The chair legs scraped along the polished floor; she rose to her full height, stiff, grim, ugly with outrage. ‘How dare you? How dare you?’
‘How dare you, Tetty? How dare you sacrifice our lives, Lyneth’s and mine, to your own bitter prejudices? All these years, ever since my father died. I don’t ask what went wrong between you and Hil, it’s no business of ours, we don’t even ask ourselves. But we weren’t deaf and blind, even as little girls. You married my father on his deathbed; but that can’t have been all—Menna whom we loved so much, went away without even a word of explanation or goodbye and from that time on, Hil’s name was not to be mentioned in your presence. Well, it’s being mentioned now. Because what Lyneth told me, she told to Hil too, and Hil accepts it: I think at the back of his mind, he’s always known it, only half understood it, perhaps, but understood. He has Hilbourne blood; he is—as it were disposed to accept and understand. But I’ve talked to him since. I went there alone, without Lyneth. And I’ve told him that Lyneth can be saved—perhaps can be saved. I’ve said…’ She broke off, biting on her lip, turning away her head. ‘Well—anyway, I’ve asked him to help me. But he blankly refuses.’
‘Refuses?’
‘Yes. And so I want you to come with me, Tetty, and persuade him.’
‘Persuade him? Persuade Hil?’ She choked out: ‘Why should I agree with something that he refuses?’
‘Well, you always do, don’t you?’ said Christine. ‘Or the other way about.’ But as her step-mother turned away from her, angrily, she amended: ‘But it’s more than that now: much more. Hil loves me as much as he loves Lyneth: and you don’t.’
A tap at the door and Tante Louise poked in her coiffured head. Lady Hilbourne stood rigid, back turned: Christine said, ‘Not now, Tante, if you wouldn’t mind.’
‘But I want only—’
Christine took her by the arm and urged her gently outside the door. ‘It will have to wait, Tante Louise…’
‘Is something wrong, Christine? Is something not well?’
‘Nothing is very well, ma tante, is it? You must have seen that, these last days?’
‘My poor Lyneth. She regrets now les fiançailles? I am not so sorry: I have told her, she can make the marriage of magnificence, formidable!—but no, she would have this Lawrence, we all give her what she wish and what result?—she is pale, she weeps, she sleeps not well in her bed, the whole house is upset. Let her then give up, if she regrets; then you, my poor child, may be happy and she also…’
‘It’s nothing like that, Tante. Simply that—well, many girls are unsettled when they take such a serious step?’
Madame Devalle caught at her hand. ‘It is more than this, Christine. The servants talk. They say—that old woman who comes up from the village pour la blanchisserie, she remembers the mother, this poor Anne—enfin, your mother also, ma chère; coming here as gay and sweet as la petite, and then the change, pale, un peu hystérique, beaucoup de larmes; and before that, she says, cette vieille—avec la grand-mère, the same thing, she remembers from childhood and all in the village speaking and saying it is always the same, no happiness for these young girls at Aberdar. I think it was for this that your Papa wished not for his daughters to mix with the world, to meet the young men, to bring unhappiness in marriage…’
‘Yes, well…’ She said helplessly: ‘These are strange things, Tante Louise, a little beyond our understanding.’
‘None can understand I think, Christine, who are outside the family. And who now is left? She—milady—and I, we are not of the Hilbournes. There is left only you and Lyneth—and Monsieur Hil. Hil understands: he is the deep one, that. They think it was for this that he married—’ She broke off short. ‘Well—n’importe…’
‘Hil—married? Hil’s never been married, Tante Louise?’
‘Oh, well, no, darling, I did not mean to say. It is all nothing.’
‘But it isn’t nothing, Tante. It’s—it may be terribly important. You must tell me. I don’t ask just out of curiosity.’
‘You had not the idea? But of course, true, it was kept to be big secret till Mees came back and then after that—Menna is gone…’
‘But Hil? Married? When? What has this to do with Menna?’
‘Oh, Christine!—I shall be for trouble!’ She glanced uneasily at the closed door.
‘Tetty. Why should she mind? Unless… Tante Louise, you must tell me now. We were small children, it all passed over our heads and since then, it’s never spoken of. No one need ever discover that I haven’t known it all along. But you must tell me. You don’t mean that Tetty—?’
‘Oh, my dear—how to say? Well… Well, we all thought this, she had big eyes for him, they were together, I don’t know where, but some idea that they were working for your Papa. And then she went away to that Greatoaks, and when she returned—pouf! it is all finish. And she marry with your father… And she speaks again with Monsieur Hil never more.’
‘Because she married my father? But then you say that he was married, Hil was? Not to Menna?’
‘Oh, Christine! I should not say. But it was before Mees came back, Hil is married, very much secret, nobody knowing but Tomos perhaps, he was a friend of her. But then Mademoiselle returns and zut! that very same night, Menna must be gone. All is arranged, ce mariage of the governess with the Squire: your papa is close to die. She comes from his bedside and her face is like white stone and, “Madame,” she say to me, “at once dismiss the cook.” Her first words. She is married with the Squire, she is my ladyship. Two hour and she is a widow. And her first words—“Dismiss the cook!” And then, “I will speak more later,” she says, and she goes to your papa’s room, she goes to the library, alone. Well, she did speak more, many times, but not of poor Menna. For me—ah Christine, now she becomes ladyship, if ever I have behave to her as if she was only gouvernante, ella m’a remboursée en plein.’
‘But Menna?’
‘I send for Menna. “Oh, Madame,” they say, “Menna is gone. A note came from her, she read, she is gone.” And of course all the house is in uprising, your father is dead, the funeral, tout ça; and the new one so high and mighty, grim, effrayante, I tell you ma chère, like a Méduse… And no time to think about Menna, for ask questions…’
‘Oh, Tante, we have never known this, Lyneth and I; how strange it all is, how strange! Menna?—but Menna was much older than Hil, old enough to be his mother. I mean, she was so sweet and lovely, I remember her well, so pretty and kind; but she was old.’
‘To you she seem old, you were a young child. She was not so old, this Menna.’
‘But too old to marry Hil.’
‘Too old for bear the children, my dear. Is this not what I have said? Your father has spoken much with him while Mees is away; your father, he wished for no more children at Aberdar, he thought—eh bien, I don’t know how he thought, Christine, but it is true that for young girls that is not a happy house.’
And then… Pages torn out of a book, papers selected from a bunch of old records. ‘One of the maids—she brought to me pieces of paper, half-burnt, not quite…’ (‘I have in my drawer, Olwen, a pretty little piece of ribbon…’ And there had been a gift of three shillings, half of which must be spent on the purchase of handkersneefs.) ‘I could not make out all, Christine. But the old Squire, your grandfather, who can blame him, poor man? His wife always ill, they say, from the marriage day and a man must have—well, when you yourself marry, you will understand all, ma chère. So there were many girls. And Menna, you see—sixteen years of age… The paper burnt so thin and black, but still you could see the letters like silver. “Deliver of a child…” ’
There was a sort of—awareness—in the house nowadays, a sort of other-worldly perception. A child born to Menna. And years later, Menna secretly married to Hil, a woman old enough… Old enough to be… Gradually, hideously, a light began to dawn. She gasped out, ‘Oh, no! Dear God, no!’
‘Oh, Christine,’ said Tante Louise, ‘you will not let an
yone know how much I have told?’
But to an ear made acute, a mind honed by suffering to a quivering point of percipience—Madame herself did not know how much she had told.
Tomos! Tomos will explain to me, he’ll help me, thought Christine. She put her head in at the door of her step-mother’s sitting-room. ‘I’ll be with you in a moment, Tetty, I’m—just getting rid of the aunt.’ She waited for no reply but backed out, closing the door behind her.
Tomos was perched on a high stool in his silver pantry, lovingly burnishing the branched candlesticks that nightly illuminated her childhood. ‘You must help me. I have to know… Tell me about it, Tomos, Menna. Hil married her?’
‘Ay well, if you already know about it. Yes—very quiet it was, only I was there—we was always good friends, Menna and I. And her brother came up from South Wales. No one else knew.’
‘Why so secret?’
‘Well… The Squire was dying, Miss Christine: Hil had promised him. He would do anything for Squire, would Hil; they loved one another like—like—’
‘Like two brothers. We guessed that long ago, Lyn and I. We never said anything.’
‘Everyone guesses, I dare say. No one ever says anything. Everybody respects him. But as I say, it was a death-bed promise; no one would want to make it seem like that, a marriage not made between them two alone: and yet it must be soon, the Squire wished it done before he died. I’ve wondered a bit,’ said Tomos, his eyes on the candlestick, ‘if it was in his mind that, if Hil was still free, Miss Tetterman—her ladyship as she is now—might not be so ready to become her ladyship. And only as her ladyship could she have responsibility for you and Miss Lyneth, over the heads of Mr Henry and Mr John.’
‘Tetty—and Hil?’
He shrugged. ‘I only say that I wondered… But any rate, he and Menna were married and that afternoon, Miss Tetterman comes back from Lady Arden’s and she goes almost immediately up to the house, to see Hil; and comes back again. I opened the door to her and dear God, Miss Christine!—she looked like—she’d changed, I don’t know what had been said there but she’d changed; she never looked the same again, nor was the same again. And they was all waiting, the lawyer and all of them, and while they’re in Squire’s room, a note comes for Menna. She showed me the note, only to me—like I said, we was friends. She must go away, he said; he had learned something, it had all been a terrible mistake, he must never see her again, she must go at once, this very night. Her brother would be still in the village, he would take her home. He said he would leave, himself, but he thought she would be sent away; and in that case, he felt he must stay, on account of the children. He said she must regard herself as not married, there hadn’t been no marriage, he said what he’d heard had made it—some expression—’
‘Null and void?’
‘That would be it. He said he’d send her money, he said she must accept it because through him she lost her place and her home and her friends. He said something terrible for her, Miss Christine: he said he dare not even send her his love.’
‘He had “learned something”. From Tetty?’
‘No one else had seen him. We all parted after the marriage—still keeping it secret, like I say. He was alone in his house.’
‘Tetty told him something. Something dreadful, that made his marriage null and void. Tomos—do you believe that Tetty was in love with Hil?’
‘Sick with it,’ said Tomos briefly. But his mind was with Menna. ‘She was, like, dazed; didn’t know what was wrong, only knew that he told her to go, so she’d go. I got out the dogcart and took her down to the village. I never heard from her again, but her brother, he’s written to me now and again—us being both Welshmen and from the south. He’s been bitter; all these years she’s moped, he says, and pined, not knowing how she should be sent away like that and without a kind word.’ His eyes filled with the easy Welsh tears. ‘She was a simple woman, poor sweet Menna; she would simply accept, but it lost her all her happy life here, sent her back among strangers, and she has grieved. And now she is ill, he says. And she isn’t young, Menna: all this was long ago.’
‘It seems so strange that Hil should give her no reason. And should say that “he dare not even send her his love”. Tomos,’ said Christine, slowly, one hand gripped till the knuckles were blanched to ivory on the edge of the polished shelf, ‘is it true that long ago, Menna had a child? My grandfather—’
‘Ay, well, all his sins be forgiven him! He was like a madman after—well, poor lady, from the very time of her marriage, she seemed to fall ill. And at last came the one child, that was your father, Miss Christine. But meanwhile… He was always a wild young man, and he had such a way with women, no girl could resist him. And with three of these girls… Poor Squire—in wedlock just the one delicate boy; and then no more. What a thriving fine young family he might have had!’
‘But these girls—having babies. Everyone must have known?’
‘Village people don’t take much account of these things, Miss Christine. In many families, a boy will not marry a girl until she conceives a child: they want to know that she’s able for it. And the Squire—in a way, there was a sort of honour in it; and everyone loved him. And he was good to them. There was a midwife in one of the villages about here, not our own village: long dead she is now—and if a girl came with child, she would take her in, a place would be arranged and before the mother could learn to love it, the baby would be taken away to its new home, and she free to start her life again. Menna often talked about these things with me, we was always good friends. Not more than that, Miss Christine, she was older than me, but us both being here at Aberdar for so long together—always close friends. Well, so then—first there was a girl called Jane and when she fell in the family way, then there was Menna, and another girl followed Menna in her turn, and she also came in the family way and when the baby was born, poor girl, she died. And that child he treated different, sent him to be reared and educated like a gentleman…’
‘And so brought him back to Aberdar?’
‘Ah, no, Squire was long dead by then: so shocked that just for his taking his pleasure of her, the girl lost her life, that he took wilder than ever, rode his horse about the countryside like a madman, and so at last broke his neck leaping the brook: and drowned there and that was the end. It was your father brought Hil here, when they were both young men: being his brother, like.’ He added indifferently: ‘And out of the three children, him being the only boy.’
CHAPTER 17
THE ERECT, SPARE FIGURE still stood, outlined against the many small, square panes of the mullioned window. ‘Where on earth have you been, Christine? Your aunt has been plaguing me—’
‘About what?’ she said quickly.
‘Household trivialities. What have you been doing?’
‘I’ve been making arrangements. I’ve ordered the dog-cart, Tetty. We are going up to see Hil. I’ve sent to tell him.’ She interrupted angry protest. ‘No one will know—I’ve said that we want to take a drive,’ and again over-rode argument. ‘You think I know nothing, Tetty, but it’s you who don’t understand—or you won’t allow yourself to accept it. That Hil married Menna for one reason only—to make it past his power to ask you to marry him and so bring into the world another generation of doomed Hilbournes.’ Again she brushed aside interruption. ‘And—something else I think you don’t understand but I won’t speak of that—not yet. Now please say nothing, I won’t listen to anything. Get your things. You and I are going out—for a drive in the dog-cart.’
Hil’s house had been reconstructed from two ancient cottages, filled with his own choice of simple furniture carved by generations of local craftsmen. Lady Hilbourne stepped inside, white-lipped after so many years of estrangement from a home that she had once prayed with all her heart might come to be her own. He bowed her silently to a chair, not offering to touch her hand. Christine said: ‘Tetty has agreed to come and try to persuade you, Hil, to agree to what I suggested to you earlier today
.’
He poured a glass of Madeira, handed it to her to pass on to her ladyship. ‘Lady Hilbourne will have no more success than in the past twelve years I have ever had in any attempt to persuade her to anything.’
Tetty rose from the tall wooden saddle-back chair. ‘As I find my present situation extremely objectionable,’ she said, ‘and apparently am to be given no hint of what the conversation is to be about, I may as well take my departure.’
He raised his voice above hers. He said with a deep anger: ‘Sit down again! The time is past for your bitter games at the expense of these two helpless girls.’ She sank back into the chair almost as though in fear that his hand had been raised to strike her. ‘You have betrayed them as long ago I foretold that you would,’ he said. ‘Now the time has come for you to make such amends as you may—to Christine, at least. She has conceived a plan. For my part, I utterly refuse to accept it; and if you have one shred left in you of the gentle heart that once you had—’
‘It was you that turned it to stone,’ said Tetty.’
‘—you will reject it, too. Christine—?’
Christine stood between them. She spoke very quietly and calmly, but her hands were gripped together tightly to keep them from shaking. She said: ‘Please don’t be angry: don’t be angry with one another. Just for once—let your minds turn only to Lyn and me.’ To Tetty she said: ‘Please listen to me, Tetty, with an open mind. There are forces in the world which we don’t understand but which we have to accept. In our world at least, in the world of the Hilbournes, we have to accept them; and at last a time has come when we understand them. Lyneth understands it all, she knows; and she has told what she knows to Hil and me. You will refuse to believe it because you don’t want to believe it—but it is true. A curse was laid upon this branch of the family long ago, in the days of Queen Elizabeth—a malediction—’
A dream. Long long ago, a dream whose message, unrecollected, through all the years had haunted her mind. She said, stammering, ‘Yes. It was… I dreamed. They were… In the old library—so beautiful, they were so beautiful then… When I woke, I found that I had knocked over a glass at my hand.’ She said, staring ahead of her as though stupified: ‘I remember that I thought the spilt wine was blood.’
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