Greygallows (13 page)

Ignorant as I was of the relations between man and wife, I found his behavior inexplicable. Was he waiting for me to indicate that I awaited his embraces? Such behavior was surely improper; but I did not know. I was groping desperately for an explanation that did not reflect on me, but it was hard to find one—unless I admitted an idea so mad that even vanity could not accept it. If Fernando's version of the family curse was based on fact; and if Clare believed in it ... Both were so unlikely as to be virtually impossible. No, the fault must be in myself. He did not find me lovable. Or else—a more hopeful idea—was it possible he still thought me in delicate health?

My thoughts went around and around in a dismal circle. They wearied me, yet I could not sleep. I don't know how I had the courage to do what I did; it was loneliness, as much as anything, that made me get out of bed and tiptoe across the shadowy room toward the connecting door.

Tentatively I tried the handle. The door was not locked. Slowly it opened under the pressure of my hand.

The fire in this room had been built up not long before. It still flared high, and I saw clearly—well enough to see that the room was unoccupied.

Unlike mine, it was a corner room, and cross-gusts made the windows rattle. The furniture was old, heavy dark pieces that must have belonged originally to an ancestor more remote than Clare's father. It was an austere room, with only dark, plum-colored hangings to soften its paneled walls and bare floor. There was no sign of
its occupant.

I wondered whether I had been mistaken. Perhaps this was not Clare's room. But the fire, the night clothes laid out on a chair by the hearth, the general air of occupation which an unused guest chamber does not have—told me I had been right. Then where was Clare? I had heard him enter; surely I would have heard him leave the room, if he had gone out by the normal exit...

A chill, which was partially pure superstition, partially the breezy atmosphere, made me shiver. Then common sense returned and with it embarrassment. What if Clare were here, in one of the corners where the firelight did not reach—behind the big armoire in the far part of the room, for instance? It would be terrible to be caught prying, like an inquisitive child...

Yet there was no sense of anyone being present and my curiosity had grown stronger. If he had not left by the door into the hall, there must be another way out. It was as simple as that; yet I knew I would not sleep that night unless I saw with my own eyes a commonplace door leading into a farther room—a study, perhaps, where Clare beguiled his own sleeplessness.

I found the door easily; it was not a secret door, in the true sense. But I could not have found it if it had been properly closed. A draft from without moved the velvet hangings and betrayed the existence of something beyond. When I lifted the hangings the door was there. Over the years it had sagged on its hinges, so that it dragged across the floor. One would have to give it a hard shove to close it all the way.

I pushed the door farther open, but by then I
knew what was obvious from the plan of the room. This was an outside wall. The door led, not into study or library, but onto a landing and a flight of stone stairs draped with dead vines and ivy. It was raining, a slow but penetrating drizzle. There was nothing to be seen except darkness. Not a star, nor a single point of light, broke the blackness surrounding the house.

I stood there for some time looking out into the night. Clare was out there somewhere, in the wet and the dark.

A man does not leave his warm bed after a tiring day to take a stroll in the rain at midnight. A normal man does not leave his bride of less than a week ... But that idea I did not pursue. Clare had some pressing errand, or he would not have gone so late—some secret errand, or he would have left by the front door.

Slowly, shivering, I made my way back to my own room. I was careful to leave everything exactly as I had found it, including the ivy-hung door. I had not stood far enough over the threshold to be wet; my feet left no marks on the floor. As I crept back to my luxurious bed I heard the clock strike one.

It continued to rain for the whole next week. I was glad to keep to my room, as Clare insisted I should. I had suffered what he called a relapse of health; but I knew the real cause of my attack was nerves. It was not a subject I could very well
discuss with him.

After the first few days I suffered greatly from boredom. Clare could not spend much time with me, he had business about the estate. The weather did not seem to daunt him; he would come to see me in the evening, ruddy-faced and smiling. Clearly his native air agreed with him. He was a different man from the haughty lord of London; he looked ten years younger.

One evening, when he was in a particularly affable mood, he condescended to tell me something of his domain. I was awestruck. Thinking in terms of parks and a meadow or two, I had not realized that his possessions included thousands of acres and an entire village.

'But what do they all do?' I asked eagerly. 'The people, those in the village, and the rest. Do they farm your lands?'

Clare smiled. He was holding my hand, stroking it as he might have stroked a kitten.

'I am not a farmer,' he said amiably. 'Neither the soil nor the climate here is conducive to agriculture, and I have neither time nor inclination to delve in the dirt, even by proxy. The majority of the villagers are employed elsewhere.'

'The mills?'

I spoke before I thought. Clare's face darkened.

'In many places and occupations. You must learn to regulate your mind, Lucy, and not let it dwell on matters that distress you. I don't concern myself with my tenants' affairs either; what a medieval view you have of me. Did you picture me as a grand seigneur, wielding my whip and trampling down the crops? I assure you, so long as the rents are promptly paid I do not interfere with
my tenants. I expect them to do the same for me.'

His words came back to me later that night as I lay awake watching the firelight. I spent so much time resting that I was not sleepy at night, and in the wakeful hours, ideas I had never consciously considered worked their way into my head. 'Ignorant' was one of the words that kept recurring to me. Jonathan had called me ignorant, and his mother had suggested, more courteously, that ignorance was curable. At Miss Plum's I had not thought of myself as ignorant. I had been considered a star pupil. Now I began to realize how little I knew. No wonder Clare talked to me as he might talk to a child. How could I expect him to take my opinions seriously when they were the product of unregulated emotion instead of study? Perhaps I could inform myself; if I could learn the facts, I could persuade Clare to share my feelings—and think better of me.

It was the children who haunted me. I might have made myself forget the other things—the polluted river, the contaminated air, the uncontrolled spread of disease. But the children's faces came between me and my sleep.

These things worked in my mind like yeast working in bread. They were working, fermenting, even when I was not consciously thinking of them. A year ago I would have paid no attention to Anna's words, when I overheard her one morning talking to one of the other servants about her brother. I could understand a little of the local dialect now, and the words I understood made me curious to hear more.

'How many brothers and sisters do you have?' I asked, when she came into my room.

'Six, my lady,' she said, after a moment. I had never asked her a personal question before, and I suppose she was surprised.

'You are the oldest?'

'I've one brother older.'

'It was not of him you spoke a moment ago,' I said carelessly. 'Was it not a younger brother who was ill?'

The girl's cheek reddened.

'It—it was Dickie I meant. The youngest.'

'How old is he?'

'Three, my lady.'

Three years old. One of the children in the mines had been three years old.

'What is wrong with him? What does the physician say?'

She gave me a look that brought the color to my cheeks. I should have known better; people of her class did not call in a physician when they were ill.

'It was the typhoid, my mother said. She's nursed enough in her time to know. But he doesn't get better as he should.'

'He needs nourishing food,' I said, remembering my own convalescence. 'Thick broth and meat and wine ... Oh. Oh, perhaps you don't have ... Tell Mrs. Andrews that she must send—no, better still, ask her to come here. I will tell her myself.'

Her face turned such an odd color I thought she was angry. She ran out without replying and then I realized she was not angry, she was on the verge of tears, and did not want me to see her cry.

By the time the housekeeper arrived I had had time to think, and it was with diffidence that I explained I wanted to send some food and simple remedies to Anna's little brother. The housekeeper
was too well trained to display her reaction; but I thought I saw a gleam in her eye, so I said,

'Mrs. Andrews, I am—I am not accustomed to directing a household, so I must rely on you. Is this a—a good thing to do? Will his Lordship be angry?'

'His Lordship will be pleased, no doubt. There hasn't been an act of Christian charity in this house since his Lordship's mother died, God rest her soul. It is only—' She broke off, her eyes widening. 'I meant no criticism of his Lordship, my lady. A gentleman does not concern himself with—that is, I mean to say—'

'I understand.'

'Thank you, my lady. I will see that your orders are carried out.'

Despite her reassurance I was a little uneasy about Clare's reaction. No one could call him cruel—certainly not I, who had enjoyed so much kindness from his hands. But his comments about his tenants did not suggest a high degree of interest in their welfare.

I did not expect Mrs. Andrews to be silent on the subject, nor was she. She must have spoken to him as soon as he came in that evening, for it was the first thing he mentioned.

'So you have taken to good works,' he said, smiling.

'You don't mind?'

'Why should I mind? Benevolence is a harmless occupation for a lady—up to a point.'

'What point?'

He hesitated.

'There is some risk of infection. In your state of health...'

'I had not thought of actually nursing the sick,' I said. 'But I have had the typhoid, you know.'

'That will not prevent you from catching other kinds of sickness. Well, well, you will please yourself, I suppose. Ladies always do. I confess I had pictured you with your little basket of medicines and your face all alight with conscious virtue, ministering to the sick and soothing fevered brows. It makes a pretty picture.'

Certainly it was a pleasure that appealed to my conceit of myself. In reflecting pleasurably on the idea, I scarcely heeded the good-natured contempt in his voice.

However, my visit to the village had to be delayed. I was not foolish enough to venture out in such rain as we continued to have. I had to amuse myself indoors; so, one afternoon when Clare was off on an errand, I sent for Mrs. Andrews and asked her to show me the house. The success of my first attempt at giving orders had made me bold.

The tour was something of a disappointment. Like all schoolgirls taught by dear old ladies of Miss Plum's sort, I considered antique ruins the height of romantic loveliness. Handsome rooms filled with modern furniture held no interest; I yearned for moldering crypts, broken pillars draped with ivy, suits of armor, and a dungeon or two. When we had inspected the rooms on the ground floor and a series of guest chambers above, I said innocently to my guide,

'I thought the manor house was old.'

'But it is, my lady. The central portion of the house is of the fifteenth century. This wing is modern; it was constructed less than a century ago.

The other wing is even older than the central portion, but I'm afraid it is not fit to be seen. His Lordship's grandfather closed it up as uninhabitable. It is one of his Lordship's ambitions to restore it, but as yet no work has been done.'

'The central portion, then. May we see that?'

Mrs. Andrews looked at me doubtfully.

'It is drafty and cold, my lady. Your health...'

'I am far stronger than I look,' I said. I was beginning to be vexed by this harping on my health. My tone was querulous; Mrs. Andrews said quickly,

'Of course, my lady.'

The central portion amply repaid the trouble we had in reaching it. It
was
drafty and cold, but here was the dark antiquity I had yearned for. I drew a long breath of delight as we stood at the end of the chamber Mrs. Andrews called the Long Gallery. It was like a long, high-ceilinged hall, with windows high in the walls. These had been paneled, but not in modern times; the wood was dark with age and roughly finished. Along each wall were the portraits of the Clares.

Though she had seemed reluctant to come, Mrs. Andrews was in her element once we reached the gallery. She knew the history of the house better than its owner, and could identify every portrait. It was eerie to see the painted faces materialize out of darkness as the old lady moved her candelabrum from one to the next.