Hunter's Green

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  “Not Justin!” I cried in alarm.

  “When were you two ever friends?” she said dryly, and was gone before I could offer further objection.

  I sat beside the fire and watched the coals flame and redden, turning gradually to dead gray. I lacked the energy to get up and put on more coal before the fire went out altogether. The afternoon had darkened into evening, and as the light outside diminished, the room lost itself in shadow. Even to get up and turn on a lamp would take too much effort. All I wanted was to sit here and think carefully and clearly about what Maggie had said. The things I’d said to her had rushed out easily, defensively—and she had not believed them. So what did I believe? What did I feel? Was it possible to face what I felt about Justin? When was I going to accept the truth about him and give him up?

  “Maggie?” said a voice from the doorway.

  I had no need to look around to know that Marc stood on the threshold of the dusky room. He was the last person I wanted to see. If I stayed very still perhaps he would go away without noticing me. It was a futile hope, since my shadowy figure must have shown up against the last red coals in the grate.

  “So it’s you, Eve,” he said easily, and came into the room. “I’d heard you were here, but I could hardly believe you’d come back.”

  I said nothing as he turned on a lamp and went to poke up the fire and put on more coal. I blinked in the sudden light and forced myself to look at him when he turned from the fireplace. I had been wrong to think when I saw him from my window earlier that two years had not changed him. Firelight touched his pale hair to gold in the old way, but he seemed thinner than I remembered and there was a tension about him that was new. The mockery in his intensely blue eyes was the same, however, and the faintly teasing quality I had mistakenly thought good-natured.

  “What a time for you to come back, Eve old dear!” he said, and draped himself gracefully upon the sofa opposite me. “What on earth do you expect to gain by it?”

  “I’ve nothing to say to you,” I told him stiffly.

  He stretched his long legs upon Maggie’s fawn-colored slipcovers and leaned one elbow on a cushion, the better to observe me.

  “You look rather different,” he said. “Less wide-eyed and trusting. Older, I suppose. It’s becoming, I must say. But you’re too late, you know. I suppose Maggie has told you that Justin has cast the die with Alicia, and all that sort of thing. Justin’s in a rage about your coming, of course. He’s not after offending Alicia at this late date. We all rather need her in the family now, you know. Or don’t you know?”

  “It’s none of my affair what you need,” I said. “Just go away and leave me alone.”

  He did not move, but his rather delicate features lighted in an angelic way I remembered. How many hearts had he broken by the deceptive sweetness of his smile? I wondered. Mine had been safe enough from him, though my wounded ego had not been. But everything was changed now. I mustn’t be afraid of him.

  He continued to watch me, obviously speculating. He had always been enormously curious and ready to probe callously for answers to anything that puzzled him. My attempt to ignore him only amused and intrigued him.

  “What can you hope to gain by coming here?” he repeated. “With Alicia’s money to help out, Justin can afford to make you a much handsomer settlement than before. If you don’t rock the boat—”

  I sprang up to face him, my temper as easily lost as ever. “I don’t want any settlement! You would never understand why I came. Not in a thousand years. And I’m leaving early tomorrow anyway. So there’s nothing for us to discuss—nothing at all!”

  He listened to my outburst without getting to his feet, and his sweetly wicked smile did not waver. “They’ve put you in the blue lady’s room, haven’t they? Dacia’s at the other end of that hall. You must meet her before you go. I’ve told her all about you, you know.”

  There was something about Marc that had always made me not only angry, but uneasy as well. Even during that reckless time when all I’d cared about was punishing Justin, I had been a little afraid of Marc. And my fears had been justified. But in this tenser, older man, there seemed to lie some deeper threat. I started toward the door and he let me go, but before I could reach the corridor my way was blocked by the appearance of Nellie with my supper tray, and Maggie’s secretary, who followed beyond. Miss Davis smiled at me, and Marc got to his feet and drew up a table before the fire so Nellie could set down her tray.

  “I wanted to make certain you have everything you need, Mrs. North,” Caryl Davis ran on, her voice at conversational pitch, now that she was not lecturing. “Fancy not knowing who you were when you joined our tour this afternoon! When Mrs. Graham told me, I was quite upset about not giving you a proper welcome.”

  Marc winked at me. “I hope we’ve made up for that by now. I’ll run, and let you dine in peace. There’s all that glass mess in Justin’s shop still to be seen to, and a guard to be arranged for tonight. Cheerie-bye, my dear.” Marc loved to affect any vulgarism.

  Nellie had her antenna out, as always, and she had seen my face. She bent toward me. “The soup’s hot and strengthening, Miss Eve. See you eat every scrap of it, now. And I’ll go fetch a hot-water bottle for your bed, the way I used to do. Not that this is the season for it, what with its being so warm outdoors. But I remember how you liked your hot-water bottle, and you shall have one now. Do eat up.”

  She looked at me so kindly that I felt weak tears in my eyes and I had to blink to keep them back.

  “I’ll try,” I told her. And to Miss Davis, “Thank you. I’ll be fine now. You needn’t trouble about me.”

  Nellie hurried off, but Miss Davis lingered. I pulled my chair closer to the table and took a spoonful of thick soup with beef chunks floating in it, hoping she would go quickly away. Instead, she moved about the room, turning the pot of azaleas, straightening the hunting picture a trifle, tugging the corner of a slipcover—all empty gestures to give her an excuse to stay. I could hardly bear to swallow, but I kept on with the soup in order not to watch her.

  “I suppose you’ve heard about what happened to Mr. Justin’s workshop?” she said, perhaps experimenting with this topic because she was curious about me. “It’s quite dreadful, really. All those glass bottles and vials broken and his work spoiled. It’s the third time in as many weeks that someone has broken into his shop. They say he’s really onto something this time, and we’re afraid someone is trying to stop him, or even steal what he’s trying to do.”

  This, at least, interested me. “What is he trying to do?”

  She glanced at me a little coyly. “Ah, that’s what we mustn’t talk about, Mrs. North. Not that we know anything. Not really. But with the way he drives about testing that new experimental car of his, we know it’s something big coming up. You can tell by the look of the car it’s not regular. Though of course this is nothing any of us can work out, is it? Mrs. Graham is terribly concerned about him now, and a new, added worry—” She broke off apologetically, but the tenor of her remarks was evident. I was the new worry.

  “You needn’t concern yourself—I’m leaving tomorrow,” I told her abruptly.

  She had the grace to flush. “Please enjoy your supper. And I do apologize for not recognizing you on the tour this afternoon. Though how we could know—”

  She left me at last and I put down my spoon and stared without interest at the food on the tray. All I wanted was the thin bread and butter, and I’d have liked a cup of strong American coffee. But I sat with my hands in my lap, all energy drained from me. How I was to face the long walk upstairs to the opposite wing of the house, I didn’t know. The numbness was coming back again—and perhaps it was better to be numb than to feel, than to face the fact, as I must inevitably, that Justin was lost to me forever. His coming marriage to Alicia was irrevocably set, and only Maggie, prompted by Nigel, who could not really know, was ready to pin some faint hope on my coming here. Maggie was a born optimist, who always believed she could wrench a
change of mind from fate, even when everything was at its worst. At least she need not stay at Athmore and share it with Alicia when Justin married her. Nigel Barrow would take her away to the home of her own she so richly deserved.

  I must rouse myself, I thought. I must finish what I could eat and return to my faraway room. But as I sat listless, something cold and damp thrust its way beneath my hand and came to rest on my knee. A long muzzle and lean head, shaggy-haired, lay beneath my hand. Round brown eyes looked up at me, questioning.

  “Deirdre!” I cried, and the dog wriggled, coming as close as she could with her great, rough, brindle-gray body. Her long tail, curved upward at the tip, thumped on the carpet as she snuffled at me hopefully, and her small neat ears pricked erect at the sound of my voice.

  “You’re only hungry,” I said. “You don’t really remember me!”

  I put my arms about her and let her sniff my neck, lick my cheek. This was the way it had been when I had said goodby to her that other time. Legend had it that Irish wolfhounds were gifted with second sight, and certainly Deirdre had been remarkably sensitive, even as a puppy. When I’d said goodby to her she had whimpered and whined, and her tail had drooped sadly. But now she was full of joy. When I encouraged her, she put her paws upon my knee and raised herself to a height greater than mine in my chair. It wasn’t only the food she was interested in, after all. Whether she truly knew me or not, I couldn’t tell, but she recognized someone she felt at home with, and certainly she must feel my response.

  When we had greeted each other thoroughly, I persuaded her to sit at my feet, and I shared bits of ham with her as I ate. I had a friend at Athmore, after all. Dear Maggie had known and had sent her to me.

  Suddenly I felt hungry and considerably stronger than I had a while ago. I put all hard thoughts of the future away from me and finished every bite of my supper, while Deirdre watched me with love, her proud neck arched, her tail occasionally thumping out her approval. Somewhere in me courage stirred. All the cards seemed stacked against me, but I wasn’t beaten yet.

  III

  The library was empty as before. Deirdre and I met no one on the stairs on in the upper corridor of the north wing. No music issued from Dacia Keane’s room, and I gave the girl no more than a passing thought as we followed the long bare hallway toward my room. Except for a console table, an occasional stiff chair, and one or two paintings on the walls, the corridor was unfurnished and lighted only by three sconces along the way. The sight of it reminded me of how dismal Athmore could seem in the darkness of winter.

  Nellie had been in to turn down my bed, and I knew the promised hot-water bottle would be waiting for me. She had left the window closed, but the room was as chill as the corridor and I would be glad to go quickly to bed.

  Deirdre came in with me at my invitation, but once she was in the room her manner became strangely hesitant. She stood uncertainly in the center of the worn blue rug, sniffing the air and looking about her, as if for something alien that she did not like.

  “What is it?” I asked, and she gave me an uneasy look and growled low in her throat. “I always thought it was the green-velvet room that was haunted,” I added, and put my hand on the dog’s bristling coat to quiet her. She went sniffing across the room, found her way behind a huge Victorian dresser and made a whining noise to summon me.

  Behind the dresser was a corner door that I had forgotten about, though I knew where it led. I opened it quickly upon the wedged stone steps that circled upward to the tower—one of Mrs. Langley’s whimsies in building this house. A draft swept down upon me and I could look up at the rise of stone wedges to a rectangular sentry window open to the sky. No wonder my room was cold. The tower had the damp, musty odor of old stones, and as Deirdre sniffed she growled again, and I felt the bristles of her coat rise eerily beneath my hand.

  “Hello?” I called. “Anyone up there?”

  There was no sound, no answer. I knew that the tower door opened upon the connecting roofs and that all four towers had access to those roofs. From the four corners of the house anyone could go up to the roof and retreat with a choice of exits. I spelled them out in my mind. There was this room, and at the front of this north corridor the room Marc’s girl occupied. In the opposite wing the front guest room had access to a tower, though I did not know whether it was occupied or not. The room that opened on the rear tower was the one known as the green-velvet room—a room I had reason to know all too well. However, identifying the tower rooms told me nothing, gave me no answer to Deirdre’s suspicious manner.

  I backed from the opening and closed the door. “There’s nothing up there,” I told her. “No one runs around the roof at night.”

  Nevertheless, I examined the door for a bolt and found none, found there was no key to the massive lock. Deirdre would not stay with me in the blue lady’s room. No matter how I coaxed, I had to let her go. Wolfhounds of all species were known for their courage. They had once been fighting dogs and their loyalty to the death is proverbial. If there had been an enemy for Deirdre to face, she would have been up on the roof like a flash. As it was, she was merely disturbed and uneasy, anxious to be away from the place.

  Her distress touched off uneasiness in me, and I felt bereft without her comforting presence. My room was far removed from the rest of the house, yet all I could do was shove the great bureau before the tower door and get ready for bed.

  Once I had put on my blue-sprigged granny gown, brought especially for the chilly nights of an English spring, I opened the side window and leaned upon the sill. Lights burned in the garage and stable areas, and between the trees I could see a man moving slowly up and down. The guard, I presumed, since Justin had said he would put someone at this post tonight.

  What was happening here at Athmore to destroy its former peace and seclusion? Maggie was worried, Marc cold and a bit secretive—and everything appeared to be moving in Alicia’s direction. Yet there seemed, as well, some threat, some enemy within the gates. A malicious hand had been at work to play havoc with Justin’s experiments. Even Old Daniel, when I met him in the woods, had been touched by the secret threat—perhaps frightened by it? My encounter with Maggie had made me forget about the old man. Now I wished I had mentioned that meeting among the ruins to her, and told her the odd warning he had given me about the rook’s play. Tomorrow I must seek out the old man and ask him to tell me plainly what he meant.

  I almost smiled at the thought. In spite of my stated intention to leave, I was already making plans for tomorrow!

  A cool breeze blew in at the window and I went to bed, to warm my feet on Nellie’s towel-wrapped hot-water bottle. In my old life at Athmore I had seldom been as cold as I was now. In those days Justin had slept beside me, close and warm and always ready to open his arms and shelter his freezing little American.

  Now I lay on my back in the huge bed, looking up into distant blue-canopied depths, perversely as wide-awake as I had been sleepy before.

  How had this all come about? How had my grandmother’s words led me so inevitably to this bitter outcome? If only she had never told me her tales of Athmore; if only she had not built romantic pictures in my mind and urged me back to the village where she was born! But no—she wasn’t to blame. Every step along the way there had always been choices for me to make. I had no one to thank for such steps I had taken but myself. My grandmother was long dead by the time I came to England as a student just before my third year in college. Dad had staked me to the trip I wanted so much to make—only a few months before his death. I had not seen him again. He had not lived to know about the fiasco of my marriage, and since I avoided my stepmother, I did not have to listen to what she might say.

  How innocently I had stood before the open gates of Athmore that other time, that first afternoon when I’d taken the bus down from London. I had not expected that it would be so easy to walk in. Though, having come so far, I might have entered, even if there had been a sign up ordering me to stay out.

  On
that afternoon I wandered up the same straight walk I had followed today, spellbound by the sight of Athmore glowing warmly beneath a summertime sun. The lawns were greener than any I had ever seen, the flowerbeds more glowing and lush. No one stopped or questioned me, and I did not go so far as to walk up to the front door and ring the bell. My grandmother had been the daughter of the village vicar, but that hardly gave her granddaughter an introduction to Athmore.

  There was no one on the terrace. I wandered around to the rose garden at the side and found Maggie Graham cutting a basketful of long-stemmed beauties. She saw me and smiled a ready welcome. I stammered my name, told her about Gran, and how I had grown up on stories of these gardens and parklands.

  “The walls of the old hall are still standing, aren’t they?” I asked. “And the chapel window? Do you suppose it would be possible … I mean, the bus I must take back to London doesn’t leave for another hour and—”

  “Of course you may look,” she told me readily. “Come along and I’ll show you the way.”

  She sensed that I was hesitant, aware of my own intrusion and thus ill at ease. She knew I would enjoy my exploration better alone, so she indicated the walk through the woods and sent me on my way.

  “Mind you don’t miss your bus,” she called after me. “There’s not another through here until tomorrow morning.”

  I smiled and nodded vaguely. My feet were set upon a way that I had followed often in my imagination as a romantically inclined girl. I fancied that I knew the very trees I walked beneath, and indeed there was a great old beech that Gran had mentioned, with the initials of forgotten lovers cut into the bark, the carving now grown high and far from the ground.

  The tree made me feel very small and unimportant. It gave me an awareness of the need to hurry if I was to do any living at all. Life went by so fast. Where were those lovers now? Where were the first Athmores who had opened the forest and built in its depth an Elizabethan mansion whose ruins still lay hidden by these woods?