Dark inheritance (18 page)

Barbara's curiosity quickened. "I didn't know he'd ever lived in town."

Aunt Ellie regarded her in surprise. "Of course, I'm
forgetting you don't know very much about him, do you? But after all, why should you? When you came to me we took each other on trust."

"I hope you don't think I'm prying. I only "

"Of course you're not prying, my dear," Aunt Ellie said quickly. "It's natural to be curious. Yes, Dominic lived in London when he was engaged. He was engaged to a very beautiful woman, you know."

"I know. He told me about it."

"Did he? That's the first time I've ever known Dominic talk about it." There was a pause. "I met her once, and remembered thinking she was almost too beautiful to be human. As it turned out, I was right—
she wasn't human, at least only human enough to know
what she wanted and go out for it with inhuman determination. But she couldn't hide it from Dominic, thank
God, although I think it broke
his
heart when he found
out."

"She wanted him to back her on the stage, didn't she?" Barbara asked the question merely to keep the old woman talking about her nephew.

"Yes, that was her principal reason for marrying him, and when he realized it he went back to Crags' Height and shut himself off from all human contacts. Life wasn't very pleasant for any of us at that time, I'm afraid; his unhappiness changed him a great deal, and I prayed he'd meet someone else who would love him enough to want to marry him."

"That shouldn't have been very difficult," Barbara said quietly. "He's a fine man."

"Yes, a fine man," Aunt Ellie echoed. "What a nice way to describe him, poor boy!" She broke off to wav to Mark who was changing sides in the game. "That
was why I didn't want you to tell him you'd been on the stage when you came for your interview. Do you re
member?"

"Very well. At the time I couldn't understand why. I do now."

"As soon as I saw you I felt instinctively you were what Crags' Height needed. I thought your freshness and candour would be good for Dominic, and I didn't want you to prejudice yourself before he had a chance to get to know you."

Barbara returned her smile, although her expression remained thoughtful. "I wonder what Dominic would say if he knew I was a singer."

"I shouldn't think it would make any difference to him now. He likes you for what you are."

"Do you really think so?"

"I do. Will you want to go back to your singing?"

"Yes, of course. It's part of me."

"I suppose you mean an outlet."

"Much more than that. It's—it's a sort of extension of my personality. I get pleasure from singing in the bath if I think I'm singing well, but to sing to an audience gives me a sense of complete fulfilment. I've been given a voice and not to use it seems as if I'm shirking a responsibility. I don't want to sound high-flown, but it's like having a vocation and not following it."

"But what would happen if you fell in love with someone who didn't want you to go back to the stage?"

"If a man loved me enough he wouldn't want me to give up something which means so much to me."

"Well, I hope you find someone who loves you enough." There was meaning in the old woman's voice.
"Otherwise you're going to be very unhappy. Unfortun
ately most people can't love without being possessive, and they're jealous of anything that leaves them out in the cold."

At that moment Mark came up, hot and triumphant from winning his game, and their conversation, came an end. But Barbara pondered it throughout the rest of the day with a feeling of guilt, as if she was allowing Dominic to love her under false pretences. Should she risk telling him about her singing or should she wait
until their love had had a chance to become more firmly
rooted? But the thought of letting him love what he
believed her to be and not what she really was made her
uneasy, and she determined not to wait until they returned to Crags' Height but to write and tell him the truth immediately.

It was not an easy letter to compose and she tore up
several attempts before she was satisfied. She tried to make him see that it was only Aunt Elite's fondness for him that had prompted her to warn Barbara not to mention her stage career, and went on to say that since he had told her the story of his unhappy love for Gina she well understood the old lady's reason.

/ hope you won't let it make any difference to us, my darling (she wrote), but somehow I can't believe it will. I debated whether to wait until I could see you face to face, but you know how impetuous I am and I wanted to get it off my mind so that when we do meet again
there will be no secrets between us. Our love must be
founded on honesty and as you have told me so much about. yourself / feel I owe this to you. Look after yourself, my dearest, I am counting the days until I
see you again. It seems an eternity since you went away
and I wonder whether the time drags for you as it does for me. Keep me in your heart, as I keep you in mine.

She signed her name firmly, slipped the letter into an
envelope and took it up to the purser to ask him to post it for her at Gibraltar. Then with a lightened heart she went up on deck to meet Mark.

CHAPTER TEN

FROSTY mist lay in thin swathes over the fields and beyond the wide sweep of lard the mountains were hard against a clear sky, their craggy summits glinting in the first rays of the sun.

Crags' Height looked particularly impressive that morning, with spirals of tenuous mist clinging to its
chimneys. A hoary frost still covered the lawns, encasing
each blade of grass in a sheath of sliver that crunched under the feet like glass, and the dark stone pile of the house loomed forbiddingly against the lighter grey of the sky.

The only sign of life was the figure of a man emerging from the house, to stand on the wide steps and look out over the panorama before him. Stillness; not a breath stirred and the only movement discernible was the slow march of the clouds. It was bitterly cold, with the raw chill of a mountain morning, and after a moment the figure moved back into the house and the heavy oak door closed behind him.

Inside it was warmer but the newly laid fires in the hall and dining-room were still too recently lit to have taken the dankness off the atmosphere, and his breath misted before him as he moved across the stone flags to
the dining-room. Not even the bright silver coffee-pot
standing on the polished tray or the gleaming chafing dishes with their steaming contents could dispel the sullenness of the room at this hour, and the man ate his breakfast quickly and left the table almost before the servant came into the room to attend to his wants.

Shrugging into a heavy leather jerkin and putting on thick hobnailed shoes, he walked out of the house, the door slamming sonorously behind him, reverberating across the great stone hall and up the stair-well through the long, empty corridors.

The air was still icy and the silence still unbroken, but as the man walked down the drive and out through the iron gates the first cock-crow shattered the stillness. Pausing for a second, he looked back at the house and then turned and with purposeful strides went along the narrow mountain road past the small stone cottages straggling up the hill, their backs almost touching the mountain-side, the only sound to greet him the sharp barking of a dog and the shrill cry of a curlew.

The earth was hard underfoot and occasionally he bent and loosened a clod from his shoe, fingering it
slowly and feeling its cold moisture. In the distance there
was the whirr of a tractor and one or two men already in
the fields raised their caps to greet him as he stopped and had a word with them, inspecting the work they were doing.

As the sun rose it was warmer and presently the man
unbuttoned his jacket, letting the air play against his
throat. For several hours he worked with his men in the
fields and beads of sweat stood out on his forehead beneath the unruly crown of dark red hair. Then the heavy booming of a gong echoed across the land, and
laying aside their implements the labourers rolled down
their shirt-sleeves and moved off towards the home farm, the man joining their slow-moving ranks and talking to them in their own soft cadences as they walked.

In the red-tiled kitchen great urns of tea stood on the
shining black range, the glow of the (ire lighting up the oak beams on the ceiling. The man was greeted with a warm cry of welcome by a woman who stood ladling out plates of stew, and she enjoined him to sit down and eat with them. But he would only accept a cup of tea
and a slice of homemade bread, leaning against the
chimney-piece as he ate. He looked at home here, his tanned skin and dark hair burnished to mahogany in the firelight.

A group of farm children were eating their meal at a small table in the far corner and the woman left the stove periodically to see that they had enough. When
they finished their meal she drew one of them aside and
stooped down to whisper in her ear, nodding her head with a smile towards the man who stood by the fire.

Hesitantly the little girl went towards him, standing a few feet away and looking up into his face, her head
thrown back and her large dark eyes fixed on him apprehensively. Then slowly she began to recite a simple
Welsh poem of welcome, ending in a rush of words terminated by an abrupt curtsey.

The man's features softened into a smile as he care
fully thanked her in the same soft tongue. Then reaching
into his pocket he found a silver coin and held it out. The child cast a look behind her, and at the woman's smiling nod went shyly forward and accepted her rewind. The man bent and patted her head and as she kissed his hard, lean cheek an expression of extra
ordinary anguish passed across his face. He left almost
immediately afterwards, as if anxious to get away from
the atmosphere of wholesome warmth and cheerfulness,
and went on his way around the estate.

Slowly the hours passed and acre after acre of rich
brown earth moved beneath his feet. The day drew to a
close; the clouds broadened and darkened and began to engulf the rolling land.

The man quickened his pace and buttoned his jacket as he toiled slowly upwards towards the back of the house, passing through the enclosed vegetable garden
and leaving his caked shoes on the flagged floor of the
kitchen before going through into the hall.

Dining alone at the long oak table, the fire behind
him threw his shadow against the heavy panelling. The
room was sombrely oppressive and as soon as he had
finished his meal he went out across the hall and at random flung open the door of the drawing-room.

He switched on all the lights, but they only served to accentuate the lonely emptiness, and his eyes roamed slowly round the room, taking in the faded carpet, the
tasseled upholstery and the grand piano shrouded in a
sheet. His glance rested on the yawning fireplace and then travelled upwards to the bare, blank space above the mantelpiece, and he passed his hands swiftly across his face.

For a long moment he remained where he was, a solitary figure of defiant masculinity in the soft, feminine room, then with a muffled exclamation he strode
out across the hall and up the wide, shallow stairs, down
the long corridor and up a further, twisted stone stairway to the very top of the house. There was no lighting up here, and going straight to a comer where a hurri
cane lamp was standing he lit it with his cigarette lighter
and held it above his head as he forced open the warped door at the end of the short passage.

The attic was dank and musty, odorous with age and disuse, and he stood for a moment swinging the lantern
from side to side, sending its light into every corner until
he saw the dim shape of the thing he was looking for. Then setting the lantern on the wooden floor he started to pull away packing cases, broken tables and rotting pieces of canvas until he had freed a flat wooden crate that stood against the far wall.

Taking it to the centre of the room, he tore at it with
his fingers, ripping it savagely open and emitting an
exclamation of triumph as he lifted out the large frame of a picture, holding it before him as his eyes devoured the contours of the beautiful face it portrayed.

Blowing out the lantern, he felt his way in the dark
ness down the narrow stone steps and along the corridor,
across the gallery and down the stairs. In the drawing-room once more he took out his handkerchief and dusted the painting, then with deliberate care hung it over the fireplace so that it completely obscured the outline it had made years before.

Stepping back a pace, he looked into the lovely face,
his expression one of such mingled love and hatred that
his anguish seemed almost beyond bearing. Then without a backward glance he strode out of the room and shut the door behind him with terrible finality.