Still She Wished for Company

by Margaret Irwin

  They had not stopped talking. They were talking about the house. The man had turned to his wife and was asking, “Who was the Tudor gentleman that built the house, Milly?” and then to the girl, “Yes, we keep up all the old feudal customs, you know. Regular old castle it is. Costs something to keep up too, I can tell you. And so you’re staying here? In the village? Where abouts? What’s your name?”

  “Miss Challard,” said the girl. “Thank you very much for giving me leave.” She bowed and left them, walking quickly away through the arch. She passed so near to Juliana that she could have touched her, but she never turned to look at her. Juliana stood looking after her, and her hands were pressed together, as cold as ice.

  “Nice little girl,” said the man. “Milly, this weed puncher’s no good.”

  Juliana turned and saw that he, too, was looking after the girl in brown, so that he was looking straight at herself. But he, too, did not see her. With a sudden, panic-stricken movement she ran through the arch and out into the park, ran blindly until, exhausted and panting, she fell under one of the oak trees and lay there, clutching at the grass.

  “They weren’t living people,” she kept saying to herself. “How could any real, living people have looked at me and not seen me?”

  She lay there for a long time, her breath gradually coming more easily and her hands ceasing their convulsive movements. She sat up and looked round her. Everything appeared the same. She heard the peacock scream from the garden.

  She started as she saw something small and white move close by her, but it was only a large piece of paper fluttering in the grass. It blew a little way towards her and she saw that there were two pieces, with writing all over them. She went and picked them up.

  The writing was not hers; indeed, compared with Juliana’s beautiful caligraphy, it looked the most slovenly, ill-formed hand, and both paper and ink extremely thin and poor. Juliana turned the pages over. They were written on both sides and appeared to have no beginning and no end. As far as she could make out it began in the middle of a sentence—

  —” but won’t I be a fool to go and ask permission even if I do get it? To see the Harrises in the flesh and know they’re really there, having their beds turned down in the evening and hot water put in their rooms. Barney, I can hear you laugh at me, but why should they be here—and not even enjoy it? They don’t even fill the house with a cheerful jolly vulgarity of house-parties and week-ends. The place crushes them; it’s not surprising. And now if I go to them, will the place ever be the same after that, however much I’m allowed to prowl about it? Perhaps I’m just throwing away the shadow for the substance, and the shadow is the only thing that matters here.

  “It’s not a real house at all. It’s a city in a fairy tale or in one of Dürer’s pictures, and when I first saw it I expected to see a hunting party in silks and velvets ride out from under that great archway.

  “When I first saw it, I turned away, but when I looked back, it was still there.

  “I found it at the end of a beech drive, the straightest and longest drive I’ve ever seen. I was already late for lunch when I hit on this drive, coming out of a little wood, but I had to go on and see where it led to. I was tired, too, and I thought I might as well come back to-morrow, but no, I had to go on. And it led to tall red chimneys rising above the trees of the drive, and then iron gates three times my height, and behind them, lawns, terraces, a flight of steps, and then that vast house. As far as I could see at that distance the windows were all closed, with blinds partly down, and they looked like brooding half-shut eyes that were all looking at me.

  “I felt quite glad to turn away, round by an enormously high red wall, and then I saw those twisted Tudor chimneys again, over the wall, and then old red roofs and a little tower and the tops of the tallest cypresses. It was then it looked most like a city and there was no sight nor sound of life.

  “I came then on the archway into the courtyard, and so on round till I was nearly at the front of the house again. This part looked more gentle and homely, and had lawns and little gardens in front of it. I thought by now that the house must be empty, and I boldly trespassed across a lawn, in bright sunshine, close up to the house. There was one room with long French windows that were open on to the lawn, and I heard girls’ voices and laughter coming from it.

  “As I went past the window I saw three girls gathered round a table looking at something on it. Two of them wore a sort of long riding dress of green velvet, and the third, who was just coming across the room, was in a loose, flowing robe, all white, with a red ribbon, like Sir Joshua Reynolds’ ladies when they’re not in full dress. It was this one in particular that I looked at, for she was just in front of the window, and she looked up and saw me.

  “She was as shy and exquisite as a fawn; yet not wild. A tame fawn that would eat out of your hand if you did not startle her. I did startle her, for her great shining eyes opened wide and she turned quickly back to the others.

  “Then it struck me how dreadful it was of me to be trespassing right under their windows, and I fled. For at the time I thought they must be the daughters of the house, dressing up or something. It was only afterwards when I heard that the whole of that side of the house is shut up, and that the Harrises are a childless couple and haven’t anyone staying with them, that I began to think that I must have seen the ghosts of girls who used to live there.

  “What do you think, Barney? Were they ghosts?

  “It is strange to think of happy ghosts, isn’t it, ghosts laughing and chattering. They looked so gay and so pretty and I thought I heard one singing as I went away, to a tinkly old instrument like a tiny piano. They were too pretty to be dead. Though— there’s de la Mare—

  “But beauty vanishes, beauty passes,

  However rare—rare it be.”

  “And, Barney, she saw me. That is so queer. You never hear what ghosts think of the changes in the place they visit, or the people they appear to, yet we must look just as strange to them, I suppose. Was it she, or I, who was the ghost!

  “The Vicar’s nice. He’s told me what he can about the place and lent me a funny old book that comes from it—he bought it for 6d. in the sale—but I haven’t——”

  There the writing came to an end.

  Chapter IX

  Juliana did not know how long she had been sitting under the oak tree. It did not seem so very long, yet she noticed when she got up that the shadows in the park had lengthened, and she was as stiff as if she had sat on the ground for some hours. It must be nearly dinner time and she was not yet “dressed.” She rose, and moved slowly towards the house.

  The arched gateway into the courtyard soon appeared, huge and grey, through the trees. It was the oldest part of the house, a relic from the days when it was a mediaeval castle. The wall that surrounded the house came up to the side of the gateway, and above it rose the irregular line of red brick roofs, straggling chimneys and a little white stone peppercaster of a turret, put up in Charles II’s time.

  Juliana stood still and looked at the gateway. The sunshine came from under it in a wide semi-circle. It all looked very still and peaceful, very familiar. But what might she not see if she went through the arch? Would she meet with the people she knew? The thought of encountering those unnatural strangers again was so terrible to her that she drew back and thought she would go round by the terrace and enter the house from that side. But if the strangers were still about the place it was as likely by this time that they should be on the other side of the house as this. It was, in fact, most improbable that they should have remained so long in the courtyard. Not a sound came from it. Juliana plucked up courage and stole up to the arch.

  There was no one in the courtyard. The sun beat down on the white gravel. The massive stone trough, overgrown with ferns, made a bright green patch against the wall, just by the arch. Juliana looked at it with a sudden fresh apprehension. She had never noticed nor thought of it at the time, but she now could not be sure if there had b
een ferns in that trough when she was in the courtyard a short time ago. She had been standing just by it; it would have been strange if she had not seen the ferns in the otherwise, bare courtyard.

  But, then, she was very unobservant, and there had been so much to agitate her at the time. She touched the ferns gently. “You were here before, were you not?” she whispered, and the rough surface of their fronds seemed to answer her smooth ringers, solidly reassuring her of their reality.

  She went into the house, not through the hall but up a side passage that led to a little stair, hesitating and listening whenever she heard a sound. She ran as though she were pursued down the corridor to her room, then stopped at the door and listened, her heart beating in great thumps, for she heard someone moving about inside. “It is only Molly? Is it one of Them?” came tumbling over and over in her mind. She could not open the door and find out. Suddenly she hit her hands together in anger at her own cowardice. What would Lucian think of her? What did she think of herself? She went in.

  Molly was arranging the folds of a silk paduasoy on the back of a chair.

  “Molly!” gasped Juliana, and the next moment had flung her arms round the neck of her maid.

  “Why, Miss! What’s the matter, Miss? My own precious lamb, what is it?”

  “Nothing. I am only so glad to see you again, Molly.”

  Juliana felt much ashamed of having exposed her emotion, but it was better to have done so to her dear Molly than anyone else.

  Whatever Molly may have thought of Juliana’s remarkable display of pleasure at seeing her again after the not very lengthy interval that had elapsed since she had bathed and dressed her young mistress that morning, she asked no more questions but set to work at once on the elaborate business of the toilet, with many exclamations at the impossibility of finishing it in time. Only half an hour to dinner! What had her young mistress been about? Her tortuous operations on Juliana’s hair had to be sadly curtailed. There would have been no time to learn her Geography Cards during their operation, even if she had been so disposed. The task of squeezing her tiny waist into yet tinier stays was performed with unusual speed, the voluminous folds of the paduasoy were rapidly arranged over the hooped satin petticoat, and the charming result of these hasty labours was arrived at within five minutes of the booming of the dinner bell.

  It was while she was thus engaged that Juliana made a discovery, she did not know if it were disquieting or not. She was sure that after she had read those papers over several times, she had folded and put them in the bodice of her dress. But when she was undressed they were not there. They had been perfectly secure, they could not have dropped out. Yet they had dropped out. For the moment, however, she felt positively glad of the disappearance of such a substantial proof of her strange terrors.

  She walked downstairs composed and easy. There is something in a hooped paduasoy that must inspire confidence in the breast of its wearer even as it imparts dignity to her appearance. Juliana might not be able to breathe quite as freely as she could have done an hour ago, but she certainly felt more capable of sustaining her part in whatever might befall her.

  Even Lady Chidleigh’s brief reproof of her unpunctuality did not cast her down. There was something positively reassuring in being scolded by mamma again. She even pictured to herself what it would be like if mamma could encounter the creature called Mr. Harris, and the shudder caused by the thought was not solely one of terror.

  It revived her spirits infinitely to look down the long table, weighted by heavy dishes, to hear Aunt Emily offering every dish to everybody and raising her voice to a very good imitation of the peacock as she addressed Cousin Francis, who was nearly stone deaf; to see George in the abundance of his manly appetite, sending Zachary for more sauce and Daniel for another bottle, the while he carved himself something like two pounds of beef. Vesey had ridden over to Barton to see a cock-fight, and Lucian was also absent, but George could not say where he was when his mother enquired.

  It was a hot evening and they all, except old Cousin Francis, went after dinner to sit on the wide flight of steps in front of the house, above the terraced garden. The elders sat on chairs at the top of the flight, Juliana perched herself on one of the steps. Last summer it had been very hot and they had done this almost every evening. Often, some of the Hilburys and their schoolboy brothers, or her cousins Charlotte and Sophia, had ridden over and sat with them on the steps until it was too chilly to sit there any longer, even with shawls, and they had gone in to dance or play blind man’s buff indoors.

  It had been a merry summer. Juliana wondered if this one would be as merry. She hoped things would not change. She had been foolish, always wishing for change, for life to be different. Gould it be pleasanter than this?

  They had sat there some time and the sun was setting at the end of the long drive. It looked black in the twilight, and the tree-tops were not stirring in the still air. She wondered whether she had not always been a little afraid of the drive, even in the sunlight.

  Vesey came home demanding supper, and giving George elaborate accounts of the cock-fight and his bets on it. Grandmamma had gone to bed, Aunt Emily shivered and fussed for shawls, and the party went in. Juliana lingered in the doorway to watch the new moon rising over the trees of the drive, and heard the thud of hoofs coming down it. “That is Lucian,” she thought, and went to the top of the steps. He might see her as he came out of the drive and then he would leave his horse at the gates and come straight up to her through the gardens instead of going round by the courtyard.

  Would he see in this dim light at such a distance? She waved her scarf but was sure it was of no use, for her pale-coloured dress did not show on the white stone. But she heard the horse stop, and for a minute there was nothing to break the exquisite stillness of the evening. Then there came the sound of a man’s steps on the gravel, a dark figure showed against the dim grey of the lawn and came up the steps to her.

  “I did not think you could see me,” said Juliana.

  “I can see in the dark,” said Lucian. “Did you not know I was a feline animal?”

  His voice was light and pleasant but she knew that something had made him very angry, and she felt more afraid than she had done at any time that day.

  “Well,” he said, “you waved to me to come. Now tell me quickly.”

  The imperious form of the request suddenly roused her. He may have had reason to be angry, but not with her. In any case she did not choose to be so commanded.

  “It cannot be told quickly,” she said in her quiet voice, and began to move towards the house. He laid a hand on her arm.

  “Sweet sister, have I displeased you?” he asked, half mocking, half coaxing. “Was I abrupt, discourteous? If so, see how humbly I pray for a return of your favour.”

  He knelt with deliberate grace and raised the hem of her satin petticoat to his lips.

  “Lucian!” she faltered, embarrassed though she laughed, “how ridiculous! And what am I to do, pray? Make my best curtsey? But, indeed, there is a great deal to tell—if—I am not sure that I want to tell it—not just now, perhaps.”

  She had drawn her scarf a little closer, glancing round her. That old familiar terrace, faintly seen—it had always been the same. Would it always be just the same?

  “No?” said Lucian, who had risen and was looking down on her with very quick, bright eyes. “Then I will tell you what I have been doing instead. Is that someone calling you? Come, we’ll take a turn on the terrace.”

  “But it is mamma,” said Juliana.

  “So? But if you were further down the terrace you could not hear her.”

  He drew her arm into his and led her further down the terrace. The white roses shone dimly in the summer dusk; the moonlight had begun to make faint shadows of a hooped skirt and a sword as they walked up and down the terrace. Juliana felt as though they were walking in a dream. Was it a true belief held by the ancients, and were their shadows that they saw before them in reality their souls? Sh
e did not fear to think so now.

  “Sweet,” said Lucian, “you have gone far away.”

  “No,” she answered, “I am here and with you.” Indeed, it was as though she had never been, would never be, anywhere else.

  They walked past the tall box hedge again. Shadows stole out on the milky ground, of a bent head, ribbon at neck, of a head, upturned to meet it, under a high-piled tower of hair.

  “We have never walked here at this hour before,” said Juliana. “Yet it seems as though we had done so for a hundred years.”

  “Or will do so for a hundred years more,” he answered, and then both fell into silence again. Even their steps made no sound on the grass walk of the terrace.

  Now, or a hundred years ago or a hundred years hence, it was all one. Wherever they were, whatever they would become, something of them both would always walk together at this summer hour on the terrace. So Juliana felt, though she could not have put her feeling into words nor even thoughts, and she knew that Lucian felt it too.

  “I have been seeing Mr. Daintree,” he said, “on the subject of the offer of marriage he has made you.”

  A hundred years ago or a hundred years hence, fled away in a flash. Juliana was in the present moment again, in the summer of 1779, and rapidly surveying what might happen by the autumn. Mr. Daintree, so kind, but grave—and old, oh, monstrously old! He had given her a doll on her sixth birthday, so kind of him—a beautiful wax doll that had come from Paris—but he had been quite old even then. She remembered his maroon satin knee breeches and the jewelled fob on his waistcoat, as she had held the beautiful new doll in her arms, too shy to look any higher than the fob while she thanked him as mamma bade her.