The Secret Woman

by Victoria Holt

  But I could not think of the passing of the years as lightly as she could.

  We did not stay overnight on that occasion, but went straight down to my school in Sherborne, where my parents put up at a hotel nearby and they stayed there until they returned to India. I was touched by this because I knew that in London my mother would have led the kind of life that she loved. “We wanted you to know we weren’t far off if school became a little trying just at first,” she told me. I liked to think that her divergence was her love for my father and myself, for one would not have expected a butterfly to be capable of so much love and understanding.

  I think I began to hate Aunt Charlotte when she criticized my mother.

  “Featherbrained,” she said. “I could never understand your father.”

  “I could understand him,” I retorted firmly. “I could understand anyone. She is different from other people.” And I hoped my withering look conveyed that “other people” meant Aunt Charlotte.

  The first year at school was the hardest to endure, but the holidays were more so. I even made plans to stow away on a ship that was going to India. I made Ellen, who accompanied me on my walks, take me down to the docks where I would gaze longingly at the ships and wonder where they were going.

  “That’s a ship of the Lady Line,” Ellen would tell me proudly. “She belongs to the Creditons.” And I would gaze at her while Ellen pointed out her beauties to me. “That’s a clipper,” she would say. “One of the fastest ships that ever sailed. It goes out and brings back wool from Australia and tea from China. Oh, look at her. Did you ever see such a beautiful barque!”

  Ellen prided herself on her knowledge. She was a Langmouth girl and I remembered that Langmouth owed its prosperity to the Creditons; moreover she had an added distinction: her sister Edith was a housemaid up at Castle Crediton. And she would take me to see that—but only from the outside of course—before I was many days older.

  Because I dreamed of running away to India I was fascinated by the ships. It seemed romantic that they should roam round the world loading and unloading their cargoes—bananas and tea, oranges and wood pulp for making paper in the big factory which the Creditons had founded and which, Ellen told me, provided work for many people of Langmouth. There was the grand new dock which had been recently opened by Lady Crediton herself. There was a “one,” said Ellen. She had been beside Sir Edward in everything he had done and you would hardly have expected that from a lady, would you?

  I replied that I would expect anything from the Creditons.

  Ellen nodded approval. I was beginning to know something of the place in which I lived. Oh, it was a sight she told me to see a ship come into harbor or sail away—to see the white canvas billowing in the wind and the gulls screaming and whirling around. I began to agree with her. There were Ladies—she told me—Mermaids and Amazons in the Lady line. It was Sir Edward’s tribute to Lady Crediton, who had stood with him all the time and had a business head which was remarkable for a woman.

  “It’s really very romantic,” said Ellen.

  Of course it was. The Creditons were romantic. They were clever, rich, and in fact superhuman, I pointed out.

  “And don’t you be saucy,” said Ellen to that.

  She showed me Castle Crediton. It was built high on the cliff facing out to the sea. An enormous gray stone fortress, with its battlemented towers and a keep, it was just like a castle. Wasn’t this a little ostentatious, I asked, because people did not build castles now, so this was not a real castle. It had only stood there for fifty years. It was a little deceitful, wasn’t it, to make it look as though the Normans had built it?

  Ellen looked about her furtively as though she expected me to be struck dumb for uttering such blasphemy. It was clear that I was a newcomer to Langmouth and had not yet discovered the power of the Creditons.

  But Ellen it was who interested me in Langmouth and to be interested in Langmouth meant to be interested in the Creditons. Ellen had heard tales from her parents. Once…not very long ago, Langmouth had not been the grand town it was today. There was no Theatre Royal; there were no elegant houses built on the cliffs overlooking the bridge. Many of the streets were narrow and cobbled and it wasn’t safe to wander out to the docks. Of course the fine Edward Dock had not been built then. But in the old days the ships used to sail out to Africa to capture slaves. Ellen’s father could remember their being auctioned in the sheds on the docks. Gentlemen came all the way from the West Indies to bargain for them and take them off to work on their sugar plantations. That was all over. It was very different now. Sir Edward Crediton had come along; he had modernized the place; he had started the Lady Line; and although Langmouth’s very situation and its excellent harbor had given it some significance, it could never have been the town it was today but for the magnificent Creditons.

  It was Ellen who made life bearable for me during that first year. I never could be fond of Mrs. Morton; she was too much like Aunt Charlotte. Her face seemed like a door that was kept tightly shut; her eyes were windows—too small to show what was behind them and they were obscurely curtained—inscrutable; she did not want me in the house. I quickly learned that. She complained of me to Aunt Charlotte. I had brought in mud from the garden on my boots, I had left the soap in the water so that half the tablet was wasted (Aunt Charlotte was very parsimonious and hated spending money except to buy antiques), I had broken the china teacup which was a part of the set. Mrs. Morton never complained to me; she was icily polite. Had she raged at me or accused me to my face I could have liked her better. Then there was plump Mrs. Buckle who mixed the beeswax and turpentine, polished the precious pieces and kept a watch for that ever threatening enemy: woodworm. She was talkative and I found her company as stimulating as that of Ellen.

  I began to have odd fancies about the Queen’s House. I pictured how it must have looked years ago when it had been treated as a house. In the hall there would have been an oak chest, a refectory table and a suit of armor at the foot of the beautiful staircase. The walls would have been decorated with the family portraits, not the occasional picture, and those enormous tapestries which were hung irrespective of color—sometimes one over another. I used to fancy that the house resented what had been done to it. All those chairs and tables, cabinets, bureaus, and clocks ticking away sometimes fussily as though exasperated with their surroundings, sometimes angrily so that they sounded ominous.

  I told Ellen that they said “Hurry up! Hurry up!” sometimes to remind us that the time was passing and we were growing older every day.

  “As if we need reminding of that!” cried Mrs. Buckle, three chins shaking with laughter.

  Ellen jerked a finger at me. “Missing her Ma and Pa, that’s what. Waiting for the time when they come and get her.”

  I agreed. “But when I haven’t done my holiday task they remind me of that. Time can remind you of quickness and slowness but it always seems to warn.”

  “The things she says!” commented Ellen.

  And Mrs. Buckle’s plump form shivered like a jelly with secret mirth.

  But I was fascinated by the Queen’s House and by Aunt Charlotte. She was no ordinary woman any more than the Queen’s House was an ordinary house. At first I was obsessed by the idea that the house was a living personality—and that it hated us all because we were in the conspiracy to make it merely a store for goods—precious as they were.

  “The ghosts of people who lived here are angry because Aunt Charlotte has made their home unrecognizable,” I told Ellen and Mrs. Buckle.

  “Lord a’ mercy!” cried Mrs. Buckle.

  Ellen said it wasn’t right to talk of such things.

  But I insisted on talking. “One day,” I said, “the ghosts of the house will rise up and something fearful will happen.”

  That was in the first months. Later my feelings toward Aunt Charlotte changed and although I could never love her, I
respected her.

  Practical in the extreme, down to earth, unromantic, she did not see the Queen’s House as I saw it. To her it was rooms within walls—ancient it was true and the sole virtue in this was that it made an appropriate setting for her pieces. There was only one room in the house which she allowed to keep its character and she had even come to this decision for business reasons. This was the room in which Queen Elizabeth was reputed to have slept. There was even the Elizabethan bed, reputed to be the bed itself; and as a concession to this legend—if legend it was—everything in the room was Tudor. It was for business, she said hurriedly. Many people came to see this room; it put them in the right “mood”; they were fascinated and because of this prepared to pay the price she asked.

  I often went to that room and found some comfort there. I used to say to myself: “The past is on my side…against Aunt Charlotte. The ghosts feel my sympathy.” That was my fanciful notion. And during those months I needed sympathy.

  I used to stand in that room and touch the bedposts and think of the famous Tilbury speech which my father had often quoted to me. “I know I have the body of a weak, feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king—and of a king of England too…” And then I was as certain that I would come through this unhappy period as she had been of victory over the Spaniards.

  So it was understandable that the house offered me compensation and I began to feel that it was alive. I became familiar with its night noises—the sudden inexplicable creak of a floorboard, the rattle of a window, and how when the wind moaned through the branches of the chestnut tree it sounded like whispering voices.

  There were days when Aunt Charlotte went away to buy. She would visit sales at old houses sometimes quite far away and after she returned we would be more cluttered than ever. Aunt Charlotte had a shop in the center of the town and there she displayed certain pieces but most of the goods were in the house and strangers were constantly visiting us.

  Miss Beringer spent all her time at the shop to allow Aunt Charlotte to absent herself, but Aunt Charlotte said the woman was a fool and had little appreciation of values. That was not true; it merely meant that Miss Beringer lacked Aunt Charlotte’s knowledge. But Aunt Charlotte was so efficient herself that she thought most people fools.

  For at least a year I was what Aunt Charlotte would call “a cross,” in other words a burden; but that changed suddenly. It was a table which caught my attention. I was suddenly excited merely to look at it and I was crouching on the floor examining the carvings on the legs when Aunt Charlotte discovered me. She squatted on the floor beside me.

  “Rather a fine example,” she said gruffly.

  “It’s French, isn’t it?” I asked.

  Her lips turned up at the corners which was as near to a smile as she could get.

  She nodded. “It’s unsigned but I believe it’s the work of René Dubois. I thought at first his father Jacques was responsible for it, but I fancy it’s a year or two later. That green and gold lacquer on the oak carcase, you see! And look at those bronze mounts.”

  I looked and found myself touching it reverently.

  “It would be the end of the eighteenth century,” I hazarded.

  “No, no.” She shook her head impatiently. “Fifty years early. Mid-eighteenth century.”

  After that our relationship changed. She would sometimes call me and say: “Here! What do you think of this? What do you notice about it?” At first I felt a certain desire to score over her, to show her that I knew something about her precious goods; but later it became a great interest to me and I began to understand the difference between the furniture of various countries and to recognize period by certain features.

  One day Aunt Charlotte went so far as to admit: “You know as much as that fool Beringer.” But that was when she was particularly incensed by that long suffering lady.

  But as far as I was concerned the Queen’s House took on a new fascination. I began to know certain pieces, to regard them as old friends. Mrs. Buckle dusting with deft but careful hands said: “Here, are you going to be another Miss Charlotte Brett, Miss Anna?”

  That startled me; I felt then as though I wanted to run away.

  It was one morning in the middle of the summer holidays, about four years after my parents had brought me to England, when Ellen came to my room and told me that Aunt Charlotte wished to see me at once. Ellen looked scared and I asked if anything was wrong.

  “I’ve not been told, miss,” said Ellen, but I was aware that she knew something.

  I made my way—one made one’s way in the Queen’s House—to Aunt Charlotte’s sitting room.

  There she was, seated with papers before her, for she used the place as her office. Her desk on that day was a sturdy refectory table—sixteenth-century English, of a type that owed its charm to its age rather than its beauty. She sat very upright on a rather heavy chair of the Yorkshire-Derbyshire type of carved and turned oak, of much later period than the table, but as strong and sturdy. She chose these strong pieces for use while they were in the house. The rest of the office did not match the table and chair. An exquisite piece of tapestry hung on the wall. I knew it to be of the Flemish school, and guessed it would not be there for long; and crowded together were heavy oak pieces from Germany side by side with a delicate French eighteenth-century commode and two pieces in the Boulle tradition. I noticed the change in myself. I could sum up the contents of a room, date them and note their qualities even while I was eager to know what this summons meant.

  “Sit down,” said Aunt Charlotte, and her expression was more grim than usual.

  I sat and she went on in her brusque way. “Your mother is dead. It was cholera.”

  How like her to shatter my future with two brief sentences. The thought of reunion had been like a lifebelt, which had prevented my being submerged in the misery of my loneliness. And she said it calmly like that. Dead…of cholera.

  She looked at me fearfully; she hated any display of emotion.

  “Go to your room. I’ll send Ellen up with some hot milk.”

  Hot milk! Did she think that could console me?

  “I’ve no doubt,” she said, “your father will be writing to you. He will have made arrangements.”

  I hated her then, which was wrong for she was breaking the news in the only way she considered possible. She was offering me hot milk and my father’s arrangements to console me for the loss of my beloved mother.

  Two

  My father did write to me. We shared our grief, he said; he would not dwell on that. The death of his beloved wife and my dear mother had meant his making great changes. He was thankful that I was in the hands of his dear sister, my Aunt Charlotte, on whose good sense and great virtue he relied. It was a great comfort to him to know that I was in such hands. He trusted I was suitably grateful. He thought he would be leaving India shortly. He had asked to be transferred and he had good friends at the War Office. He had received the utmost sympathy and as there was trouble brewing in other parts of the world, he believed that very soon he would be doing his duty in another field.

  I felt as though I were caught in a web, as though the house was laughing at me. “You belong to us now!” it seemed to say. “Don’t imagine because your Aunt Charlotte has filled the house with these alien ghosts you have ousted us.” What foolish thoughts. It was fortunate that I kept them to myself. Only Ellen and Mrs. Buckle thought me an odd child, but even Mrs. Morton had some sympathy for me. I heard her say to Miss Beringer that people shouldn’t have children unless they could look after them. It wasn’t natural for fathers and mothers to be on one side of the world and their children on another in the hands of those who knew nothing of them and paid more attention to a piece of wood—and often riddled with the worm at that! As for me I had to face the fact that I should never see my mother again. I kept remembering scraps of her conversation; I idealized her beauty. I sa
w her in the figures on a Grecian vase, in the carving of a tallboy, in the gilded beauty supporting a seventeenth-century mirror. I would never forget her; the hope of that wonderful life she had promised me had gone and I was certain now that the ugly duckling would never turn into a swan. Sometimes when I had looked into old mirrors—some of metal, others of mottled glass—I had seen her face, not my own rather sallow one with the heavy dark hair which was the same color as hers. My deep-set dark eyes were like hers too; but the resemblance ended there for my face was too thin, my nose a little too sharp. How was it that two people who were fundamentally alike could look so different? I lacked her sparkle, her gaiety, but when she was alive I could imagine myself growing like her. After she was dead I could not.

  “It’s a long time since you’ve seen her,” soothed Ellen, seeking to offer comfort with the hot milk.

  “Children forget, quick as lightning,” I heard her say to Mrs. Buckle.

  And I thought: Never. Never. I shall always remember.

  Everyone tried to be kind—even Aunt Charlotte. She offered me the greatest consolation she could think of.

  “I have to go along to see a piece. I’ll take you with me. It’s at Castle Crediton.”

  “Are they selling something?” I stammered.

  “Why else should we go there?” demanded Aunt Charlotte.

  For the first time since my mother’s death I forgot her. I was sorry afterward and apologized to my reflection in the mirror where instead of my own face I made myself see hers, but I could not help the excitement which came to me at the prospect of visiting Castle Crediton. I remembered vividly the first time I had seen it and my mother’s comments and I wanted to know more about that important family.

  It was fortunate that I had learned to hide my emotions and that Aunt Charlotte had no notion of how I was feeling as we drove under the stone gatehouse and looked up at the conical turrets.