The Time of the Hunter's Moon

by Victoria Holt

  Autumn came. It was the time of the Hunter’s Moon. A whole year since I had gone into the forest and met the stranger! It seemed longer. I suppose that was because so much had happened. I was beginning to convince myself that I had imagined the whole thing; and I should have loved to see Monique, Frieda or Lydia again so that I could assure myself that we really had all been in the forest together on that day.

  Fiona Verringer was at length chosen to play Cinderella and Charlotte was Prince Charming. They were the inevitable choices because Fiona was so pretty and Charlotte so tall. Charlotte was delighted and far more manageable than before, being absorbed in her role.

  During November we were rehearsing and Mr. Crowe, the music master, wrote some songs for the girls to sing and there was great activity in Miss Barston’s class putting the costumes together.

  One morning I went into the town and in the little draper’s shop I came face to face with Marcia Martindale. She seemed quite a different person from the heart-broken women I had met in the courtyard. She was serene and friendly and asked me to call.

  “I should be so pleased if you would,” she said. “One doesn’t see many people and it would be a great treat. Do you ever get a few hours free?”

  I said I had a free afternoon on Wednesday unless something happened, such as one of the other mistresses being indisposed. Then I should be expected to take her class.

  “Shall we say Wednesday then? I’ll be so delighted if you can come.”

  I accepted, I have to admit, with alacrity, for I was very eager to discover more about her. I tried to pretend to myself that her relationship with Jason Verringer was of no interest to me, but that I wanted to make her understand that circumstances had thrust me into the position of dining with him—as she had found us on that night when she had been so clearly distressed.

  So I went to tea with Marcia Martindale.

  It was a very unusual afternoon. The door was opened by a little woman with a sharp dark face rather like an intelligent monkey’s. She had hair which was almost black, stiff and coarse, and stood out en brosse round her small face; her eyes were small and very dark; they seemed to dart everywhere, missing nothing.

  She said: “Come in. We’re expecting you.” And she smiled, showing large white teeth, as though my coming was some tremendous joke.

  She took me into a drawing room most graciously furnished with Queen Anne furniture which suited the house.

  From a sofa Marcia Martindale rose and held out both her hands to me. She was dressed in a peignoir of peacock blue silk. Her hair was loose and about her forehead was a velvet band with a few brilliants in it which might have been diamonds. There was a similar band about her throat. She looked dramatic as though she were about to play some tragic role like Lady Macbeth or the Duchess of Malfi. Yet again she was quite unlike the woman I had so recently met in the draper’s.

  “So you have come,” she said in a low voice; then, raising it a little: “Do sit down. We’ll have tea now, Maisie. Will you tell Mrs. Gittings?”

  “All right,” said the woman who was clearly Maisie, with more alacrity than respect. In her cockney voice was a jaunty suggestion of equality. She was a striking contrast to Marcia Martindale. She went out as though she were finding it difficult to suppress her mirth.

  “My friends get used to Maisie,” said Marcia. “She was my dresser. They get very familiar.”

  “Your dresser?”

  “Yes. I was in the theatre, you know, before I came here.”

  “I see.”

  “Maisie remembers the old days. It was good of you to come. Particularly as you have so little free time.”

  “We’re busy at the moment. We are putting on a pantomime for Christmas.”

  “Pantomime?” Her eyes lighted up and then became contemptuous. “I started in it,” she went on. “It gets you nowhere.”

  “I think it is most interesting that you were an actress.”

  “Very different from being a schoolmistress, I daresay.”

  “They are poles apart,” I agreed.

  She smiled at me.

  “You must miss the theatre,” I went on.

  She nodded. “One never really gets used to not working. Particularly if…”

  She shrugged her shoulders and at that moment there was a tap on the door and a squat, middle-aged woman trundled in a tea trolley on which were sandwiches and cakes and everything we should need for tea.

  “Over here, Mrs. Gittings,” said Marcia in rather loud ringing tones. And then more quietly: “That’s right. Thank you.”

  Mrs. Gittings gave me a look and a nod and went out. Marcia surveyed the tea trolley, as though it were John the Baptist’s head on a charger. I did not know why these allusions kept occurring to me. It was simply because everything here did not seem quite natural. I wished Eileen Eccles were with me. We should have a hilarious time laughing over it all, I was sure.

  “You must tell me how you like your tea. I do think it is so good of you to come. You can’t believe what a pleasure it is to have someone to talk to.”

  I said I liked it weak with a little milk and no sugar. I stood up and took the cup from her. Then I sat down. There was a little table beside me on which I set my cup.

  “Do have one of these sandwiches.” She seemed to glide toward me, holding out the plate, even infusing a certain amount of drama into that ordinary action. “Mrs. Gittings is very good. I’m lucky. But I do miss the theatre.”

  “I can understand that.”

  “I knew you would. I expect you wonder why I bury myself in the country. Well, there is the little one. You must meet Miranda before you leave.”

  “Your little girl? Yes, I should like that.”

  “It’s for her sake really.” She threw back her head with a gesture of resignation. “I shouldn’t be here otherwise. Children break into one’s career. One has to make a choice.”

  There were many questions I should have liked to ask, but I supposed they were all too personal. I became intent on stirring my tea.

  “You must tell me all about yourself,” she said.

  I told her briefly that I lived with my aunt and that this was my first post; but I sensed that she was not really listening.

  “You are very young,” she said at length. “Not that I am much older than you…in years.”

  She sighed and I presumed she was referring to her superior experience of life. I felt she was probably right about that.

  “And,” she said, coming to the point which I was sure was the reason why she had been eager for me to visit her, “you have already become friendly with Jason Verringer.”

  “Well, hardly friendly. There was that accident and I had to stay at the Hall with the girl who had been thrown from her horse. You remember you came when I was there.”

  She regarded me steadily. “Oh yes. Jason went to great lengths to explain. He was most apologetic. But I told him that in the circumstances he had to entertain you.”

  “It wasn’t a matter of entertaining. I would have been perfectly happy with a tray in the sick-room.”

  “He did say that was out of the question…A guest in his house and all that.”

  “He seems to have gone into the matter pretty thoroughly.”

  “Of course he would enjoy your company. He likes intelligent women…if they are pretty as well, which you undoubtedly are, Miss Grant.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I understand Jason very well. In fact when he comes back…Well, there is an understanding, you see. There is the child, of course, and his poor wife…That’s over now…”

  I understood that she was telling me I was not to take seriously the attention Jason Verringer had bestowed on me. I wanted to tell her not to worry. I should certainly not attempt to be a menace to her and I was really quite indifferent to the plans she had made with the odious man.

  I said coolly: “I am absorbed in my career. I was going in with my aunt at one time but that came to nothing. The Abbey is a m
ost interesting school and Miss Hetherington a wonderful woman to work with.”

  “I am so glad you are happy. You are different from the others.”

  “Which others?”

  “The mistresses.”

  “Oh, you know them?”

  “I have seen them. They look like schoolmistresses. You don’t exactly.”

  “I am one, nevertheless. Tell me about the parts you played.”

  She was nothing loth. Her greatest success had been Lady Isabel in East Lynne. She stood up and burying her face in her hands declaimed: “Dead. Dead. And never called me Mother.”

  “That was the deathbed scene,” she told me. “It used to entrance the house. There wasn’t a dry eye in the place. I played Pinero’s Two Hundred a Year. Lovely. I liked drama best. But there was nothing to touch East Lynne. That was a certain success.”

  She then gave me little extracts from other parts she had played. She seemed quite a different woman from the one I had first seen on the lawn with the child or in the draper’s shop. In fact she seemed to change her personality every few minutes. The quiet fond mother; the lonely woman pleading for a visit; the heart-broken mistress of the courtyard scene; the charming hostess; and now the versatile actress. She slipped from roles with perfect ease.

  We talked about Cinderella which we were doing at school. She had played in it once. “My first part,” she cried ecstatically, clasping her hands about her knees and becoming a little girl. “I was Buttons. You must have a good Buttons. It’s a small but effective role.” She looked upwards with adoration at an imaginary Cinderella. “I was a very good Buttons. It was then people began to realize I had a future.”

  The door opened and Mrs. Gittings came in leading a little girl by the hand.

  “Come and say Hello to Miss Grant, Miranda,” said Marcia slipping easily into the part of fond parent.

  I said Hello to the child, who surveyed me solemnly. She was very pretty and had a look of her mother.

  We talked about the child and Marcia tried to make her say something but she refused, and after a while I looked at my watch and said I should have to be back at school in half an hour. I was sorry to hurry away but she would understand.

  She was the gracious hostess. “You must come again,” she said, and I promised I would.

  Riding back to the Abbey I thought how unreal everything had seemed. Marcia Martindale appeared to be acting a part all the time.

  Perhaps that was to be expected since she was an actress. I wondered why Jason Verringer had become enamored of her and what part he could play in such a household. I felt there was something very unpleasant about the whole matter and I wanted to put them both out of my mind.

  ***

  The term passed with greater speed than the previous one, which might have been because I was becoming so familiar with the school. Lessons, rehearsals, gossip in the calefactory, little chats with Daisy…I found it all absorbing.

  There was no doubt that I was a favorite with Daisy, who, I knew, congratulated herself on having imported a Schaffenbrucken product into the establishment; and I really believed she attributed the growing prosperity to my presence.

  She would ask me to her sitting room and over cups of tea talk about the school and the pupils. She was delighted in the change in Teresa Hurst and was relieved that I could be relied upon to take her off her hands when the cousins defaulted.

  As the term progressed the main item of conversation was the coming pantomime.

  “The parents come to see it so it is very important that we have the right kind of entertainment,” Daisy said. “Parents are not very perceptive where their own daughters are concerned and are apt to think that they are budding Bernhardts—but they can be highly critical of others. I want them to notice how well all the girls enunciate, how they move with a particular grace, how they enter a room and are free from any gaucherie. You know what I mean. I should think a good many parents will come to see the pantomime. They will have to make their own arrangements, of course. The hotel in Colby will be full, but some of them can stay a few miles off at Bantable. There are some big hotels there. They can then travel back with their daughters. We have never had as many as we did for the Abbey Festival. That was last year. We’ll do it again next. It should be in June. Midsummer Night is the best. It’s light then and of course it is so effective among the ruins. Such a wonderful setting. It was most impressive…quite uncanny, in fact. The seniors were in their white robes. You really would have thought the monks had come to life again. We had some lovely singing and chanting. It was a great occasion. I daresay we have some of the costumes put away somewhere. I must ask Miss Barston.”

  “An Abbey Festival with the girls dressed as monks. That must have been really exciting.”

  “Oh it was. The Cistercian robes…and I remember we had torches. I was terrified of those torches—though I must say they did add something to the scene. Girls can be so careless. We came near to having an accident. It would be better if we could do it in the light of a full moon. But that’s for the future. Now let us concentrate on Cinderella. I hope Charlotte will not show off. Other parents won’t like it.”

  “I am sure she will do very well. And Fiona Verringer is going to make a charming Cinderella.”

  And so we went on.

  The term progressed and I did not see Marcia Martindale during it, but I did on two occasions meet Mrs. Gittings wheeling the child through the lanes. I stopped and talked to her. She seemed devoted to the child and I liked her. She was a rosy-cheeked homely woman with an air of honesty, quite a contrast to the flamboyant actress and her truculent cockney dresser.

  I talked to her and I confess to a curiosity to know how she fitted into such a household. She was not the sort of woman to talk much of her employers but one or two revealing observations slipped out.

  “Mrs. Martindale be an actress twenty-four hours of the day. So you can never be sure whether ’tis what she means or whether she be playing a part, if you get my meaning. She’m fond of the child but forgets her sometimes…and that’s not the way for children.” And of Maisie. “She be such another. Got her two feet on the ground though, that one. I don’t know. It be like working in some sort of theatre…not, mind you, Miss Grant, as I’ve ever worked in one. But I say to myself, Jane Gittings, this b’ain’t no theatre. This be a real live home and this be a real live child. And if they forget it, see you don’t.”

  On the other occasion when I saw her—that was nearer the break-up for the Christmas holiday, she told me she was going to stay with her sister on the moor just over the holiday. “Mistress, her be going to London and her’ll take Maisie with her. That gives me a chance to take the little ’un with me. My sister’s one for babies. I reckon it was a real pity she never had one of her own.”

  Somehow I could not imagine Marcia Martindale as mistress of the Hall. But it was no concern of mine and there was plenty at this time with which to occupy myself.

  Cinderella was a continual source of panic and joy. Fiona had a pretty singing voice and we had found an exuberant wicked stepmother and two ugly sisters whose spirits were difficult to restrain, and who were determined to add touches of their own, to the despair of Eileen Eccles. Then Charlotte’s costume didn’t fit in a manner to please Miss Barston and there was pandemonium about that.

  “For heaven’s sake!” cried Eileen. “It can’t be worse at Drury Lane!”

  There was the task of decorating the school and setting up a post box so that the girls could send Christmas cards to each other. On the morning before Cinderella was performed we had our postal delivery and two of the younger girls had postman’s caps and very solemnly opened the box which had been set up in the refectory, and the cards were delivered to the various classes. There were gasps of oohs and ahs and much embracing and many expressions of heartfelt thanks.

  A record number of parents came to watch Cinderella; they applauded wildly, declared it was charming and much better than last year’s Dick Whi
ttington, and it didn’t matter in the least that one of the ugly sisters fell sprawling on the stage and her shoe went hurtling into the audience and that the second ugly sister forgot her lines and the prompter’s voice was so loud that it could be heard all over the hall.

  Everyone said it was delightful. Daisy was congratulated.

  “Your girls have such beautiful manners,” said one parent.

  “I’m so glad you notice,” replied Daisy smiling. “We are so insistent on deportment. More so I believe than in so many of these fashionable finishing schools.”

  It was triumph indeed.

  The girls had gone and Teresa and I would be departing on the next day for Moldenbury. Another term was over. It had been a very interesting and pleasant one and it was partly due to the fact that Jason Verringer was absent. The fact gave a certain peace to the surroundings.

  ***

  Christmas was a real success. Teresa had so looked forward to it that I feared she might have set her hopes too high and suffer disappointment.

  But no, everything went perfectly.

  We arrived a week before the Day and I was glad of that because it gave Teresa time to enjoy the anticipation of Christmas and all the preparations which I had often felt were more enjoyable than the feast itself.

  She was able to help Violet with the pudding and the Christmas cake. All of which Violet said should have been done by this time. But there was Teresa sitting on a chair stoning raisins and shelling nuts, watching Violet like a dedicated priestess stirring the pudding and calling everyone in to have a stir, even the man who helped in the garden three times a week.