The Land of Summer

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘No, no, I shall continue on. I would not wish to disappoint Mrs Aubrey. You know the ladies, always so suspicious of us!’

  Both men laughed appreciatively, and a cab was duly called up.

  By the time the cabbie swung his hansom off the main carriageway heading due west and on to the first of a series of much narrower roadways that would finally lead to Gorran Lodge, its passenger had become aware of the clatter of another set of hooves not far behind him. Taking a look over his shoulder, he saw in the distance another cab travelling in the same direction as his own.

  ‘Busy night, eh?’ he called to the driver, who didn’t respond.

  The following cab was still there as they passed through Tregony and then down into the lanes leading through a lonely stretch of deserted countryside before reaching St Michael Caerhays, the last village of any note before the final destination nominated by the fare, a fare who in spite of the bone-shaking ride had fallen asleep several miles back.

  The lanes were quiet except for the sound of the hooves of his own horse, or so it seemed to the cab driver as he slapped the ribbons on his horse’s rump to urge him up the steep hill rising beyond the village, and that was the way they remained until just before he slowed to locate the lane which, without lights, and nothing but the brightness of the moon overhead, he had managed to overshoot.

  ‘You passed it, I think!’ the now awake passenger called up to the driver as the cab stopped once again. ‘The turning’s marked by a white post on one side and a water trough on the other. Hard to see at night – but we should be able to pick up the post all right!’

  After another brief search, this time made by the cabbie on foot, the right lane was located and the last stage of the journey completed. As the cabbie walked his horse slowly up the rise and through the named gates of Gorran Lodge he heard the clopping of the other carriage horse disappearing into the night as the following cab made its way along the coast road, leaving his passenger to alight from his transport in utter peace and quiet under a star-spangled sky. He stood there for a moment with his luggage at his feet taking in the night view and listening to the sound of a sea that from the distance seemed to be at low tide. An owl in a tree somewhere at the bottom of the gardens hooted tremulously, but otherwise all was silent, until he thought he heard someone behind him. Turning, he found himself confronting the bulldogs.

  ‘What the hell—’

  ‘We been sent to teach you not to cheat at cards.’

  ‘My dear fellow, I don’t cheat at cards, and whoever has sent you must know that. No, certain rather well-connected and even royal persons do cheat at cards, but not me. I am too good to need to cheat—’

  Brave words, perhaps, but not enough to save him from what followed.

  Up at the Lodge something had woken Emmaline. She sat up, listening. She had often had cause to curse being a light sleeper, but never more than now as she thought she heard a dull thud, and then someone, or several people, walking on the gravel outside the front door.

  She was sure it could not be Julius, because if it had been he would merely have put a key in the door and walked into the Lodge to make himself at home until morning. After all, he knew the house well enough.

  She lay in bed, feeling less than brave, realising gradually that there was nothing she could do. Uneasily, she remembered Mrs Carew telling Agnes and her, with some relish it had to be said, of the pirates that still plagued the Cornish coastline, and, according to her, always would. Since both the housekeeper and Agnes slept in a different part of the house, Emmaline knew that she was, in all senses, quite alone.

  For a few seconds she remained frozen with fear, her teeth chattering, and then she pulled herself together. She could not confront pirates or anyone else on her own: self-preservation was called for. She slipped out of bed, and as quietly as was perfectly possible she turned the key in the lock, and promptly went back to bed, where she lay once more listening for something further. There was nothing. Not a sound, not a footfall to disturb the gravel, not a sighing of the wind in the trees, only an owl calling out almost laconically, as if it was becoming mightily bored by its own sound, and soon, with daylight upon it, would be falling thankfully asleep.

  Emmaline closed her eyes. The Lord only knew, and the Lord was the only one who did know, it had been a bad enough day, what with coping with Bray Ashcombe and his passionate outpourings, and trying to pretend to Mrs Carew that it was normal for gentlemen like him to push their way into people’s houses armed only with a small book of verses.

  She lay for the next few minutes straining to listen, but there was definitely no other noise to be heard, so whatever it was had gone away, if it had ever been there. She sighed with relief, and was woken, many hours later, not just by the bright daylight of the south-west, but by Agnes pulling her curtains, and the sound of Mrs Carew calling in a carefully modulated manner.

  ‘Agnes, could you come down here, my dear, for a little minute?’

  Agnes excused herself and went downstairs, but the look of happy expectancy on her face was soon wiped off.

  ‘My dear! It’s Mr Aubrey! Out here!’ Mrs Carew pointed to the open door. ‘Not ’imself at all, he’s laid down in the drive not moving, laid down in the drive, like one dead. I think he is dead.’ This last she said in a whisper, at the same time putting a hand over Agnes’s mouth to prevent the inevitable scream.

  The heaviness of a mature man became all too apparent to the two women as they attempted to half carry, half drag the body into the hall, and from there into the darkened drawing room, where they laid him out as best they could, given the circumstances, on the rug in front of the dead fire.

  ‘Is he alive, Mrs Graham? Is Mr Aubrey alive?’ Agnes begged in a whisper, covering her face, because she could hardly bear to see what a state he was in.

  Mrs Carew stared down at the body. ‘I am very much afraid not, my dear,’ she confessed, having knelt to put a hand to his wrist and temple, and as Agnes started to sob she said in gentle tones, ‘Come away now, Aggie my dear, this is not for the likes of you and me, this is for the doctor. If the poor man is gone there is nothing to be done, and we have moved him as far as we could.’ She beckoned to the terrified Agnes, who was staring down at the corpse on the floor. ‘Here, girl, you look after your mistress. Say nothing until I go for help. Leave her be in her bed, make to show that the water is taking a time heating up for her bath, see, my dear? If she do come down, burnt feathers under the nose, and a teaspoon of brandy, but no need, we hope.’

  Agnes did as she was told, and after taking a deep breath and letting it out somewhat noisily she walked up the stairs to the upper rooms.

  Meanwhile Mrs Carew ran to the cottage to send her nephew on his pony to the doctor’s house a mile away, and on the way back, having the luxury of being able to slow to a walk, she found herself shaking her head.

  ‘Lord have mercy on his poor soul, the poor man has been beaten black and blue. And that this should happen at Christmas time, too.’

  The boy saddled his pony and rode as fast as the plucky little pony could take him to the doctor’s house. Happily the doctor was in, unhappily he was drunk.

  ‘I can’t make out a word you’re saying, my boy. Where is it I am meant to be go-in?’

  His wife arrived at their front door, and dragged him back into the house. The boy heard with some interest the sound of water being run, and protests being made, and more water being run, before the good doctor reappeared at the door, his bag in his hand, and a look of startled concentration on his face. He leaned against his gatepost and sighed.

  ‘I know I have forgotten something,’ he said to no one in particular. ‘But what it is I’m confounded if I know, confounded if I know.’

  ‘The pony and trap, sir, to take you to Gorran Lodge? I’m much afraid my pony won’t take both of us, sir.’

  ‘Yes, of course, pony and trap, yes, of course.’ The doctor turned very slowly from the gate to see his groom bringing up exactly t
hat, and waiting for him to climb in, which he did with little dexterity, and much swaying and sighing. ‘It’s Christmas, d’you see,’ he said, finally seating himself at the back of the trap. ‘I allus gets drunk at Christmas, it’s my prerogative, along with the rest of the world, and all my patients. Carry on now, carry on, to wherever it is, lives must be saved, it’s Christmas after all!’

  Everyone at Julius Aubrey Ltd left the works on the last dot before the clock struck midday on Christmas Eve. They knew they were lucky to get two days for Christmas, there were many in the town who only enjoyed one, and everyone was looking forward to the feast to come, their appetites sharpened by weeks of happy expectation. Not only that, but Mr Ralph had been instructed by their benevolent employer to give them all a Christmas tip, which meant that the buying of the Christmas bird and all the other necessary arrangements were all the merrier for having been paid for in advance.

  They all wished each other the joys of the season and ran through the rain-darkened streets to the marketplace, where there would be hard bargaining to be done. Birds would be held up and rejected, vegetables would be felt and weighed, and neighbours would eye them with envy if they saw they were carrying home more to their families than they themselves could afford.

  Mr Ralph shut up the works with a feeling of quiet satisfaction. He was glad that Mr Aubrey had gone to Cornwall. Of late the poor man had appeared as being most unhappy, and his return from London had merely served to heighten this feeling. To say that Mr Aubrey had looked shattered was to say the least: he looked done in, almost oblivious of everything that was happening at the works, so distracted had he been. But happily, now he would be in Cornwall with Mrs Aubrey, and everything would start to seem better once he was reunited with his new young wife. Poor man, he had suffered so much in his life, most particularly at the hands of his older brother, the son and heir to whom Mr Aubrey senior had hoped to be able to entrust his business affairs, but who had turned out to be a wastrel of the worst kind. But never mind that now, that was all in the past, along with Mr Julius’s poor dead first wife, and all the other sadnesses that had darkened his life, turning him from being a happy soul to the introvert he had become.

  Mr Ralph stopped and stared in the window of a delightful shop displaying fans of the prettiest kind. He was sure that he knew someone very close to him who would like a fan for her Christmas gift. He leaned forward, staring at one in particular. A prettier piece no one could wish for. He pushed his way into the shop knowing that this Christmas, unlike so many before, thanks to the prosperity of the works, he could afford to spoil his wife, and he only hoped that Mr Aubrey would be doing the same to his.

  At Gorran Lodge Mrs Carew and Agnes were standing beside Emmaline’s bed staring down at her in distracted fashion.

  ‘That is right, now, you just sip on this brandy, my dear, and Mrs Carew will stay with you. The good doctor has come and we can safely leave all the practicalities to him. Oh, you poor soul, that this should happen to you at Christmas time.’

  Emmaline stared at her. What did she mean? What did it matter when it happened? Julius was dead, and she was a widow. She was too stunned to cry, but pushing away the brandy spoon she turned her tear-stained face into her pillow. What kind of life was it that could take Julius from her when they had had no life at all?

  ‘I loved him, but I never told him. I never told him that I loved him,’ she kept saying to Agnes, until both women could be forgiven for wanting to shake her to stop her saying the same words over and over again.

  There was the sound of a carriage in the drive, and, later, muttered voices.

  ‘I must go to him before they take him away,’ Emmaline protested, but Agnes tried to restrain her.

  ‘You go to whoever it is. I expect the doctor has sent for help to remove the poor man to hospital,’ Mrs Carew said in a low voice, not wishing to say more, knowing that there would be a need for an examination.

  Agnes nodded, and walked slowly down to the hall. Seconds later the women upstairs heard a prolonged scream, whereupon they both flung themselves downstairs to see Julius Aubrey standing at the front door, a shy, hopeful smile on a face that said he was very much alive.

  Chapter Eleven

  EMMALINE STARED UP at Julius. Everything was making sense, but a great deal of the sense that it was making was as upsetting as it was bewildering.

  ‘He was my elder brother by an hour,’ Julius was saying.

  ‘He was your twin—’

  ‘He was a blackguard, a liar, and not a little depraved, and although he should have been heir to everything, he was heir to nothing but his own sins.’

  Emmaline waited as Julius walked down the drawing room and stood looking out. He was glad that Theodore was dead. He found only relief in the fact.

  ‘My father was a hopeless businessman,’ Julius continued. ‘He was an artist – and a very fine one too. A man with a great imagination but not a man born to run a business, that was why he left it to Theodore to run. It seemed ideal. He loved to travel, enjoyed being in America, which was so alive to new ideas, new businesses. It was when he was in New York that he met these so-called entrepreneurs who had all sorts of schemes. You had to buy into them, of course, which Theodore did, with company money – and that was where all the trouble began. In the end, when it became necessary to buy him out in order to give the company any chance of survival, I agreed that if he concluded an agreement to have Aubrey & Aubrey recommended in Nesbitt & Nesbitt’s catalogue, I would sign over to him fifty per cent of any sales made through the catalogue, and a very handsome cash settlement. So that is what he did. He made a bargain with your father, and your father made a bargain with him.’

  Emmaline rose to her feet.

  ‘My father – my father – don’t tell me—’

  Julius looked at her, shrugging his shoulders helplessly. ‘What could I do? I had no idea that marrying you would be part of the contract made with your father, but I have to say that when I saw you that first time, I felt no regret. Why should I? I thought you were beautiful.’ Emmaline was holding on to the mantel, probably whiter than he had ever seen her. He sighed. ‘The truth is I fell in love with you, Emma, but it was only when I had married you that it came to me what a terrible thing I had done, and I couldn’t make love to you as I should, because I doubted that you could possibly love a man so base as to go through with such an agreement.’ He stopped and went over to Emmaline, then guided her gently back to the sofa and stood opposite her to continue his story. ‘There is more, I am afraid. I began to feel that no one could accept me as I was, that I was unacceptable, because – because my first wife died only a week after we married, and once you were in the house it seemed to me, time and again, that I might be betraying her by loving you, which is why I—’

  ‘Which is why you hid her portrait.’ Emmaline shook her head. ‘And the wedding gown – that was hers too, wasn’t it?’

  ‘No! That was my mother’s wedding dress, it’s been in her family for over fifty years. I am not that – no, I am that callous, of course I am. I fully admit it, but I wouldn’t do that.’

  Emmaline was silent, and Julius continued.

  ‘The works had dwindled to nothing by the time I picked up the reins, which was why I took up advising and helping with restoration work. The two combined very well, and Ralph, you know, he is an excellent fellow, he looked after that side of it, but we would have been scuppered without this business agreement, and your father, you know, he was all for it, and now it seems he is more than pleased with the way things are going, orders are flooding in—’

  ‘And my sisters can all marry now I am married. What a very happy ending,’ Emmaline said in a flat voice. Then she looked up at Julius as something came to her.

  ‘Tell me the truth, Julius. Did you imagine that I had fallen in love with the man who had wooed me in America, and that put you, in your mind at least, out of the running?’

  He nodded miserably. ‘Naturally. Why wouldn’t I i
magine it? Theodore was always more captivating than I was, rogues so often are. He had inherited my father’s charm, and his way with women.’

  Emmaline threw up her hands in despair.

  ‘I hardly knew him, I hardly had time to get to know him before he was gone, and all I knew was that he sent me a mirror with a sweet message—’

  ‘No, it was I who sent you the mirror. He had told me this cock and bull story that – well, that your family considered you plain, and thought you would never marry – I felt so sorry for you. I wanted to give you courage, and I was, I must confess, expecting just that, a plain little American girl who had never been able to capture a husband. But what I met was so far from that, I was bowled over. For me you were, and still are, just beautiful.’

  ‘How do I know?’ Emmaline demanded after a long silence. ‘How do I know that you are not as big a liar as your twin brother?’

  ‘You don’t, Emma. Alas, you do not.’

  Emmaline stood up suddenly, and leaning forward she kissed Julius on the lips.

  ‘Oh, dear Lord,’ she said, moving away from him. ‘So it was him that night. It was Theodore who kissed me, and I fainted – I knew there was something different, so terribly different.’

  As Julius stared at her, she went on to explain.

  ‘I had taken a sleeping powder on Dr Proctor’s orders, but even so I awoke thinking that I had heard you coming in. I went downstairs and thought I saw you in your study at your desk, going through some papers, and you kissed me, but everyone told me that it was not possible, that you were away, which of course you were—’

  ‘That must have been the night that Theodore broke in and stole my copy of our agreement. Fool that I was, I should have locked it in a safe. Had I known that he was still kicking his heels in England I would have done, but I was so sure that he was in Australia.’