Don Villarca smiled. “Yes,” he said. “He does. And you?”
Mary did not speak at once but seized his face in her pale hands and looked. She looked truly and long. He looked back without artifice, without pride. She saw the tired soldier within.
“To agree,” said Mary, “only to abandon you in, what? One year? Two? It is merciless of me, and cruel. What is your name?”
“Leopoldo,” he said, squeezing his bright almond eyes closed with distaste. “Is it not dreadful?”
“Dreadful,” she said. “I am Mary.” She stopped, puzzled. “I had thought, oh, so many things…” She had a growing hilarity in her; she looked at him, and it rose and thrust against the dam. “All along, I thought you truly a villain—as if we were caught in the plot of some play…” Her mirth reached its peak like a stream in spate, and she laughed. “I mistook it for horror, but it was merely love, in the end.”
“It is, perhaps, quite an easy mistake,” said Don Villarca. “Your answer?”
What was there left to say? For the first time, circumstance marched together with the dictates of her heart.
• • •
He left in the twilight. Mary rose and went to the house. She found Miss Brigstocke standing by the garden door to the parlor. She did not seem to note Miss Hopewell; she was pale and trembling, and her eyes were wet currants. In one hand, she held a withered red bloom. In the other, she held, betwixt her fingers, a thin band of old gold adorned with rubies and diamonds.
Miss Brigstocke was whispering. “Lav hi azar, yak, alazas, b’or, amria. Ai! Ai ai, johai,” she said on a low breath. Her eyes were blank. “Beng tasser tute! Detlene. Ladzav, ladzav, ladzav! Jekh dilo kerel dile hai but dile keren dilimata.”4
Miss Hopewell looked on her with a cautious eye. Hephzibah was a stranger to her now. She made to pass the other woman into the house. As she did, Miss Brigstocke seized her arm in an iron grip.
“You see? I have it, the flower,” said Miss Brigstocke. “I have also your ring, which was in your reticule. It was not lost. You have practiced a low deception upon me. You lured him to us, like a common…a common…”
Miss Hopewell regarded Miss Brigstocke. “Yes,” she said. “I suppose that I did.”
“But you despise him,” said Miss Brigstocke. “You fear him.”
“I thought so,” said Mary. “But I have been so very wrong.” She smiled a little to herself.
“But we made a compact, you and I,” Miss Brigstocke said. “We are to face it out together…Mary.” She began to weep, great, broken sobs. “I thought you constant. I thought us friends.”
Mary breathed deep, her eyes as bright as children’s marbles. “Such pity for yourself, Hephzibah,” she said. “And yet, I heard something most strange. That day, as I slept, I dreamt I heard you below, with Don Villarca; two voices were raised at each other—you spoke of me. A dream, I thought! When I asked you of it, you told me as much. I called myself a madwoman and chastised myself for it after. But let us be frank. He came, and you sent him away, told him I would not survive marriage or children. Is this not so?”
Miss Brigstocke wept bitterly and openly. “Yes, yes,” she said. “It is so.”
“Did you wish for my small capital,” asked Mary, “so very much?” They looked at one another. Miss Hopewell shrugged and turned to go.
Miss Brigstocke drew breath. She dashed the tears from her eyes. “Stop, Mary. There is something… For the sake of what we were, I must tell you. As I held your ring, moments ago, between my fingers, the sight came upon me. I have never felt such living evil. This marriage will bring sickness and death. It will lay waste to generations. It will grow black flowers in the black land… You will not live. I beg you—I implore you—do not do what you intend…”
Miss Hopewell stilled her with a hand. “No more, madam,” she said, “of your cant and your stratagems. You may be right; those words that you uttered in duplicity may easily be true. Perhaps I will not live.
“But no matter what might come, I am resolved that I will forge my own existence. No longer will I be pushed, and pulled, and cosseted, and lied to. Damn you.
“In short, Miss Brigstocke, I find that you have been speaking for me, where you had not the shadow of a right to do it. You pretend to protect my interests, but it is only to further your own advantage.” Here, Mary Hopewell drew a long breath, and when she spoke next, her voice was weighted with unshed tears. “You speak of deception,” she said, “but it is I who have been the most deceived; that is, in you. But there it is, and no longer of consequence.”
She plucked the ring from Miss Brigstocke’s cold fingers and went past her into the dark house.
“Lashav!” called Miss Brigstocke as she went. “Your future is dark, and long. Longer than you suppose. Lashav, lashav, lashav!”5
Miss Hopewell did not look back.
“Curse you, then,” called Miss Brigstocke after her. Then, to the empty air, “I have tried to turn it aside.”
• • •
The following morning, Mary awoke to a sense of something reordered, of a vacancy in the pattern of things. She lay, still half in the grip of her dream, which had been bright and violently colored, involving long swathes of flowing cloth that stretched like roads into the distance… She turned her head upon the pillow and felt how pleasant it was. Her hair, unbound, was smooth beneath her shoulders; she rolled gently to and fro upon it, thinking of nothing much. But what was it?
In the street beyond, doors were opening for the business of the day. Horses passed by, and hooves rang on the beaten earth. Birds made shrill retorts. From the kitchen below, there came the familiar singing of the dented kettle, the drag of Gabriela’s slippers along the boards, her quiet, murderous muttering.
No sound came from the room adjoining Mary’s. There was none of Miss Brigstocke’s high and tuneless humming or the creaking of her ancient and torturous stays. Through the wall was a silent space. Hephzibah had gone from the house. When? In the night? It would be quite gothic, to flee in the dark. But gone she was; Mary felt it. The very air was changed; the quality of the light that came through the shutters, the shafts of winter sun laid straight along the floor. Mary looked around her little room with its dusty corners, the dark beams that seeped an astringent, resinous scent, the worn rag carpet, once green, now washed pale gray. Somewhere, a mouse made a drowsy, scratching sound. The scene had an irresolute quality, as of something imperfectly remembered. She could not feel anything about it.
The pillow beneath her head was white, unsullied. Mary looked at it for a time, wondering. Suddenly, she drew a deep, sharp breath, filling her lungs. The air flowed in a clean, cool stream. I am very well, she thought. It was too big a thing for so small a feeling as surprise. Her life’s companion had left her. It seemed right and inevitable that it be so. It is true. We are healed by Rawblood. This thought was followed in that instant by others that traveled through her like fatigue, like warmth: He will come again today. And I am going home… The feeling that pierced her then was like light.
• • •
Mary stands before the window, upright as a wand, the floor cool and solid beneath the soles of her feet. She throws the shutters open to the blinding day, raises her arms above her head, and stretches herself wide and high, lifting onto the tips of her toes as dancers do. She throws her arms out, broadening, lengthening, into a star. She tips her head back and yawns wide.
1850
Far Deeping, Lincolnshire
The woman who grasped his sleeve in Church Street was near starving. Her bones turned up in her face like the edges of saucers.
“Reverend,” she said. She regarded him with berry-black eyes that were sunken and dull. She gathered her voluminous garment about her. It was of gray flannel, stained all about and frayed sadly. The morning wind licked at the holes.
Reverend Comer sighed inwardly and
prepared himself for exposition.
“Madam,” he said, “I am, as you see, in somewhat of a hurry. If there is something of a spiritual nature that you require from me, let’s have it. Otherwise, I must refer you to the Magdalene House on Union Street, where you will find assistance of the kind you seek.”
At this, the woman bristled. She drew herself up and stared, and in that moment, he recognized her. It was, of course, too late to recall his words.
“Reverend Comer,” said Miss Brigstocke, “I do not quite understand.” Her tone said that she understood perfectly.
“My dear Miss Brigstocke! My word. What a charming surprise! I was thinking of something else entirely—and—and speaking quite at random, you know. Er, forgive me. The cares laid upon the shoulders of the clergy… And I was not expecting to see an old friend! But what were we saying?”
“We had not yet begun to say anything, sir.” A strand of gray hair whipped across her face. She pushed it aside, seeming close to tears.
“Which will not do!” he said, desperate. “Will you not take some tea with me for the sake of old times? It would give me great pleasure.”
“Well,” Miss Brigstocke said delicately, “let us see. What is the clock? Yes, oh, I see. Well, I need not call before eleven, so…” He stood patiently through the performance. At last, she said, “And of course, it would be a shame to miss the opportunity of hearing all that you have been about. It has been ten years?”
He judged then that pride had been satisfied and ushered her across the cobbles.
Once inside the Rose, Miss Brigstocke’s color improved. She laid her gray flannel sack gently on the chair beside her, revealing a dress, perhaps once black, now the murky green of deep water. It was patched here and there with cambric of various colors and red-striped linen that gave her the appearance of a molding deck chair on a promenade. She had no hat. Her hair waved about her like a shock of dried grass. The Rose was half full, and he could see at a far table Mrs. Munn, who had the haberdashery shop, and her daughter. They stared with round eyes, mouths busy behind their teacups. He waved, and they raised slow, wondering hands in return. It would be all over Far Deeping by the afternoon.
He ordered tea, cake, and sandwiches. Looking at Miss Brigstocke’s thin lips, which struggled over pointed brown teeth, he called after the girl, “Also macaroons!”
Miss Brigstocke sat quietly with her hands folded in her lap as this part of the business was done. A scent came from her, not quite of the gutter, but strong and fermented. The reverend wished once again that she had not chanced to see him. He liked things to be comfortable; Miss Brigstocke and her state were so uncomfortable. He waited but saw that she would not begin.
“Well!” he said. “I am sure there is much to say. I am surprised, I own, to find you in England.”
“Oh,” she said, “I have been back in the country for some while. I left Italy, you know, that very same year that we met there.”
“Indeed! It seems a pity. You and Miss Hopewell had made such a cozy life together!”
She smiled, but her eyes were on the tray of cakes, which arrived that moment.
He took three immediately onto his plate, in order that she should feel she could do the same. “Home shores are best, Miss Brigstocke! But I expect you do not regret your adventure, for travel is so enlarging.”
“Yes,” she said. “Most pleasant and enlarging.”
“And what brings you to Far Deeping? Are you placed in the area?” He sincerely hoped not. He thought of the inevitable obligation. She was neither a respectable person nor a charity case. It was so awkward. Would Mrs. Comer be expected to invite her to dine? And that odor… It was something like a cat, or a stoat.
Miss Brigstocke smiled kindly at him, as though she could see his thoughts and wished him to know that she understood. “My plans are not yet settled, Reverend,” she said. “I have been visiting a cousin not far from here and thought to see the village, which is said to be a charming place. And I find it to be so. Who could not be drawn to it? The little lanes and such cheerful awnings and everyone going about their right business under thatch and steeples. Now, do tell me, is the church, yes, with that rather imposing spire over there, is that Norman?”
He laughed and told her no, no, she had it quite wrong… Conversation went on in this fashion, rather pleasantly, he thought, for some minutes, as the merits of the country were extolled and the decline in English architecture mourned. Her manner was, after all, perfectly pretty; she had not too many firm opinions and showed a charming deference to his views. As they spoke, he observed her and was increasingly distressed by what he saw.
“Miss Brigstocke,” he said after all the sandwiches had been consumed, “I hope you will not mind me presuming a little, but it seems to me that you are not in the best of circumstances. How does this come about? I am sorry to speak so bluntly…”
She blushed a little, turned away. She said nothing. A tooth worried her lower lip.
He was determined not to retreat. “Please,” he said. “We are old friends, are we not?”
Miss Brigstocke nodded, eyes lowered, and said, “I am afraid that my departure from Italy was somewhat precipitous, and I did not have the luxury of looking about me for a good appointment. I took the first one offered, and as perhaps you will know, Mr. Comer, if you fall on hard times, hard times follow, for people look only as far as your last post.”
“I know,” he said with some warmth, “what can befall someone who has no recourse or friends. And Miss Hopewell and yourself… I hope that you and she did not part on bad terms?”
She raised her eyes to his and said quietly, “I will not discuss that, for I do not believe in speaking ill of the dead.”
“Dead?” There was a rush in him, of some feeling, some old feeling; it was like seeing again, after many years, a place where you once played as a child.
“Yes,” said Miss Brigstocke, “quite recently. She and her husband both… But of course, you may not have known. She married in ’40.”
“I did not. I am glad, although,” he said with another strong current of sympathy, “I think it placed you in a difficult position.”
“Yes,” she said. “Mary returned to England as a bride. While I… Well, sad tales are not for happy occasions, are they?”
“She was never strong,” the reverend said, thinking of the dark and shadowed cast of Mary Hopewell’s eyes, set deep in her lily-pale face.
“No, I fear not. I thought…” said Miss Brigstocke delicately. “Forgive me, but I thought that at one time, you and she…” Her eyes filled with soft meaning.
The reverend thought of that Italian idyll, of the sound of his pony’s hooves, and the sun-drenched hills, and dishes of olives beneath the trees. He recalled the scent of wild herbs and women hanging white sheets to dry in the hedges on warm, starlit evenings. That was before he had met Theresa and married her, and she gave him two strapping sons, whose lusty cries filled his house day and night… He would not change it for anything, of course. But it was good to have the memory of Miss Hopewell’s elegant hand on his and of the sunshine. What had he called her? Only to himself, of course, never aloud, but it had been rather poetic in him—a fragile bloom.
“Oh, yes,” said the reverend. “Perhaps there was something of that, once.” His voice sounded unfamiliar to him: deep, rich, and full of feeling. It had a slight tremolo, like an actor speaking. “No,” he went on. “She was never strong.” He thought, Oh, Mary…
“Of course, Mary’s death was violent, and so very gruesome,” said Miss Brigstocke. “One cannot blame her health for that.”
Reverend Comer felt as if she had doused him in water. To be considering something rather pleasurable and melancholy, and then to be so abruptly shocked… There was an uneasy turning in his insides. There was something uncouth in her after all.
“Perhaps you had better tell
me,” he said. He sounded shrill and cold now, he knew.
“I only know what I have been told,” Miss Brigstocke said, “but I will repeat it. Talking is such a thirsty business, don’t you find?” She took a macaroon and nibbled it, watching him.
“Yes, indeed,” he said, starting. He called for more tea.
Around them, the room was emptying—the morning was yielding to luncheon, and there were many market-day engagements. The rain had begun. It struck the windows in spiteful pellets. He thought, She will not want to go out in this, with only that gray thing for protection, and saw then that she lent her tale mystery and interest in order to prolong it. He softened. Christian charity settled into him again. He would not oppose her.
“I understand that Mary was very happy,” said Miss Brigstocke. The steam from the teapot drifted about her face. “They had settled in a house in Devon, where her family was from, you know. I have been in the vicinity quite recently, and it is a place of rolling hills and, though quite lonely, quite lovely too. The house is a madman’s dream, of course, old stone and large doors and quite impossible to heat. But the situation is pleasing, in a shallow valley behind a hill, and looking out in all directions on the vista.
“Mary occupied herself quite pleasurably by all accounts with the house and with a school she had begun in the village and other things. They had brought a manservant from Italy who seemed to rule them with a rod of iron and ordered their household. A peculiar name… Rattles? Quivers? Shakes?
“Some small discords, I think, with neighbors, which is always the case in the country. A man by the name of Gilmore would refuse to keep his cattle off the land, or would not let theirs on his, or something of that sort. I am not very well acquainted with farming practices. And of course, presently, there was a child, a son, which was given some outlandish name. I do not recall it. This added to their contentment.
“She was in the habit, as the boy grew older, of taking him up onto the moor and staying there for long hours, playing games with him and telling him the names of the plants and so on. Sometimes, her husband accompanied her. On many other occasions, it was the manservant. I will call him Quivers—I cannot continue to refer to him as merely the manservant, and I cannot for the life of me recall… Everyone thought it odd of Mary to spend so much time with only a child and Quivers for company. But as you may recall, Mary was ever one to please only Mary. She would not have cared what appearance it presented. And some days, she and the child went out with no escort at all. Her husband showed no inclination to interfere, which is of course quite typical of… But I forget. You did not know him.
The Girl from Rawblood Page 24
