Bride of Pendorric (41 page)

Then she saw her mother in the hospital and she must have known that Morwenna was lying where I was intended to be.

Death was hateful; it was frightening; and it touched those she loved.

Her own mother. And even for me she had some affection.

She was frightened; and when she saw me going off with Barbarina in the car, guessing for what purpose, she broke into hysteria which so alarmed her father that he sent for Dr.

Clement, but it was some time before they could understand the meaning of her incoherent words. Dr. Clement’s first action was to telephone Roe; and Roe immediately drove to the manor.

Yet although I lived so dangerously up to that night when Roe came to me in Devon, it was during the following months that I learned so much more of life than I ever had before; the months of safety and serenity.

For one thing, I learned the story of the boy who lived in Louisa Sellick’s house on the moor. Morwenna must have grown up too, because she confessed to Charles that he was hers. She had been afraid to do so before because the boy was the result of a brief passionate love affair which had occurred when she was seventeen.

Rachel Bective, who as a child had so longed to be asked to Pendorric that she had locked Morwenna in the vault in order to blackmail her into giving her an invitation, had proved a good friend. She had looked after Morwenna during her troubles, and of course Roe had been at hand. It had been his idea to ask Louisa’s help, and he and Rachel took the child to her; Louisa had been only too glad to do what she could for Petroc’s children.

As Roe said to me: ” I couldn’t tell you the truth when I’d sworn to keep Morwenna’s secret. But I did intend to persuade her that you should be brought in. The trouble was she was so afraid of Charles’s knowing.”

There had been fear and drama in Pendorric before I arrived. During the last year we have gone a long way towards turning Polhorgan into a home for orphans. I am going to be very busy keeping an eye on this particular project as I shall be starting my own family. Rachel Bective is going to be a nursery governess to the orphans, and Dr.

Clement will be at hand to advise when we need him. The Dawsons will stay on and although there may be a little friction now and then between them and Rachel, that is inevitable, I suppose. I don’t like Rachel—I doubt whether I ever shall—but I have wronged her in my thoughts so much that I try very hard to change my opinion. She was merely enamoured of a way of life which was not hers. The romantic big house must have been very appealing to an orphan, brought up by an aunt who had children of her own and didn’t really want her. She saw her main opportunity in life when she was sent to a good school paid for with the money her parents had left with instructions that all of it be spent on their daughter’s education. She had attached herself to Morwenna and clung; but she had been a good friend in Morwenna’s trouble and often visited Bedivere House—as Roe did—to bring Morwenna news of the son she dared not see until she had confessed to Charles.

The twins have now gone to school—separate schools. Hyson had a holiday, a holiday at Bournemouth alone with her mother after Morwenna’s recovery. They both needed to recuperate; and we feel that in time Hyson will grow away from that sinister influence which Barbarina cast about her. We shall have to be very careful in our treatment of Hyson.

This, then, has been an illuminating year. We all seem to have grown up, become wise; but then I suppose it is experiences such as these which make us learn our lessons quickly.

Morwenna has cast off the burden which, like Christian in Pilgrim’s Progress, she has carried for fourteen years, and Charles, she discovered, was less self-righteous than she had believed him to be.

Indeed he was a little sad and reproachful that she had not trusted him all those years.

As a result, Ennis and Louisa are often at Pendorric. Morwenna would not take the boy from Louisa, but she does want to share him, and I have an idea that in time he will be to Charles as the son he did not have.

It may well be that one day we shall have to give up Pendorric as we know it. We shall probably have to throw it open to the public and have strangers walking through our rooms. We shall have our own apartments of course, but it will not be the same.

Roe is reconciled. ” You can’t fight the times,” he says. ” It would be like trying to fight the sea.”

All the money I have will be used on Polhorgan, and that is how Roe wishes it to be.

He often teases me, reminding me that I once thought he schemed to marry an heiress and then planned to murder her.

” And yet,” he said, ” you loved me … after your fashion.” He is right. During those months of danger I was deep in physical love with Roe; I knew only what I saw, what I heard, what I sensed.