Chapter Sixteen
A full fortnight passed. I heard no more of the elopement. Though I saw Rowena every day for long periods of time, not a word was spoken on the subject. I had given the matter into her hands, and in doing so, I had given away my only weapon: I could not in honour raise the question until she did, and she did not.
I was still sure that Uncle Iain had not been told; instinctively I knew he would come to me for advice when he heard his daughter’s intentions, and he had not yet done so. There was time though. The month was not out.
As time passed, and the household went on with its usual life, I began to wonder if the whole odd episode had not been merely a fantastical extension of Rowena’s romantic dreaming. There was surely nothing in her actions, or in Roderick’s, to indicate that they were about to embark on a secret marriage. His attentions to her were frivolous as always, and as always those same attentions were available for myself on any unfortunate occasion that I found myself alone with him.
Then too, Rowena had been promised an elaborate family-dinner to celebrate her birthday and she openly revelled in the excitement of the coming event.
Her youthful glee at being the centre point of everyone’s attentions was not apparently diminished by plans for an elopement. It was hard to imagine that a girl about to be married would really care about anything as trivial as a birthday party.
Still, I reminded myself, standing at the schoolroom window, this girl sitting now in careful concentration on her French translations had surprised me before. The twisting currents of her nature might surprise me again.
She looked up from her desk. ‘There, I have finished it.’
I went and looked over her shoulder, checking her work.
‘Very good,’ I said, pleased with her noticeable improvement during my stay.
‘May I go now?’ she asked. ‘I am to go to Miss Fraser for fittings for my new gown, and I must not be late.’
‘Of course,’ I said smiling. ‘Go ahead now.’ She jumped up and rushed off in a flutter of ribbons and petticoats. She was young enough that a new gown was a major event. I smiled sadly, wanting to run after her, take her slim shoulders in my hands and shake sense into her.
She had so much good fortune: her beauty, her high birth, her father’s wealth. There were years ahead for her of girlish delights: new gowns and parties and handsome, pleasing young men. And she was perhaps even now plotting to throw it all away for the inconstant love of Roderick Grant-Davies.
I saw suddenly a frightening vision of this pretty young girl, old in her thirties, tied to an ageing rake who had spent her money, shattered her faith, and taken her into a life of poverty in some artist’s slum for which she was ill-equipped indeed.
If Rowena had seen, as I had seen in the tenements, what that life could mean, perhaps she would have been less careless of her birthright.
Later that evening, as Duncan and I walked through the misty, August garden, I thought how strange a thing love is; that there is no conviction quite as strong as the belief one holds in one’s first love. Only through the light of a later, truer commitment can one see the falseness of those early romances. I was fortunate, blessed now with such a love. Rowena, struggling with her first dangerous passions, was not so lucky.
Uncle Iain had urged us to make our engagement public, but Duncan and I were strangely reluctant, wanting to keep the rest of this magical summer to ourselves alone. But there was talk already, among the servants and others. Soon duty would bind us to inform Papa of our intentions. We had decided that sometime after the excitement of Rowena’s birthday had settled, we would make a quiet announcement.
In the soft calm of the summer garden, we could not have imagined what lay between us and that day.
Rowena’s birthday fell on the last day of August, a day on which we felt the first turning of the summer to autumn. The air was cooler, and a strong wind had come up over the night, from the north-east. Grey, misty clouds scudded over the hills. We all gathered around the inglenook after breakfast; Duncan and Uncle Iain, Roderick, Rowena and even Gordon, enjoying the novelty of the need for a fire after what had been an exceptionally sunny August.
Rowena sat on the little, low spinning-chair, beside her father’s knee, showing her affection for him openly, unlike herself. I was pleased to watch her there, blushing as we teased her about her new maturity. Uncle Iain looked happy and proud of her. Even Gordon was unusually animated, actually conversing with us quite freely.
The day started well, and throughout it everyone maintained the cheerful atmosphere. I had nothing but pleasant anticipation of the coming evening.
We took tea together in the drawing room, and Morag wheeled in the stately trolley with an elaborately iced and trimmed birthday cake. Rowena blew hard at her sixteen candles, but one stubborn one resisted and burned insistently on, and she pouted at her lost wish. But that minor setback was quickly forgotten.
‘Come, Elspeth,’ she said soon afterwards, ‘let us play our duet. Papa has not heard.’
She took my arm and led me to the piano and, giggling, we played a piece we had practised together in the music room. I gave up near the end; my young pupil far surpassed my abilities in this field, and there was laughter and much mockery of my fumbling attempts.
Suddenly Rowena embraced me like a sister and kissed my cheek. ‘We’ve had such fun, Elspeth,’ she said quickly. She got up quickly and ran to her father. He also received an embrace and a really quite loving kiss. Then she was away to the door where she turned and said, ‘I must go and dress now. It is getting late.’
It was a simple parting, unusually emotional for Rowena, but natural enough on a pleasing, exciting day. And still I left the drawing room with an odd feeling that she had bade us farewell.
The feeling would not leave me, and I stared troubled into the mirror, later, while Catriona styled my hair, singing her Gaelic songs all the while. I watched the reflected quick movements of her linen-cuffed wrists, as if their pattern could make me an answer. It could not.
She changed her song to one, low and sad, that I knew, because Duncan had sung it to me. I could not understand the Gaelic. Even after he had explained the meaning, the soft sounds made no shape of words. So he turned it to English and I remembered one verse that ran side by side in my head with Catriona’s singing.
Hear the music of my song,
Dark the night and wild the sea,
By God’s light my foot find,
The old pathway to thee.
It seemed to have more meaning than it should tonight and it was comforting. I clung to it, holding it in my head as I went down the hall to see Rowena.
I tapped lightly on the door, and she called for me to come in. She was sitting in camisole and petticoats, carefully brushing out her black hair.
‘Hello, Elspeth,’ she said. ‘You are looking very nice. That colour does suit you well.’ She was being uncommonly sweet.
‘Thank you,’ I murmured. I had chosen to wear the green silk, now repaired, that I had worn the night of the Creagdhubh ball, and with it the Iona cross that Duncan had given me.
‘Is that your new gown?’ I said, gesturing to a dusky-pink garment hanging ready on the wardrobe door.
She looked up at it with a peculiar wistfulness and said, ‘Yes, it is a pretty colour too, isn’t it.’
‘Very,’ I said, and then added, ‘Well hurry and get into it, we are all waiting to see you, and dinner will not be long now.’ Then, knowing she would prefer to dress unaided so that she might make her entrance without preview, I left her.
Rowena did not join us for sherry. When the dinner gong rang, she had not yet appeared. I was involved with my conversation with Duncan and, having just seen the girl preparing to dress, I took little notice. It was not unusual for Rowena to spend a little longer than the rest of the company perfecting her appearance. That Gordon had not yet arrived surprised no one. That was typical.
Had I not been so interested in my companion,
I think it would have struck me odd that Roderick, who was usually prompt, had also chosen this same evening to be late to dinner.
Uncle Iain and Duncan escorted me to the dining room. It would not do to keep the waiting staff hovering at the dining table with no explanation.
As Duncan led me to my seat, Uncle Iain said to the two serving girls, ‘Miss Rowena and the others will be along in a moment. If you could begin with the soup now, I think there will be only a little delay.’
‘Very well, sir,’ said the girl, retiring to the kitchen.
The girls brought the soup, and the big tureens stood on the sideboard, steaming. Our talk quieted slowly to an awkward silence, in which we were conscious of the taffeta-rustle of the serving-maids’ skirts. They watched Uncle Iain uneasily, and he looked around the table to Duncan and myself and said, ‘Now what do you think is keeping everybody tonight? Surely they have heard the gong.’
Duncan and I glanced quickly to each other, and I believe the same thought struck us as one. I jumped up and said hurriedly to Uncle Iain, ‘I’ll just go see about Rowena, perhaps she missed the gong.’
I left the room, hearing Duncan attempting to resume the uneasy conversation behind me.
The main hall and the stairway were very still, too still. I heard neither voices nor footsteps.
I lifted my skirts and ran up the stairs, turning down the corridor towards Rowena’s bedroom, my feet scuffing lightly on the red carpet.
At the door I rapped lightly and then harder. Trembling slightly, I turned the knob and flung open the door.
‘Rowena?’ I said softly, knowing she was not there. The room was neatly ordered, everything in place. On the door of the wardrobe, the dusky-pink evening gown hung untouched.
I knew then, but I still hoped desperately for some other explanation. And thinking vaguely that I might yet find Roderick, and perhaps Rowena herself, at the gate house, I ran from the room and down the stairs, quietly, not yet wanting to alert the rest of the household.
The rain and wind lashed at my face as I opened the tall front door. Outside, the late summer evening was darkening early under the heavy cover of a storm cloud. I splashed through the wind-rippled puddles of the cobbled forecourt, my thin slippers soon soaking up the muddy water. By the time I reached the bridge, I could feel the cold rain through my thin dress. Knowing that this was not a time to worry over such trivialities, I peered into the dimness beyond the bridge. There were no lights in the gate house.
I would at least try the door, though now I had little hope. As I crossed the stone arch, I glimpsed a moving shape in the shadows to my left. It was a face above a ruffled shirt-front. Someone was walking up the loch path, coming towards me.
I stopped and leaned over the low wall of the bridge and called, ‘Roderick? Is that you?’
The wind blew my words into the echoing ravine, and the man on the pathway stopped, having heard the sound if not the meaning. He looked up at me, closer now, and I saw the face. It was Gordon.
He made no answer, but stood for a long, frustrating moment staring at me. Then he continued up the path, his head bent against the storm, toward me.
He came to the bridge and started to cross, never raising his head, never looking at me, not seeming to know I was there.
When he was but feet away from me I called his name, loudly, again and again, and slowly, wearily he looked up at me.
The strong wind whipped his wet, dark hair into a tangle of curls across his forehead. His eyes were a dead, dark, emotionless black, and they looked at me with the blank dumbness of an animal. I was suddenly aware of how his youth had dissolved away, even over the months I had been here. ‘Gordon,’ I said, sharply, ‘where are Roderick and Rowena?’
‘Gone.’
‘Gone where?’ I demanded, desperately.
‘Away. They have gone away. They are not coming back.’
I stood motionless, absorbing his meaning, and restlessly he shifted his feet and tried to push past me.
‘Wait!’ I cried, stepping between him and the way to the house. ‘Where have they gone? How?’
‘The boat,’ he said, ‘the boat.’ He shook his head impatiently, as if my questions were unreasonable and he was bored with the subject. Again he tried to pass me and I held his arm, feeling him tense as I touched him.
‘They have run away, alone, in the boat?’ I said fearfully, for the wind was howling down the ravine and the loch would be wild.
‘The ferry-wife,’ he said. ‘Of course she will go with them.’ He was muttering, to himself, and I wanted to weep with the frustration of trying to drag the truth from him. ‘The ferry-wife, too.’ That seemed to bother him, and he rubbed his hand across his forehead nervously. Then he looked up, his eyes brightening, his face animated.
‘But she is an evil woman, Elspeth. She is very evil. It will serve her justly.’ He smiled a funny little crooked smile. He had pleased himself.
‘The ferry-wife’s boat, Gordon?’ I said, my fingers tightening on his velvet sleeve. ‘Have they run away in the ferry-wife’s boat?’
‘Oh, yes’ he said, clearly. ‘You see, Elspeth,’ his voice dropped to a tight whisper, ‘they want to get married.’ Then he giggled. ‘They asked me … me, they asked me to help. So you see, I was right. I knew if I waited, they would come to me. If I was very, very quiet.’ His eyes wandered off my face, down to the stones at my feet. ‘When one is on the hill, stalking the deer, one must be very, very quiet. I am very good at stalking. Last year I got a royal stag. Father will tell you.’
‘Gordon!’ I shouted and suddenly I brought the palm of my hand sharply up and across his face with a sound that I heard over the wind.
‘Elspeth!’ he said, amazed. ‘You hurt me.’ He looked dazed.
‘Gordon,’ I begged, ‘Tell me what is happening. Did you help them?’ I asked incredulously.
‘The ferry-wife can take them to the railway. At Fort Augustus. So they asked me … to arrange it.’ Again his hand came up and covered his eyes, and looking inward into the darkness he said, ‘And I did. I have arranged everything.’
‘Then they are going to Fort Augustus?’ I said, hoping this at least was the truth.
‘They are going to hell!’ he shouted at me, his face suddenly alive with anger.
‘We can stop them at Fort Augustus. If we send a rider. Or go after them in the boat,’ I said. ‘Come, we must tell your father.’
‘No,’ he said, wary and calm again. ‘No. You must not do that Elspeth, I can’t let you.’ His warning was quiet, but now it was he who held my arm.
‘Please Gordon, please let go. There is not much time.’
‘There is no time, Elspeth. They are gone, forever, all three of them.’
I knew then what was happening, and I gasped with shock. ‘What have you done Gordon? Your own sister is in that boat.’
‘She took my mother’s dress. She was going to wear it. My mother’s dress, her beautiful wedding dress.’ He stood in the rain, sobbing, tears lost in the rainwater on his face. For a moment his hand went slack on my arm and I pulled wildly.
It was a mistake.
‘No, Elspeth,’ he said perfectly calmly. ‘You should not have done that,’ and then with incredible ease he twisted me around, grasping my flailing free hand as he did so and forcing me surely back. I fought, but the backs of my legs came up against the cold, wet wall of the bridge. He pushed harder, steadily, and my back bent over the awful space below. My feet slid and scraped against the cobbles and I felt them lifting off the ground as he levered me over the stone parapet.
‘Gordon, stop!’ I cried, desperate for my life. He was so calm. I could hear the roar of the burn far below while my loosened hair trailed down into the ravine.
I screamed, and he, logical to the last, let go of my left hand to cover my mouth. My one free hand was little threat, but my screams would bring help.
I bit hard into the hand over my mouth and he shouted and raised it, swinging angrily with his
fist at my face. I pulled sideways, flattening myself onto the wall, and he lunged wildly for me and over me. Then with a single awful scream he overbalanced, the force of his lunge carrying his body over the low stone wall into the black emptiness.
I clung sobbing to the wall; he had very nearly dragged me with him.
Standing then, I looked down in a sick silence. Gordon’s fragile lace-cuffs, trailing in the black water of Alltdhubh, glowed pale white, like foam. Even then, seeing the dark huddled, utterly still form on the rocks, I had no real comprehension that he was dead.
Instead, my shocked mind was swept by a single thought, the one thought that had been upon it before he turned on me. I must stop the ferry-wife’s boat before it sailed, with all its occupants, to the destruction Gordon had planned.
I turned away from the ravine and ran across the bridge and down the loch path. Beside me Alltdhubh thundered and roared with the rainwater of the hills.
Chapter Seventeen
Rain had turned the loch path into a slimy black ribbon of peaty mud, running beneath the tunnel of arching hazels and rowans and wet, glittering hollies.
In the dim, stormy evening-light the sheltered path was almost dark, the murk drawn in close under the trees. The brilliant rowan berries were dulled to the colour of dark blood, the hollies near-black at their roots.
I ran wildly, my skirts above my knees, tripping and sliding, and fortunately too shocked to fear the cliff edges beside me. The roar of the burn never left me, and high above, lost in the trees, the wind was howling as loudly.
Then a new sound grew up under the two, a low ominous moan, and through a break in the tossing trees I glimpsed the wild waters of the loch, slate grey and splashed all over with foaming white wave-crests. Long white streaks of foam ran in parallel lines down its length, showing the way of the north-east wind.
When I reached the shore, leaping recklessly down the last shelving of rock, the waves were breaking on the sand like the sea.
Christabel's Room: A spellbinding Victorian gothic romance Page 15