Legend of the Seventh Virgin (21 page)

Mrs. Salt was talking in her low monotonous voice about her husband, and her daughter Jane was the only one who was really paying attention. Doll kept patting her hair in which she had tied a new blue ribbon and she was whispering to Daisy that Tom Pengaster had given it to her. Haggety sat down next to me, bringing his chair a fraction closer. He breathed onto my face and said: “Bit of trouble in high places today, eh, m’dear?”

“Trouble?” I asked.

“Him and her, of course.”

Mrs. Rolt was watching us, her lips pursed, her eyes disapproving. She was telling herself that I was leading poor Mr. Haggety on; such a belief suited her better than the true one and she was a woman who would always delude herself into believing what she wanted to. And while she watched us she was smiling slyly, thinking of that titbit of news with which she was planning to startle us.

I did not answer Mr. Haggety because I disliked discussing Judith and Justin in the kitchen quarters.

“Ha,” went on Haggety. “She comes in, in a rare paddy. I saw her.”

“Well,” put in Mrs. Rolt portentously, “it do go to show that money bain’t everything.”

Haggety sighed piously. “We’m a lot to be thankful, I’m thinking.”

“Trouble comes to all sorts,” went on Mrs. Rolt, giving me a clue to the news she was withholding, “be they gentry or the likes of we.”

“You never spoke a truer word, me dear,” sighed Haggety.

Mrs. Salt started to cut the great pasty which she had made that morning and Mrs. Rolt signed to Daisy to fill the mugs with ale.

“I reckon there’s trouble coming,” said Mrs. Salt. “And if anyone knows trouble when they see it coming, that’s me. Why I remember …”

But Mrs. Rolt wasn’t going to let the cook ramble back to her reminiscences. “It’s what you might call a one-sided relationship, and them sort ain’t good for nobody, if you were to ask me.”

Haggety nodded in agreement and turned his rather bulging eyes on Mrs. Rolt while his foot touched mine under the table.

“Mind you,” went on Mrs. Rolt, whose pleasure it was always to feign great knowledge of relationships between the sexes, “one thing, I’d say. Mr. Justin bain’t the man to get himself into
that
sort of trouble.”

“With another woman, you mean, me dear?” asked Haggety.

“That is exactly what I did mean, Mr. Haggety. That’s the trouble if you ask me. One blowing hot and one blowing cold. ’Twould seem he don’t want one woman, let be two.”

“They’re a wild family,” put in Mr. Trelance. “I had a brother who worked over at Derrise.”

“We do all know that story,” Mrs. Rolt silenced him.

“And they say,” put in Doll excitedly, “that last time when the moon was full …”

“That’ll do, Doll,” said Mrs. Rolt who would not allow the lower servants to discuss the family, it being a privilege of the higher ones to do that.

“I remember once,” said Mrs. Trelance dreamily, “seeing that Miss Martin over here … that were when her father were alive. A real pretty creature. She were on her horse and Mr. Justin were helping her off it … and I said to Trelance here, I said, ‘There’s a pretty picture for you’; and Trelance he said that if parson’s daughter were the mistress of Abbas one day we couldn’t have a prettier nor a sweeter.”

Mrs. Rolt turned an angry glance on Mrs. Trelance. “Well, her be the companion now and who ever heard of companions being the mistress.”

“Well, she couldn’t now … him being married,” said Mrs. Salt. “Though men being men …” She shook her head and there was a silence round the table.

Mrs. Rolt said sharply, “Mr. Justin bain’t men, Mrs. Salt. And it ain’t no good you’re thinking all men is like that man of yours because I can tell you different.” She smiled secretly and then went on in a voice portentous with promise. “And talk about trouble …”

We were all silent waiting for her to go on. She had come to the titbit; she had all our attention, and she was ready.

“Her ladyship sent for me this afternoon. She wanted me to see that a certain person’s room be made ready. She weren’t very pleased, I can tell ’ee. There have been terrible trouble. As soon as Mr. Justin come in, she sends for him. I was to watch out, she said, and the minute he come in he was to go to her. So I watched and I saw him come in. She was down there … Mrs. Justin … all tears and clinging to him. ‘Oh, darling … darling … where have you been …?’”

There was a titter round the table but Mrs. Rolt was eager now to get on.

“I stopped all that. ‘Her ladyship wants you to go to her at once, Mr. Justin,’ I said. ‘Her ladyship’s orders that there shouldn’t be any delay.’ So he looks pleased like … anything to get away from her with her darling … darling … and he goes straight up to her ladyship. Now I knew what had happened because she’d told me, though she didn’t tell me why, but as I was polishing in the corridor outside her ladyship’s room I happened to hear her say: ‘It’s on account of some woman. This is
such
a disgrace. I thank God his poor father can’t understand. If he could, it would kill him.’ I says to myself trouble comes, be we gentry or the likes of we and it be true.”

She paused and lifting her mug of ale to her lips drank, smacked her lips and regarded us triumphantly. “Mr. Johnny be coming home. They’ve sent him home. They don’t want him there no more since he have disgraced himself over this woman.”

I stared down at my plate; I did not want any of them to notice the effect those words had had on me.

Johnny’s presence in the house changed it for me. I was aware that he was determined to be my lover and the fact that he now found me installed as a servant in the house amused and delighted him.

The very first day he returned he sought me out. I was sitting in my room reading when he walked in. I stood up angrily because he had not asked permission to enter.

“Well met, fair maid,” he said, bowing ironically.

“Will you please knock if you want me?”

“Is it the custom?”

“It is what I expect.”

“You will always expect more than you receive, Miss … Carlyon.”

“My name is Kerensa Carlee.”

“I shall never forget it, although you did adopt Carlyon on one occasion. You’ve grown beautiful, my dear.”

“What did you want of me?”

His smile was mocking. “Everything,” he retorted. “Just everything.”

“I am maid to your sister-in-law.”

“I know all about that. That’s why I came down from Oxford. The news reached me, you see.”

“I have an idea that it was for a very different reason that you came back.”

“Of course you have! Servants listen at doors. And I’ll swear there was some consternation when the news was brought.”

“I do not listen at doors. But knowing you and knowing why young men are usually sent down …”

“So knowledgeable you have become. I remember a time … But why hark back? The future promises to be so much more interesting. I’m looking forward to our future, Kerensa.”

“I cannot see how yours and mine can have anything in common.”

“Can you not. Then you do need educating.”

“I am satisfied with my education.”

“Never be satisfied, Kerensa, my dear one. It’s unwise. Let us begin that education of yours without delay. Like this …”

He was about to seize me but I held him off angrily. He shrugged his shoulders.

“There must be a wooing? Oh, Kerensa, such a waste of time! Don’t you think we have wasted too much already?”

I said angrily: “I work here … unfortunately. But that does not mean I am your servant. Understand this … please.”

“Why, Kerensa, don’t you know that all I want is to please you.”

“Then that is easy. If you will keep out of my way I shall willingly keep out of yours — and that will give me great pleasure.”

“What words! What airs and graces! I shouldn’t have thought it of you, Kerensa. So I am not to have even a kiss? Well, I shall be here now … and so shall you. Under the same roof. Is that not a delightful thought?”

He left me then but there was an ominous look in his eyes. There was no lock on my door, and I was alarmed.

The following evening Justin, Johnny and Lady St. Larnston retired to her ladyship’s sitting room after dinner and there was a great deal of serious conversation. Haggety, who had served wine there, told us in the kitchen that Mr. Johnny was being put through his paces and they were seriously discussing his future. All were very concerned, it seemed, except Johnny.

I was putting Judith’s clothes away when she came up. I brushed her hair as she commanded. It soothed her. She said I had magic in my fingers. I had discovered that I had a gift for hairdressing. It was my most successful accomplishment as a lady’s maid. I tried different styles on her hair and sometimes I would copy them with my own. This delighted Judith and because she was generous by nature she often gave me some little gift and tried to please me, when she remembered it; but chiefly her thoughts were concerned with her husband.

Preparing her for bed was a ritual and this night there was an air of satisfaction about her. “You are aware of the trouble with Mr. Johnny, Kerensa,” she said.

“Yes, Madam. I have heard it.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “It’s unfortunate. Inevitable though. He is not like … his brother.”

“No, Madam. Two brothers could not be less alike.”

She smiled; more at peace than I had ever seen her before.

I braided her hair and wound it round her head. She looked lovely in her flowing negligee.

“You are very beautiful tonight, Madam,” I told her, because I felt a need to comfort her — perhaps after what I had heard in the kitchen.

“Thank you, Kerensa,” she said.

Soon after that she dismissed me, saying she would want me no more that night.

I went along to Mellyora’s room, and found her sitting by the window looking out on the moonlit garden. Her tray — symbol of her lonely life — was on a nearby table.

“So you are free for once,” I said.

“Not for long.” She grimaced. “I have to go along and sit with Sir Justin in a few minutes.”

“They work you too hard.”

“Oh, I don’t mind it.”

She looked radiant. The look, I thought, of a woman in love. Oh, Mellyora, I thought, you’d be very vulnerable, I’m afraid.

She went on: “Poor Sir Justin. It is dreadful to see him as he is and think of what he was. I remember Papa …”

“It’s unfair that you should have to help nurse him too,” I said.

“It might be worse.”

Yes, I thought. You might be a drudge in a house where there was no Justin. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?

Then I asked myself what had happened to my relationship with Mellyora. Once I should have said to her the things I was now thinking.

It was not that we had changed. It was just that this dangerous situation was too delicate a matter, too important to Mellyora for her to wish to discuss it or take advice, even from me.

“And now,” I said, changing the subject. “Johnny is back.”

“Oh … Johnny! It’s not entirely unexpected. Johnny will always be Johnny.”

She was almost smug. How different was Justin, she was implying. Then I thought of Judith who had said almost the same. Two women — both in love with the same man — deeply and passionately; for although Mellyora was calm and Judith was far from calm, both were the victims of a deep emotion.

“I wish he had not come back home,” I said.

“You are afraid of him?”

“Not exactly afraid, but he can be a nuisance. Oh, never fear, I shall know how to handle him.”

“I am sure you will.” She turned to look out of the window and I knew that she was not thinking of Johnny and me because her thoughts were all for Justin, and it would be like that in the future. She was obsessed by her love even as Judith was; fortunately for Mellyora hers was a more balanced nature.

Some bond had snapped between us, for as her emotion deepened for one person so there became less time in her life for others.

I asked her then if she ever heard from Kim; she was startled and for a few seconds seemed as though it were an effort to remember him.

“Kim … oh no. He wouldn’t write. He always said he was no letter writer, but that he would come back one day.”

“You think he will?”