised that it would prove impossible to bring herself to the point of asking the leathery old man what a bride was expected to do in these circumstances.
When the old Colonel died, and they had travelled over to Tryst for the funeral, she almost brought herself to the point of raising the matter with her mother, who did give her some kind of opening just before they parted after the funeral tea. It was not fear or embarrassment that checked her but pride, so that she went home without, she hoped, having betrayed the fact that marriage to Lester Moncton-Price was a permanent twilight of expectancy, a waiting around for something ill-defined, nebulous, depressing, and utterly baffling in every single respect.
3
The climax came one blustery night in late February, about a month after the Colonel's funeral, when the four of them—herself, the old man, Lester, and, of course, Ralph Ponsonby—had dined together and later adjourned to the only room in the house with the least pretensions of comfort: the big drawing room with heavily brocaded curtains and a great open hearth before which Sir Gilbert sat with his board on his bony knees and the little stacks of miniature playing cards that he used for his nonstop games of patience.
Lester and Ponsonby lounged in some thirty minutes later, their faces flushed with the port and brandy they had been guzzling, but soon they excused themselves and went off into the billiards room, where she could hear the monotonous snick of balls whilst she pretended to be engrossed in Surtees's Jorrocks's Jaunts and Jollities, one of the few readable books in the musty library at Courtlands.
About ten she said goodnight to Sir Gilbert and went to bed, taking her time about undressing and dawdling in front of the small coal fire, one of the few luxuries she had secured for herself; she was sitting here, her toes on the fender, when she heard a prolonged rustle that seemed to come from behind the wainscoting, left of the fireplace, the side nearest the corridor where it turned a right angle to the stairhead.
She had heard pattering noises there before but had assumed it was caused by mice, and there were wainscot mice even at Tryst. This sound, however, was caused by something bulkier than a mouse, and she at once thought of rats and moved in stockinged feet a few steps closer to the wall angle, at the same time grasping the heavy brass-handled poker. Rats were unpleasant bedroom companions, but she did not fear them any more than she feared mice. She had often joined Alex and George in a rat-hunt in the stabling area at Tryst, and had even killed one on occasion. She meant to kill this one if she could. It would give her something to do as well as something to talk about in the morning.
With her ear pressed to the panelling, however, she thought she detected another sound, together with a smell that did not suggest rats. It was the sound of suppressed breathing and the smell that came to her, faintly but unmistakably, was that of cigar smoke. After a moment or so she was quite sure of it, sure enough to cross the room and put on her bedgown and slippers, but as she groped for the gown in the dark closet she heard a click and a scurry beyond the door, as of someone passing swiftly along the corridor towards the stairs. She went out then but the corridor was dark and she could hear Ponsonby's high-pitched voice coming from the stairwell, calling out something to Sir Gilbert. She went back to her room for a candle and then returned to the spot where the corridor turned, opening the door of a large broom cupboard and holding the candle high, the poker still grasped in her right hand. Then she lowered it, for inside there was no mistaking the whiff of tobacco, and holding the candle at floor-level she could see flakes of cigar ash among the handles of the upended brooms. She saw something else, too, a small circle of light in the lowest section of the recess where it sloped away to meet the crossbeam of the bedroom wall. The light centred on a very small knothole and by stooping low she found she could see more than half her room, including the fireplace, the armchair she had been sitting in, and even a pile of underclothes on the chest beside the bed.
It took a moment or two to absorb the implication of her discoveries. Somebody, certainly a man, had been making a habit of following her upstairs, crouching in this cupboard with his eye to the knothole, and watching her undress, and the Peeping Tom could only be one of three, for whilst it was entirely possible that one or other of the broken-down old racing men about the house was capable of such an act, none of them would be likely to smoke a cigar whilst engaged upon it. That left Sir Gilbert, Ralph Ponsonby, and Lester himself.
She went out, closing the door, and returned to her room, sitting before the fire and forcing her mind to study the problem objectively, as though she was solving someone else's dilemma. She kept the burning shame and indignity of her discovery at arm's length, as something not to be contemplated, for she real
ised now that whoever had used that cupboard on successive nights during the winter must have seen her mother naked not once but a score of times. She thought, with relief, that she had never once used the close stool they provided, but had preferred to walk the length of the draughty passage to the huge, high-seated water closet, the only privy that existed in this primitive house; but it was bad enough to know that the wretch, whoever he was, had been able to study the most private areas of her body when she was washing in the footbath. The thought made her flesh crawl, as though she was being marched over by an army of bedbugs.
She pondered the suspects one by one. Sir Gilbert? Lester? or that ever-smiling hanger-on Ralph Ponsonby, and she decided at once that Ponsonby was the most likely, although she could not be sure. There was a factor here that made it possible the culprit was Lester.
She concentrated on him first, wondering if there was a link here with his deliberate avoidance of her that might be due to a terrible shyness, camouflaged by truculence. She remembered how unwilling he was at all times to be left alone in her company. There was something to be said for this theory. It was all of a piece with his baffling elusiveness, his obvious reluctance to consummate the marriage and, above all, his near panic when she had summoned him on the occasion her corset hook caught in the thread and had asked for help. He had appeared, on that occasion, almost instantaneously, and this might well mean that he had been concealed in the cupboard when she called and would assume, for a few seconds at least, that he had been discovered. All three of them smoked cigars, but somehow, although he had the reputation of having been a rakehell in his younger days, she could not imagine the old man hiding in a broom cupboard and squinting through a knothole at his nineteen-year-old daughter-in-law. He would be more likely, she thought, to do something more positive—pinch her behind, perhaps, or convert a paternal kiss into an embrace, letting his hands stray down the front of her bodice in the manner of some of the younger men who had embraced her.
Finally she eliminated him and that left her a choice of two, one who might prefer spying from ambush rather than taking what he had a perfect right to take, the other a man capable, she would say, of any small infamy that did not require courage.
It was a delicately poised balance, about fifty-fifty she would say, and she realised then that the identification of Peeping Tom was of terrible importance to her. If it was Lester, then one could find, within his odd conduct, reason for hope. At least it showed that he was interested in her as a woman and might, with careful handling, be coaxed to claim his rights as a husband. She wondered wretchedly if she was equipped to perform so delicate a task, regretting that she had not availed herself of all the opportunities she had had of learning more about men. Obviously they were not, as she had assumed, uncomplicated creatures, but could be even more devious than women. She remembered then, with a sudden insight into the sex, whispered talks among the girls at a party she had attended a year or so ago, concerning Mr. Ruskin's recent divorce from the beautiful Effie Gray, who had subsequently married the famous painter, Millais.
She had forgotten the details, unfortunately, but remembered it had something to do with Ruskin's inadequacies as a husband and that Effie had been a virgin after years of marriage. There had been a great deal of giggling concerning this, and the divorce had been a forbidden subject. So proscribed, in fact, that one of her friends, a very forward young lady called Caroline Coutts, had been put across her mother's knee and slippered for daring to mention the subject at the breakfast table.
Perhaps Lester was like Mr. Ruskin? Perhaps he had something wrong with him, an injury from childhood possibly, that made him different from other men, and as she thought this there came to her, unbidden but vaguely welcome, a feeling of compassion for the sulky, elusive, boorish man she had married in such a prodigious hurry. If, indeed, it was Lester who followed her upstairs, then she could find it in her to be sorry for him, although she understood now that it was a situation that would have to be resolved one way or another. She could hardly continue like this, a married woman who was not married, deprived of all prospects of babies and the companionship of a husband. If, on the other hand, it was Ponsonby who was doing the peeping, then he had put a weapon into her hand that would surely lead to his instant dismissal from the family circle, even if exposure resulted in a scandal. In the meantime she had to be sure, and she suddenly saw a way, or fancied she saw a way, to tip the balance one way or the other. She would go down the backstairs, looking in at Lester's room en route to make sure he was not there. If he was then it surely followed that he was the one who had scuttled down the corridor when she had advanced, poker in hand, against the imaginary rat. If he was not, then she was still left with the choice of two Peeping Toms and would make an innocent suggestion about putting down rat poison in the stairhead broom cupboard when they were all assembled at breakfast-table. It should be very easy, by studying their expressions, to decide who was the guilty party.
She went out and along the corridor to Lester's room, tapping on the door, getting no response, opening it, and glancing inside. He was not there and she felt a slight stab of disappointment, closing the door again and standing, indecisively, at the top of the backstairs. She was still there when she heard the rumble of voices from the kitchen below and it occurred to her then that she might, conceivably, have been mistaken in eliminating the staff, for it was unusual for any of the servants to be up and about in the kitchen quarters at this hour.
Treading very carefully, for the old stairs squeaked abominably, she went on down, pausing at intervals to listen in the hope that she could identify one or other of the voices. At the bottom of the staircase, where a short stone passage led directly to the kitchen, she realised they were not those of the servants but of Lester and Ralph Ponsonby, the former's voice predominating, with only the odd word or two contributed by Ralph.
If it was unusual to find servants in the kitchen after midnight it was even more unusual to discover either one of the menfolk in the rear quarters of the house at night, or indeed at any other time. She knew that they very rarely penetrated there, leaving the entire management of these regions to the slatternly cook, Mrs. Wighouse, and her motley staff of men and boys who had direct access from kitchen to stables.
Standing quite still in the passage, she realised that someone was eating at the kitchen table, for she could hear the scrape of knife and fork on pewter and this again struck her as odd, so that she advanced a couple of paces and, holding her breath, stooped and peeped through the giant keyhole. What she saw in the first glance made her gasp, so that instinctively she drew back, pressing herself hard against the stillroom door, her hand to her mouth, her body shaking and quivering.
Ponsonby was seated at the table, demolishing the remains of a cold duck and being waited on by Lester, whose attentions were those of an obsequious servant in that he bobbed and grimaced as he moved to and from the larder with pickles and potato salad and finally, a tankard of ale drawn from the barrel on the lowest of the slate shelves. Ponsonby, she noticed, was entering into the game, if game it was, acting out the part of the master as he flourished his knife and fork in a gesture that was half jocular, half menacing, and whenever he did this Lester cringed and smirked. Then, as he set down the beer mug, Ponsonby did something more positive, grabbing Lester round the waist and pulling him towards him, so that they stood for a moment pressed together, grinning at one another like a couple of sportive Cheshire cats.
The tableau was so bizarre, so out of key with all she knew of both men, that it was then Stella drew back, not knowing what to do yet realising instinctively that to intrude would provoke a scene she would be quite unable to sustain in the presence of Ponsonby. Intense curiosity, however, brought her back to the keyhole almost at once, but, although prepared for almost any development, what she saw now had the power to shock her half out of her wits.
Lester had a long sliver of duck protruding from his mouth and as she watched he bent within close rang
e of his friend's face and Ponsonby seized the loose end of the meat in his teeth and began to nibble so that their lips met in a kiss and Lester's hand went round Ponsonby's neck so that they remained in a loose embrace, exactly like a pair of lovers, and unsavoury lovers at that, with that scrap of half-chewed meat linking them.
Suddenly she felt violently sick, pushing herself clear of the door, groping for the handrail of the stairs, and somehow negotiating the stairway as far as the closet before she vomited, holding herself—half erect, one hand encircling the rusty pipe connecting the closet to the cistern in the loft. What she had witnessed had no precise meaning for her. It was outside the range of her comprehension and yet she knew, somehow, that it represented the end of her involvement with this man, this family, this house, and that it was absolutely imperative that she should leave it and them at once, before association with them involved one more night under their roof. She saw, too, dimly but with a curious certitude, that here was the real reason behind her isolation and deprivation, for she was not married to a man at all but to some poor creature who was neither man nor woman but a kind of freak, with tastes and habits that were foreign to every other male she had ever met or heard about.
The prospect of immediate escape braced her, at least momentarily, so that she put off thinking where she might go at this hour of the night and in a raging gale that was shaking the house. She only knew that she must put distance between herself and the two young men downstairs so that she was startled, on entering her room, to find Sir Gilbert sitting in her basket armchair, warming his slippered feet on the hob, just as she had been doing when the scuttle behind the wall launched her on this sickening adventure.
Theirs Was The Kingdom Page 10