I could not have said that Nicholas neglected me. We met as often as before, talked, smiled, our relationship apparently unaltered. And perhaps it was the very lack of change that troubled me, for, if it did not diminish, it did not grow; and I knew there were times when he held back from me.
‘Faith will know what I mean,’ he still muttered now and then, but increasingly I could not understand him, was aware simply that something troubled him, my own senses, sharpened by panic, being quick to detect the slow building of a barrier between us, which I could not always bring myself to call Georgiana Clevedon.
I knew him too well for that—or thought I did—for, unlike Blaize, he had never sought the exotic in women, had spoken many times of the need to settle with a partner of one’s own kind. He may, from time to time, have enjoyed the convenience of a casual mistress—in fact I knew quite well he had—as exotic or as garish as our local music-halls could provide, but in a wife—and Miss Clevedon, like myself, could only be available to him as a wife—such qualities must surely repel him. Nicholas was practical, shrewd, level-headed enough to choose a woman who was right for him. And since Georgiana Clevedon, ‘rare bird’of the wild wood’as Blaize had so aptly named her, was so very wrong, I was able for most of the time to convince myself that I was mistaken.
And in the moments when I couldn’t—bare, solitary midnights that stripped me of hope and dignity—I concluded that if he wanted her, as he had wanted the actresses of the Theatre Royal, if it was passion, the reckless impulse of sensuality he had not managed to feel for me, then I would wait, closing my eyes and my mind to it, until it was over. I would say nothing, do nothing; I would be, as always, simply here when he needed me, making no demands, ready, like cool water, to heal him if she scorched him, ready to warm him if she proved cold, waiting, until the flame expired, to welcome him home, asking no questions, offering merely the strength of my love for him to lean on if she should weaken him.
But did he want her? Certainly no one but myself thought so, Caroline being too irritated by Miss Clevedon’s open, encouragement of Blaize, and Aunt Verity, who knew her eldest son rather better, too amused by it, for either of them to connect her in any way with Nicholas. Was it merely my overwrought imagination, my jealousy extending to every woman he met, because I had not, it seemed, succeeded in making him love me? Had he, in fact, given any real indication of regard for her? None. But I would have been easier, I knew, had he leaned forward to catch a glimpse of her ankle, on her second visit to Tarn Edge, when she had mismanaged her skirt at the carriage-step—something he would have done automatically had it been any other woman—instead of staring stony-faced at the horse’s legs, not hers. I would have been easier if, responding to her flighty, familiar manner, he had flirted with her, even treated her coarsely—anything. And I could not have explained, even to my mother, how his show of indifference where she was concerned stabbed me to the heart.
Nor did she appear to want him. Blaize, beyond question, was her choice, and a visit to Galton Abbey at the end of January convinced me that, as Caroline had said, a choice of some kind was necessary, for indeed the estate was much encumbered, the brother deep-dyed in his extravagance, and Miss Clevedon, without doubt, would have to fend for herself in life.
We went first, of course, to Listonby Park, even my mother, unutterably bored now with Cullingford and eager to be off again, twittering with excitement as the house revealed its graceful lines to us through the mist.
‘Caroline, my dear—how perfectly lovely!’ And so it was, the Great Hall sparse, as Caroline had warned, but noble, the carved oak staircase rising majestically from it, the dining-room and drawing-room—added a mere hundred years ago—of such frail beauty, the baroque plaster mouldings so mellowed from the original white to a delicate cream in places, in others a gentle grey, that I, too, was reminded of fragrant petals at the season’s end, and wondered how anything so exquisite could endure.
And when we had taken tea by the crackling, smoking fire—‘I must ask my father to advise me about that chimney’—had paced the Long Gallery up and down to admire the gilt-framed row of Chards, long dead, who would have turned over in agony in their weed-strewn graves had they suspected that any descendant of theirs could marry a tradesman’s daughter, we were driven the three miles to the much smaller estate of Galton Abbey, to inspect a house of a very different order.
It stood at a bend of the River Law which had somehow escaped the pollution of our mills, a hurrying, sparkling water still running free beneath a rickety bridge, swirling itself around a row of old stones which the nuns, perhaps, in Tudor times, had used to cross the stream. There was a steep green hillside, ancient trees dipping their arms in the river, and the house, whose stones had heard the tolling of the convent bell, set in a slight fold of the land as if it had grown there, quite naturally, without the help of any man. And although I wanted to find it cold and dismal, like Caroline, I would have been enchanted, had I allowed it.
There was a hall here too, quite small, extremely dark, stone floors, stone walls, stone stairs leading to an open gallery, a feeling of age, a weight of memory and experience so strange, yet so haunting, so much in keeping with Miss Clevedon herself, that I was suddenly, fiercely grateful that only Blaize, not Nicholas, had found time to accompany us.
She received us alone, neither her brother nor her grandfather having returned from hunting, walking abruptly into the room in her inevitable dark green riding-habit, its trailing skirt looped over her arm, two elderly gundogs padding stiff-legged at her side, a pair of greyhounds, a frisk of terriers following behind.
‘My word!’ my mother said, when the conventional greetings were done, ‘I hear you have a cloister—may we risk the encounter of a ghost or two?’
And immediately, without ceremony, we were taken to see the cloister, a dim, empty tunnel leading to no tangible place at all but directly into the past. ‘They pulled down the Abbey church,’ Georgiana said, ‘my great, ever-so-great-great-grandfathers. But they left part of the abbess’s house and this cloister intact. I once spent the whole night here, as a child, quite alone, curled up in a blanket, just thinking about it. Don’t you find it the most fascinating place in the world?’
‘Absolutely.’ Blaize said, his eyes ignoring the intricate fan-vaulting and resting directly on her vivid, eager face. And instantly her quite breathless admiration of the stone tracery, the hushed mystery of this ancient place, gave way to a boyish, unabashed chuckle.
‘Oh—nonsense—for you are teasing me. Pretending to admire my cloister and looking at me instead. But I am not deceived.’
‘Miss Clevedon,’ he declared, his hand on his heart a smile of pure mischief on his lips. ‘I am the most sincere of men—’
‘He is the greatest flirt the world has ever known,’ Caroline said tartly. ‘And it is very cold in here—and the air not quite fresh. Matthew, I would like to go outside.’
‘So you shall, for I want to have a look at Perry’s stable.’ Sir Matthew said, aware, one supposed, that quite soon he would have the purchase price of any horse in the county, despite the restrictions my Uncle would endeavour to tie into the marriage-contract. But Caroline was nervous of horses, Blaize not obsessive. Miss Clevedon remarkably agreeable to his suggestion that, while his mother and mine returned to the house, we should take a stroll.
‘Show me these famous abbey grounds,’ he invited her and so we walked a while in the, thin sharp air, my feet and Caroline’s uneasy on the stony pathways. Miss Clevedon striding out, her hips as narrow and flat as a boy’s, no blood on her cheek today, but a certain translucence, a quick-rising vitality, her hair turning to pure copper at every uncertain shaft of winter sunlight.
She had spent all her life here at the Abbey, she told us, just a few miles distant from Tarn Edge, but as unaware of our existence as we had been of hers. The city, to her meant London—and that to be avoided whenever possible—the rest mere collections of houses, a strange, restricted way of l
ife she did not care to understand. She had been happy here—every day of her life she had been happy—gloriously content with the company of her brother and her grandfather, and their sporting friends.
And a mere half hour of her company sufficed to make it clear that her brother, Peregrine Clevedon, who was reckless and spendthrift and would have fallen foul of the law more than once had it not been for his family connections, could do no wrong in her eyes, that her grandfather, Mr. Gervase Clevedon, was of a nobility and wisdom falling little short of the Deity, that her Abbey was the master-plan besides which the rest of the world’s great buildings did not really signify. She was herself a passionate horsewoman, having ridden to hounds six days a week every season since she had turned five years old; and was no mean shot either, although she could not match her brother’s record of killing ninety-six pheasants, one smoky Autumn day, with ninety-six shots, eighty grouse with eighty shots, thirty-four partridges with thirty-four shots.
‘I believe you pity those of us who have not lived as you have.’ Caroline acidly remarked, to which Miss Clevedon gave her sudden, almost startled peal of laughter, tossed her head, as restive and open-hearted as a young colt, and declared that she believed she did.
‘But you can hardly expect to live here forever? One assumes your grandfather is not immortal, and that your brother may marry?’
But Miss Clevedon was not dismayed. ‘Oh, but it is the Abbey and the estate that matter, you see,’ she explained to an increasingly distant Caroline. ‘When my grandfather dies it will all be Perry’s, and then his children’s, and theirs. We will still be here, life-tenants handing into the future what was given to us by the past. That’s the great thing. That is immortality, don’t you see?’
‘How comforting.’ Caroline said, walking briskly forward, pausing as she reached the river-bank, her eyes critically scanning the fragile bridge.
‘Can that be secure, do you think?’
‘I daresay it is not,’ Miss Clevedon called out, ‘but I never use it.’ And catching up her skirt still higher, she sprang lightly on to the first stepping stone, and then the second, her boots up to their heels in water, swaying slightly, deliberately, as she flung down her challenge.
‘Would someone care to race me to the other side?’
‘I hardly think so.’ Caroline told her, Barforth fury visibly mounting, since it was clear to her that Matthew Chard, had she not been there to restrain him, would have plunged readily enough into the stream, good, broadcloth jacket, best cambric shirt and all.
‘I’ll venture myself on the bridge,’ Blaize offered. ‘And rescue you at the other side.’
‘There’ll be no need to rescue me, Mr. Blaize Barforth, I do assure you—’
And they were off. Miss Clevedon leaping, splashing, from stone to stone, her hair coming down in a guinea-gold tangle, her feet kicking up a fine spray as she went, Blaize on the bridge, not hurrying but keeping pace with her, reaching out a hand as they both came to the far bank, allowing her, for just a moment, to pull him forward towards the water.
‘I’ll give you a soaking yet, Mr. Barforth.’
‘I think you will not.’ And then her quick, gurgling laughter as he tugged her sharply on to the grass and, for an instant, into his arms.
‘Matthew, go after them.’ Caroline commanded. ‘They must not be alone together over there.’
But to Matthew Chard, accustomed to the free and easy hunting society of Leicestershire, the sophistications of Oxford and London, these were the notions of Methodism, of the middleclasses—shopkeepers’morality—and lounging some what irritably against the bridge he said. ‘Good lord, Caroline what harm are they doing?’
‘None, if they come back at once. But if they go up the hill and out of sight that young lady may well find herself compromised.’
‘Lord!’ he said again, half amused, half wishing, perhaps, that he had gone hunting after all. ‘I have been up that hill alone with her a dozen times and thought nothing of it. These things don’t signify, I reckon, in good—I mean, in the countryside.’
But before she could give him her opinion of his countryside, knowing full well he had almost said ‘in good society’, they were back again, Miss Clevedon breathless, almost beautiful, Blaize in no hurry to release her hand. And, smiling at him, fond of him as I was, wishing him well as I did, my treacherous thought still reached out to him: ‘Fall in love with her, Blaize. Or make her love you—as you could, if you tried, if you wanted to.’
We started for home soon after, Matthew Chard remaining at Galton to await the arrival of Miss Clevedon’s brother, and the house was scarcely out of sight, the superb Barforth carriage-horses making light of the distance, when Caroline, who had remained very cool said to her mother, ‘I think you should know that Blaize has behaved very foolishly—in fact, very badly.’
‘I wonder,’ Aunt Verity said. ‘Have you, dear?’
‘Yes and no,’ he told her, the understanding between mother and son quite complete. ‘Badly perhaps. Foolishly—I don’t think so.’
‘I expect you have been flirting with Miss Clevedon?’
‘I have.’
‘And enjoying it?’
‘Immensely.’
‘And she may have enjoyed it too. But is it really wise, dear?’
‘Of course it is not wise,’ Caroline cut in, ‘since the girl is angling for a husband, and he is too blinded to see why.’
‘My dear Caroline,’ he said, a perfect imitation of her own grand manner, ‘I am well aware of her reasons, believe me. Their property is in ruins, the brother is too wild for any woman to marry, and so Miss Clevedon has elected to make the supreme sacrifice. She doesn’t like the idea of marrying a manufacturer—my word, she doesn’t like it, and it is an indication of her devotion to her family that she is willing to undertake it at all. In fact I am flattered that, in my case, she feels it could be less horrific than she’d anticipated.’
‘Then you admit her to be an odious, unfeeling creature?’
‘I admit nothing of the kind,’ he said, leaning sharply forward, ‘for she is every bit as enchanting as I have been telling her these past few weeks And she is very far from being unfeeling—very far. I will tell you this, Caroline, she is exactly the kind of girl a man might come to love, quite foolishly, without at all wanting to, you may believe me. She could get inside a man’s head, and his skin, and he could find himself quite unable to get rid of her, no matter how much he tried. It would take a warm-hearted man, of course, which puts me out of the running, you’ll surely agree?’
‘So you have done with her?’
‘Have I? Very likely, I am going to London at the end of the week in any case. And if it eases you, Caroline—since this will not shock mother and Aunt Elinor, and Faith may stop her ears—I have a friend in London who intrigues me, perhaps not quite so much as Miss Cleyedon, but who is considerably easier of access. So—probably—you have nothing more to fear on her account, and mine.’
‘Well, I am glad of that, although you need not snap at me.’
‘What is it, Faith?’ my mother said, quietly for her. ‘Are you not well, dear?’
And, forcing my mouth to smile, an effort made through a sudden weight of weariness, I said. ‘No—no—it’s the cold, that’s all, mamma. Just the cold.’
Chapter Ten
My sister Celia had her child at the beginning of February, a boy some weeks ahead of his time who lived but a moment or two; and it chanced that when her pains started she and I were alone in the house together, Jonas in Leeds on business, my mother and Prudence on an excursion to Harrogate. Aunt Hannah so unacceptable to Celia that I sent at once for Dr. Ashburn, not daring to imagine the consequences to myself, and to my sister, if he could not be found.
‘It is nothing,’ she said, plainly terrified. ‘Not at all what you are thinking, in any case.’ And, seeing the beading of sweat on her thin, seventeen-year-old face, the utter panic in her eyes, my little sister, trying hard, even now,
to play the matron, I told her, ‘Nonsense. I may be unmarried, Celia, but I have learned that babies do not grow under a gooseberry bush—nor in the doctor’s bag, either.’
‘Then you know more than I did—last year,’ she gasped, biting her lips, allowing me to take her upstairs and hold her hand, her fingers gripping hard, the sheer outrage in her face comic, had it not been so totally appalling.
‘Darling—darling Celia—it’s going to be all right.’
‘All right? It’s disgusting!’ she cried out, teeth digging vixen-sharp into her lip, ‘disgusting—all of it!’
‘Oh no, darling, it’s natural, isn’t it?’
‘What do you know about it? You don’t even know what I mean. It’s horrible. I’m telling you. It’s disgusting.’
‘Celia—I don’t know—but I think you should calm yourself.’
‘Why? Why should I?’
‘Because I think you should. And the doctor will soon be here.’
‘The doctor,’ she spat out. ‘The doctor—what’s a doctor? Another man coming to maul me—dear God!—don’t leave me, Faith. I won’t be left alone with him.’
But Giles Ashburn, appearing blessedly, almost silently, would not have me stay, disengaging her frantic hand from mine with quiet authority.
‘Mrs. Agbrigg, I am going to help you and you must help me to do so. Miss Aycliffe, if you will wait downstairs—’
‘No!’ Celia screeched, thrashing her body wildly again.
‘Yes,’ he replied, opening the door for me, leaving me with no option, although he had not even raised his voice, but to obey.
Jonas would be here before it was over, I thought, calculating the time of the last train, and my mother, who would come immediately on reading the note I had dispatched to Blenheim Lane. But the afternoon had scarcely darkened. I had been but an hour or two, it seemed, staring into the fire, trying not to heed the mutfled sounds, overhead, not to dwell on my sister’s frailty—my own helplessness—when Giles Ashburn was back again; telling me with his great quietness that although my sister was as well as one could hope her to be, her son, who had been born too quickly, too soon, had not survived.
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