by John Harwood
“That is monstrous—absurd. No one could possibly believe you mad.”
“You forget the family history, dearest. Edmund regards my desire to sell that wretched mausoleum as proof in itself.”
“All the same . . . do you think, if we were caught, that you really might be sent to prison?”
“If you were able to swear that you came away willingly, and that Naylor was as much the aggressor as I, probably not. But you would be locked away in your father’s house—that is what they are counting on—in no position to swear to anything, leaving them free to blacken my character. So yes, I might very well be convicted and imprisoned, assuming that Edmund did not contrive to have me certified, which would be far worse—but fear not, my darling; in ten days’ time we shall be married in law, and that will draw most of their teeth.”
“Most?”
“Well, they could still have me arrested and thrown in gaol to await my trial. And then, if your father had you kidnapped—it would be illegal, but he might still risk it—they could contend that I was insane at the time of our marriage, and try to have the marriage annulled. Until you come of age in November, we must be on our guard. But don’t look so alarmed, dearest: we shall be gone long before then. I shall call at the shipping agent’s this afternoon, and see what sailings are available.”
“Shall we not see Emily, then, before we leave?” I asked, striving to conceal my disappointment.
“Your cousin’s house is likely to be watched. But,” he added, studying my face, “I know how much it means to you; we shall find a way of throwing them off the scent.”
“Must you go back today? Is it safe? What if Mr. Carburton has told your brother that he is writing to you at Dunbar?”
“I was on my guard from the moment I opened the letter—which I did in the post office, thinking it was the deed—and saw nothing suspicious; I am certain I wasn’t followed. There is always that danger, yes: the devil of it is, I must be able to communicate with Carburton about the sale, and so if we move, the same difficulty will arise. And it will be easier to prove our three weeks’ residence if we remain here. From now on, I shall go to Dunbar alone; if I have to run for it, that will give me a better chance of escaping. You must try not to worry too much; the only danger is at the post office, and I shall be watching like a hawk.”
“But if Mr. Carburton has taken your brother’s side? . . .”
“That is why I must go back: I have decided to consult a medical man and have him write me a certificate of sanity. Unusual, I know, but if you can be certified insane, why not the reverse? I shall send it straight to Carburton, with instructions to draw up the deed of sale and advance me a further two hundred and fifty pounds. I am the heir, after all, and he is already acting for me; I think, when it comes to it, he will have to do as I ask. And now I must be off; it may take me several hours, but the sooner it is done, the sooner we can set sail.”
Watching him stride away across the grass, I realised that, in spite of the threat hanging over us, I no longer wanted to live abroad. We had talked a great deal—or rather Felix had talked, and I had listened, utterly content in his embrace—of faraway cities like Rio de Janeiro: places he had never seen, but could conjure, with the utmost vividness, from fragments he had read and pictures he had glimpsed, as if recalling a vision of heaven. And yet it had never seemed quite real to me; reality was the bed we lay in, the sun on the coverlet in the mornings, the salt air wafting in from the sea, the beating of his heart against mine. I had said to myself, “I can be happy anywhere Felix is happy,” and believed it, but now, newly conscious of the damp stains on the wallpaper and the musty odor rising from the carpet, I envisaged a bleak procession of furnished rooms and lodgings, and my spirit rose up in revolt and said, “No, I want us to live here, in our own country, and have a house of our own, a place where our children can grow up amongst friends, and music, and laughter, not as strangers in a strange land.” Yet when we had talked in Regent’s Park, the prospect had seemed wholly delightful. What had come over me? I reproached myself for inconstancy of feeling and for putting my own comfort above Felix’s, but I could not recapture whatever it was I had felt that day.
I emerged from my reverie to find that Felix had vanished from sight. I had locked the front door behind him, but what of the others? The house was surrounded on three sides by trees, which until then had looked peaceful and sheltering, but now seemed alive with shadows. The front windows looked over a low stone wall, beyond which was an expanse of meadow, then a long curving line of pale sand, and the sea stretching toward the horizon. If you went out by the kitchen door at the back, you could pick your way through the trees—the copse was very much overgrown, and choked in places with nettles—past the collapsed remains of another wall, and scramble down onto the Edinburgh road, in clear view of the village. We had never gone that way to Dunbar, having always taken the path along the coast.
I went around the ground floor, making sure that all the windows were latched and the kitchen door bolted. Fear prickled at my spine. I went on upstairs, forcing myself not to look back, and into our bedroom. Not a soul was in sight; only the ragged meadow, and an iron grey sea fading into mist. My head ached dully, and there was a griping in the pit of my stomach, which might have been apprehension, or simply the discomfort I had felt all day. I was shivering, too, but reluctant to light the fire, telling myself it was not really cold enough and trying to suppress the voice that whispered, The smoke will give you away.
In the end, I got into bed fully dressed, wrapping the chill bedclothes tightly around me until the shivering diminished, and I began to drift in and out of uneasy dreams, starting awake whenever the hall clock chimed, or a bird’s claws scrabbled on the sill. Two o’clock struck, and then the half hour, and then three. And then I must have fallen into a deeper sleep, from which I woke with the impression that someone had been knocking at the door below.
I threw off the bedclothes in a panic, wondering how long Felix had been waiting, and was halfway to the landing before I came fully awake and realised that it might not be Felix at all.
The sound was not repeated. I crept back to the bedroom, knelt down beside the bed so that I could not be seen, and crawled toward the window. My skirts chafed against the carpet—or was that footsteps on the gravel beneath? Very slowly, I raised my head.
A man was standing just inside the front wall, no more than ten yards away, looking up at the house; he seemed to be staring directly at me. A stocky, powerfully built man in a dun-coloured suit like a uniform, with a cap of some sort protruding from his side pocket. His head was completely bald, lumpish and irregular in shape, the skin so transparent that it gleamed like polished bone. Down the left side of his face, a livid scar ran from temple to jaw, narrowly missing the eye.
I dared not move. He stood as though he had a right to be there, his eyes flicking back and forth over the house, but always, it seemed, returning to me, with a chill as palpable as the draught from the casement. At last he turned and walked away, pausing for one more glance at the window before he disappeared behind the trees.
Had he seen me? He had turned to the left, as if to go around the outside of the copse and rejoin the Edinburgh road, but there was no way of telling. He could be lurking amongst the trees, waiting for me to emerge. Any minute now, Felix might be approaching from the other direction, oblivious of danger.
Unless they had captured him already.
The hall clock began to strike, startling me to my feet before I realised what the sound was. If the man was still watching, he had certainly seen me now. Five o’clock. Felix had been gone nearly four hours.
If he had seen me, and Felix was already in their hands, they would have broken down the door by now. Which meant . . . The thought was lost in a wave of panic, but I knew well enough what it meant. My only hope of escape was to slip out by the kitchen door, seek another way through the coppice, and pray that I could find Felix before they did.
There was no o
ne in sight. I went over to the closet, pulled on my walking-shoes and cloak with trembling hands, and went downstairs as quickly and quietly as I could.
Was there anything I could use as a weapon? I could think of nothing more formidable than the poker, and one thought of the scar-faced man was enough to dissuade me. I crept into the kitchen and sidled up to the window. Misty grey cloud hung low over the treetops; again there was no one to be seen, but any number of men might have been lurking amongst the trees.
No help for it. I drew back the bolt and lifted the latch. Silence, except for the terrible pounding of my heart. Inch by inch, I eased the door open, willing the hinges not to creak, and looked out through the gap. Nobody sprang at me, but the floor beneath my feet felt very strange. It began to sway, and then to revolve; the door slid through my hand, and darkness engulfed me.
I came to my senses with my cheek pressed against cold stone and a throbbing in my temple. For a moment I had no idea where I was, only that I was lying sprawled across a doorway with something digging into my shins. How long had I been lying here? Shivering, I rose stiffly to my feet and looked around.
The overgrown garden was deserted; nothing stirred in the shadows beyond. Keeping close to the wall, I moved toward the far corner of the house and peeped around. Still there was no one; only the low front wall and a glimpse of meadow. Twenty paces away, across a stretch of ragged grass, loomed the edge of the coppice.
The ground was uneven and littered with dead foliage, so I had to watch where I trod. Five paces; ten; I was almost there, when a voice on my left cried, “I seen her!”
I began to run, tripped over my cloak, and fell. Footsteps pounded toward me; I picked myself up and turned, hopelessly, to face my pursuer—and realised that he was Felix, calling my name.
“Rosina! What on earth . . . ?”
I gabbled out my story, but he seemed strangely unperturbed.
“One man alone, you say? No one you recognised?”
“No, but—”
“Well, then, he couldn’t have known who you were. You see—I was thinking about it on the way back—they would have to send someone who could identify you: Naylor, for instance. Even your father wouldn’t risk kidnapping the wrong woman. And now we must get you indoors, my darling; you are shivering, and white as a sheet.”
“Felix, you don’t understand; they will be back any minute—”
“No, dearest, they won’t, because they don’t know where we are. We haven’t been followed on any of our walks; I’m certain of it. You were anxious—all my fault; I shouldn’t have alarmed you so—and out of sorts. Your scar-faced man, however menacing he seemed to you, was most likely an innocent wayfarer in need of sustenance. And remember, you were fast asleep; you might very well have dreamt the knocking, and even your sinister visitant himself.”
Calmly ignoring my protests, he led me back to the house and put me to bed as tenderly and efficiently as Lily would have done. Only after he had got a good fire going, and mixed me a glass of hot spiced wine, did I think to ask how he had fared in Dunbar.
“All is well, my darling. The physician I consulted was a little nonplussed by my request, but after fifteen minutes’ conversation he agreed readily enough. And then, while I was looking for a notary, I remembered my will—the one Carburton persuaded me to sign a few days after my father died, leaving everything to Edmund as the next in line—poor Horace isn’t allowed to manage his own affairs. So I found a solicitor instead—a Mr. McIntyre, in Castle Street, well away from the post office—and had him draw up a new one, leaving the entire estate to you. It is drawn ‘in anticipation of marriage,’ as the lawyers say, so it will still be valid after we are married.”
“But dearest, you have promised to share with your brothers; it is not fair to them—not even to Edmund, abominably as he has behaved.”
“Well, that is the point, in a way. As soon as the will was signed and sealed, I wrote to Edmund, telling him what I had done; but I didn’t enclose a copy, and I didn’t tell him who had drawn it. So, at least until the estate is sold up and divided, it would be very much against his interest for me to die.”
“Felix—are you afraid he might try to have you murdered?”
“No, but it will show him that I am not to be swayed by his threats: that, and the certificate of sanity I sent to Carburton along with my instructions about the sale. One copy of the will is in Mr. McIntyre’s strongbox; the other is for you to keep. And now you must rest, and promise not to dream of any more scar-faced men; we would not be here now if I thought there was the slightest danger.”
Reassured by his certainty (and doubtless by the hot toddy, which he insisted I finish), I agreed that I could easily have dreamt the scar-faced man, and by the time I fell asleep, I almost believed it myself.
It is almost midday on Friday; I have let my pen run away with me again, but I will abide by my principle of doing what I should want you to do (or rather posting what I should want you to post) in my place. I am still in bed, at Felix’s insistence, still headachy and uncomfortable, but with only a few scrapes and bruises to show for yesterday’s fright. He blames himself for alarming me unnecessarily by rushing home whilst he was still upset over Edmund’s letter. For my part, I feel ashamed of getting into such a panic over a harmless stranger, as he surely was. In ten days’ time we will be safely married, and then, God willing, I shall embrace you on the ninth.
All my love to you, and to dear Godfrey,
Your loving cousin,
Rosina
Kirkbride Cottage
Friday, 1 June 1860
Dearest Emily,
Once again I had to reassure Felix that the tears I shed over your letter were tears of joy. It is such a delight to know that Godfrey is his old self at last—such a long and anxious time it has been for you—and eager to return to his work. And such a relief that neither you nor your neighbors have seen anything suspicious.
All is quiet here, too. The man with the scarred face has not returned, not even to trouble my dreams. And Felix is in wonderfully high spirits; he told me last night that our love has brought him a happiness beyond anything he could have imagined. “Before I loved you,” he said, “even at the best of times, there was always a grey cloud hovering somewhere about my heart. At the worst, it was Stygian darkness; I could scarcely lift my head from the pillow, and longed only for oblivion. But now I am filled with light; I have fed on honeydew and drunk the milk of paradise, and the cloud is banished forever.” He says it is why he needs so little sleep; he feels light in every sense, and can easily believe that human beings could soar like birds if only they had sufficient faith, as with the disciple who was able to walk on water until he grew fearful and began to sink.
Yesterday afternoon we walked along the coast to a place called St. Baldred’s Cradle, a steep, rocky cleft at the mouth of a river. Felix insisted upon climbing the outer cliff, though he did not so much climb it as run straight up a spur of jagged rock, fifty or sixty feet high, and then leap from crag to crag along the top, waving delightedly whilst I watched with my heart in my mouth. He assured me when he came down that he could not possibly have missed his footing, but I do wish he could learn to be just a little fearful, if only for my sake!
As yet he has heard nothing from Carburton, but in Dunbar this morning he had a strong presentiment that he should call at the shipping agent’s. There he learnt that a ship called the Utopia will be sailing from Liverpool for Rio de Janeiro on the twenty-ninth of June. It seemed to him such a good omen that he reserved a cabin for us; the passage money does not have to be paid until the fifteenth, and he is certain the deed of sale will have reached him by then.
I confess that my heart sank at the news—it seems so terribly soon—but I am determined to subdue my misgivings. Felix is so elated by the prospect that I cannot bear to disappoint him. “We shall never have to endure another winter,” he said when he came in, “because in Rio it is warm and light all the year round.” Even though he
is certain his melancholia will never return, it would be unpardonably selfish of me to try and keep him here, where the winters would remind him of that terrible darkness. All I could bring myself to say was that I should hate to be separated from you forever, to which he cheerfully replied that of course we should come back for visits. And perhaps when we have stayed in Rio for a while, he will be happy to live somewhere closer—Spain, perhaps, or the isles of Greece (he read me those wonderful lines from Don Juan the night before last)—so that we can spend whole summers in England—by which, of course, I mean Nettleford, and take a house close by, and see you every day.
All my love to you, and to dear Godfrey,
Your loving cousin,
Rosina
Kirkbride Cottage
Tuesday, 5 June 1860
Dearest Emily,
Well, we are married according to law, though the ceremony itself was a miserable affair, conducted by a dour and (I thought) disapproving clergyman in the presence of two paid witnesses who shuffled their feet whenever there was a momentary silence. I wept at the cheerlessness of it all, and even Felix was quite cast down; though the day was fine, we were in no mood for celebration, and were about to return home when he noticed a livery stable and suggested we hire a dogcart for the afternoon. A brisk drive along the coast restored our spirits, and a mile or so beyond the village of Skateraw we came to a little bay that was quite deserted. We tethered our horse near a grassy hollow, where the same thought came to us both: that we had been married not three hours, but three weeks. We made a bed of our cloaks and lay down, sheltered from the wind; and afterward, holding Felix in my arms while he slept (such a rare delight) with the sun’s warmth on my skin, I felt as though we had been taken up to heaven without the need of dying, floating in perfect light.
Only four days until I embrace you at last. We shall take the London express on Friday morning and stay in the Great Northern Hotel that night, so that Felix can see Mr. Carburton about the deed of trust. I feel a little apprehensive about staying so close to Great Portland Street, but Felix insists that, despite what he said the other day, there is not the slightest risk of his being charged with abduction. “I was upset by Edmund’s letter,” he said, “and not thinking clearly; you are my lawful wedded wife, and if anyone accosts us, I shall have him arrested then and there.” He will call at Mr. Carburton’s office on Saturday morning; as soon as that is done, we shall drive straight to Paddington, and should reach Nettleford by six at the latest. And then my happiness will be truly complete.