He was up and dressed and stood leaning at a perilous angle from the window, which he had succeeded in forcing open, to peer along the wall beside it.
“I believe there is a bird’s nest down there,” he informed his sister, drawing back into the room. “Dee, I heard that sound again last night. The one that woke me the night before.”
Dione picked up his discarded nightshirt and folded it. “What sound was that?”
“The tapping—not the creeper against the window, but the other. The heavier one, indoors. Did you not hear it?”
“No, and I very much doubt whether you did either, except perhaps in a dream,” she retorted, beginning to make the bed. The window, left unattended, blew shut with a bang that made them both jump, and then swung wide again. “But I did hear that! Close the window properly, Theo. We have enough broken panes already without chancing more.”
He turned to do as she said, but paused with his hand on the casement to look out again. “There is a gap in the trees,” he remarked, “and you can see right down the valley. There is a house there as big as a village.”
Dione laughed. “Don’t exaggerate, love!”
“But it is,” he insisted. “Come and see.”
With a sigh of mock exasperation she joined him at the window, and looked in the direction he indicated. Framed by the bright foliage of early summer was a vista of sunlit valley, and in the middle distance, amid acres of parkland, a mansion of undoubtedly impressive proportions, surrounded by outbuildings that did indeed lend it the appearance of a small village.
Dione chuckled again. “Very well. I beg your pardon. Now do, pray, close the window and make sure it is properly fastened before we go downstairs.”
He obeyed, but his curiosity had been aroused and later, when Molly brought breakfast into the parlor, he asked about the house they had seen. She replied with reluctance.
“That be the abbey. Rushbourne Abbey.”
Theodore frowned. “It doesn’t look like an abbey.”
“ ’Tis said it was, long since, so ’tis still called that. ’Tis just a house now.”
“Who lives there?”
“Sir Greydon Varleigh—when he b’aint jaunting off to London or Brighton or some such place.”
Dione suppressed a start and glanced quickly at Cecilia, seeing with exasperation but no surprise that color had rushed up into her face so that she looked the picture of guilt. Fortunately, no one else was looking at her.
“Who is Sir Greydon Varleigh?” Theodore demanded.
Molly sniffed. “Oh, he owns nigh on all the land in these parts—aye, and most of the folks, too, or so he thinks. Then there’s his grandma, the old dowager. She be as bad as him, or worse.”
“Theo, that is quite enough.” Dione roused herself to speak firmly. “Thank you, Molly. You may go.”
Molly went with something suspiciously like a flounce. As the door closed behind her, Theodore said reproachfully:
“Why did you stop her, Dee? It was interesting.”
“Yes, my love, but it is not at all the thing to be gossiping with the servants,” his mother put in mildly. “Molly is already somewhat more encroaching than I could wish, and it will not do to encourage her.”
Theodore sighed and applied himself to his breakfast, while Dione allowed her thoughts to wander. So their benefactor at the Royal George was the great man of the district. Remembering his pleasant but unmistakable air of authority and the way the landlord had obeyed him without question, she could not feel surprise. Yet there had not been the least height in his manner, nothing to justify the way in which Molly had spoken of him. “The old dowager” might well be a tartar, but it was hard to imagine the man who had shown kindness to two strange and totally insignificant young women behaving in a way which would cause a person of Molly Ibstone’s station in life to take him in dislike.
That day the three girls, with Molly’s unwilling assistance, set to work on the parlor, and Mrs. Mallory was obliged to carry her sewing up to her bedroom. The task occupied them for the whole of the day, but by early evening, when the furniture was all back in place and Cecilia had set a bowl of flowers on the table, the room had begun to look quite homelike.
“Excellent!” Dione said with satisfaction, surveying the transformation. “Tomorrow we will tackle the hall. I will tell Ibstone to clear all those dead ashes from the fireplace—which I am sure has not been touched for years—and then we will see what we can do to set the rest of it to rights.”
Cecilia gave a small, weary sigh, and Dione added sympathetically: “Yes, I know, love, but it is not the smallest use making the parlor and our bedrooms habitable if we have to walk through dirt and disorder every time we come into the house. We must set the hall to rights, but that will do for the present. Now let us make ourselves clean and tidy, for we cannot sit down to dinner in this state.”
They went upstairs together and parted to go to their separate rooms. A little later, when Dione, having washed and put on a clean gown, had just finished dressing her thick gold-brown hair, her mother came into her room from the small adjoining chamber. She looked worried.
“Dee, where is Theo?”
“Downstairs, I expect, Mama, waiting for his dinner. It is wonderful how his appetite has improved these two days past.”
“He is not in the parlor,” Mrs. Mallory said uneasily, “and Molly assures me he has been nowhere near the kitchen or the yard. I thought you must have sent him upstairs to make himself clean and tidy.”
“And I thought you had probably done so, though, had I stopped to think, I would have realized that it is a deal too quiet in his room for him to be there. He must still be in the garden, then. Did you call to him?”
“No, for I felt sure he was in the house. I have been sewing in my room and have not seen him all the afternoon.”
It occurred to Dione that she had not seen Theodore either, though this did not seem to be any cause for disquiet. It was a beautiful day, and the big, overgrown gardens, utterly unlike anything he had ever known, seemed to fascinate him. He had gone out immediately after breakfast, reappeared briefly at midday in search of sustenance, and then hurried out of doors again.
“I will go and look for him,” Dione said soothingly. “Do not fret, Mama! We must be thankful to see him so active and occupied.”
“Oh, I am, Dee, believe me, but it will not do for him to be overtiring himself. You know the doctor warned us most particularly against that. When did you last see him?”
“When we ate our luncheon,” Dione admitted. “After that we were busy in the parlor.”
“Dee!” Mrs. Mallory exclaimed in dismay. “That was hours ago!”
“Yes, love, but you know what Theo is like when he becomes absorbed in anything. Time means nothing to him at all. I will go and find him.”
She took a shawl from one of the chests and cast it about her shoulders, then slipped an arm through her mother’s and drew her toward the door, adding cheerfully:
“You go and wait in the parlor, Mama. What, by the by, do you think of our efforts there?”
“Oh, a wonderful difference, my dear! It looks almost as I remember it,” Mrs. Mallory replied, but her tone was abstracted, and Dione halted again and turned to face her.
“What is it, Mama? Come now, confess! You cannot be so worried just because Theo has stayed too long out of doors.”
“I keep thinking of the pool,” Mrs. Mallory admitted reluctantly. “We were all busy in the house, and if he has fallen in—!”
“Mama dear, Theo is not a baby. He is a sensible little boy, and in any event, I warned him not to go near the pool. No, he has probably found some hideaway among the trees and is busy fancying himself to be Robin Hood or some such thing, for you know how he loves such playacting. However, he ought to have come indoors by now and you may be sure I shall take him down severely for not doing so.”
Somewhat reassured, Mrs. Mallory accompanied her downstairs and returned to the parlor, while Dione w
ent on across the hall and out through the front door. On the steps she paused, looking about her, surprised and a little dismayed to see that the sun had already dipped behind the trees so that the house and gardens lay in shadow. She had not realized it was so late.
She called her brother’s name several times. When there was no reply, she went across the weed-grown gravel and along the least overgrown of the paths leading from it. Methodically she worked her way around the gardens, calling repeatedly but receiving no response. Then, aware of a growing uneasiness, she walked slowly around the whole perimeter of the pool, noting with relief that the reeds still stood straight and undisturbed and that there were no footprints in the muddy verges of the water.
She tried to remember what Theodore had talked about at luncheon. The fountain in the rose garden was broken, and he did not suppose (hopefully) that it could be made to work again; he had seen a thrush’s nest; he had found the place where the stream ran into the pool and had to be crossed by stepping stones; there was a path beside it, leading up into the woods. Where, did they suppose, did the stream come from?
Dione stopped short as that last memory returned to her. She had just passed that spot herself, picking her way somewhat apprehensively across the moss-grown stones set amid hurrying water, and now she felt convinced that Theodore had yielded to the temptation to go in search of the stream’s source, pretending as he did so that he was an intrepid explorer braving the dangers of an unknown land.
She went back to the house by way of the stableyard and the domestic quarters. In the kitchen Mrs. Ibstone was preparing dinner. She glared at Dione with undisguised hostility, but Dione was unmoved by this reception and inquired the whereabouts of Ibstone, for she had formed the intention of sending him to look for Theodore in the woods behind the house. Mrs. Ibstone, with evident satisfaction, informed her that her husband had gone to town and had not yet returned.
“It being market day, and things needed,” she added accusingly, her tone implying that, but for the intrusion of the Mallory family, Ibstone would not have been put to so much trouble. “He had to take the cart, so like as not he won’t be home till after dark. That old horse can’t be hurried.”
Dione thought it more likely that Ibstone was amusing himself with his cronies at some inn or tavern, but she was by now too concerned about Theodore to pursue the matter. Telling the housekeeper that dinner would probably have to be delayed, she went through to the front of the house and put her head round the door of the parlor, where Mrs. Mallory had now been joined by Cecilia and Edwina.
“I have not found Theo yet, but I believe I know where he has wandered off to,” Dione told them lightly, “so I will just go and fetch him. I have desired Mrs. Ibstone to hold dinner for us.”
She withdrew quickly before her mother could ask any awkward questions.
The path beside the stream was narrow and muddy, but at first it was easy enough. After a couple of hundred yards, however, it began to climb, gently at first and then more steeply, snaking upward over rocks and protruding tree roots. Branches hung low and undergrowth encroached upon it—later in the summer it would be impassable—and before long Dione was hot and breathless and as much angry as concerned. Twice she halted and called her brother’s name, but her voice echoed desolately through the wood without evoking any response.
Eventually, reaching a point where the massive, ivy-festooned trunk of a fallen tree overhung the path at a perilous angle, completely blocking it, she paused in dismay, for it seemed that she had guessed wrongly. Theodore could not have come this way after all. If he had, she would have met him returning, for she had seen no other path. Perhaps he had gone instead along the drive, and the road toward the village; perhaps he was even now safely at home, waiting impatiently for his dinner while his eldest sister slipped and stumbled through these precipitous woodlands on a fool’s errand. At that moment she felt that she could readily have boxed his ears, and she was just turning to retrace her steps when a gleam of bright metal at the edge of the path caught her eye. Stooping, she picked up a button instantly recognizable as belonging to Theodore’s jacket.
For a moment she stared at it in the fading light, and then called his name again as loudly as she could, but to no avail. Yet he had undoubtedly been here, and since she had not met him coming back, he must somehow have gone on. She took a closer look at the fallen tree, and decided that there was just one place, immediately above the spot where she had found the button, where the obstacle might be surmounted. In the ordinary way she would never have considered attempting such a feat, but she could not rid herself of the fear that Theodore might be lying injured somewhere ahead, so, since there was no fear of anyone witnessing her immodesty, she knotted the shawl firmly about her shoulders, kilted her skirts above the knee, and, grasping a protruding branch, managed to haul herself up on to the tree trunk.
Her most immediate fear, of finding her brother lying senseless on the far side, was not realized. The path was deserted, winding upward and out of sight around a bluff of rock, and though for some while she had been unable to see the stream, and only to hear it faintly, the sound of falling water was now close at hand. Glancing back the way she had come, she made an unwelcome discovery. To climb up to her present perch had been difficult; to climb down the same way, from a tree trunk overhanging a steep drop, would be impossible. Come what might, she would have to go on.
She slid cautiously and inelegantly down the far side of the tree, uttering an exclamation of dismay as her skirt caught, and then pulled free with a rending sound. Reaching the ground, she ruefully inspected the damage, then, holding up the torn and trailing flounces, set off wearily along the path. Every step was an effort now, but it was perhaps fortunate that she was not hurrying, for the path dipped abruptly as it rounded the bluff and she found herself unexpectedly on the brink of a broad, shallow pool, fed by a spring which appeared to rise somewhere in the rocky bank above. This, then, was the source that Theodore must have been seeking.
The path skirted the pool and then sloped away from it, much less steeply and more clearly defined, across the hillside rather than up it. Dione picked her way carefully past the water and trudged on, emerging a few minutes later into a lane, beyond which lay rolling grassland. To her right the road ran straight for several hundred yards, to her left it began to descend, soon passing out of sight behind the trees; it was deserted, and there was no habitation of any kind to be seen. The sun had set, and though it was less dark here than in the woods, Dione was uneasily aware of the deepening shadows, and of the fact that she had not the faintest idea how far she was from Garth House. Sinking wearily down on the grassy bank beside the road she faced the unpalatable fact that not only had she failed to find Theodore, even though he must certainly have passed this way, she had also come uncomfortably close to losing herself, stranded as she now was on a deserted hilltop in gathering darkness.
Since there could be no question of returning through the woods, she would have to follow the road, and hope that she would come soon to some farm or cottage where she could seek assistance; and a fine impression she would make, she reflected grimly, bare-headed and disheveled, with her gown torn and stained with mud and moss. She sighed and got up, wrapping her shawl more closely about her, for here on the hilltop in the deepening dusk the air seemed suddenly cold, and began to walk down the hill, but had barely gone fifty yards when she heard the sound of a carriage coming behind her. She looked quickly round, but when she saw that it was a curricle and four bearing two masculine figures her heart lurched unpleasantly, and her anxiety about Theodore was suddenly superseded by disquiet on her own account. In a moment of panic she wondered if it would be prudent to beat a hurried retreat into the woods, but the path was out of reach and the slope behind her too steep to make flight practicable; then the curricle was close enough for her to distinguish the features of its occupants, and with an illogical surge of relief she recognized the driver as Sir Greydon Varleigh.
The h
orses were moving at a brisk trot, and for one alarming moment she thought he was going to drive straight past her, but even as she lifted a hand he recognized her and reined in his team. One swift, comprehensive glance took in her disheveled state, and he said quickly:
“You need assistance, ma’am. What has happened?”
She explained as briefly as she could, vexed to find that her voice was shaking. Sir Greydon cast an astonished glance past her into the thickening darkness of the woods.
“You have climbed up from Garth House? My dear ma’am, you must be exhausted! Permit me to drive you back there at once.”
He added a word to his groom, who immediately jumped down from the curricle to make room for Dione and to assist her up into it. She hesitated, looking up anxiously at Sir Greydon.
“You are exceedingly kind, sir, but my brother—!”
“Is almost certainly ahead of us on the road,” he replied reassuringly, “in which case we can take him up also. We may even find that he has already reached Garth House.”
She recognized the truth of these words, and allowed herself to be helped up into the curricle. The groom climbed up behind, and Sir Greydon put his horses in motion again, observing as he did so:
“Once your brother reached this lane, ma’am, he should have had little difficulty in finding his way back to Garth House. How old is he?”
The Varleigh Medallion Page 4