She had entirely forgotten Sir Gilbert, but at first it did not seem odd that he should be sitting there in his shirt and breeches, with his cravat removed and his sinewy old throat exposed, his lined face wearing a paternal expression and his silvered hair newly dressed with a pomade that emitted a scent that she associated with lavender soap Phoebe Fraser had introduced into the nursery when she was a child.
His presence there, serene and relaxed, caused her to falter on the threshold, but he rose at once, extending a thin, blue-veined hand as though to welcome and reassure her, and his voice carried reassurance as he said, gently, “My dear… you’re unwell… something you’ve eaten… Take a tot…” and he lifted a wineglass and a bottle of his favourite table wine, producing both as though by magic from somewhere near the fender.
She accepted the wine gratefully and without uttering a word, but when she had emptied the glass and set it down on the night table, she said, in a voice that did not seem to be hers, “I… I must go… Go home… At once! At once, you understand?”
He did not seem in the least surprised by the statement but replied, taking her hand, “There now, my dear, don’t talk of such things. Give the wine a chance to settle your stomach. Come over here by the fire,” and very courteously he made way for her so that her wits, so widely scattered, began to remuster and she looked at him closely for the first time, noticing not only that he was half-undressed but was studying her in a curiously intent manner, as though making some kind of assessment of her panic. She said, stifling a hiccough, “Was it you in the cupboard?” and he said, with a look of surprise that was obviously genuine,
“In the cupboard? In what cupboard?” and she pointed in the direction of the wainscot so that he rose and went over, his keen eye raking the scarred surface of the panel and coming to rest on the empty knothole that was barely noticeable from this side. He turned then, looking thoughtful but still very composed.
“You heard someone behind there? Is that what made you ill? You were frightened?”
“No,” she managed to say. “Not of that… something else… downstairs in the kitchen.”
“Tell me. I’m your friend here. Your only friend.”
It was strange, she thought, that he should say that and in that level tone, precisely and carefully, as though he had rehearsed it for a week; and her eyes darted about the room, now seeking a means of escape. He noticed the glance and repeated, insistently, “Tell me, my dear. Tell me what frightened you,” and when she made no reply, “You heard someone in the cupboard? Well, that's possible. It's what one might expect, I imagine. One of their more extravagant outlets, providing they were well bottled in advance. But I’ll put a stop to it. You can be quite sure of that!” and suddenly, to her intense surprise, he raised his clenched fist and struck the panel a violent blow so that it split around the knot and fell inward in two even halves.
“I’ll have Danvers replace it in the morning,” he added, as though, instead of punching a hole in the wall, he had soiled a table napkin or broken the stem of a wineglass.
She continued to stare at him, waiting for the next sequence in this progressive nightmare, and presently it came as he flexed the knuckles of his hand and crossed over to her where she stood with her back to the fire. He said, in the same level tone, “Go to bed. I’ll stay with you. You can tell me your story in the morning,” and reached out with both hands, grasping her bedgown at the shoulders.
She knew then precisely what he intended and although panic rose in her throat, bringing on another volley of hiccoughs, the prospect did not frighten her in the way that the incident in the kitchen had. For here was something inside the context of her experience, a lecherous but vigorous old man, lusting after a woman young enough to be his granddaughter but determined, if he could, to demonstrate his vigour in a way that would feed his pride. She understood too that she was cornered and could look for no rescue from the two men downstairs, and also that, unless she kept her nerve, and temporised whilst her mind explored the chances of tumbling into her clothes and slipping down into the hall, she was lost, cut off for all time from the safe, familiar world outside where she might, in years to come, succeed in persuading herself that everything that happened here tonight was part of a confused dream.
She said, clutching her gown about her, “You shouldn’t be here… I’m not frightened now… it was just…” But then his expression changed, and he looked at her bleakly, saying, “I can guess what you saw, child. You don’t imagine I’m unaware of that relationship do you? That's why I’m here. I should have made it my business to tell you long ago. But it needn’t matter, I can assure you of that.”
She managed to say, “But why? Why did he marry me?” and at that he laughed, saying, “Well, that's a tomfool question, I must say. You brought him a thousand a year, didn’t you?”
“But I couldn’t stay now. There wouldn’t be any difficulty about the money if I explained…”
“Explained? To whom? To your father, so that it became gossip in all the Cheapside coffee houses? To your mother, who would relay it to every tittle-tattling woman within twenty miles of your home? Do you want that kind of scandal? Do you want every thruster in the West Kent hunt tittering every time you appear at a meet or a steeplechase? No, my dear. There's a simpler way than that. We go our path and they go theirs and no one a penny the wiser.”
She looked at him with a kind of wonder. “We? You and me? You mean Lester would agree to that?”
“Why the devil not? He isn’t in the least interested in you as a wife, and only as a woman so long as he can snigger about you with that lover of his. They see you as a freak. As the bearded lady at a fairground booth, if you like. Don’t you understand even now what they’ve been about, pushing one another into that cupboard and taking turns at the peephole?”
“You mean Ponsonby is a… a… kind of wife? That he’ll always be here?”
“He or someone like him. You can never tell with a relationship of that kind. It might go on for years. It might end in a woman's quarrel, in screams and accusations and even violence of one kind or another. He's Stukeley blood, piss-thin this side of the country. Stukeley and Everard on his mother's side, God rot her, for bringing me such a brat! However, it's not past mending. You could manage something better I’ll warrant,” and he reached out again, his arm encircling her waist.
She knew then that her only hope was to play for time. A few minutes would do, enough to hustle into a few clothes and run. Run anywhere. Out into the dark and wind, where they couldn’t find her and drag her back to make her choice between living out her life with a wretch who preferred fondling a man, and took his pleasure in a woman through a chink in a broom cupboard, or being seduced by this pomaded old roue, who seemed long ago to have made up his mind to get an heir from her, as though she was one of his fillies brought to stud. She said, trying with all her might to keep her voice steady, “You would be kind to me? You’d drive that man Ponsonby out of the house?”
He looked at her speculatively. “I’d be kind, yes. You could have anything you fancied providing you were a sensible gel. Lester would have to stay on for appearances’ sake, and it could take time to prise Ponsonby loose. Might be done tho’. We should begin casting around for a substitute, someone more manageable, a stableboy possibly, someone who could keep his mouth shut.”
“Get rid of them now, then. Get them clear of here for a spell… for an hour or so… while… while you’re here. Invent something. Say there was trouble in the stables. For I couldn’t stay here another minute if I thought there was the least prospect of their spying on us… if they weren’t at a safe distance this first time, you understand?”
He seemed to consider this a long time, finding it extravagant but perhaps understandable in view of the shocks she had suffered in the last hour. Finally he said, with a sigh, “Very well, if that's what you want. I’ll go down and turn one of the mares loose and start a hullabaloo. It's a wild enough night to set a door swinging
,” and he smiled, as though relishing the hoax. “But I make conditions, too. As proof of the bargain do something for me. A very small thing. Take off those things and warm the bed, for I won’t be gone more than ten minutes.”
She knew there was no alternative, yet the effort of parting with her gown and nightdress was more than she could manage, so that she remained standing against the night table, her hands clutching the quilted material of the gown. He said, very sharply, “Come now! They’ve looked you over times enough, damn them. Why should I be denied the pleasure?” and at that she shrugged herself out of the gown and let it fall, kicking off her slippers, loosening the neck ribbon of her nightdress, and turning her back on him as she pulled it over her head.
She could feel his glance playing over her, all the way from her plaited hair to her heels, and again she felt the terrible flesh-crawling sensation she had experienced in the cupboard. He said, hoarsely, “Don’t be shy, my dear. I’ve seen a thousand women in my time but none prettier than you. Turn around. You shouldn’t be ashamed of a body like that,” and she turned, her hands drooping at her sides, her eyes on the threadbare patch of the stained strip of carpet beside the bed.
She expected then that he would seize her but he did no more than look her over, much as she had seen him look at a new horse brought in by one of the many nagsmen he dealt with. Finally he got up, patted her shoulder, and moved across the room, saying, “Don’t worry if you hear shouting and running about. I’ll be back in a few minutes,” and she heard him turn into the corridor and stalk towards the backstairs with firm strides.
It took her less than a minute to scramble into her shift, drawers, dress, stockings, and boots. She did not bother with her corset but stumbled over to the closet, wrenched it open, and grabbed a riding cloak lined with heavy, waterproofed material. Then, no more than seventy seconds after she had heard his step descending the backstairs, she flitted out into the corridor and along it to the head of the main staircase that led directly into the great, draughtswept hall where a single oil lamp burned on a half-round table just inside the great door, with its complicated array of locks and bolts, as formidable as the fastenings of a gaol.
She had no intention of wrestling with them but ran down the stairway and into the big drawing room, where tall French windows gave on to the flagged terrace overlooking the lawn. The bolts on the windows were stiff and rusty, like every other piece of metalwork in the house, so that she broke a nail drawing them from their sockets; but the air that rushed in when the wind caught the frame and flung it back on its hinges was as exhilarating as the first gulp of air sucked down on surfacing after swimming underwater in the pool above the islet at Tryst. She went out into the blackness, groping her way to the balustrade and then, turning hard left, moving its full length to the door in the brick wall that led into the greenhouse and beyond that to the kitchen garden. By the time she had reached the five-barred gate opening on to the lane, her eyes had grown sufficiently accustomed to the darkness to make her way without stumbling, but the wind tore at her hair and cloak, blinding her with its folds so that she had to tug them free to see the surface of the lane and fight her way down to the open ground where the road passed about a quarter-mile east of Courtlands.
For some time, for the better part of an hour it might have been, she battled along mindlessly, unable to accept the reality of her escape. It was only when she paused, gasping, in the lee of a Dutch barn short of a village, that she was able to form some coherent pattern of flight; her intimate knowledge of the paths, bypaths, and gaps around here coming to her aid, and her instinct as a horsewoman telling her to keep the southwesterly at her back in order to head east over the crown of the moor, down through Bletchley Green, and over the watersplash at Cooper's Corner, where the torrent rose to her thighs before she reached higher ground and found the dust road that wound southeast between clumps of wind-whipped larch and spruce.
With the wind to boost her along she moved at five miles an hour, despite the darkness and intermittent slashes of rain. Then the weather began to moderate a little, and she wondered whether she was far enough on her road to find a sheltered place to hide and catch her breath. But she thought better of it and pressed on until her head spun and her feet began to play her false, so that she thought, “I got away from them but I shall die out here, sure enough, and somebody will find me in a ditch when it's light and wonder how I came to be there…” But the prospect of dying out on the highroad, like a used-up tramp, did not strike her as so bizarre as that nibbling exchange between Lester and Ralph Ponsonby, or the determination of that scented old reprobate to take his son's place in her bed in order to ensure the continuity of the Moncton-Prices. It did not seem to matter now what happened to a body that had been so defiled, and she could even feel a spurt of malice at the manner in which she had tricked the old roue, who would doubtless be hunting for her high and low when he found those French windows banging in the drawing room and guessed she had escaped.
It was about then she saw the light, a yellowish speck that glowed, went dim, and glowed again over on the crest of a field to her right. Instinctively she made for it, turning off the road to cross a hundred and one furrows of heavy clay that plucked at her boots and caused her to stumble half a dozen times, so that she was soon plastered with mud, her cloak and dress heavy with the stuff. But little by little the speck of light enlarged itself and presently she saw that it was a lantern swinging over the entrance of a doorless hut on the edge of a copse crowning the field.
She called then, shouting into the wind, and the light was momentarily obscured by the passage of a figure who advanced down the last few yards of the field towards her, calling out something she could not understand. Then she fell flat yet again and felt herself lifted as easily as if she had been a shopping basket, but after that there was no sequence to events, for images came and went, caught up in a tumult of wind and whirled away over the tossing trees of the copse. She identified the figure as Denzil Fawcett, the farmer's son from Dewponds, when they were less than a mile from home and was able to answer some of his questions, but very impatiently for she had an overwhelming desire to escape into sleep and never wake again, for her mind was more exhausted than her body so that she would not have objected to sharing a bed with a dozen old men so long as she could stretch her limbs, get warm, and feel a pillow under her head.
She had a confused impression of stumbling along, supported by Denzil; and after that standing mute in a small circle of bustling women, who spooned broth into her and began peeling off her clothes and rubbing her with a rough towel, but after that came a moment of triumph, for she was inside the warm bed with a soft pillow and the sound of the wind was muted and finally heard no more.
Four
1
THERE WAS TIME TO PONDER HER STRATEGY DURING THE LONGISH JOGTROT through the maze of intersecting country roads that retraced, in a westerly direction, the route Stella had travelled in the wind and darkness twelve hours before.
As to tactics, she had, in reserve, Denzil Fawcett in the driving seat; his presence, although glum and uncommunicative, indicated in some way that he was hoping to exploit his entirely unforeseen advantage, and this made him a useful ally. She sensed this from the first, and that was one reason why she had invited him to help her resolve this highly unsavoury business after Stella had awakened to find her mother sitting at her bedside, sympathetic but as relentless in her catechism as a New Scotland Yard detective extracting a deathbed confession from a felon.
It had not been easy to assemble the minimum information needed for a confrontation of the kind she had in mind, but Henrietta, having decided that her life would need a great deal of unravelling, persisted; and as the story unfolded she was astounded, not so much by Stella's blindness but by her own and Adam's in allowing the wretched girl to expose herself to such dreadful risks and humiliations.
True, she had never much cared for a match based on hard cash and an admitted hoist up the social la
dder, had never looked with favour on that sulky mouthed Lester, or his rackety old father, but it had never occurred to her that the son might be thoroughly vicious, or the father a wicked old satyr, of the kind one might meet in a German fairy tale featuring ogres who breakfasted on children. Shame, dismay, and rage succeeded one another as the girl's broken sentences acquainted her piecemeal with the facts, but it was the climax that shocked her beyond belief, for she realised that, but for good luck and a display of hardihood and desperation on Stella's part, the Swanns of Tryst might well have been saddled with a grandson begotten by that old rake in circumstances that were too disgusting to be contemplated.
It was this, above all, that made her resolve to deal with the situation personally, without waiting for consultation with Adam or Lawyer Stock, who handled all their legal affairs. For here, surely, was something that had to be settled at once and with finality, for she made up her mind on the spot that nothing—nothing— would induce her to sanction the return of the girl to that house of infamy. Simultaneously she made up her mind about something else. Somehow Stella's tracks would have to be obliterated, if only to avoid a scandal that would drag the family's name through acres of filth and bid fair, if it got abroad, to damage the business. This meant that under no circumstances should Stella return home, where, as like as not, that old devil or his son would come seeking her within hours, primed with some cock and bull story of hysteria on the girl's part, that had sent her flying into the night like a mad woman, babbling a story that no one was likely to believe.
Yet Henrietta believed it, every single word of it, although she did not make the mistake of confiding more than was absolutely necessary to the Fawcetts, merely hinting that Stella had been cruelly served by the Moncton-Prices, father and son, and that she was resolved to take what steps she could towards achieving a permanent separation. She did not say upon what grounds, reasoning that a bucolic family like the Fawcetts would be unlikely to know how the quality went about annulling their failed marriages. She did ask, however, for the loan of the Fawcetts’ trap, and for Denzil's services as escort, saying that a man of Sir Gilbert's temperament was likely to be offensive and obstructive when she called for her daughter's belongings.
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