Eventually, Duncan leapt from the saddle and raced to the entrance of his family home. The door was flung open and he stood a moment facing his mirror image before being folded in a bear-like grip by his brother.
“How is she, Fergus? Does she still live?”
“She is gravely ill and it is my belief she waits only to make her peace with you.”
“As if she cares,” Duncan said bitterly.
“You’d be surprised. She knows how she drove you away. She even asked me to write and beg you to come home but I knew from your own letters that the wounds cut too deep. But it’s time, brother. There can be no excuse for what she did to you, but you are still her son.”
“Though she renounced me!”
“Do not let her take her guilt to the grave. Come, I will take you to her now.”
“Phoebe. Phoebe!” her cousin repeated in a louder voice when it was evident the other was lost in a daydream.
“What? Oh, I am sorry, Lydia. I was in my mind planning the final details for tomorrow’s soirée.”
Not true, but her reflections were not of the kind she could share with her cousin. In the week he’d been gone Duncan had intruded upon her thoughts many times. He invaded her dreams as well and the dream always the same. She was running through a dark passage, Duncan behind her and Simon in front. And then she slipped, fell, and lost consciousness. Morning brought no relief for she didn’t feel rested. Each day she rode Jester but gained little joy from the experience. She stopped as ever in the clearing, trying to remember every moment she had shared there with Duncan. Her horse now was the recipient of her confidences, “for if I do not talk to someone I shall run mad.” Phoebe had for the first time in her life fallen deeply in love. She had no idea whether or not her feelings were reciprocated. A stranger to the art of dalliance, she couldn’t trust her own instincts. Had Duncan merely been amusing himself? Not unkindly, never that for she would not believe he might be so cruel. But perhaps it was a game he had thought she would understand. Rupert had by now apprised her of the cause of his sudden flight. Surely though, had he felt as she did, his note would have contained more than just a reference to Simon.
“I was merely wondering whether I should wear the blue or the yellow muslin to the dance this evening,”
“Dearest, you will look delightful in either,” Phoebe answered, concentrating her attention once more upon her cousin. “Sadly I am unable myself to wear yellow for it chases away all the colour in my face. You may wear almost any shade to advantage. Blond hair, blue eyes and such a warm skin tone that complements every hue. Were it in my nature I would envy you,” she said with a smile.
“But, Phoebe, do you not realise how beautiful you are!”
Phoebe laughed for she had never admired her own auburn curls and brown eyes, thinking herself very ordinary. “Now I know you are trying to gammon me. Wear the yellow then, if you will, and I shall try to achieve some tone by myself wearing blue.”
Phoebe, spending the evening with so many friends and neighbours, couldn’t help enjoying herself. Harriet Fairweather chose to surround herself with people and would have done so every day had her long-suffering husband not begged for the occasional respite. “Which is all very well, my dear, but he takes as much delight as I do in having company,” she assured Phoebe. She had invited only ten couples, “for I much prefer it when I can speak to everyone present, a proper conversation you understand, rather than a snatched word or two.” Phoebe was extremely fond of Harriet who had been a close friend of her mother and had figured largely in her childhood before Emily’s demise. And afterwards too, for having no children of her own she had made sure to see her goddaughter regularly. Edward having withdrawn into himself was of little help and Rupert was her only contemporary, though older by three years.
“My cousin has expressed the same opinion. It seems that small gatherings are more to her taste than the large functions she was obliged to attend in London. It is kind of you to include her.”
“Not at all. She is an asset to any occasion.”
It was true. Lydia, in the short time she had been in Somerset, had endeared herself to all. Harriet looked across the room to where Miss Talbot was deep in conversation with Rupert.
“I wonder will they make a match of it, those two?” she asked Phoebe, whose ready smile reached her eyes in spite of her own situation.
“I hope so. How my aunt will regard such an alliance is another consideration.”
“You think she will not approve?”
“She has but recently lost one of her daughters to matrimony. She may not yet be ready to lose another.”
Chapter Ten
Duncan stood in the doorway to his mother’s bedchamber. Visions arose of being taken in her arms as a child, soothed when he grazed his knees, tickled playfully at other times. The images were so strong that it took some moments for them to clear. Behind him his brother put a hand on his shoulder. He moved towards the bed.
“Fergus? Is that you,” Mrs Armstrong asked in a failing voice. Her hand, claw-like, gripped his.
“No, Mama. It is Duncan.”
The grip tightened and she turned her head to see him better.
“You have come!” she whispered. “At last you have come.”
He sat beside her, his throat constricted. “Do not tax yourself, Mama. I shall not leave you.”
Tears crept from the corners of her eyes and onto the pillow. “I have written. Ask Fergus to show you.” But she did not release his hand. Duncan looked at his brother.
“She was frightened. In case you didn’t come. In case you came too late. It was some weeks ago. I had not expected her still to survive,” he said in a voice too low for his mother to hear. “Here,” he said, handing Duncan a sheet of paper. The windows were covered against the dwindling daylight. He struggled to read, an unaccustomed mistiness in his eyes impairing his vision. He recognised his brother’s hand but it was his mother’s voice that spoke in his head.
I pray that God will forgive me for I will understand that you cannot. When your father died I had no thought for your own loss, only for the man who was my very life. I blamed you for being in the water, when it was I who should have been keeping watch over you. I saw your father dive in, watched him disappear and waited for him to return to the surface, not knowing his foot had been caught amongst the weeds. Instead it was you who bobbed up. You who were saved. The bitterness of my loss turned upon you. I blamed you, you see.
Duncan looked at his brother. “Did you know of this?”
“Not until Mama charged me with writing it down. I had no more notion than you of the reason for her rejection.”
You cannot know how many years I have regretted what I did, but it was too late. If I could but see you once again I shall go to my grave in less torment than I have carried for so long.
The brothers knew of course that their mother’s antipathy towards Duncan stemmed from the time of their father’s death. The change had been immediate. What they hadn’t known was that she had considered him to be the cause. But for his brother, Duncan’s double loss might have destroyed him entirely but there was an invisible bond that enabled the one to pull the other through. What Duncan would have done a few weeks earlier might well have been different, but he had ‘met’ Simon Marchant. He fervently believed now that a soul could exist between two kingdoms in grief and pain. He could not condemn his mother to such a possible existence. He leaned over and kissed her brow. “I didn’t understand. But I am here now. Rest a while. I will not go away again.”
“You were remarkably gentle with Mama. I find it hard to believe you have forgiven her so readily.”
“And you would be right to feel so. Knowing the reason will at least stop me wondering, but I cannot purge the pain in so short a time.”
“And yet you did not recriminate.”
Duncan looked at his brother before taking a sip of whisky from the glass he had been nursing between two large hands. They were sitting one at
each end of an old oak table in the room that had been the favourite of both as children. The space beneath its surface had in the past served as a fortress, a make-believe battlefield and even on occasion, a hiding place. Tonight they had dined there.
“Had I not returned home I would have felt no remorse but it would be cruel to reject her now. She seeks a forgiveness which I cannot bestow but she is looking also for peace of mind. If I can help her to that end I will do so or I would carry a different sort of guilt to my own grave.”
Duncan was looking haggard and at his brother’s suggestion retired to bed, “for you have had a long and tedious journey. Tomorrow we will talk of other things. A great deal has happened in the three years you have been away.”
“Jane and Malcolm are away from home, I gather. I would hear more about them.”
“And so you shall, but not until tomorrow when you will hear so much you will be begging me to stop.”
“You the father of a son. I find it hard to believe,” he said, smiling at last.
“Tomorrow, Duncan. Now go to bed.”
It was the day after the soirée. Having enjoyed the evening immensely, Sophia was resting, feeling the need to gather her resources again. Lydia had gone to visit the Wainwrights but Phoebe had declined the invitation, confident she could leave her cousin to the care of the Squire’s good lady. Though she thought of Duncan every day she had resigned herself to the fact that she might never see him again. There had been no word but there could hardly yet have been any, aside from which he made no mention of writing to her in his short note. I must, I shall forget him.
She was in her mother’s drawing room and looked up at Simon’s portrait. Did you mean, I wonder, to set us such a difficult task. He didn’t reply. She moved to Emily’s desk and opened the bottom drawer. When she attempted to pull it further it resisted. Thinking it must be caught on something, she curled her fingers up inside to find the culprit. What she found instead was a catch which caused the drawer to spring towards her. Curious now, she grasped it with both hands and wiggled, whereupon it came away from its housing. Not entirely surprised and more excited by the moment, she reached in. Probing with her fingers she withdrew her hand which now clasped a silver goblet. The silver goblet. There could be no mistaking it. So, Mama, you succeeded further in your search than we had imagined. How excited Duncan will be when he finds out. Then she sat back in the chair, saddened because she might never be able to tell him. She began to examine her treasure. She turned the goblet in her hands, investigated the engraving around its rim, but could find nothing significant. She looked at the underside but that too revealed nothing. Then she remembered the words of Simon’s poem.
Then take the cup into your hand and drink down to the base
There will you find the clue to guide you surely to that place
With trembling fingers she peered inside. Engraved upon the bottom was the Marcham family crest. She felt elation, and then despair. The goblet had been in her mother’s drawer not because she had uncovered its secret but because she had not. Glendale was riddled with examples of the family’s crest. There was not one single room where it did not appear. She turned again to the portrait. You were clever, Simon. Too clever for your descendants, for I don’t even know where to begin. Great and many times Great Grandfather, again I salute you!
“Do you not think it time, Papa, to put this feud behind you?” Phoebe asked her father when discussing arrangements for the next few days. “We must of necessity meet the Rushmores everywhere. Do you even know what the reason is for the hostility?”
She was asking because Rupert had regretfully to decline an invitation, having already been promised to their common neighbour.
“Lost in the mists of time,” Edward said. “I believe it was something to do with the Civil War. We Marchams remained loyal to the Crown. The Rushmores went with the Roundheads. I believe it was all very bitter at the time.”
“But that was nearly two centuries ago! What can have been so bad as to continue through the ages?”
Edward looked at his daughter. “In truth I don’t know but I believe it was more to do with Simon Marcham and the Rushmores’ daughter than who favoured which side.”
“You don’t know and yet you continue to cut them?”
“It has become a habit,” he said with an edge to his voice.
Phoebe could hardly believe she had all her life accepted the feud without question. But with the round of visits since her aunt and her cousin had come to stay it had been forcibly borne upon her that there were things to which the Marchams had not been invited. She had herself of habit excluded the Rushmores from her own invitations. What interested her more, though, was this new information regarding Simon. Could this daughter be the true love spoken of in his poem? She felt both excitement and frustration. Snippets of information kept coming to light but it was even more of a puzzle than the maze which stood in the grounds. A puzzle she was more determined than ever to solve.
“You are well-acquainted with Hugh Rushmore, are you not?” Phoebe asked Rupert when they were attending yet another picnic.
“Hugh? Yes, he is a particular friend of mine.”
Rupert looked uncomfortable, well aware of the antipathy between the two families. It was inevitable that the Marchams and Rushmores meet occasionally. They were always meticulously polite but that was as far as it went. Phoebe and Hugh had observed the feud simply because it was the way it had always been. She could see now how absurd it was.
“I should like you to arrange for us to meet.”
“Dash it, Phoebe, why can’t you write him a note yourself?”
“I cannot ask him to Glendale. My father would not like it. Nor can I invite myself to his home. I would like to meet him on neutral ground.”
“If you ask me, the whole thing is very silly.”
“I can only agree and cannot believe I have gone through my whole life without questioning. Dearest Rupert, do me this favour if you will. I promise I shall not cross swords with Hugh.” She smiled appealingly, her dark eyes glowing.
Rupert, never able to resist his friend when she was in teasing mood, agreed to arrange such a meeting if Hugh was willing, “though for all I know he feels as strongly as both your parents and may not even consider it.”
“We can but try. I must try.”
Chapter Eleven
On the third day after Duncan had arrived at Kirkleas his sister-in-law returned home with her son. Malcolm had only recently attained his second birthday, along with the ability to walk, an attribute of which he was immensely proud. UncaDunca was adjured to watch his progress across the room from his mother’s knee to his father’s. The effect was a little spoiled when, having triumphantly reached his destination, he turned to see if his uncle was still watching and promptly fell to a sitting position. His little face began to crumple, whereupon Duncan jumped from his seat, swept his nephew high in the air and praised him for being a very clever boy. The threatened tears abated and Malcolm giggled instead.
“You have a way with children, I see,” said Jane. “Few men so large have that gentleness which both you and your brother display.”
Duncan had liked Jane on sight and had lost his heart entirely to Malcolm. There was a new softness too about Fergus. Duncan experienced a pang if not of envy then certainly something akin to it. He thought about Phoebe every waking hour. Though he didn’t know it, he had had the same argument with himself as Phoebe had undergone. He reasoned that with her open and friendly manner there was nothing to indicate whether or not she had a preference for him above any other. That she enjoyed his company was undeniable, but she enjoyed the company of others also. Having at first resolved to put her out of his mind, he decided instead to write to her.
My Dearest Miss Marcham
Forgive my presumption in writing to you but as I had to take my leave in such haste I would like to explain the situation more fully now. My mother is gravely ill. She grows weaker every day. You are aware th
at our relationship is not what I would have wished. I cannot however leave her now and must in any case be bound here for some time for there is much to do after so prolonged an absence.
He paused for a moment to glance out of the window where his brother was balancing Malcolm on the back of a tiny pony, Jane standing to one side and smiling. Duncan sighed and continued.
While I do not leave my mother’s side for long, I have had an opportunity to inspect my overseas purchases. Some pieces are very beautiful (I would love you to see them) but none is more moving than that of Simon and his love. I am sure you are continuing your search and I wish you every success. I would, if permitted, like to join you at some future time to aid you if I am able.
With affection, Duncan Armstrong
Duncan had chosen his father’s library in which to write his letter. How well he remembered his sire placing him on top of the steps. The little boy he was then had clung in fear to the pole. In flashback he could feel his own face crumple and how his father had swung him in much the same way as he had recently swung Malcolm. A rumble of thunder disturbed his reverie and told him the impending storm was moving closer. He sealed his letter and went to sit with his mother.
Phoebe, receiving Duncan’s letter in due course, was frustrated to say the very least. What did bound here for some time mean? A week? A month? A year? And then like to join you at some future time to aid you. Time again, but how long? Just as Phoebe had begun to get used to his absence, Duncan had crept in again beneath her defences. Well I won’t have it! I shall get on with my search and I shall get on with my life! And she swept out to meet Hugh Rushmore.
The Ghost of Glendale Page 7