“Papa once said to me that, when we judge other people, it is always by our own standards and that often prevents us from understanding them or giving them the compassion they deserve.”
“What do you mean?” the Earl asked sharply.
“My father said,” Olinda went on, “that we may denounce a thief, but how can we understand his action if we have never felt the compulsion to steal? And if we have never starved or seen anyone we love hungry, ill and deprived.”
She paused before she continued,
“He also asked, when a murderer is condemned, how many of those who commit him with much righteous indignation have ever really been tempted to commit murder themselves?”
“I understand what you are saying,” the Earl said. “Of course I understand. But a woman is different.”
“Every woman is different from every other woman,” Olinda said. “But I think that all women, even if they don’t realise it, are also seeking the Divine love instinctively. They too want to find the ecstasy and the wonder of it.”
She paused before she continued,
“When they fail in their search, they accept second best.”
“Can you be saying this to me?” the Earl asked. “Do you not know what I suffer from my mother not accepting second best, but third, fourth and lower still?”
His voice was savage.
“I know I am very – ignorant of – such things,” Olinda replied, “because I have never loved anybody and no one has ever – fallen in love with me.”
She gave a little sigh before she went on,
“But I know that for some women love can only be expressed with their bodies, for others love is also of the mind and of the soul. That is – real love.”
She was thinking of Hortense de Mazarin and knew her words were hurtful to the Earl, but he had asked for the truth.
His mother could not face the fact that she was growing old and her beauty would no longer attract men. But she had nothing else to offer.
There was silence.
Then the Earl said,
“Tell me what I should do, knowing the intolerable problem that exists in my own house – the house that belonged to my father and my forebears before him.”
The harsh bitter note was back in his voice.
For a moment Olinda thought how extraordinary it was that he should be speaking to her in such a way.
Then she realised that what she had thought about their both being disembodied had come true.
She was of no importance, insignificant, a nobody and because of that he could speak as he would not have been able to speak to a friend or even to a woman he was infatuated with.
For him she was a dream out of the mists of the night and therefore his defences were down.
He was asking her for help as perhaps he had never before asked another human being to help him.
“I think,” Olinda said quietly, “that you should come back. You should take your rightful place at Kelvedon and in the County. You should do what is expected of you.”
“And tolerate that man living in my house, eating my food and degrading my mother by his attentions?”
“Each of us has to live our own life,” Olinda said. “We cannot live anyone’s else’s. We should not really interfere with their development or their decisions.”
“It’s impossible!” the Earl said almost beneath his breath.
“I think that perhaps we are each something like the island where we are at this moment,” Olinda went on as if he had not spoken. “The only real communication that we can have with one another must be by a bridge and the bridge should be made of – love.”
The Earl did not speak.
He rose to his feet to stand looking over the lake. Olinda thought that he was looking into his heart, seeing how useless and ineffective his anger had been in the past, how little his defiance had gained.
She did not know whether she had helped him or only made things more difficult.
She only knew that she had said what came into her mind. It was almost as if the words had been there without her consciously seeking for them.
There was nothing more to say, nothing more she could do.
Rising, she walked quietly away, moving behind the white Temple and crossing the Chinese bridge over the water onto the mainland.
She walked back through the orchard with its fruit trees through the gardens. There was just enough light for her not to stumble and, although sometimes the shadows seemed dark, she was not afraid.
She reached the house, let herself in and locked the door again on the inside before she ran up the stairs to her bedroom.
Only, as she reached the safety of her own room, did she feel as if she had stepped out of the mists of the night into reality.
‘Please God, let me have helped him,’ she prayed as she climbed into bed.
She was still thinking of the Earl as she fell asleep.
*
Downstairs in the library Felix Hanson heard the clock on the mantelshelf chime the half-hour and kicked the fireguard savagely.
“Damn the girl!” he swore. “Why could she not have the guts to come here as I asked her to do?”
The fact that Olinda had not joined him at his request he attributed entirely to her nervousness of being discovered.
Felix Hanson was extremely conceited because, ever since he had been old enough to realise that there were attractive women in the world, he had seldom, if ever, had his advances rebuffed.
It never struck him that a common little embroiderer, who had come to the house because she needed money, would not be honoured by his attentions.
He was quite sure that it was only a question of time before she would surrender herself eagerly as a long line of similarly placed women had done before her.
In Felix’s mind, the only difficulty was that the Dowager Countess was always on the look-out for such romantic interludes, so that he had had little opportunity of pursuing another woman, however desirable she might be.
He had known that he was quite safe tonight, feeling that, with the unexpected arrival of the Earl, the Dowager Countess would undoubtedly be upset and certainly not anxious to flaunt their relationship in her son’s face, seeing it was the reason which had sent the Earl abroad two years ago.
This had been in fact, Felix thought, an excellent opportunity to get to know the grey-eyed girl who had attracted him from the moment she had walked into the salon.
She was just the type of woman he liked best, quiet, unassuming, modest and unawakened.
Doubtless, when he had remedied that deficiency, she would be like all the others, demanding, possessive and clinging to him, as he put it himself, like a piece of ivy.
For the moment she would be shy, a little reluctant and entrancingly innocent!
He was determined that he would find opportunities of being alone with Olinda, however careful a watch the Dowager Countess might keep on him.
He kicked the fender again in irritation not only because Olinda had not come to the library as he expected but also because he was getting restless.
He had never before in his life had a liaison that had lasted so long.
There had been a great many advantages in being the cher ami of the Dowager Countess of Kelvedon, but he was beginning to think now that the disadvantages outweighed them.
Felix Hanson was the son of a Solicitor in a small market town.
An intelligent man, Mr. Hanson had built up a good practice not only amongst the townsfolk but also amongst the country Squires, who found it more convenient and cheaper to employ him than a London firm.
Scrimping and saving, he managed to send his son, an only child, to a minor public school and afterwards to Cambridge University.
He had hoped that Felix might win a scholarship but it was soon apparent that there was very little likelihood of that. However, it was of course important, if he was to take over his father’s practice, that he should obtain a degree.
Felix, nev
ertheless, had an aversion to work.
He discovered that Cambridge could give him all the amusements that he had sensed were waiting somewhere outside the narrow world of the County town he lived in.
Soon he was part of the rich pleasure-seeking set of young undergraduates who were the despair of their Tutors.
When he came down from Cambridge, he had no degree but quite an intimate knowledge of the fashionable world and an unshakable confidence in his ability to attract women.
He decided to exploit this latter talent and managed to do so with considerable ability.
He stayed in the houses of people his father would never have aspired to number among his clients.
He made love to any women he thought would further his Social life and offer him the comfort that he found was indispensable.
He was, as a man who despised him said contemptuously, “an amorous adventurer”.
Felix Hanson made up his mind that he would marry a rich heiress, forget his humble origins and move exclusively in the extravagant Social world that he enjoyed.
The only obstacle was that the fathers of the heiresses were far more discerning than their wives and daughters.
Long before Felix got to the point of declaring his intentions, he found himself manoeuvred away from his prey in a manner that told him all too clearly that he was wasting his time.
There was, however, a profusion of attractive, young, married women, bored with their husbands and on the look-out for a flirtation or perhaps an affaire de coeur with an unattached bachelor.
Through them Felix moved higher and higher in the Social world and had actually on several occasions been included in parties where the guest of honour was the Prince of Wales.
It was on one of these evenings that he had met the Dowager Countess of Kelvedon.
Roseline Kelvedon had just emerged from a year’s mourning.
She was bored with the country and the black crepe in which she had been draped in the fashion set by Queen Victoria.
All the balls and parties had been barred to her for what seemed to be an interminable period and she was determined to make up for lost time.
She was still extremely beautiful despite the fact that she was just past her forty-seventh birthday and her figure was that of a young girl.
She was also sophisticated, experienced with men and more passionate than any woman Felix Hanson had ever known before.
To begin with he was swept off his feet and was, perhaps for the first time in his life, in love.
Even then it was a limited emotion because Felix was too egotistical and too self-centred to be really concerned with anyone other than himself.
At first he made Roseline Kelvedon extremely happy until the rows with her son proved disruptive and also her possessive jealousy made Felix progressively restless, but, because she could not trust him, she insisted on staying most of the time at Kelvedon.
Felix wanted the gaiety and amusements of London to stimulate and amuse him. He was not really a countryman.
He played the games he had learnt at Cambridge because they kept him fit and he was always concerned lest the rich food and the amount of wine he consumed would ruin the athletic proportions of his body.
But Kelvedon itself got on his nerves. He had no appreciation of the house or its contents except that it gave him a feeling of grandeur because he could give orders to an army of servants and every comfort he desired was at his elbow.
Yet there was no point in having a motor car unless there was an admiring audience to see him drive it, in winning a game of tennis or going round the golf course in under par without a crowd of attractive women to congratulate him at the finish.
“Let’s go back to London,” he begged the Dowager Countess all through the spring.
“What is the point?” she would ask. “You know that you will have to live at your Club or I could buy you a flat. It would be impossible for us to be together in the family house in Grosvenor Square, as we can be here.”
“Why not?” he asked sulkily.
“Because my dear Felix, I should immediately be ostracised by every hostess in London. Do you suppose the Queen would not hear of it?”
Felix knew that this was irrefutable.
He had thought at one time that he might persuade the Dowager Countess to marry him, until he had learnt that if she married again she forfeited all the money of which now she had the handling.
The late Earl had made a will when his son was still a small boy that on his death his wife should control the vast family fortune.
He believed that being so much older than his wife he might die suddenly and Roque would not be old enough to administer the money wisely and sensibly without his mother’s help and guidance.
He had always meant to change his will when Roque became twenty-one, but somehow the years had drifted past and he had not bothered to do so.
It was only when he was dead that the details of his will burst like a bombshell upon his son.
‘How could my father have done this to me?’ the Earl had asked himself a thousand times.
He knew the answer lay in the fact that his father had adored his beautiful wife!
The late Earl had never for one moment anticipated that she might behave in the manner that had shocked and horrified his son to the point where it embittered him and changed his character.
Roseline Kelvedon had been discreet and she kept to the Edwardian code of ‘never being found out’ as long as her husband was alive.
But after his death she had installed Felix Hanson at Kelvedon and defied her son to do anything about it.
‘I have to get out of here,’ Felix told himself.
He was not thinking of the great classical library, which he felt was yet another part of the prison closing in on him.
He would be twenty-seven next birthday and he told himself that, if he did not take steps to settle his future soon, he would find himself growing old, as Roseline undoubtedly was, with very little to show for it.
Like all women she was prepared to give him expensive presents, but kept him short of actual cash.
He had been wondering for some time how he dare approach her about his overdraft of over four thousand pounds at his bank and a bill of nearly a thousand, which his tailor was becoming increasingly objectionable over.
The first thing, he thought now, was to get these paid off and then move out.
He had some small assets that would fetch enough money to keep him going until he found the rich wife he was seeking.
Perhaps he had made a mistake in considering young girls.
He had better find a widow who did not lose her money on remarriage or perhaps a spinster whose not too obvious charms had left her unmarried until she would be glad of a husband, especially one as attractive as himself.
The world outside Kelvedon was full of opportunity, Felix Hanson thought. Yet here he was cooped up and Roseline becoming more demanding, more possessive every day.
He knew that she was frightened of losing him and decided that was the card he must play to get his bills paid.
In the meantime things were not as dull as they had been.
That little grey-eyed girl in the house was proving at the moment elusive, but must obviously be brought to heel by the charm that only he knew how to use to its best advantage.
At the thought Felix smiled and caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror on the wall. He stood regarding his own reflection. There was no doubt that he was exceedingly good-looking. There was no doubt too that women found him irresistible.
There was plenty of time yet for him to obtain everything he wanted in life and a great deal more besides.
He was getting nowhere, wasting his time at Kelvedon.
‘I will talk to Roseline about those bills at the first opportunity,’ he decided.
Then, with a little swagger, he turned from the mirror and walked from the library up the Grand Staircase to his own bedroom.
He was going auto
matically to the room he had occupied for the last two years when he remembered he had been moved into another room on the other side of the corridor.
It was certainly not so magnificent or so large, but for the moment Felix was not interested in furnishings.
He was thinking of his future and a very attractive pair of lips that he had every intention of kissing before he left the house.
In fact it was while he was thinking of Olinda that he fell asleep.
*
Lucy brought Olinda up to date with the happenings in the house as she waited on her at breakfast.
“His Lordship’s gone ridin’, miss,” she related. “I heard Mr. Burrows say that Mr. Abbey, the Head Groom, was over the moon with excitement when his Lordship said the best horse in the stable was to be outside the front door waitin’ for him at eight o’clock.”
“I expect he is a very good rider,” Olinda said, because she felt that some comment was expected.
“There’s never been anyone like his Lordship, accordin’ to Mr. Abbey, and they say the horses’ve been eatin’ their heads off for want of exercise. It’s not the same being ridden by a groom, as when the Master’s in the saddle.”
Olinda was sure that there was some truth in this, but she wanted to finish her breakfast because she wished to get back to work.
She was in fact just rising from the table when Mrs. Kingston came into the room.
“Good morning, Miss Selwyn.”
“Good morning, Mrs. Kingston.”
“I have just been looking at the work you did yesterday, and I must say, Miss Selwyn, I’m astonished to see how skilfully you’ve darned that tear in the black velvet. It’s almost impossible to see where it was and I am sure her Ladyship will be delighted when I show it to her.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Kingston.”
The housekeeper put a parcel down on the table.
“Here are all the silks the groom could obtain in Derby and I’ve already despatched a letter to London to ask for the rest that you’ll require.”
“I have only asked for what I need for the Duchesse’s room,” Olinda explained. “When I see what else there is to do, I may want different colours and I am sure that more gold and silver thread will be necessary.”
A Dream from the Night Page 8
