When she had finished, Marguerite told her, ‘I must go and fetch her, that much is plain. Perhaps you can suggest a suitable place nearby where she can stay for a while to be treated. Mrs Constantine, I will remove from your house. We are bringing nothing but trouble and scandal to you.’
‘Do not dream of it my dear,’ Mrs Constantine said, ‘though, for her sake, it would be better not to bring your sister here while she is unwell. But you must stay.’
‘You are being too generous,’ Marguerite told her. ‘It is quite plain we must move on.’
‘Allow me to give you what support I can for a month or so,’ Mrs Constantine told her. ‘You see, I think your sister has been very unfair to you. Whatever her reasons, she has left you wondering for many weeks whether she was dead, or some horrible fate had befallen her. I will be honest, this is an affair I would be glad to stay away from, but none of it is your fault. And then,’ she remarked repressively, ‘there’s—’ and she jerked her head towards Elaine’s bedroom, occupied by Mrs Grose. ‘Still,’ she resumed, ‘I wonder if it’s wise to move your sister immediately.’
‘I must go there today.’
Jenny then appeared in the doorway. ‘Mr Reeve, come to call,’ she reported. ‘Asks to see you, ma’am; Miss Selsden, too, he requests, if she is free.’
The two women stared at each other in consternation. ‘He will ask if there is news of Elaine,’ said Marguerite. ‘What can I tell him? It would be better not to see him.’
‘Come down with me. We’ll say she’s in Scotland, taken ill. Come now, we can’t leave him waiting.’
And so they descended the stairs together. They had gone down only a few steps when Mrs Grose appeared at her bedroom door. ‘Is there any news?’ she enquired eagerly.
Guiltily, neither woman replied; as if she had not spoken, both continued to the foot of the stairs, where Mrs Constantine turned, calling back at her, ‘We have a caller – a neighbour.’ She and Marguerite then went into the parlour.
Mr Reeve stood up. ‘So good of you to call, Mr Reeve,’ Mrs Constantine said.
‘I returned last night from London. The police there had no news,’ he said. ‘I was anxious to hear if you had any word of Miss Elaine.’
Shocked by the letter from Harold Brett, Marguerite was reluctant to speak of her sister to Henry. ‘I hope the wedding went well,’ she said. ‘I know – forgive me if I’m too blunt – that after Mrs Grose’s revelations about Flora’s childhood there must have been a great desire to see her happily settled.’
‘The wedding went well enough,’ he said. ‘The couple are in Italy.’
He paused and Marguerite knew she must tell him Elaine was safe. ‘We have heard from my sister,’ Marguerite told him. ‘She is in Scotland.’
‘My dear,’ he said enthusiastically. ‘I am so glad. I am glad this weary waiting is over. She is safe?’
‘She went to visit her old employers, the family to whom she was governess, but was unfortunately taken ill there,’ Marguerite replied.
His smile faded. He frowned a little and gave her a long, careful look. What Marguerite had said did not explain Elaine’s silence for over six weeks. He said, ‘Well, that is splendid news. I hope her illness—’ just as Mrs Constantine said, ‘Miss Selsden is about to—’ Each broke off, having interrupted the other. Henry said quickly, ‘I beg your pardon. But were you about to say Miss Selsden was to go north? Miss Selsden, is that the case?’
‘Yes,’ Marguerite said. ‘I wish to see for myself how she is. If she is fit to move we will return together.’ Her voice faltered.
He bent forward, took her hand and, his large brown eyes entirely sympathetic, said, ‘My dear. Will you let me help you?’
Marguerite tried to speak, but her eyes filled with tears. Mrs Constantine said, in a firm voice, her country tones suddenly reasserting themselves over her acquired gentility, ‘Miss Selsden, will you listen to what Mr Reeve has to say. I must go to the kitchen. I’ve business there.’ And she stood up promptly and left the room.
Henry gazed after her appreciatively. ‘There goes a woman some would dismiss as ordinary. But she has a true heart and a great deal of sense. Will you be guided by her, and let me help you? There’s something wrong with your sister, is there not? She’s not ill, is she?’
‘She is ill. But with an illness of the mind,’ Marguerite said in a low voice.
She expected Henry to be shocked by this information and was surprised when he merely nodded. ‘Well, you’ll have to confide in me to some extent. There are mysteries here. You’ve done your best, but secrets have been kept all through this affair, and no one is any the better for the concealments. I don’t wish to offend you, Miss Selsden, but you may be out of your depth. It could, I think, be unwise for you to rush off to Scotland without thinking first.’
‘My sister believed she was engaged to her employer’s son,’ Marguerite told him in a low voice. ‘She went to London to meet him, then to Scotland to get the approval of the family for the marriage, or they might have cut their son off without money. Once there, he repudiated her. She is ill, in consequence. They, the family, have placed her in a sanatorium.’
Henry sighed, recalling Elaine’s desperate attempt to persuade him to declare love for her.
Marguerite went on, ‘I have just had a letter explaining all this from the young man’s father. My sister needs me, Mr Reeve.’
‘It will be better if you offer suitable help,’ he advised. ‘With your permission I’ll try to telephone the gentleman who wrote to you. If his home has no instrument, perhaps his place of business may. It would also be useful to speak to a doctor at the sanatorium. Will you come back to Lion House with me while I make such efforts?’
Marguerite agreed. After they had left the house Mrs Grose found Mrs Constantine in the kitchen checking bills at the table. ‘I hear there has been a letter from Scotland,’ she said. ‘Is there any news? Is Elaine with the Bretts?’
Mrs Constantine led her from the kitchen. In the parlour she told her stiffly, ‘Elaine is in a sanatorium in Scotland. Marguerite has gone off with Mr Reeve to see if they can get news of her by his telephone.’
Mrs Grose burst out, ‘Ah! They have made her ill – yet again. Those cruel, wicked people. Poor Elaine.’
‘What are you saying?’ Mrs Constantine asked unsympathetically.
‘Why – I talk of the love of Tom and Elaine,’ Mrs Grose cried out. ‘How the family put a stop to it, being ambitious and thinking Elaine unsuitable for Tom. Did she not tell you? They sent him away and she was forced to stay on there, though they mistrusted her, just to keep some connection with him. Thus, she lost her health. I’m surprised you do not know. And now this – ah, it is too bad.’ She paused. ‘Marguerite must go and bring her back.’
‘Perhaps. If it seems wise,’ Mrs Constantine said.
Mrs Grose looked startled. ‘There can be no question – she must be brought back.’ She added harshly, ‘No doubt you find this situation troublesome.’ She turned and was about to go upstairs again when she added, ‘I take it there is no objection to my staying on to get more news of dear Elaine. If necessary I will go to Scotland with Marguerite.’
Mrs Constantine’s lips pursed. ‘That will be satisfactory,’ was all she said, then went into the kitchen and disturbed Jenny and Polly by commanding an instant turn-out of all kitchen cupboards and larders.
Alone in her bedroom Mrs Grose sat down heavily. She looked about the peaceful room and said aloud softly to the empty air, ‘Where are you now? Where have you gone to? You are growing stronger with our help, that I know. We are feeding you. We are helping you. What will you do for us?’
Forty-Three
Justin and Flora crossed St Mark’s Place in Venice, hand in hand. They would take some coffee at one of the open-air cafes there. Justin, tall and strong in his white suit and Panama hat, trod lightly, joyfully across the square, so happy, and so proud to be leading his beautiful Flora in her white lawn dress. They h
ad arrived the previous night – the honeymoon was a success. Flora had been, understandably enough, nervous about the coming physical relations between them. Justin himself, though his role was to pretend otherwise, nearly as apprehensive. He had been told by his father – not to mention several friends – to be gentle with his bride, warned that sometimes a marriage was made or broken forever on its first night. But how was he to put this good advice into practice? Obviously one could not treat a wife, even less a new bride, in the same way as a willing shopgirl or milliner. On the other hand, if one did not treat her that way, then how did one treat her? But somehow the problem had been solved. Flora, startled, as of course she would be, had not shown any signs of the unbalanced sensuality she had demonstrated so alarmingly during the courtship, but affectionate and warm, had welcomed him to her. Now Justin, overcome with love fulfilled, thought himself the happiest man in the world.
Last night Flora, her arms around him, had whispered, ‘You have laid all my ghosts for me.’ Justin was a little puzzled – what ghosts could ever have haunted Flora, that sheltered girl from an untroubled family? But he closed his arms more strongly about her and said, ‘There’ll be no more ghosts. I’m here. I’ll always be with you.’
That morning they had slept late and breakfasted on their balcony, in full sunshine, looking over the Grand Canal and its gondolas. Opposite, on the other side of the wide stretch of water, domes and spires gleamed like gold. To one side of them the city hummed and bustled, to the other lay open sea.
The sky had clouded later on, though. The air remained warm, very warm, and as they crossed the square to the cafe Justin turned and said to Flora, ‘There are signs of a storm.’ Even as he spoke there was a clap of thunder. The heavens opened and a sheet of water came down. Within instants they were soaked. Their clothes clung to them. Flora, laughing, stopped and shook her hat. Water cascaded from it. The effect was exactly as if they had been standing beneath a window out of which someone had suddenly emptied a bucket. Still laughing, Flora picked up her wet skirt and began to run across the square, in sheets of rain, towards the shelter of the cafe, looking over her shoulder at Justin as she sped towards the tables, which had quickly emptied of people. ‘Run, Justin, run,’ she cried.
It was like this, running, laughing back at him, one hand clutching up a soaking dress, the other holding her dripping straw hat outflung, that Justin was to remember Flora, for the rest of his short life.
* * *
They returned to the hotel to change out of their wet clothes. The sight of Flora, a little bashful, taking off a wet chemise roused Justin’s feelings. He went to her and embraced her. Shyly she put her arms around him. They kissed. Then, wide-eyed, she said, ‘Justin. It is only eleven o’clock.’
‘These things do not go by the clock,’ he told her and kissed her again.
It was as they lay on the bed making love that he felt Flora, who was beneath him, stiffen, then shudder. Her face was ashen, her eyes wide. She wore an expression of anguish. It was the moment Justin had seen in his wildest nightmares, the face of a woman appalled by the brutal realities of lovemaking. Yet she had not been like that the night before. He raised himself up, sat beside her. ‘What is it, dearest?’ he whispered down at the terrified Flora.
‘Oh look,’ she said, raising with difficulty an arm that seemed heavy as lead. ‘Oh look.’
He turned to the window. This was masked by net curtains, the damask curtains beside it being undrawn. There was a little balcony beyond. Had Flora perhaps glimpsed some villainous person looking on the balcony outside? He could see no one.
‘Did you see someone?’ he asked.
‘Can’t you see? No – you cannot,’ she said brokenly. Then. ‘Aah. He is gone.’
‘Who, Flora, who?’ Justin said urgently. He grasped her shoulder. ‘What can you see?’ He jumped up as he was and ran to the window. He hauled back the net curtain and peered out. There was no one on the balcony.
What had frightened Flora was no intruder of an ordinary kind. Outlined against the window had been Miles, as she had seen him only a day earlier in the church. Even as Justin returned to the bed and began to question her – ‘What did you see? Was it a person? What was he like?’ – she began to hear whispers, unseen whisperers, a man and a woman, in the room. ‘Flora, I am going out. Do not tell Mrs Grose. Flora, you are my little friend. There is something I must tell you.’ Then the voices began to speak together, ‘No – Quint, no, the child will see. Come here, my darling, let me show you this. Oh, love, come here and let me love you. Hush – the children will hear us. There, there, my darling.’ The voices ran on, ‘Oh look, the sun is out again. What is the capital of Peru? There is a blackbird’s nest. See the eggs. Miles, there is a heron. Take Flora to the lake’s edge. Come here my darling. No, the children will see, hear, look, listen. Take your coat, the wind is sharp. Oh, come to me, my love.’
There was the whispering, the sound of a footstep, the rustle of a skirt, there was Justin’s questioning, wild now, with anxiety as Flora lay there, rigid, unable to speak for the voices around her. At length she gave one, anguished cry, ‘Miles! Save me!’ Then she lapsed into something between consciousness and coma.
The couple returned to England with a nurse a few days later.
Forty-Four
It took one telephone call from Henry Reeve to Harold Brett’s legal office to reassure Tom’s father. Henry represented himself as an old friend of the family of the Misses Selsden. The two men agreed, implicitly, on an account of Elaine’s visit to Edinburgh which would be palatable for listeners. So relieved was Harold Brett, in fact, that he took it on himself to make enquiries at the clinic and communicate them to Henry. The matron there confirmed that Elaine was in a much calmer frame of mind and required, according to her doctor, no more than a further week of treatment at the clinic, and that would be merely so that they could assure themselves her cure was permanent.
‘It would seem,’ Brett said bluffly, man-to-man, to Henry over the telephone, ‘no more than a dangerous fit of female hysteria, mimicking the symptoms of graver mental disturbance. Apparently this is not uncommon.’
‘I’m relieved to hear it,’ Henry told him. He was not altogether confident about the diagnosis but conveyed it to Marguerite, who seemed calmed by the news.
During the telephone calls she had been sitting in the garden. He told her Harold Brett had agreed to cover the cost of Elaine’s treatment at the sanatorium and of her journey back to Strand when she was considered well enough to be discharged, though in fact he had agreed with Brett that he would cover the costs himself.
‘And Tom?’ asked Marguerite.
‘They’ll keep Tom at home, working in his father’s office,’ Henry told her. ‘Brett insists he and Elaine must not meet, at least for the time being. What emerged,’ he said carefully, ‘was that your sister had been keeping vigil outside the house of Flora Bennett, in the days before her wedding. They think the spectacle of so much happiness in the life her former pupil affected her badly.’
Marguerite sighed. ‘I expect that is true.’ She hesitated. ‘Elaine has been ill. She finds it hard to be content with her lot.’
‘And do you?’ he asked.
‘Do I find it hard to accept my lot?’ she smiled. ‘I have had little time to consider it since I left Russia.’
‘Would you like to return there?’
‘I think it would be rash to do so for a while,’ she told him. ‘Matters are so unsettled at present. When we still had no news of Elaine I took a post at Westwood Academy, which is a few miles from Strand, as you may know. But now Elaine is returning … Mrs Constantine has gallantly said she will keep me for a month or so, but I feel I cannot impose on her for much longer. We have been very troublesome to her already. And she has been so kind. And Mrs Grose is still there …’ she added doubtfully.
‘Did you know,’ he said bluntly, ‘that Bly is sold?’
‘I heard it had been,’ she replied.
&n
bsp; ‘No. What I mean is, do you know where Mrs Grose plans to reside? Has she mentioned it to you?’
Marguerite shook her head, ‘She has not,’ she replied.
Henry said no more on the topic. He said encouragingly, ‘Well, it might be practical to take the post at Miss Greenslade’s Academy.’
‘Elaine’s reappearance changes things,’ she said. She stood up. ‘However, Mr Reeve, I must not throw all our decisions on to you. You have done enough, more than enough, this morning. In fact, you have solved everything.’
‘I only wish I had,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you will reward me by dining with me this evening? My friends the Aliens are coming.’
‘If you wish – I should be most pleased,’ said Marguerite, and, somewhat confused by this sudden invitation, took her leave. Henry stood up and went to his kitchen to order a dinner for two people – ‘but set the table for four,’ he told his housekeeper.
‘For four, Mr Reeve?’
‘Yes,’ he told her. ‘Dinner for two, but the table will be set for four.’
He was determined to dine alone with Marguerite. The Aliens would not arrive – simply because he did not plan to invite them.
Mrs Grose and Mrs Constantine were waiting together in the parlour when Marguerite returned. Marguerite conveyed the news that Elaine was better, and that after a week’s convalescence would be fit to return home. Mr Brett, she added, would generously cover all expenses. ‘And so he ought,’ Mrs Grose said instantly. To this Marguerite made no answer. Mrs Constantine, though, joined battle. ‘He did not ask Miss Selsden to his house to make trouble. If she was to be married, it was her future husband’s job to go to make things right with his family.’
‘After the way they treated her …’ said Mrs Grose.
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