“Come now, this is much better!” she remarked encouragingly. “You stay here, Mama, with Theo and the girls, while Mrs. Ibstone shows me the bedrooms so that I can decide where we are all going to sleep.”
Mrs. Ibstone paused in the act of lighting more candles to look at her, and then past her to Mrs. Mallory. She said with emphasis: “I’d have thought the mistress would want to decide that.”
“My mother is very tired, and Master Theodore is unwell after so many hours in the coach,” Dione said with finality, “and I can assure you that both they and my sisters will be quite happy to leave this to me. That is so, is it not, Mama?” she added cheerfully.
“Oh yes, my love! Do whatever you think best,” Mrs. Mallory replied faintly. “Theo, my dearest, pull that little stool close beside me and sit down so that you may rest your head in my lap. Take your cap off, dear, and then you can be comfortable.”
It was plain that her whole attention and concern was centered upon her son, and Mrs. Ibstone, with a contemptuous sniff, waddled out of the room and led Dione back across the hall and, with much puffing and wheezing and pausing for breath, up the stairs to the bedrooms.
The first of these was quite large, with the same ancient paneling and cavernous fireplace as the hall, and also the most forbidding bed Dione had ever seen. It was four-poster that must have been made in Tudor times, with massive columns, tester and headboard all ornately carved, and curtains of dark, moth-eaten tapestry. It brooded like some squat monster in the middle of the room, flanked by lesser pieces of furniture of the same period—a tall cupboard, a couple of chests, a stool or two—a bed that seemed to repel rather than invite repose.
“This be the Great Bedchamber,” Mrs. Ibstone informed her. “Master always slept here, so I reckon the mistress’ll have it now.”
Dione tried to picture her nervous mother sleeping in that catafalque of a bed, and knew that she would never agree to such a thing. The prospect did not much appeal to Dione herself, but if anyone had to have this room, and apparently someone did, it would have to be she. She said nothing, however, but waited to see what the other rooms on the first floor were like.
They were not much of an improvement on the first, though not quite so oppressive. The best two were on the opposite side of the house, while another, much smaller one, adjoined the Great Bedchamber, with a connecting door between. Dione inspected them all and then announced her decision.
“I will take the Great Bedchamber, as you call it, and my brother will have the small one adjoining it. The one at the corner of the house for my mother, and my sisters will share the large one next to it.”
“You be taking the Great Bedchamber, miss?” Mrs. Ibstone’s astonishment was genuine, but her tone suggested that Dione was committing a serious crime. “Whatever will the mistress say?”
“Let me explain the situation to you, Mrs. Ibstone,” Dione said quietly, “so that there can be no misunderstanding. My mother does not enjoy good health and finds day-to-day household cares too much for her, so in all such matters you will be dealing with me. As for the bedrooms, my little brother has, unhappily, inherited his mama’s delicate constitution and is, moreover, only just recovering from a serious illness. He does not sleep well, and if he is restless in the night it is better that I should be disturbed than she. Besides, my mother is of a somewhat nervous disposition, and I do not think that she would care for the Great Bedchamber.”
“Nervous, is she?” the housekeeper remarked with a sniff. “Reckon she’s come to the wrong place then.”
“Indeed?” Dione spoke sharply, but if the woman had hoped to hear alarm in her voice, she was disappointed; there was only displeasure. “What, pray, do you mean by that?”
Mrs. Ibstone shrugged. “This be a very old house, miss, and there’s some queer tales told of it.”
“Specters with rattling chains, no doubt,” Dione retorted skeptically. “Let me make one more thing plain to you, Mrs. Ibstone. If I discover that you, or anyone else in this house, has been frightening my mother with such nonsense, I shall be very seriously displeased.”
Mrs. Ibstone gave her a venomous look but made no reply, and Dione, who did not feel nearly as confident as she had contrived to appear, breathed an inward sigh of relief. She foresaw a continuing battle with the housekeeper, who so clearly resented their presence, but she felt that in their first encounter, the honors had gone to her.
Dione was to learn, during the course of that evening, just how wearing the struggle was going to be. There was a great deal to do—bedding to be fetched out and aired, beds to be made up and bags unpacked. Supper had to be prepared, since the family had eaten little during their journey, but Mrs. Ibstone declared flatly that if she was expected to get a meal she could not attend to anything else, nor could her daughter, Molly, manage all the rest on her own.
If the housekeeper expected to floor her new mistress with this ultimatum, she did not succeed. Miss Mallory said promptly that she and her sisters were all perfectly capable of making up a bed or wielding a duster, and would Ibstone be good enough meanwhile to light a fire in the parlor for Mrs. Mallory and Master Theo. Confronted by Molly Ibstone, a slatternly girl in her early twenties, Dione took her measure at once. Molly looked with insolent scorn at Miss Mallory’s shabby attire and was plainly contemptuous of the young ladies’ readiness to help with the necessary arrangements, but she soon discovered that appearances were deceptive. During the years at her aunt’s home, Dione had found herself more and more in the position of housekeeper and had learned long ago how to deal with recalcitrant servants. Molly’s rude manner was rapidly reduced to sulky silence, and Dione could congratulate herself on another victory.
Self-congratulation, however, was not her paramount emotion when, much later, she sat beside her brother’s bed in the little room adjoining her own. It was nearly midnight. Theodore, overtired and overwrought, had dozed and wakened and dozed again, restless in the strange bed. He missed the noise of the city where he had lived for nearly half his life, yet was disturbed by other, alien noises that broke the country quiet; the sighing of the wind, the hoot of an owl, a mysterious tapping at the window that proved, upon investigation, to be caused by a strand of wisteria trailing across it. Dione was worried, for it seemed to her that he was a little feverish and she dreaded a recurrence of the illness that had given them so much anxiety a month or so ago.
As she sat there she was plagued again by doubts of the wisdom of her determination to come to Garth House. She was bone-weary, and it seemed to her at that moment the only course open to her was to try to retrace the disastrous step she had taken. She could not expect Mama and the girls and Theodore to live in this ruin of a house; she would have to abase herself, beg Aunt Winton to forgive her, and admit to Eustace that he knew best. She did not doubt that the breach could be healed. They would be able to return to the comfort and security of the Winton house, and though by doing so she would be committing herself to a marriage that she regarded with revulsion, that was the price she must be prepared to pay to insure the future well-being of those who depended upon her.
At last Theodore sank into a sounder sleep, and Dione decided that she could safely leave him. Wearily, she undressed and climbed into the monstrous bed, trying not to wonder whether Cousin Jonathan had died in it. It was unexpectedly comfortable, and she was just sliding into sleep when she was dragged back to consciousness by her brother’s voice, muted yet urgent.
“Dee! Dee, are you asleep? I can hear something.”
With a sigh Dione sat up and groped for her dressing gown. She had left the connecting door ajar and a candle burning, and when she entered the smaller room she found Theodore sitting up in bed, his blue eyes enormous in his thin face.
“What is it this time, Theo?” She asked, trying to keep the impatience from her voice. “I heard nothing.”
“I did! A tapping sound!”
“That was the creeper against the window.”
“No, it wasn’
t like that. This was indoors, and it was slower and—and heavier, and there were voices, too. It woke me up. Listen!”
They both listened. The wind soughed in the trees and the fingers of the wisteria patted the windowpanes, but within the house there was silence. After a moment or two Dione said reassuringly:
“You were dreaming, love. Go back to sleep, there’s a good boy.”
He slid down again onto the pillows that she had shaken up for him, saying, not in any rebellious spirit but simply as a statement of fact:
“I did hear it. It wasn’t a dream, but I’m sorry that I disturbed you. Goodnight, Dee.”
“Goodnight, dear.” She tucked the covers more snugly around him and waited for a minute or two beside the bed until she was sure that he had settled down again. She was almost reeling with fatigue as she went back to her own room and crept into bed again, but just before sleep claimed her she had a startlingly vivid recollection of Sir Greydon, of the striking swarthy face and humorous manner, and of the blank disbelief in his eyes when she told him they were bound for Garth House.
“He knew,” was her last waking thought. “He knew what it is like here. That is why he was so astonished...”
TWO
Garth House, seen in full daylight, seemed at once less sinister and more dilapidated than it had appeared the previous night, when candlelight had softened the full impact of the decay now clearly visible on every side. The worn and threadbare carpets, the moth-eaten hangings, the dust and cobwebs that lay thickly everywhere. It was a sight to daunt the most inveterate optimist, and yet Dione found that for some reason her despairing mood had vanished with the darkness, and a return to London no longer seemed inevitable.
“I fear,” she said, after a second and more extensive tour of the house, “that Cousin Jonathan must have fallen upon hard times toward the end of his life, for it looks to me as though he was obliged to sell all his more valuable possessions. Everything that is left is very old, and much of it must have been here as long as the house.”
“I believe you are right, Dee,” Mrs. Mallory agreed with a sigh. “I remember it as an old-fashioned house, but I am sure it was more comfortably furnished than this, and it was certainly not as somber.”
“It would be much less somber, Mama,” Edwina observed practically, “if it were not so dirty. Only look at the windows! One can scarcely see out of them.”
“Just so!” Dione looked approvingly at her youngest sister. “It is wonderful what sweeping and polishing can do, for only think of that horrid little house we lived in before we went to Aunt Winton’s. It was quite dreadful when we first took it, but we made it very tolerable.”
“But a house of this size, Dee!” Mrs. Mallory said dubiously. “How can we ever make it fit to live in? I am sure the Ibstones cannot be prevailed upon to do very much, and you know we cannot afford to hire more servants.”
“Leave the Ibstones to me,” Dione replied cheerfully. “I have already set Molly to work upon your bedchamber, Mama, and though she was not very pleased, it will perhaps teach her not to hang at my heels the whole time. She followed me about the house as though she were my shadow, giving me a great deal of quite unnecessary information when I would have much preferred to find things out for myself. She is lazy and would rather talk than work, but I am very well able to deal with her.”
“I hope you may be, Dee, for I am quite sure that I am not, nor with her mother.”
“I think Mrs. Ibstone resents us,” Cecilia interjected in her soft, gentle voice. “Do you suppose, Dee, that she thought Cousin Jonathan had no living relatives and that she and her husband might have Garth House bequeathed to them?”
“Very likely, though if that were so one would think they would have kept it in better order. Do not look so despondent, Mama! After all, we need not use the whole house. Just the hall, and this parlor, and perhaps one other room downstairs, and our bedrooms. Cecy and Edwina and I can do a good deal ourselves, and perhaps when Molly sees that we do not intend to leave everything to her she will feel less ill-used and be more willing to work.”
“You are such a comfort to me, Dee,” Mrs. Mallory said tremulously, taking Dione’s hand and pressing it. “To all of us! I do not know what we should do without you.”
“Well, for one thing, Mama, without me you would still be living comfortably in Aunt Winton’s house instead of this derelict ruin,” Dione replied lightly. She hesitated, turning her own hand to clasp her mother’s frail fingers, and after a moment continued more seriously: “Do you wish to return there? Answer me honestly, love, for if you feel you cannot endure to remain at Garth House I will write to my aunt, begging her pardon, and to Eustace, confessing that I have made a dreadful mistake and asking him to forgive me and come to our rescue. I do not think he will refuse.”
“Oh, Dee, no!” Edwina exclaimed in a shocked tone before Mrs. Mallory could reply. “It would be like going back in disgrace, for you know how Aunt Winton would scold, and besides, if you did that, Eustace would expect you to marry him after all. You know he would!”
“Don’t be impertinent, my child,” Dione said calmly. “Whether or not I marry Eustace is no concern of yours.”
“Yes, it is, for it would make him my brother-in-law,” Edwina retorted rebelliously, “and then he really would have some right to tell us all what to do.”
“Hush, my love! It is most improper for you to speak so,” Mrs. Mallory reproved her, “though I must confess, Dee, that what Edwina says is true. He would expect it, and you would be under an obligation to agree. Have you considered that?”
“Yes, Mama, I have, and to what, after all, would I be agreeing? To a far better match than a dowerless female like myself has any right to expect, to a man I know to have the highest principles. To be sure, we have not always agreed very well in the past, but I dare say we could learn to deal tolerably well together. So, if you wish it, I will sit down and write those letters immediately, and I dare say that in a very short while we can all be back in London.”
Mrs. Mallory hesitated, her gaze searching her daughter’s face. Dione maintained a cheerful expression but found it difficult to sustain her mother’s regard, and after a moment Mrs. Mallory shook her head.
“No, Dee,” she said gently, “you and Eustace could never learn to agree. I realize that now. I think I always did, but the match seemed so excellent from a material point of view, and your aunt was so eager for it, that I allowed myself to be persuaded. I would not wish you—any of you—to marry solely for the sake of worldly advantage. There must be some degree of liking, of understanding, if there is to be any hope of an amicable marriage. If you did accept Eustace, my love, it would be only for the sake of the rest of us, and neither I, nor your sisters, nor Theo either, if he were old enough to understand such matters, would permit you to sacrifice your happiness on our behalf. You are too dear to us.”
Cecilia and Edwina murmured emphatic agreement. Dione looked from one to the other, her eyes very bright, and pressed her mother’s thin fingers, but merely said in a rallying tone:
“That is settled, then! We stay here and do the best we can with the means at our disposal. For one thing at least we may be thankful. Not only does Mrs. Ibstone appear to be a good cook, but I observed from a window upstairs that the vegetable garden is in good order, and she keeps poultry, too.”
“And pigs!” Theodore, who had been doing some exploring of his own, came into the room in time to hear his sister’s last remark. “I saw them in the orchard. Mama, this is a capital place! Wasn’t it a good notion of Dee’s to come and live here?”
Mrs. Mallory looked at him. He was grubby and untidy, his nankeens and jacket streaked with dust and cobwebs, his tasseled cap pushed far back on his fair curls and his shoes caked with mud, but the listlessness that had been a persistent and worrying aftermath of his illness had disappeared, and there was even a trace of color in his cheeks. This, in his mother’s opinion, was a complete vindication of the decision which had j
ust been made.
“Yes, my love, an excellent notion,” she agreed with a smile, and looked again at her eldest daughter. “Dee’s notions generally are.”
For the rest of that day and all of the next, the Mallory girls flung themselves with enthusiasm into the task of bringing order to the chaos of Garth House. They began with the bedrooms, Dione keeping Molly up to scratch by working with her, first in Mrs. Mallory’s room and then the Great Bedchamber and Theodore’s, while Cecilia and Edwina tackled the apartment they shared. Mrs. Mallory protested that they were leaving her nothing to do, but Dione said, with her ready chuckle:
“Don’t you believe it, love. From what I can discover there is scarcely a piece of linen in the house which does not need patching or darning, and since you are by far the best needlewoman among us, I assure you that there will be plenty for you to do.”
In proof of this she made a foray to the linen closet and carried to the parlor an armful of sheets and pillowcases and tablecloths with which her mother, who not only excelled at sewing but also enjoyed it, settled down quite happily. By evening there was a pile of beautifully mended articles to be put away, though an even larger pile still awaited attention. By that time, too, all four bedchambers were clean and shining and smelling of beeswax, and three decidedly weary young ladies could congratulate themselves upon a task well done.
That night Dione slept deeply and dreamlessly and woke to find a finger of sunlight probing between her drawn bedcurtains. Cheered by this promise of better weather, she got up and looked from the window, seeing the wilderness of garden quite transformed, a place of sunshine and dancing shadows, loud with birdsong. The pool, its surface rippled by the fresh breeze, sparkled and danced, and a wild duck with a miniature flotilla of ducklings about her swam slowly along the edge of the reedbed. Dione’s spirits lifted yet further. She dressed quickly and tidied her room, and then quietly opened the door connecting it with Theodore’s.
The Varleigh Medallion Page 3