Brides of Aberdar

by Christianna Brand

  Pages of an old diary, torn out and destroyed. A handful of letters and accounts, torn up and destroyed… That this particular sick old woman would certainly have just such a memory as he described, it apparently did not occur to her present benefactress to mention. This particular sick old woman—in a neighbouring village, in fact, not even their own—though long retired, had been for many years the local midwife.

  And suddenly—drama. A letter arrived addressed directly to the Manor, in the recognisable hand of Sir Charles Arden who had written the original recommendations which had got her the post; and, very pale, Miss Tettyman crept to the bedside of the Squire. ‘Forgive me, sir, but I must leave you. If only for a little while—’

  So thin and haggard, lying there on his couch by the bedroom window, with the peak of his bent knees fallen sideways, for lack of strength, against the sofa-back. ‘Oh, dear God!—are you going?’

  ‘For just a little while, sir. I’ll return.’

  ‘You will? You will?’

  ‘Oh, sir—yes. Yes, I will.’ But her voice strengthened to a new purpose. ‘I will indeed, sir, I promise it.’

  ‘When can you return?’

  ‘Just a matter of a few days, perhaps. I will try. But they are—there is great trouble at Greatoaks. I must go to them.’

  ‘It is only this,—that if you don’t return soon, very soon…’ His thin shoulders rose and fell in the ghost of a shrug. ‘There is not much time left for me,’ he said.

  Tears filled her eyes. She knelt down by the couch and took his wasted hand in her own and kissed it, laying it for a moment against the unscarred cheek.

  ‘I’ll come back to you—and to the children,’ she said. ‘I promise it.’

  ‘It is of such very great importance to them. And to my peace of mind.’ He hesitated. ‘I had been going to—I had thought of asking you…’ But he released her. ‘You are in a fever to go to where, also, you’re needed. Just so that you come back!’

  ‘I’ll come back,’ she promised. ‘I’ll come back.’

  How stay away ever again from Aberdar Manor—where all her heart now lay? She scribbled a note to Hil, explaining the circumstances of their need for her at the Park, and within an hour she was gone.

  More ashes, this time in the empty grate of the bedroom. ‘Come back?’ said Tante Louise, improvising re-arrangements with the Squire for the care of the children. ‘She won’t come back. The wife is dying—Mees has gone to her paramour.’

  ‘Lady Arden dying? How do you know this, Louise?’

  From the remnants of a letter, this time too hastily burned to have been totally destroyed: sufficiently, however, to have been to some extent misunderstood. ‘She—well, she said as much, let slip something to that effect—she will hardly remember, I dare say, that in her haste she did so. But now the wife dies—the lover at last is free.’

  He closed his ears against it, shook his weary head. ‘Oh, Edouard,’ she said, speaking as she usually did with him, in French, ‘you never will hear a word against Mees. But she is one for the men, my dear! Even Hil, have you not seen with what eyes she looks at Hil?’ Now he did lift his head and stare at her, suddenly startled. She improved upon it. ‘And he too. All those hours they spend together…’ She shrugged. ‘Madame Menna will not like that too much, I dare say.’

  ‘Menna? And Hil? Menna is twice his age.’ But he regretted immediately having exchanged a word with her upon such a subject. ‘It is no concern of yours or mine. It is Miss Tettyman who is in charge of the children. She will come back to them.’

  But Tante Louise had seen where she had touched him on the raw. ‘And to Hil?’ she said; and when he did not reply, looked at him more closely and saw that he had fainted.

  That day he was too weak but next morning he sent for Hil. ‘She swears that she will come back—’

  ‘She’ll come back,’ said Hil. ‘Or she wouldn’t promise.’

  ‘You seem very sure.’ He said cautiously: ‘Does it mean anything to you, if she returns or stays away?’

  ‘Well, of course. The children—’

  ‘To you, James?’ He had no words to waste. ‘You know that… You could never marry her, you must never marry…’

  The long, long history, traced back now through this means and that, built up into a family tree which, for very space upon the paper, excluded all but the tragedies. A new generation, flourishing two hundred and fifty years ago; the happy marriage, the full family. And then—the eldest son of that marriage, killed in the flower of his youth; Isabella, the widowed daughter, sitting so rigid in the niche in the ancient church with her stiff pointed hands, her dead baby lying across the lap of her robe. The boy-child surviving, had grown up, married and then—hardly yet into manhood, like his father had been killed instantly in the hunting field. His child brought up in the sorrowing family, had brought in a new wife from a fine healthy stock, only to fall with her first child into a dérangement, spending the rest of her long life locked away in the company of ‘friends’ whom no other person could see or hear, in a sort of terrible, mad contentment all of her own. Her child, in its turn…

  ‘It is the curse upon the place, James, there is no happiness for any marriage in Aberdar. The line must end. And you are a Hilbourne, directly in line.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Edward, I must have some woman in my life.’

  ‘Then you must beget no children upon her.’

  ‘What sort of manage is that?’

  ‘For this sweet girl—no marriage at all.’ He cringed away from the vulgarities of Madame Devalle; but…‘If she returns—’

  ‘She will return.’

  ‘That woman, The Walloon, says that she will not. She says that there is—another lover; who will now be free.’

  ‘That emanates only from the ugly imaginings of a woman frantic with anxiety as to her own situation,’ said Hil, steadily. ‘If ever there was another whom she loved—well, we can’t help loving, there need be no wrong in that if we don’t give way to it. But if ever there were such a love, then I believe that it’s over. She will return.’

  ‘To you?’ said the Squire.

  ‘Perhaps. I have to admit to you, Edward, now, that I could pray on my knees that it might be so.’

  ‘James, for God’s sake! You can’t bring her—and yourself—under the curse of this doomed line.’ He paused, gestured feebly towards the decanter on the table beside him. Hil poured out a half glass of wine and held it to his lips. ‘Rest a little, you’re overtiring yourself.’

  ‘No, no, it must be said now.’ He closed his eyes for a few moments nevertheless and then with an effort resumed. ‘I had been intending to discuss this with you, as once we did before, though at that time you said you cared nothing for her. There were reasons then against my marrying. Suppose I had recovered my strength… But that is now past hope. I have not very long to live. If I were to marry her, the children would have a mother; what else is to become of them?’

  ‘You seem less concerned with her survival under the curse,’ suggested Hil, unable to keep the dryness out of his voice, ‘when you consider it from your own point of view.’

  The Squire looked at him sadly. ‘Ah, my poor James! Do you not think what I must feel for you? But—this is for the children; and here is what seems to me. A marriage to me would be no marriage—there could be no children from it, to bring the doom upon her. Look here, at your papers. Who is affected? The young wives, the young husbands, the children. But she—’

  ‘She is a nothing, who is to be used for the benefit of Lyneth and Christine?’

  ‘She would be mistress of all these great estates, of all this wealth. She has much to lose, but she would have these ready-made children whom already she loves. She has something also to gain.’

  ‘You have not considered,’ said Hil, driven by his own bitterness to unwonted cruelty, ‘that your wealthy young widow might very well marry again.’

  ‘I have thought of that also,’ said the Squire, sadly. ‘I
am not a fool, brother. But—such a marriage if it were outside the family, would not come under the curse. It would not be within this doomed Hilbourne line. Only one marriage could bring that about—to her destruction—’

  ‘And to mine,’ said Hil.

  A long hour passed. The Squire lay back against his pillows, utterly spent and spoke no further word. Hil sat beside him with his head in his hands. When at last he moved, he rose and went over to the window and stood staring out at the summer greens, from the golden green of the willows, the emerald of the grass, to the dark evergreens beyond. He said: ‘So there is only one way left to me. Only one way.’

  ‘Believe at least that my heart breaks for you,’ said the Squire.

  ‘I must marry. I must have a woman in my arms. I must have warmth and companionship, I must have such love in my life as is left to me. And at the same time, put it out of my power to bring more Hilbourne children into this world.’ He came over swiftly and knelt down beside the couch and as that other had done, took the Squire’s frail hand and held it against his cheek. ‘Have no more fear,’ he said. ‘There is a way out.’

  CHAPTER 10

  MISS TETTERMAN, MEANWHILE WAS met at the station by Sir Charles himself, who in the darkness of the carriage put his arm about her shoulders and kissed the disfigured cheek. She put up her gloved hand to it. ‘Oh, no—you must not!’

  ‘I had rather kiss this scarred cheek, my dear, than the smoothest in all the world.’ He sat back away from her, gazing into her face. ‘How wonderful to see you—how good of you to come, and so soon!’

  ‘Of course, I would come if you sent for me.’

  ‘My heart of gold! But—you are well, Alys? You look so fresh-faced and blooming—you are not the same thin, sad girl who crept away from this place. And this spa where you went when you left here—’

  ‘—sent there through your generosity—’

  ‘What less could I offer you?—and such competence as you would accept. But, indeed they’ve done well with their treatment of the scar.’

  ‘I put it out of my mind—most of the time. But you have never been out of my mind. Nor out of my heart.’ And now she asked: ‘Is her case hopeless?’

  ‘So the doctors tell us: and they’ve been frank with her, she has demanded it. It will not be yet, not even very soon perhaps. But with the knowledge, she has changed. There will be no hard words now. She wishes to see you before she dies.’

  Smiling faces greeted her, willing hands assisted her in alighting from the carriage. She stepped in through the familiar door into the great hall, marble flagged, went up the lovely graceful curve of the stairs. An elderly maid waited upon her, all smiles; she took off her bonnet and cloak, tea was brought up to her there, with tiny sandwiches and a profusion of little cakes, ‘Cookie remembers, Miss, how you used to like them. But, oh, Miss Alys—the poor mistress!’

  ‘Sir Charles holds out little hope for her. But it won’t be yet.’

  ‘It is sad for him, poor gentleman. What will he do in his loneliness? Our darling Miss Charlotte gone and now there’ll be nobody. But as to our own ladyship, Miss Alys, she won’t be too sorry to go. She’s never got over the accident. Our poor Miss Charlotte—I never did take to that horse-riding, but she was that wilful! And now you, Miss, left with this great scar. Not but what it’s better than when you—when you left here. As to that—’

  ‘There was a misunderstanding,’ she said. ‘That was all. And now I must go…’

  To another death-bed. But as yet there was no outward sign of what was to be. Lady Arden reclined upon the day-bed in her boudoir but she was dressed, in a loose gown certainly, but with all her own old exquisite care. ‘Oh, dear Alys! How good of you to come to me!’

  She said, trying not to seem too stiff and cold: ‘Of course, I would come when your ladyship asked for me.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Alys! How have I treated you—?’

  ‘I have been looked after my lady. I make no complaint. Sir Charles—’

  ‘Yes, he has told me now all his care for you after you left here. He sent you to the doctors at Cheltenham till your poor scar had sufficiently healed, and he has written to you constantly? You told them nothing, of course, of all this?—in your new place. I know my Alys: so loyal and discreet.’

  ‘No, indeed, nothing. When curiosity grew, I asked him to use an accommodation address. I came in the end,’ she said, at last frankly smiling, ‘to be suspected of harbouring an admirer. The Madame there, a Belgian woman, brought in when the children’s mother died—’

  ‘Ah, she was jalouse, I daresay! Of an old grandfather, did she but know it, seventy years of age!’

  ‘He has been like a grandfather to me, my lady. You know that he gave me to bring away her ring, our darling’s little “regard” ring, his last present to her—with her initials carved inside it, Charlotte Bell Arden, her lovely name.’

  ‘She was named after him, and after her father. My husband was Charles too, of course—my dear lost love. Perhaps after all, I need blame myself not too severely, Alys, left a widow so young and then to have my own precious treasure killed in this terrible way. But my poor Alys!—your sweet, pretty face—’

  ‘I think nothing of it, my lady. It was a small thing, if only I could have prevailed.’

  ‘I suppose I have—resented it; that you should live while our darling died. And yet I know that you would have given your own life, I know that you risked your life. I believed—I wouldn’t allow myself to un-believe, that you had been responsible for the horse bolting…’

  ‘I wasn’t even there, my lady. The groom was with her. I saw the horse tearing across the meadow, I rushed down the hill to intercept it. I had him by the bit but he was too strong for me, he reared up and I suppose his hoof must have struck me. I fell down unconscious…’

  ‘I know, I know: this is what they told me but in my grief I must hit out at somebody. That I should have chosen you! But your generous heart will forgive me.’

  ‘Of course.’ But she said frankly: ‘I was bitter: bitterly hurt by your—’

  ‘Ingratitude.’

  ‘I had offered my life; or rather, I’ll say that at that moment my life meant nothing to me. And as it transpired, though my life was spared, it was with a disfigurement that made it, for that time at least, almost worthless to me. After this to be reviled and rejected by you…’

  ‘How could you have understood—?’

  ‘I should have understood. I think in your place I might have done the same—in my grief, struck out wildly and savagely, wounding and destroying. I recognise it in myself.’

  ‘Well, yes. For all you pass through life such a quiet little dove, you have strong passions beneath the surface. Your dear old saintly father used to speak to me of it.’

  ‘I think it is true,’ she admitted. ‘In love and in war.’ To conceal the rise of colour in her cheeks, she rose from her kneeling position, found a chair for herself and sat down, composing her hands in her lap. It gave her time to re-slant the conversation. ‘Sir Charles has been so good, I have been so grateful to him; especially at first, it meant so much to me in my loneliness—kind letters, all the news, of yourself, of Greatoaks, things going on in the village; and the little gifts, always with the same theme, remembrance—trifles that she had valued…’

  ‘He was always fond of you as we all were. And after that terrible day… You were right when you said that he has been like a grandfather to you.’ She hesitated, her voice altered a tone. ‘This was partly the reason why I’ve sent for you, my dear. Before the time comes for me to die, while I’m still able to think clearly and speak sense… Poor old man—bereft of his much-loved son, his heir, and then of the light of his eyes, the light of all our eyes, our darling—and now of myself, who, though only his daughter-in-law, have been to him like his own child. What is to become of him?’

  She would not pretend to be stupid. ‘Oh, my lady—I am so much needed where I come from now.’

  ‘You
have been there something more than a year, Alys. We have known you from your childhood in the village. You were in and out of this house, you were the little girl who filled in for Sir Charles between his son’s marriage and our departure to a home of our own, and my return here with Charlotte after my husband died. From then on, you lived and worked in this house—if you could call it work, this loving service in a happy home. What is a twelvemonth compared with all that?’

  ‘There are the children, they have no one else. And their father is soon to die, leaving them friendless.’

  ‘So am I soon to die—leaving your kind old master friendless.’

  ‘Would not Mr George then come to Greatoaks? He is now the heir.’

  ‘He won’t come until he inherits. He is content on his own estates. So, Alys—’

  ‘My lady, these are two little girls—’

  ‘Who will grow up and marry and then where will you be? An ageing governess looking out for another post where things may be less congenial; and another and another. You might have married, my poor pretty Alys, but…’ Her finger traced without repulsion the terrible scar. ‘Let us make up to you for this. Return to your happy home here—you say that Sir Edward Hilbourne is soon to die—could you not have the children here with you, make it a second home to them? When my father-in-law dies you may return with them to Aberdar if you must, but you could well remain here. George Arden will take over, but he and his Kitty have always been so fond of you—might they not pass on to you the use of the Dower House—?’

  She interrupted. ‘Oh, my lady, I can’t—I can’t!’

  It was said that this sickness altered the character and here was a character quick to an ugly anger, which had once been only gentle and sweet. ‘What more do you want then?’ And after a moment’s thought: ‘Ah, it is real wealth, is it?—not just a competence. It is marriage—a brief year or two, he won’t long survive these blows—and you a rich widow, the Dower House at your disposal…’