Menfreya in the Morning (8 page)

The house seemed to have come alive. Everywhere were the sounds of voices; the musicians had arrived, and those guests who were staying in ihe house were already with my father in the ballroom. Aunt Clarissa was not here on this occasion—it was too far from London—and my father was going to receive the guests alone.

I sat on the window seat in my bedroom with Fanny while we watched the carriages arrive.

It was a fascinating sight to see the guests, in their costumes and masks, alight and step across the path to the porch. The Leverets’ arrival caused some excitement because they had come in their horseless carriage. They were the only family in the neighborhood who possessed one, and when they drove out in it people would run out of then* cottages to see it go by; and when it broke down and horses had to pull it along, there was a lot of talk about the folly of modern inventions. But during the last year in London the contraption had been treated with more respect since the law enforcing a man to walk before it with a red flag had been abolished and the speed limit raised to fourteen miles an hour. Here in remote Cornwall, however, the horseless carriage was still regarded with contemptuous suspicion, and I had to agree that to see the Leverets in fancy dress riding in the thing was incongruous.

I laughed, and Fanny said: “Well, if this ain’t a regular circus!”

“I was thinking it was like being in the past … until that came.”

“You’re getting too excited, Miss.**

“Am I?”

“Why, yes. IVe never seen you like this before. Don’t forget you’re only going to look on from the gallery.”

“I wish Gwennan were here.”

“Miss Mischief will be here soon, don’t you fret.”

She was right. The carriage from Menfreya arrived soon after she had spoken. The first to alight was the eighteenth-century gentleman, who was Bevil; he helped his mother and Gwennan out, and then came Sir Endelion. I did not notice what Sir Endelion and Lady Menfrey were wearing, for I had eyes only for Bevil.

Gwennan, in her everyday cloak over a simple party dress, looked quite insignificant among those brilliant costumes, and I could imagine how impatient she was to get into her blue-velvet gown.

One of the servants brought Gwennan to my room. I hid myself so that I should not be seen in my topaz, and Fanny spoke to the servant while Gwennan came into’the room. When the servants had gone, Fanny said, “You can come out now, Miss.” Then she helped Gwennan into her gown and left us together.

“Yours is not brown,” said Gwennan. “It’s a sort of gold.1* She smoothed down the folds of her blue velvet complacently. Then she frowned. “Yours is more unusual,” she went on. “Really, Harriet, I’ve never seen you look like that I know what it is. You’re not thinking people are hating you, that’s what. But why are we waiting? I want to go to the ball, if you don’t.”

I had been told where I was to take her. It was to the gallery—the imitation minstrels* gallery—which looked down on the ballroom. We had decided that we would wait there until the ballroom was crowded before we slipped on our masks and went down, “Then,** Gwennan had said, “we shall not be noticed.”

We reached the gallery. Heavy purple-velvet curtains were fixed across it and drawn back by gold bands to give us a peephole, and two chairs had been set some way back from the rails, so that although we need not be completely invisible, we should certainly not be obtrusive.

Gwennan immediately went to the balustrade and looked down. I stood a little way back; but what a magnificent sight h wasl We were almost level with the gas-candled chande-

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Menfreya in the Morning

Victoria Holt

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tiers, and the scene below was made fantastic by the color of the costumes and the different centuries represented.

We had been watching for five or six minutes when we heard voices at the gallery door, one of which was Fanny’s.

“Well, sir,” she was saying. “I don’t lightly think I should, but if you insist…”

“Of course, I insist. Now, be a sport.*1

Gwennan looked at me. “It’s Harry,” she said. “Harry Leveret”

The door opened, and Fanny, flushed and anxious, said: “I don’t rightly know .. .**

“What is it?” I asked.

“The gentleman said .. .**

And there was Harry. He was dressed as Drake, and his false beard did not match the reddish hair that showed beneath his feathered cap. He brushed Fanny aside and she disappeared; then he came into the gallery.

“Harry, what are you doing?” asked Gwennan, her voice rising on a high-pitched note of excitement.

“You didn’t expect me to stay down there when you were up here, did you?”

He didn’t seem at all surprised to see us in our costumes, so I guessed she must have told him that we had found them. His eyes shone as he looked at her.

“We have masks too, haven’t we, Harriet?” said Gwennan. “Come on. Put them on and we’ll go down.”

I could see that Harry wasn’t very pleased at the prospect of having me with them.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I shant be a nuisance.”

“You’ll find a partner,” Gwennan said, with that conviction she always gave to things she wanted to believe.

“Of course,” I replied proudly, although I didn’t believe it for a moment, and now that the time had come to join the dancers, I was alarmed. What would happen if my father discovered me! I had allowed Gwennan to pull me into this adventure without giving full consideration to the coo-sequences. She would be all right; she would have Harry Leveret to look after her; besides, her family were not tike my father.

“Of course, she wfll,” agreed Harry.

We left the gallery and went down to the ballroom. I promised myself that I could always hurry back to the gallery if I felt too lonely among all those people, and the thought

gave me courage. And what comfort it was to cower behind the mask. I caught a glimpse of myself as we passed a mirror. I didn’t recognize myself. Then if / didn’t, why should anyone else? And suddenly I was excited—by the color, the music, the brilliance of everything and the strange feeling that, with the dress, I had put on a different personality.

Harry could scarcely wait to get Gwennan to himself, and as we entered the ballroom he put his arm about her and they went into the waltz. I stood watching. The Beautiful Blue Danube! How dreamy, how romantic! How I should love to be one of those dancers!

I hid myself behind the potted ferns, watching, caught up by the music, imagining myself dancing there … with Bevil, of course.

And then I saw him. He was dancing with a beautiful girl dressed as Cleopatra—laughing, looking down at her, saying amusing things … affectionately, I was sure. I thought of the way be had talked to me when he had brought me back from the island; he had kissed me then. It had been a joke, of course.

He was dancing past my alcove again, and as he did so he looked straight at me, I was sure, although it was not easy to see, because of his mask. He had come very close to the ferns; it was almost as though be had wanted to take a closer look at the figure cowering there. Then he was gone, and I told myself I had imagined it. I knew him because I had seen him arrive with his family; besides, I should know him anywhere. He wouldn’t know me in the same way. The dress, the snood and mask made an entirely different person of me.

The waltz was over, and there followed an interval when the dangers of exposure were trebled. Suppose I were seen hiding myself in the alcove! What should a young woman be doing at a ball without a watchful mamma or a chap-erone of some sort to look after her?

The music started again. Now was the time to escape to the gallery; to sit there watching the dancers, as I had been told to do. But the temptation to stay was too strong. I could not bear not to be here. Gwennan would despise me for running away, I told myself. But it was more than that I was different hi this dress. I could not forget that in the room—that strange, circular opening in the buttress—I had danced.

“All aloner

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My heart began to beat uncomfortably. I stammered: “Not at this moment.”

Bevil laughed. I was dreaming it all. It couldn’t be Bevfl.

“I noticed you,” he said. “I came back, scarcely hoping that I should find you here. You must have just arrived, or I should have seen you before.”

“Among so many?”

“I should have been aware of you.”

This was the way he talked to women. This was flirtation, and with Bevil I found it extremely enjoyable.

The orchestra started to play. “A cotillion,” he said, and grimaced. “Let us stay here and talk—unless you would prefer to dance.”

“I should prefer not to dance.”

He sat down next to me and kept his eyes on my face. “We’ve met before,” he said.

“Do you think so?” I replied, trying to disguise my voice.

He laid his hand over mine. “I am certain of it.”

I withdrew my hand and let it fall onto the folds of topaz velvet.

“I wonder where?” I said.

“We can easily discover.”

“I think we’re supposed to keep our identities secret Isn’t It more fun that way?”

“As long as we know curiosity win eventually be satisfied, perhaps. But I am very impatient” He had leaned towards me and touched my mask.

I drew back indignantly.

“I am sorry,” he said. “But I was so certain that I knew you, and it seems incredible that I shouldn’t be sure who you are.”

“Then I am a mysterious woman.”

“But I’m sure you know me.”

“Yes … I do know you.”

He sat back in his chair. “You give up?” I asked.

“You can’t know me very well, or you’d know I never give up. But in any case, I have the whole evening before me. First, let me tell you that you are enchanting. Your dress is wonderful.”

“You like it?” I smiled, thinking of the shaking and hanging out in the sunshine to take off the smell of damp; and the lavender sachets which Gwennan had produced to put in the folds.

Victoria Holt

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“I’ve seen it before.”

“Where?” I asked.

“I’m trying to remember.”

I was entranced. I heard myself laughing at his conversation—light, frothy, frivolous conversation; and yet, there seemed to be depth in it. He was interested in me; he had seen me in my alcove, and as soon as possible he had left the partner with whom he had been dancing and had come to me. Who would have believed that possible?

There I sat, gay as anyone at the ball, returning his quips, finding that I too had a gift of repartee that might be mistaken for wit. He was certainly not bored, but he was puzzled. He did not guess who I was. Perhaps had he known I was to be at the ball he might have done so; but he had always thought of me as a child, and still did, and it would not occur to him that I could possibly be there; he had been with Gwennan in her simple party dress when they arrived and had heard that she and I were to sit in the gallery to watch; he knew nothing about the discovery of the dresses. No, it would not occur to him that it could possibly be young Harriet with whom he was enjoying such an intriguing interlude.

The cotillion was over; they were playing a waltz.

“Shall we dance?” he said.

I was surprised at myself. If I had not been intoxicated by the evening, by the presence of Bevil, by my new personality, in spite of having danced with Gwennan, I should have murmured that I couldn’t dance. But I was bemused; I allowed myself to be led onto the floor; I may have limped but I was unaware of it; my voluminous skirts would perhaps hide my infirmity; at least, so it seemed to me. And there I was, dancing with Bevil. I do not mean that I danced well or expertly. Bevil was no born dancer anyway, but I danced, and the floor was so crowded that one’s steps did not matter—and I was so happy that I felt life was wonderful and everything had changed for me.

Before the dance was over, Bevil suggested that we go to the supper room, and there he seated me at a table while he went to forage for food. He came back with a tray and glasses of champagne. It was the first time I had drunk champagne, and it made me more dizzily happy than ever. I caught a glimpse of Gwennan with Harry Leveret, but they

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were so absorbed in eacb other that I don’t think they saw me.

After supper we went into the garden. Bevil took my hand and we walked across the moonlit lawn to a seat under one of the trees from which we watched the dancers filtering on to the lawn; through the open French windows came the strains of music.

“I know,” cried Bevil suddenly. “The dress! I know where I’ve seen it before.”

“Please tell me.”

“At Menfreya.”

“Oh,” I said blankly, remembering that Gwennan had said he and she had found the trunk years ago. But it waa surprising that Bevil should remember a dress.

“Why,” he cried, “it’s exactly so. The hair filet … the gown. It might be you, but she is not masked, of course.”

“Who?”

“It’s a portrait at Menfreya. Ill show it to you … soon. When shall it be? You must come to Menfreya and let me show it to you. Will you?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I’m relieved. I had a terrible fear that you were going to disappear after tonight and I shouldn’t see you again. It’s a promise, is it?”

“Yes. A promise.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow,” I said. “Tomorrow I will call on you and ask to be shown the portrait”

He pressed my hand. “I know you’re the kind to keep a promise.”

‘Tell me about the portrait”

“It’s an ancestress of mine. A long-ago Lady Menfrey. My great-great-great-grandmother—or there may be a few more greats. But your dress is an absolute replica of the one she’s wearing. It’s as though you’ve stepped down from the canvas.”

“I should so enjoy seeing it.”

“Tomorrow,” be said. “It’s a promise.”

I wanted to catch at time and prevent its moving, but even now people were making their way to the ballroom for the dance which would precede the unmasking at midnight. I had to get away before that. I did not want to stand beside Bevil, to take off my mask and see the surprise in his face,

Victoria Holt