by Tessa Arlen
To Clementine’s annoyance, they were interrupted at this point by Mrs. Lovell, who had broken away from Miss Jekyll and come across the room toward them.
“I think it is time I said good night to everyone,” she said. “It is almost eleven o’clock and I simply have to be fresh for tomorrow. I am so gratified that we will be judged this year by a true plantswoman. The things Miss Jekyll has accomplished at Munstead are a horticultural revolution.”
“Amelia, we are judged soundly and fairly every year and always by someone who knows of what they speak.” His smile was kindly, but his tone was strict. It certainly made the stately Mrs. Lovell hesitate before she spoke.
“I wonder if keeping the roses in the conservatory is perhaps not a particularly good idea. It is very hot and humid in there.”
“For a mere two days? Oh my dear Amelia, you worry unnecessarily. I can tell you that they are quite happy basking in the conservatory. Henry Bennett believed that a little heat was particularly efficacious for strengthening certain strains of roses, he told me so himself last week.”
“Henry Bennett?” Clementine was puzzled. The name was familiar. Was Mr. Urquhart perhaps referring to the Henry Bennett, whose hybrid tea rose Mrs. John Laing had graced every suburban garden in the home counties at one time or another?
“Yes, the great rose breeder Henry Bennett, the father of the hybrid tea rose. His crosses between tea roses and perpetuals gave us the pedigree hybrids of today,” answered Mrs. Lovell. “He bred the beautiful rose Lady Mary Fitzwilliam.” She referred to a particularly heavy-headed rose in a hideous pink that managed, unfortunately, to bloom all summer long.
“But isn’t he…” Clementine hesitated before saying, “dead?” How on earth could this funny little man converse with someone who surely died years ago?
“Yes, indeed, Lady Montfort.” Mrs. Lovell smiled at Mr. Urquhart and he twinkled back at her. “Henry Bennett died almost twenty-five years ago, but Finley talks to him regularly, don’t you, dear?” They laughed together as if Mrs. Lovell had made a tremendous joke.
And with that Mrs. Lovell wished them good night and left the room and Mr. Urquhart bent toward the two ladies on his left to whisper, “Ah, dear, dear me. Poor Amelia, try as hard as she might, every rose she develops looks exactly like the last one. She had some minor success with her first rose, Lovely Amelia, it was favorably mentioned in the Rose Breeder’s Gazette, but since then every single specimen has been exactly the same: in petal count, in color, and she has never managed to produce a rose with any scent at all. They all sadly smell quite … sterile.” His eyes regarded them sadly from behind his spectacles as he sighed and signaled to the footman. “Charles, I am ready to retire now. Please ask Sanders to bring up my peppermint tea in exactly half an hour.” Rising to his feet, he executed a charming little bow to them both. “My dear Leddy Montfort and Edith, how happy I am you have come to join us. Maud is so hoping you will both become a part of our modest little group, for we understand the Iyntwood rose gardens are quite exquisite. I wish I could spend longer with you, but I fear I am in for a restless night.”
“We will see you at breakfast, Mr. Urquhart,” Clementine said.
“Ah no, I am afraid not. I always take my breakfast in my room. Then I must spend some time with my dear girls to get them ready for Miss Jekyll.”
And will you be speaking to Henry Bennett about them, too? thought Clementine as she turned to her housekeeper and saw that Mrs. Jackson’s eyes were sparkling with glee. She laughed and said under her breath, “Do you think he is perhaps a Theosophist, Jackson?”
Chapter Eight
Clementine awoke in the small hours. Was it her covert reason for coming to Hyde Castle that had awoken her with a feeling of distinct unease, or was there something here, close to her, that was of malevolent intent? She lay very still in her bed and listened.
Hyde Castle, with is mongrel architectural styles built to encompass an older structure, was a hotchpotch of rooms scattered upstairs and down, connected by long stone corridors, odd flights of stairs sometimes leading to other corridors and then surprising the visitor by opening into a mundanely modern, overly furnished sitting room. It was a confusing building to navigate during the broad light of day, but at night it had the allure of a haunted abbey portrayed in eighteenth-century gothic novels. This contrived gloomy gothic charm did not make Clementine feel anxious about sleeping alone—this was hardly the Castle of Otranto—and Clementine was well acquainted with the eccentricities of buildings far more ancient than Hyde Castle.
But something had awoken her. She strained her ears in the dark. Silence. She held her breath and listened. All was as quiet as a church on a Monday afternoon. It must have been the call of an owl, or a mouse hurrying back to its nest in the wainscoting. She lay quite still in her bed and stared into the implacable blackness, her ears straining to a silence so profound that they started to ring. Relax, she instructed, it’s nothing at all, these extremely odd people are making you jumpy. She turned on her side, rearranged her pillows, and closed her eyes preparatory to sinking back into sleep.
And just as she was drifting off she heard the sound that had no doubt awoken her. Most definitely this was not a mouse or an owl, it was a most human sound. On the still night air she briefly heard a thin, high wail, like that of a child—a frightened child. She sat up in her bed and stared once more into the dark. Silence, and again she held her breath. And then came again, a high, distant cry, cut off so abruptly that she was quite prepared to believe that her heightened senses had imagined it. The cry had not come from her bedroom window thrown open to the night air. And it was certainly not the wind wuthering against the tall stone walls of the house, as it was a particularly calm night.
She reached for the light on the table next to her bed and switched it on as she swung her legs over its edge and groped for her dressing gown. Even though parts of the castle had the studied appearance of the fifteenth century, Mr. Haldane had thoroughly modernized it. Electricity lit the long, dark, crooked corridors and hot water poured obediently into huge bathtubs in the bathrooms that she imagined adjoined every bedroom.
The sound came again, but a little fainter this time. If I go exploring, thought Clementine, I will probably meet the Hyde Castle ghost. It must have been installed along with the plumbing. She put on her dressing gown and walked silently across her room on bare feet in the direction that she fancied the cry had come from. The southeast wall of her room was hung with heavy tapestries and she pulled the first a little to one side and felt along the wall. Her palm lightly scraped along the surface of undressed, closely mortared stone. She thought that she was staying in the newest part of the house, but this wall had the feel of ancient stone hewn hundreds of years ago. The tips of her reaching fingers brushed up against the beveled edge of wood. Here the old part of the wall ended, or did it? She lightly passed her hand over the linen-fold of oak paneling, and her knowledgeable touch informed her that it was hand-planed from an age older than the smooth, wallpapered walls of the rest of her room. This is part of the ruined castle they incorporated into the new building, she thought. Perhaps I am going to meet a ghost after all. But why disguise something as beautiful as a medieval stone wall and paneling with these dreadful faux tapestries? She pulled the wall-hanging to one side and slid behind it. Half of the wall was stone, the rest paneled. She laid her ear against the wood and listened.
She heard the faint, soft scrabble of mice; the unmistakable tick and shift of old timber rafters and joists as they settled on ancient foundations; the rhythmic and comforting thump of her pulse and the quiet inhalation and exhalation of her breath—and a long, sobbing cry.
Facing the wall, she shuffled along it, an ear close to its surface, feeling ahead as she went. Her right hand bumped up against the jamb of a door, and slid effortlessly over its stile. Reflexively her hand dropped to the door’s handle, and closed around the cold iron ball of the doorknob. She turned it to the right. With her should
er pressed against it, the heavy door swung silently away from her. She held it open, just wide enough to put her head around to listen. It was dark on the other side of the door, and at this moment her courage wavered in the dark night as she contemplated the black void before her.
Should she return to her room and wake Jackson and then perhaps with the aid of Jackson’s torch they might see into this room that opened so clandestinely from hers? Was it a closet, perhaps, or another room? Standing on the threshold of the black space, she craned her head forward. And then around her feet she felt a cool draft of air, which lifted the hem of her light silk dressing gown and stirred a wisp of hair that had fallen across her face. She pushed her hair out of her eyes and waited. It was cold in this room, if that was what it was. It smelled dry with the fustiness of places that are not used and she sensed that she was standing in the doorway of a corridor. She could see, just a little ahead of her, a gray patch of light. She took one tentative step forward, spreading her arms wide on either side of her body. Fingertips touched rough stone. Yes, she had been right, it was a corridor. And just as she took another step she heard again the cry that had awoken her, short and sharp before it fell to a sobbing murmur. Was it her imagination or did she hear the responding tones of a deeper voice? Surely someone was crying in the dark of the night and whoever it was, was not alone.
She slid a foot forward and her bare toes found smooth wide flagstone. She took another step and turned; the door to her room was still open. She could see a glimmer of comforting light coming from around the edges of the tapestry.
Just a few steps along this corridor—I can turn back at any time. I can even see my room from here. Now she extended her arms in front of her as she advanced slowly forward, step-by-step: five paces. The dim light became a little brighter as she rounded a bend in the corridor. Here was a single small casement window with leaded panes, which allowed the light she had seen from the doorway to her room. She put her nose to the thick glass panes and stared out into the night. A three-quarter moon was high in the sky, its silvery beams lighting her uplifted face. The casement window was ill fitting and she felt a substantial draft filtering into the corridor from around its edges. She peered down the length of the corridor and saw that there were no doors along its walls, but she could just about see the end, twenty feet ahead. With her arms reaching out to the walls on either side of her, she went forward. She felt with her toe a shallow step of stone, then another of smooth polished boards. In front of her was a closed door. She turned her head and put her ear against the heavy oak panel.
Silence, except for her own breath and leaping pulse. Very carefully she placed her hand on the iron curve of the door handle and, pushing down, heard the muted click of the spring-loaded mechanism releasing the latch. She pushed, but the door did not move. Was it locked? She stepped back and pulled and the door opened inward. She steadied its swing and put her head around it. She saw a wide corridor, with only two doors, one at the bottom to her right, the other almost directly in front of her. It was lit with electric sconces, and before her on the floor was a bright Turkish rug on the well-polished wood boards; flowers had been arranged on a small table, a landscape hanging on the wall behind it. There was the reassuring scent of fresh flowers and beeswax common in well-kept houses. Clementine breathed a deep sigh of relief at the sight of this pleasantly commonplace corridor.
What had she expected to find when she opened this door? A dusty forgotten chamber, with bare boards and mismatched furniture? A narrow iron bed on which tossed the body of a gaunt creature with masses of tangled hair and, off in the corner in the light of an oil lamp, the large figure of a woman keeping watch through the night? In her short walk down the stone corridor she had half believed that this door would open into a secret room on the fourth floor of Thornfield: the attic room that housed Mr. Rochester’s insane Creole wife and her guardian, Grace Poole, whose occasional bouts of inebriation enabled the violent Bertha to range the house at night and set fire to people in their beds. Is this what her overwrought imagination had prepared her for when she had so daringly opened the door? Yes, she had to admit to herself, it was.
The stone corridor, most probably used by the housemaids to go from one side of the house to the other when they were cleaning this floor, had taken her from the guest rooms of the house to the wing where the family slept. Hadn’t the butler pointed out the family’s wing when he had turned right at the top of the wide landing? Conscious that she was trespassing and embarrassed with herself for creeping down the corridor in the first place when she should be in her bed, she stepped back, preparatory to closing the door, and heard a long, low sob so clearly and so near that she realized it came from behind the door across the corridor. There was such despair in the lament that Clementine felt an overwhelming desire to rush to the woman’s aid. And from behind the door, in response, she heard a low, insistent rumble, the words muffled and vague. She stepped lightly across the corridor, conscious as she did so that she was breaking all conventions that bind polite guests in the houses of friends and, even more significantly, complete strangers when someone has kindly extended an invitation. She allowed this moment of self-admonishment to give her pause for the space of several seconds before she pressed her ear against the door and listened.
The low, breathy sobs continued and above them came a male voice, almost conciliatory in tone. Ah, she drew a breath; someone had come to this tragic woman’s aid. The voice was so low that the words were indistinguishable, it rumbled on and then abruptly changed, lifted in volume and tone, and she heard, “Disappointed,” quite clearly, and as the voice rose in pitch, “… and then you make me lose my temper…” was plainly audible as Mr. Haldane’s reproving tone became angrier. There was a gasp, and a woman’s voice cried out in pain and entreaty. Clementine pulled back in horror.
Oh dear God, what am I doing? I am eavesdropping on the Haldanes. She turned and fled back through the door she had come through, closing it behind her, and with her arms outstretched in front of her, she tiptoed down the two steps, felt flagstone under her feet, and as fast as she could made her way back toward the glimmer of light at the end of the corridor. She pulled her bedroom door open wide and stepped cross the threshold into her room, closing it behind her. Feeling below its handle, she found a key and turned it in the lock. That is what you should have done when you found this door, she quite angrily told herself, instead of creeping around the Haldanes’ house like a spy.
But, oh what a relief to be back in her room with the door into that terrible corridor firmly locked. She slid out from behind the tapestry and found herself staring at her own reflection in the looking glass over the dressing table. Her face was white, her eyes wide, and her bedtime plait swung as she turned and cast a guilty glance at the tapestry that concealed the passageway to the Haldanes’ private wing of the house. She was across her room in a flash and, climbing into the high, wide bed, she slid her feet down under the sheets and put her hands over both ears to prevent herself from hearing the wails of Mrs. Haldane’s suffering at the hands of her husband.
How on earth can I sleep when I have just broken all the rules of good manners and in return have been taught a sharp lesson, thought Clementine as she lay back against her pillows and tried to come to terms with what she had just done and, even more shocking, with what she had just heard.
The apologetic pale face of Mrs. Haldane, with her watery pale blue eyes and soft, fading blond hair, stared at her reproachfully, and over the woman’s shoulder Clementine saw the red leathery face of Mr. Haldane, his frown belligerent as he accused her of a serious breach of good manners in a house she had been invited to visit.
She closed her eyes to block out these images and at the same time reached out a hand for the book she was reading. She would read herself to sleep and when she awoke it would be to a bright sunny day and she would forget the sobbing, fearful cries and the angry voices of the Haldanes. Her eyes remained fixed on the page but she found she could
n’t make sense of a single word.
Mr. Haldane is one of those terrible men who dominate and mistreat their wives, she thought. Mrs. Haldane’s cry of despair kept echoing in her head. How can she live with a man who is so brutishly cruel? And then she remembered what Mr. Urquhart had said just hours before, when he had been indulging in a cozy little gossip about his friend Mrs. Haldane: “Poor Maud, she is so adored by Roger. I don’t know if you have noticed that he has rather an overshadowing effect on her.”
An overshadowing effect on her? What a shattering understatement. What she had overheard was a man who not only socially overpowered his wife but was both physically and verbally violent to her. For surely the cries she had heard, the sobbing and the entreaties, were the response of a woman who has either been forcibly restrained or cruelly punished. Clementine accepted that sleep would be impossible—she was far too disturbed—but more than that she was angry. And the more she dwelled on the bullying she had just overheard, the angrier she became. Anger was welcome, it washed away her sense of shame at being a sneak. She was so angry she could hardly stay in her bed. She wanted to leap up and dress herself, go to the Haldanes’ room, open the door, and command the man to leave his wife alone. No, I actually want to brain the brute with a poker.
Mr. Haldane was the sort of man who believed it his right to possess his wife, to control her every deed and thought and to require her to serve him—as if she were an indentured servant, without the freedom to leave and find another job. It made complete sense to her in this moment that Mrs. Haldane had found comfort and friendship in the company of Mr. Bartholomew, and that if her husband had found out he would have punished her and killed her friend.