by Sara Seale
Jimsy’s appearance with a telegram for Duff was a welcome interruption, allowing her a brief respite for further reflection, for the drab prospect of the unknown homes and identical streets of places like Clapham was beginning to weigh on Harriet as the more impossible alternative of the two.
The crisp crackle of paper as Duff, having read his telegram, crumpled it into a ball, brought her back from her thoughts.
“Well,” he said with the clipped harshness remembered from their first meeting, “it’s too late for repentance, or indeed, for very much choice. They won’t have you back.”
She stared back at him without real comprehension. “Was that from Matron? But I thought you said—”
“That I’d already heard? So I had, but the first wire was one requesting further information.”
“Then what did you reply?”
“That you’d eloped with me, of course.”
“What!” She sat up so suddenly that pain shot up her injured ankle, making her screw her eyes shut in momentary anguish. When she opened them again she saw him grinning at her and said indignantly: “You didn’t say anything of the kind!”
“Well, perhaps I didn’t, but however I worded the message, the result’s the same, so you haven’t much choice now, have you, Miss Jones?”
She looked tired and rather plain with the freckles standing out on her white face. “No, I haven’t much choice, I suppose, if you won’t help me,” she said. “I can’t even get away from here if it means walking. I’m your prisoner. Do you have dungeons?”
“You don’t sound quite as regretful as you should; I suspect you’re weakening. We don’t run to dungeons, I’m afraid.”
His voice had become cajoling and surprisingly gentle, though his eyes told her he was not prepared to stand any more nonsense, and quite suddenly she was weeping, whether with relief that the authorities had taken matters out of her hands, or in the desire for comfort that a child feels when it has at last given in, she hardly knew, for it no longer seemed important. She was aware of Duff getting to his feet with an abrupt exclamation, and expected a fresh rebuke for that irritating predilection to tears, but he merely came and sat beside her on the sofa and silently proffered his handkerchief, then quite unexpectedly pulled her into his arms and told her to cry it out and be done with it.
“Listen, you ridiculous child!” he said above her head, “you didn’t really imagine anyone could force you into marriage these days, did you? I must confess that I still think you’d be better off with the protection of my name and all that goes with it than struggling for existence in a world for which you seem woefully unfitted, but I’m not going to knock you over the head to convince you, so the choice is yours, my dear. Don’t cry so bitterly, Harriet, I won’t badger you any more.”
He spoke with a rough tenderness as if compassion did not come easily to him, but he could not have chosen a surer way to break down her defences if he had planned it deliberately, for he seemed to Harriet in that moment, the strange embodiment of all her adolescent dreams; father-figure, protector, even the benevolent trustee who would one day adopt her, conjured up by her invention. The fact that he would also be her husband had no more significance than would the discovery of some unknown relative whom she would claim as her own.
“You won’t need to b-badger me, Mr. Lonnegan,” she said at last, smiling up at him through her tears. “As the choice is mine, after all, I—I’ll say yes, and th-thank you.”
“So you’ve decided to bum your boats once again, have you?” he said. “I have to warn you, young lady, that it will be for the last time.”
“You don’t need to warn me, but you—you will be burning yours, too,” she replied, feeling that in his case the burning of boats might have more serious repercussions that in her own.
“Mine were burnt long ago, so don’t let’s have any doubts on that score,” he said rather curtly. “No regrets, no comparisons, the slate wiped clean like the past, and the future—well, the future could hold surprises for us both. Now, for the last time, you’re sure, Harriet—because there’ll be no going back after today?”
“Yes, I’m sure. I—I hope I’ll make a satisfactory wife, Mr. Lonnegan.”
“I hope so too, and hadn’t you better get used to using my Christian name? Perhaps, incidentally, you would like to know what your, good lady at Ogilvy Manor really said?”
His smile was a little mocking as he suddenly tossed the crumpled telegram into her lap and she smoothed it out wonderingly. Return Jones on next boat immediately, she read, and her eyes seemed to grow as large as saucers; boat will be met and fare reimbursed. Regret inconvenience.
“What!” exclaimed Harriet, her cheeks scarlet with outrage. “I wouldn’t have believed it of you! Of all the dirty, low-down tricks, letting me think—Return Jones on next boat, indeed—as if I was a lost parcel!”
“But I needn’t have shown it to you,” he pointed out mildly, watching with interest the conflicting struggle in her face, then she suddenly gave him a most unexpected grin which momentarily lent her rather solemn little face the look of a mischievous urchin and caused him much surprise. Her teeth, he noticed, though small and white, had an engaging irregularity.
“Yes, that’s true,” she conceded fairly, after serious consideration, then a trace of the grin returned. “Well, at least I’ll get my own back when Matron duns me for a subscription at Christmas—she will, you know, once she knows I’m married to a Castle. Jones, indeed!”
His quick smile was sympathetic, but his expression was a little rueful as he got up and went back to his chair. He had got what he wanted, with possibly more trust and compliance than he deserved, but it would, in different circumstances, he reflected wryly, have been far more sensible to adopt her.
CHAPTER FOUR
THEY were to be married by special licence at the parish church in Knockferry, the nearest market town, and the few days which elapsed before the ceremony seemed to be filled with visits from lawyers and clergymen and nameless officials on unspecified business and even doctors.
Harriet did not, however, understand the necessity for such speed in hurrying on the marriage until Jimsy enlightened her.
“It wouldn’t be dacent to stop at the Castle whilst they called the banns, young miss,” he told her reprovingly. “An’ where else could you go, an’ yourself cast up out of the fog like a piece of flotsam?”
Harriet had not altogether cared to be likened to a piece of flotsam, but she was grateful that the servants showed such little surprise at these hurried nuptials, and appeared to accept her without resentment. Agnes of the uncertain temper, it was true, had looked her over with a belligerent eye and made it plain that she would brook no interference in the kitchen, and the untrained Molly, learning that the Castle guest she had thought a little queer in the head was to become the new mistress, gave way to shrieks of hysterical mirth and had to be banished to the scullery with sharp words from Jimsy; the land workers, whose wives supplied the casual labour in the house, stared at her incuriously and went away, scratching their heads.
“Och! There’s no accountin’ for the tastes of the quality, an’ they not troubled with choosin’ a woman for wurrk,” was one remark overheard. “But wouldn’t you think, now, Mick, he’d’ve gone for one of the Miss Ryans if it’s heirs he’s after, an’ they with the strong hocks under thim, an’ the grand quarters of brood mares?”
The question of heirs, thought Harriet ruefully, was no doubt sufficient reason for the most unlikely of unions in the eyes of a community accustomed to the seriousness of stock breeding and the misfortune of no male heir for Castle Clooney, but by the terms of his proposition, it was evidently not the matter uppermost in Duff Lonnegan’s mind. Since to Harriet the main object for his marriage still seemed to be concern for his daughter’s welfare, she tried to learn something about the child from Jimsy, but he would only say that the little miss had lacked too long for the right company and would be the better for some learning in the proper way to beh
ave.
“Has she no manners, then?” Harriet asked, feeling a little daunted by the prospect of an undisciplined Irish hooligan.
“Och! Manners in children is onnatural entoirely. She was born ould, that wan.”
There seemed, thought Harriet, to be little place for Nonie, for Duff seldom mentioned her except with that suggestion of rough regret at nature’s perverse trick in endowing the child with his own looks and not her lovely mother’s. Harriet revisited Kitty’s room to steal another look at her portrait and try to discover some likeness in the child, but she found that both portrait and easel had been removed, together with the books bearing Sam’s signature and the discarded clutter of girlish mementoes which had filled the drawers of the little chest.
The discovery gave her an odd little sense of shock. Was this Duffy’s way of warning her not to trespass, or was it simply a ruthless severing with the past? No regrets ... no comparisons ... the slate wiped clean ... he had said, but he had spoken with faint bitterness, and once again Harriet’s curiosity was aroused. Who was this Sam whose gifts had been sufficiently significant to banish with the portrait? Had he loved poor, imprisoned Kitty, or even been her lover? Harriet gave a little shiver, imagining what discovery might have led to, for she did not think that the dark, ugly stranger who was so soon to be her own husband would give much quarter if he learnt he had been deceived, then she left the room to seek the more friendly familiarity of the snug, chiding herself for letting her imagination run riot yet again.
She had not expected to find Duff already there, evidently back early from his daily rounds of his tenancies, and jumped when he remarked with his disconcerting trick of catching her out:
“Well, have you changed your mind?”
“What about?” she stammered, her attention upon Kurt who had lifted his head and after investigating her with an exploratory nose as he had on that foggy day, flattened his ears to his skull in sudden ingratiation and miraculously uncurled an inquisitive tongue to lick her. “Did you see that, Duff? He kissed me—he actually licked me!”
“Well, I shall administer a different kind of licking if you don’t pay attention to me,” he retorted, but he smiled all the same at the ridiculous look of shining gratitude she bestowed alike on the dog and himself. “I asked you if you’d changed your mind, meaning about marrying me, but it will be too late if you have, in any case.”
“Then why did you ask?” she said not unreasonably, and he shot her a sharp look as if he suspected pertness, then smiled.
“A sensible retort, and I don’t know why I asked. The wedding’s set for tomorrow.”
“Oh!”
“Is that all you have to say?”
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” she replied a little helplessly. She had no idea how long such matters as a special licence took to arrange and no one had enlightened her.
He leaned forward in his chair and touched her hair with an uncharacteristically hesitant gesture.
“I don’t know, either,” he said. “Perhaps I’m having last-minute qualms. “You’re so young Harriet, so utterly inexperienced, and filled with all sorts of romantic nonsense. I feel, I’m taking an advantage.”
“Do you—I mean have you perhaps had—had second thoughts yourself?” she stammered, wondering whether it was he who wished to change his mind, but his sudden smile was a little unkind.
“Never have second thoughts, my dear, or, if you do, sit on them firmly. I haven’t changed my mind, if that’s what you were hoping for, and it’s too late for you to recant that nice little preference for butter to bread and scrape, so let’s forget about the conventional heart-searchings that cast doubts on the wedding eve and get tomorrow’s itinerary cut and dried. Now—”
She sat on the rug patiently listening to all his instructions; no wedding guests because time was short and his social obligations negative; no reception for the same reason, but mild celebration for the tenants because that was expected of the Castle. Harriet asked if the little girl was to attend the ceremony, but was told rather shortly, no. Nonie hadn’t been told yet, and Duff thought it better to wait till the holidays with the new relationship already an established fact.
Later, as Harriet ate her dinner in solitary state, Duff having gone out, and the two dogs rather pointedly preferring to remain in the snug, she wondered whether Duff was indulging somewhere in the traditional stag party, but it seemed unlikely in view of the kind of marriage he was contemplating that he would consider there was anything much for the bridegroom to celebrate.
She went back to the snug when she had finished her dinner and tried to settle down with a book, but the silence of the big house seemed oppressive and presently she took herself up to bed and stood rather forlornly in the middle of the big room wondering what to wear on the morrow. All Duff’s careful arrangements had not covered the bride’s apparel, and she supposed he could hardly be expected to remember that she had arrived with one suitcase, and the suit she was wearing at the time had been ruined by bog-water. She inspected the meagre contents of the wardrobe, disconsolately aware that her hasty purchases, so satisfying at the time, were utterly unsuited to Irish country life; neither had she invested in a warm coat, thinking her old one would do since it had seemed more important to buy the cheap little cocktail dresses which she had imagined would be essential to gay life in an Irish castle.
Harriet sighed, selecting the least offensive garment from her wardrobe to brush and lay out in readiness for the next day. Her prospective bridegroom had certainly not succumbed to love at first sight, or shown any sign of courtship, neither, so far as she could judge, was there any dark impediment in his life, unless it was the discovery of his dead wife’s lover, which would hardly account for a second marriage so long after. That left only the child, a worthy motive, no doubt, but scarcely a matter for such haste. It still seemed foolish to Harriet that marriage should be made a condition for care in such circumstances, but no less foolish, she supposed, than her own willingness to oblige.
She fell asleep wondering where she would lay her head tomorrow night and whether her new husband would expect to share her bed, despite his assurance of a business arrangement. Rooms had been prepared, she knew, in another wing, but she had not seen them; they were, she had understood, the rooms always allotted to the presiding master and mistress of Clooney, so presumably Duff and his Kitty had already shared them. It was, she thought prosaically, on the last drowsy awareness of consciousness, a good thing that her affections were not at all engaged with the undemonstrative master of Clooney.
She awoke very early as darkness was just merging into the grey of dawn with an over-riding impulse to wash her hair. She was drying it, huddled by the fire which she had managed to get alight again, when Molly brought in her breakfast, and not only the milk but the whole contents of the tray nearly slid to the floor as the girl stood staring at her, open-mouthed.
“For the love of God! You’ll not be ready in time, and himself fit to throw a great passion an’ he waitin’ at the church door!” she exclaimed. “Kept waitin’ he’ll not be if his mind’s set on a thing. Aren’t you alarmed, miss?”
“Alarmed?”
“Nervous—your insides heavin’ at the thought—sure, I thought all brides was needing a drop of the craythur to see him through, an’ they swoonin’ away with apprehension.”
“I’m sorry to disappoint you, Molly, but I feel just as usual,” Harriet replied, reflecting that Molly, like herself, had obviously supped on too many romantic novels.
“Faith, you’re the quarest bride I ever see!” the girl observed in disappointed tones, and Harriet, knowing that whatever she might have said, she scarcely felt just as usual, asked if Molly would like to stay and help her get ready. It would at least, she thought, take her own mind off the unfamiliar events of the day.
As she made ready with the only bridal garments at her disposal, she could not altogether avoid a passing regret for the traditional glory of a white wedding
. Molly’s presence was helpful after all, for to her country eyes there was nothing wrong with the cheap new underclothes and badly made dress, though she, too, regretted the splendour of a white wedding.
“Still an’ all, ‘tis not the same, as Agnes says, an’ he a widower with his heart buried in the grave,” she said cheerfully.
Harriet gave a little shiver and started brushing out her hair, glad that she had woken early enough to wash it, for it was the only detail of her appearance that gave her satisfaction. Straight it might be, but it was thick and silky and could be coaxed into two shining crescents along the jaw-line, helping to hide the impoverished bones of her face, if not the freckles which powdered her cheeks and nose.
“Sure, it’s paid for washin’. I wonder you don’t take one of thim permanent waves to give it style,” observed Molly.
“It wouldn’t suit me. I haven’t the face for style,” Harriet said, going to the window to see what omen the day had brought her. There had been a frost, for rime still sparkled on the terrace and the bare branches of thorn and rowan; Cuchulain’s Island looked like a ripe purple plum in the still waters and the foothills on the far shore echoed the colour.
“How beautiful it is,” she murmured.
“Ah, sure the skies is smilin’ on you this day, and that’s a promise of good luck,” said Molly. “See, miss—I’ve remembered the charrms for good luck to a weddin’. Me garter for somethin’ borrowed, if you’ll not be affronted wearin’ it, your clothes is new, an’ here’s me blue headscarf, for ‘tis the only clean thing of that colour I could find.” Harriet spun round to thank her, the emotional tears which Molly had been cheated of ready to fall now.
“Ay-ah! Don’t start bawlin’ now or you’ll be desthroyed entoirely walkin’ down the aisle with red eyes an’ a shiny nose,” said Molly with rough kindness. “Where’s your hat?”