Menfreya in the Morning (9 page)

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to hear him say “Harriet!” in shocked surprise. Moreover, what if my father saw me!

For tonight I wanted to be the attractive mystery behind the mask.

We were caught up in the crowd going into the ballroom. Lady Menfrey was near us; she spoke to Bevil, and as he turned to her I seized my opportunity. I slipped into a passage, knowing the house as few of the others did, and reaching (he main staircase hurried up it to the gallery. It was then twenty minutes to twelve.

Later, from the gallery, I saw him enter the ballroom; he was looking about him searchingly, eagerly. Looking for me!

Gwennan came running into the room at five minutes to twelve. I had thought she would be caught down there, but it was like her to leave it until the last moment

She was flushed and radiant.

“What a wonderful, wonderful ball!” she cried. “It’s the best ball I’ve ever atttended.”

I laughed at her and reminded her that it was the only one so it bad to be the best.

Then we were laughing together. I was different that night. I had had my adventure, and it was no less wonderful than Gwennan’s.

I slept very little that night but lay awake, going over everything that had happened at the ball. I got up once during the night, lighted my candle and took the dress from my cupboard, held it against me and looked at my reflection in the mirror. The dress did do something to me. Even in the middle of the night I looked different … fey … even attractive. Yes, I was sure of it, the sort of person people would look at twice. I wasn’t beautiful; even the candelight could not fool me as much as that, but there was a certain medieval charm about my face which needed the muted color of the dress, the period style of it, to bring it out.

It was dawn before I slept at all, and then only for an hour or so. The next morning the house was in that after-the-ball chaos, which I knew so well; everyone was tired and touchy, except myself. I was exalted.

In the afternoon I walked to Menfreya, where I knew Bevil would be waiting for me—only, of course, he wouldn’t know he was expecting me. What a shock, I thought, to find instead of the mysterious woman this little-

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more-than-a-schoolgirf in a gray merino dress, sedate cape, untidy hair unprotected by a glittering filet. If only I could have worn the dress, how different I should have felt.

The house was quiet but Bevil was there, and I went straight in to the library unannounced.

“Why . , . it’s Harriet,” he said. Bevil’s social manners were perfect. If he was disappointed, he didn’t show it.

“You were expecting someone, I see,” I said. “Well, I’m sorry it’s only Harriet”

“I happen to be delighted.” His face creased up into a smile I knew and loved,

“But you were expecting some charming woman and wondering how she would look in modern clothes. You were picturing her perhaps in a mulberry-velvet riding habit with a black riding hat, her face delicately veiled to protect hex dazzling complexion.”

“Who is this phantom of delight and how do you come to know so much of what I’m hoping for?”

“Because you were with her last night at the ball. Prepare for a shock, Bevil. Your partner last night wasn’t all that you thought she was. I’m going to confess right away. I was disguised last night… unrecognizably.”

“So you sayl Do you think I wouldn’t recognize you anywhere?”

“You knew!”

He took me by the shoulders and laughed at me. Then he leaned forward and kissed me as he had in the boat

“So you knew all the time!”

“My dear Harriet, why should you know me and I not know you? My powers of perception are as well developed as yours.”

“But I saw you arrive and I … should know you anywhere.”

“And I, too. Now look, what was the game last night? Gwennan was there too. It was a plot between you two girls. Where did you find the dresses?”

“Here in Menfreya.”

“I guessed it”

“Promise you won’t tell. Gwennan would be furious.”

“And I’m terrified of her fury, naturally.”

“Well, you see, we wanted to go to the ball, and we found these dresses in a trunk, and so …”

“Two little Cinderellas came to the ball, not forgetting to

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disappear before midnight, leaving two desolate Prince Charmings wondering what had become of them. Well, Harriet, I must thank you for an enjoyable evening. Your secret is safe with me. I said I would show you something if you came here this afternoon, didn’t I? Well, come on. Let’s

I followed him into the great hall, and we went up the staircase towards the wing protected by the buttress in which we had found the dresses.

“Not scared of ghosts, Harriet?” he asked over his shoulder. “This wing isn’t used much. It’s said to be the haunted one. There has to be a ghost in all houses like this. You knew that, didn’t you? Well, this is it If you’re scared, give me your hand.”

“I’m not,” I said.

“I always knew it wouldn’t be easy to scare you.” He exclaimed in disgust: “It’s musty in here. We’ve always intended to open it up, but somehow we never get round to it. The servants wouldn’t like it They won’t come here even in daytime.”

“This is where Gwennan and I found the trunk,” I said.

“Really. So you have been here before! Did she tell you the story of the ghost? A woman with a child hi her arms, Harriet, who walks these musty passages … and a man who walks too, but they don’t walk together, because they’re looking for each other.”

I shivered, and he noticed.

“I am scaring you,” he said. “Don’t take any notice of what I say, Harriet It’s nonsense. Just one of the old legends.”

“It’s the cold,” I said. “I’m not scared.”

He put his arm round me then and held me against him for a moment; it was nothing; merely the gesture he would use to comfort a child. He was different from the man he had been last night, and I had a suspicion that he had not recognized me and that today I had ceased to be a glamorous masked woman and I had reverted to myself, familiar, plain Harriet.

“Gwennan told me some story,” I said, quickly to hide my emotion, “about a governess who was kept in a room unknown to anyone hi the house except Sir Somebody Men-

“Sir BevH, if you please. One of the many Bevils of the family.”

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“And she died having a child, and no one knew till after she was dead.”

“That’s it.” He opened a door whose hinges gave the same protesting whine which I noticed before. “This part of the house will have to be gone over soon,” he commented. “We’re a lazy lot, we Menfreys. We’re not energetic like you Del-vaneys. We let things drift along. How many years do you think it is since these rooms have been lived in?” I started back, for something touched my face. It was a tangle of cobwebs, slimy and cold. I felt as though the whole place was calling to me: Keep out. But Bevil felt none of this. There was nothing fanciful about Bevil. An unlived-in room was nothing to him but an unlived-in room. There were no such things as ghosts; there were only legends.

“Here she is,” said Bevil.

And there was the picture—a woman in the dress which must surely be the one I had worn the previous night. It was beautifully painted; the folds of velvet were so real that I felt had I stroked them they would have been as soft as the actual material. Her dark hair was held back in the snood of gold-colored net set with stones of topaz.

“It’s the same!” I said. “Did I wear her dress, then?”

“It might be so.”

I went near to the picture. She had a sad, almost furtive expression.

“She doesn’t look very happy,” I said.

“Well, she was married to this Bevil—who was involved with the governess.”

“Oh,” I said, “I see.”

He came to stand behind me, putting his hands on my shoulders. “What, Harriet, do you see?”

“Why she looks so unhappy. But the dress is lovely. What a wonderful artist who painted it!”

“I see that you are fascinated by that dress. Where is it now?”

“In my cupboard at Chough Towers.”

“You’ll never be able to part with it, will you?”

“I am going to pack it up and bring it back to Gwennan.”

“Don’t,” he said. “Keep it. You might want to disguise yourself again one of these days.”

“Keep it!”

“A present from me,” he said.

“Oh, Bevil!”

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“Come on. It’s cold in here. Let’s go back to the inhabited regions.”

That night at the ball changed Gwennari as well as myself. She was more restless, more dissatisfied with her life. She was in one of her restless moods when we went riding together.

“Life,” she told me, as we rode into the woods, ducking our heads when we passed under the trees, at this time of the year laden with heavy foliage, “is very unsatisfactory with us.”

Always eager to hear of the Menfreys, I asked why particularly now.

“Money! It’s always money. It’s fortunate that Papa is not the Member now, because being a Member is a costly business. I’m so bored with having no money that I’ve almost decided to remedy it.”

“How?”

“By marrying Harry, of course.”

“Gwennan, do you think he would?”

“Do I think he would! Are you crazy? Of course, he would. He’s madly in love with me. That’s one of the reasons why it’s so hateful to be sixteen. I’ll have to wait at least a year before I marry.”

We had come to a clearing, and she whipped up Sugar Loaf and broke into a gallop. I went forward and rode beside her. She was laughing, and I think some devilish mischief was in her that morning.

“I don’t want to go back to that ridiculous school of ours,” she called over her shoulder.

“Well, we aren’t yet. There’s another week or so.”

“I mean … ever. Academy for Young Ladies! If there’s anything I hate more than being sixteen, it’s being a young lady.”

“I’m not so certain of the second, although the first is indisputable.”

“Harriet Delvaney, don’t try to talk cleverly like some frightful… politician.”

“Was I? I didn’t know.”

“Some people say that if you want something to happen or not to happen … tremendously … you know, if you concentrate, it might make it work.”

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“Like not going back to school? Like leaping from sixteen to eighteen in a day instead of two years?”

“You’re developing that acid asperity in your nature, Harriet. You’re going to be one of those bluestocking women with the serpent’s tongue if you don’t look out”

“And why shouldn’t I?”

“Because they’re fatally unattractive to men.”

“I don’t have to develop any new tendencies to be that I’m it already.”

“Stop it, Harriet It’s your own fault.”

“What is?”

“I haven’t time to solve your problems this morning. I have too many of my own. I’m determined not to go back to school next term.”

I was silent, wondering what it would be like to go without her. But, of course, she would go back.

We rashly galloped across the moor. She was certainly in a wild mood.

“Like this,” she called, “I feel free. That’s what I want, Harriet, to be free. Free to do exactly what I like. Not when I’m grown up, but nowl I am grown up, I tell you. I’m as grown up as I’ll ever be.”

I galloped with her, calling out to her to have a care; there were some ugly-looking boulders on the moor, and if she didn’t care for herself she ought to for Sugar Loaf.

“We know where we’re going,” she retorted.

I was thankful when we left the moor behind us. Gwennao was the most reckless person I had ever known in my life.

We came into a village I had never visited before. It was delightful with its gray-towered church, surrounded by its graveyard and its cottages bordering the green.

“It’s Grendengarth,” Gwennan told me. “We’re six miles from home.”

It was close to the village that it happened; we had turned off the road into a clearing, and there was a bank ahead of us which should not have been difficult to take; but, as I said, Gwennan was in a reckless mood that morning. I don’t know what happened, exactly—one never does on these occasions. She was a little ahead of me when she took the bank. I heard her cry out as she shot over Sugar Loafs head. It seemed as though time slowed down. I seemed poised in midair over the bank for minutes before I was on the other

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side. I saw Sugar Loaf running on, bewildered, and then my attention was focused on Gwennan lying still on the grass.

“Gwennan,” I cried stupidly. “Gwennan, what’s happened?**

I slipped from my horse and knelt beside her. She was white and still, but she was breathing. For a few seconds I remained there; then I mounted and rode back to the village for help.

I was fortunate, for as I reached the road a boy was riding past on a pony. I stammered out that there had been an accident

“111 go straightways to Dr. Trelarken,” he said.

I returned to Gwennan, and as I knelt beside her, waiting for what seemed like hours, I was terrified that she might be dead; I remembered her words, a short time before, that she was determined not to go back to school, and wondered whether some terrible recording angel had noted the words and this was the punishment.

“If you die, Gwennan,” I whispered, “you won’t go back to school, and your wish will be granted.”

I shivered. Then I noticed that her left leg was in a strange position, and I realized what had happened.

Dr. Trelarken arrived on the scene with two men who carried a stretcher. The doctor set the leg before Gwennan was moved, and then the men carried her back to his house in Grendengarth. The doctor walked with me and asked me questions.

He knew who we were because everyone in the district knew the Menfreys and Sir Edward Delvaney. He pointed out his house, which was a white one on the pretty green I had noticed when we rode through. My horse was taken from me by a groom, and as we went into the house he called: “Jess! Jessie. Where are you?”

“Coming, Father,” said a voice; and a young woman appeared in the hall. That was my first glimpse of Jessica Trelarken, who has always seemed to me one of the most beautiful women I have ever known.