Dorothy Eden

by Vines of Yarrabee

  When Mrs Ashburton was successfully dressed in her black silk dress, her cap on her grey hair, and her lorgnette dangling round her neck, she made her slow way downstairs. She had a favourite chair under the fig tree in the garden. She sat there dozing in the shade on a hot day looking like a giant black mushroom, scarcely stirring when the children shouted and played about her. She only came to life in the evenings, when dinner was served. Then she began her long rambling monologues while the master filled her glass too often and the mistress frowned at him. But let her be happy, the master said. People should not be deprived of their particular pleasure in their old age.

  It was unknown for the old lady to come downstairs before ten-thirty.

  So how could either Molly or Gilbert expect her at the door of the dining-room when Molly, serving the master’s breakfast herself as had become her habit, was caught playfully by him and pulled on to his lap.

  He wanted to kiss her warm brown throat where her collar unbuttoned. It had a pulse he could feel beneath his lips.

  She resisted for a moment, but he laughed.

  ‘What’s the matter? Running away from me?’

  ‘Someone might come in.’

  ‘Let them.’

  She did not find the risks they ran stimulating, giving an edge to their illicit love. She only lost her feeling of guilt when they were safely closeted in her room, the door locked, their clothes discarded, and their passion as impossible to stop as a bush fire in a raging wind.

  But Gilbert enjoyed these snatched kisses and caresses. He had a mischievous habit of coming silently behind her in the kitchen, lifting her coiled hair and laying his lips on the nape of her neck, when at any moment one of the maids might come in. Or he would grasp her round the waist, and whirl her about, laughing as the colour rose in her face.

  She lived in perpetual apprehension. She knew that she would have to leave Yarrabee if ever the mistress discovered her treachery. Her own code of honour which was all she had had to live by for so long would demand that. But it would be annihilating. If Gilbert, by his recklessness, allowed it to happen she would want to kill him.

  Watch the life flow out of this vital strong body that pulsed against hers? The vivid picture flashing through her mind made her wince. She sighed in despair, her body going limp in his arms.

  ‘What is it, love?’

  ‘I suddenly thought of you dead.’

  ‘Dead! What a morbid notion. I’m far from it, I assure you. Let me demonstrate.’

  And then Mrs Ashburton’s voice came from the doorway. Hoarse, shocked, but strangely unsurprised.

  ‘Aren’t you both ashamed of yourselves?’

  Gilbert sprang up so abruptly that Molly nearly fell to the floor. She had steadied herself in a moment, and hastily smoothed her skirts and fumbled with the betraying buttons of her bodice.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs Ashburton. Aren’t you down early?’ Gilbert said.

  ‘A little too early for you, eh?’ Mrs Ashburton was an undignified picture herself, with her hair straggling, her eyes bloodshot, her bedgown sagging across her vast bosom.

  ‘What is it you want?’

  Gilbert had regained enough of his usual superb confidence to allow himself some impatience with this doddering bulbous-eyed old creature. What business had she to wander in so unexpectedly?

  ‘Hasn’t Emmy taken you your breakfast?’

  ‘Oh, yes, I’ve not been neglected. I must say that for you, you’ve always looked after me well enough. Treated me like your own mother. Gilbert Massingham, you fool!’

  ‘Fool?’ Gilbert’s eyes glinted dangerously.

  ‘I could call you worse than that. Insensitive. Uncouth. Have your mistresses if you must, and I suppose you must. But not under the same roof as your wife.’

  Molly moved. Mrs Ashburton’s quivering finger was pointed at her.

  ‘Get back to the kitchen, where you belong. Mr Massingham will send for you later, if he has any sense, and tell you to pack your bags.’

  Molly allowed herself an alarmed look at Gilbert. He managed to give her the smallest nod of reassurance. His colour was high. He was about to lose his temper. And it would be the old lady, for all her belligerence, who came off worst.

  But he was still controlling himself as Molly left, lingering at the door to hear him say with a calm reasonableness, ‘Now, Mrs Ashburton, what’s this wild talk about mistresses, because you find me snatching a kiss from my housekeeper. I had always regarded you as a woman of the world. Even if you’re as shockable as an old maid, I question your right to tell me what to do in my own house.’

  ‘My house, if you please,’ Mrs Ashburton said.

  ‘Yours!’

  ‘It could hardly be yours still without my support. Could it? And if I withdraw that support, if I demand to be repaid the amount I have lent you, which is now ten thousand pounds, where will you be, my fine gallant?’

  ‘You can’t expect me to take this threat seriously.’

  ‘I don’t make idle threats, my boy. Just as you, I imagine, don’t make idle love. That was no snatched kiss in passing. You’re having a liaison with Mrs Jarvis and I regard it as being in the worst possible taste. I love Eugenia. Her mother made me responsible for her when we left England together. She’s still just about as innocent as the day she was born, bless her, and I won’t allow that innocence to be destroyed.’

  ‘So?’ said Gilbert with ominous quiet.

  ‘So I suggest you find a mistress at least as far off as Parramatta. Sydney would be better. And I also suggest you send Mrs Jarvis and her child packing.’

  ‘You can’t expect me to do this!’

  ‘I do. No more, no less.’

  ‘And if I refuse?’

  ‘That would be a pity, Gilbert. Then I would have to make that tiresome journey to Sydney to see my solicitor. I would require to make a new will and place a warrant of distraint on Yarrabee. I believe that’s what the nasty thing is called.’

  ‘You’re mad,’ said Gilbert bluntly. ‘How dare you dictate to me like this!’

  ‘Eugenia could take the children and return to England,’ Mrs Ashburton reflected. ‘She’s always longed to, poor child. I don’t suppose you even realize that, you’re so wrapped up in your own affairs.’

  ‘Be quiet, you old witch!’ Gilbert exploded. Presently he said in a calmer voice, ‘Come now, Mrs Ashburton, you’re having a brainstorm. We’re friends. We can’t turn against each other like this.’

  ‘Can’t we?’ muttered the old lady hoarsely. ‘Can’t we? I tell you, when I saw that woman in your arms in that indecent way something turned black inside me.’

  ‘Why, Mrs Ashburton, I believe you’re jealous!’

  There was a rustling as Mrs Ashburton came to the door. Molly had to slip away quickly.

  She couldn’t hear the next words, but she did hear the old lady saying in a smothered virulent voice, ‘And I’m not senile either. I mean every word I said. You can make up your mind by tomorrow at the latest. Twenty-four hours, my boy. That’s what you’ve got.’

  Molly found Rosie crying in the kitchen.

  ‘Now what are you sniffling about?’ she demanded, venting her distress on the child.

  Rosie flung herself at her mother.

  ‘Mammie, we won’t have to go away, will we? What would Kit do when he came home if I wasn’t here?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I don’t know. I heard Mrs Ashburton saying someone had to pack their bags. It wasn’t us, was it, Mammie? Mammie, was it? Was it?’

  ‘For goodness’ sake, hush, child. Why do you always get so excited? You must control yourself. Ladies don’t make scenes like this.’

  ‘Is it true, is it true?’ Rosie demanded, beating at Molly with her bony fists.

  ‘Of course it isn’t true. Do you think Mr Massingham would hear of any such thing?’

  Rosie drew away, her tears arrested, her face suddenly still.

  ‘Why wouldn’t he?’ sh
e muttered.

  ‘Because he’s a good man. Now off up to the schoolroom with you. Don’t keep Miss Higgins waiting. Have you got on a clean pinafore? Have you brushed your hair properly? If you want to be a lady—’

  Rosie suddenly stamped her foot. Her face was crimson. ‘I don’t want to be a lady!’

  ‘Of course you do.’ Molly kept her voice calm. Rosie was such a funny secretive child, saying little until she would burst out in one of these tantrums. But there was an unfailing cure for her storms. Molly used it now, deliberately. ‘How would Kit like you if you weren’t?’

  Rosie’s head went down, her hair falling over her eyes. Then she slid out of the room without saying another word.

  At luncheon Eugenia said to Gilbert, ‘I can’t think what has upset Mrs Ashburton. She refuses to leave her room. She says she’s perfectly well, but would like her meals sent upstairs today. I do hope she isn’t going to begin habits like this. It will be very tiresome for the maids.’

  ‘She’s only sulking with me,’ Gilbert said. ‘We had some words. She’ll get over it.’

  ‘Words about what?’

  ‘One thing and another. I told her to mind her own business. She pokes her nose into too many things.’

  ‘But what things, Gilbert?’

  ‘Only a trifling matter. The old lady’s getting senile.’

  Eugenia frowned uneasily.

  ‘But I always thought you were such devoted friends. You mustn’t quarrel with her. You owe her too much.’

  ‘There’s no need to remind me of that.’ Gilbert’s voice was testy, the taut look that heralded his quick explosive temper had come to his face.

  ‘I’ll go up and talk to her,’ Eugenia said placatingly. She hated it when Gilbert did lose his temper.

  ‘Leave her alone!’

  ‘But, Gilbert! Is this difference you’ve had with her serious?’

  Gilbert obviously regretted the sharpness of his voice, and made himself speak more quietly.

  ‘She’s only indulging in a fit of jealous pique.’

  ‘Jealous pique? At her age?’

  ‘A woman can be jealous at any age. Didn’t you know that? I hadn’t taken her into my confidence, that’s all.’

  ‘But what about?’

  ‘Leave it! Leave it, can’t you? Since when have you been so deeply interested in my vineyard?’

  ‘Oh, it’s about your vineyard.’ Eugenia sighed, obscurely relieved. The strange notion that Mrs Ashburton should nourish some personal jealousy about Gilbert was as distasteful as it was incredible. Though it was obvious enough that she doted on him.

  ‘She’ll be down to dinner,’ Gilbert said. ‘She won’t miss her dinner.’

  She was down that evening. But not to dinner. There was a commotion just after Ellen had lit the lamps in the hall and the sitting-room. No one saw what happened. There was only that half-smothered cry and then the terrible slithering bumping sound on the stairs, and when Ellen and Mrs Jarvis rushed out it was to see Mrs Ashburton at the bottom of the stairs, her petticoats over her head, her dropsical legs immodestly displayed.

  Ellen screamed, and presently Emmy and Miss Higgins screamed, too. Mrs Jarvis, as was to be expected, kept her head. She turned the poor lady on to her back and put a pillow under her head and felt for her pulse. When Eugenia came hurrying down the stairs to see what all the noise was about, she was met by the terrible fixed stare of the old lady’s bulbous eyes. She had to cover her own eyes for a moment, unable to continue looking at the dreadful face.

  ‘I fear she’s killed herself, ma’am,’ came Mrs Jarvis’s voice from a long distance.

  Eugenia forced herself to open her eyes.

  ‘The children,’ she said faintly. ‘Ellen! Keep them away. Emmy, run for the master.’ The strength that had once made her hold Mrs Jarvis’s hand in childbirth, now enabled her to kneel beside this other prostrate figure. She took one of the plump beringed hands and began massaging it feverishly.

  ‘Get some smelling salts, Mrs Jarvis.’

  ‘It’s too late, ma’am. The poor lady’s broken her neck. Look how her head lies.’

  Eugenia managed to control her sickness. Words erupted from her instead.

  ‘I always knew she would fall again one day. I’m afraid it’s the wine. She drank too much wine, Mrs Jarvis. Did you know? Night after night she and my husband would sit finishing a bottle. Or two bottles. And today when she was upset after some quarrel they had—she must have been drinking in her room. Can you smell wine on her breath?’

  Hard fingers jerked Eugenia back from the grotesque face.

  ‘Don’t, ma’am!’

  ‘How silly of me. Of course there’s no breath. She’s not breathing.’ Hysteria was rising in Eugenia. ‘But I know it will be because of the wine. This dreadful fall. It’s one more reason to hate it. Yarrabee burgundy, Yarrabee claret, Yarrabee port. All of them.’ She couldn’t stop talking. The words pouring out of her seemed to ease not only her shock but the weeks and months of strain she had been living through. It was only when Gilbert stood over her, and the body of the old lady whose skirts had been decently straightened by Mrs Jarvis, that she fell silent.

  He jerked her to her feet, not ungently.

  ‘Eugenia, go in the sitting-room. I’ve sent Sloan for the doctor. I think she’d better not be moved.’

  ‘She can’t lie on the hard floor,’ Eugenia protested, a sob rising in her throat.

  ‘That won’t make any difference to her now.’

  Gilbert’s face had become a stranger’s. Bleak, frozen, tight-lipped, a hard look of tragedy in his eyes. He must be thinking that now he would never be able to make up his quarrel. Poor Gilbert. Remorse was terrible. She had realized that all too well when, a little time ago, the news of Colm’s death had reached her.

  The doctor, dusty and dishevelled after the ten-mile journey, expressed it as his opinion that Mrs Ashburton might have had an apoplectic seizure, causing her to fall. But of course there was the sad evidence in her room of two empty claret bottles, a chair tipped over, and other signs of disorderly behaviour.

  He begged Gilbert and Eugenia not to be too grieved about the accident for, from the dropsical swellings of the ankles and the gross overweight, he feared that the poor lady could not have lasted long. She had been spared a distressing slow illness that could only have ended in death. In his opinion, she had been taken mercifully.

  Gilbert, Tom Sloan, and two men sent for from the convicts’ huts, carried her into the library and laid her on the table there. The doctor said he would send a woman to do the necessary things. She could drive out with the undertaker. In the meantime Mrs Ashburton lay beneath the fringed tablecloth, a vast still mound, and already the house seemed empty without her.

  Eugenia kept the little girls with her. She took them in the garden, keeping them outdoors until the sudden dusk fell, and then upstairs where she bathed them herself, and they were allowed the treat of having their supper in bed.

  Adelaide seemed unconcerned by the silent haunted state of downstairs. She prattled on as usual about her own affairs. She was a self-important little creature with a mind as direct and unswervable as her father’s. Lucy, however, was completely silent, her eyes unnaturally large, her round cheeks pale, her lips inclined to tremble.

  When Eugenia kissed her goodnight she clung wildly to her mother, begging her not to go.

  ‘She’s afraid,’ Adelaide said with contempt. ‘She really shouldn’t be such a baby, should she, Mamma?’

  ‘What are you afraid of, my darling?’ Eugenia asked.

  The little girl buried her face against her mother’s breast. At last she managed to whisper in anguish, ‘Why doesn’t God take Grandmamma Ashburton away?’

  ‘But He has taken her away. I told you.’

  The little fingers dug into her flesh.

  ‘He hasn’t. She’s downstairs. Ellen said so. She’s on a table. Why must she lie on a t-table, Mamma?’

  ‘She’s happy,
little one. She has no more pain, no more cares.’

  ‘She’s singing with the angels,’ Adelaide said. ‘Surely you know that, Lucy. She’s probably holding our baby sister Victoria in her arms.’

  ‘On the table!’ Lucy whispered, horrified.

  ‘No, you silly, in heaven.’

  Eugenia rocked the child in her arms.

  ‘Yes, darling, Adelaide is telling you the truth. Grandmamma Ashburton is in heaven.’

  That irreverent old creature whom Eugenia was sure had not said a prayer for the last thirty years, whose voice, if she tried to sing, was as croaking and hoarse as a crow’s. What was God and His angels to do with her in heaven?

  If she laughed at the impossible vision hysteria would rise in her again. If she cried Lucy would be doubly distressed. If she began to dwell on the fact that Mrs Ashburton’s death was fortuitous for Gilbert since now he could forget their quarrel and her inconvenient demands she would begin to have dreadful suspicions.

  The old lady’s death was an accident, of course. But if the question had arisen as to who was to be sacrificed, her or the vineyards, which would Gilbert have chosen? Had he deliberately encouraged her to drink herself into this state of ill-health and incompetence? Who had seen that she had been supplied with two bottles of claret in her room to be consumed greedily in her state of anger and hurt?

  Eugenia, again refusing to dwell on questions that were too worrying, thought only that the evenings were going to be very silent. The voices and the hoarse shouts of laughter coming from the dining table after Eugenia had retired to her sitting-room would return like ghosts to the air for a long time to come.

  The surprising thing was that although Adelaide and Lucy had been distressed, it was Rosie, that seemingly unemotional child, who was the most profoundly affected by Mrs Ashburton’s death.

  It was not until dark that Mrs Jarvis discovered she was missing. When she didn’t appear Tom Sloan and Jem McDougal went looking for her. She would be hiding up in her favourite tree, they surmised. She was a regular tomboy for climbing trees, especially when Master Kit was home.