Brides of Aberdar

by Christianna Brand

  ‘You had better fall in love with my sister too, no one can tell the difference. Then your heart will be divided between us and as it is non-existent, neither of us need worry about you, you need not break ours.’

  ‘But he is here for no other purpose,’ said Lenora.

  ‘Indeed, sweet Lyn, you must break your heart for me,’ said Richard.

  ‘Even living, I’m said by some people to have none,’ said Lyneth, ‘any more than you have. So you will have your work cut out. Furthermore, I am a betrothed young lady; all the nonsense means nothing to me.’

  A look that in life Lenora had known too well, came to his face, that face of a handsome, wilful child. ‘In that case, we as may as well fade away and be gone.’

  She cried out, protesting: had not meant to offend him, only to tease. ‘Do come back! Do come back!’

  ‘We will come back.’ She heard Lenora’s voice from out of nowhere. ‘And when we do, little cousin, you will find perhaps that it is not only you who know how to tease!’

  They went riding that afternoon, the three of them—Lawrence must meet Hil, in his new situation as Lyneth’s betrothed. That Hil had disapproved of her none too covert pursuit of Christine’s erstwhile lover, Lyneth well knew, but he was so much a part of their lives that she could not ignore him. But they returned without having seen him, only to find him standing consulting with the head groom in the stable yard—that great, beautiful walled-in square where long ago he had sat with the new nursery governess and told her, ‘I am so terrified for them.’

  But now he came forward, amiably smiling as they clattered in over the cobbles, helped the girls to alight, held out a friendly hand to Lawrence. ‘I hear that you are to be congratulated. Of course, I wish you all possible happiness. And to you, my darling,’ he said to Lyneth; and did not look at Christine.

  As in those days she had hung on Miss Tetterman’s arm, so Lyn now clung close to him as though to wheedle her way back, not into his affections which she knew to be ever constant, but into his good graces. And she was hard to resist, sweet thing, with her pretty little ways, and head over heels in love; she had wanted the boy for the wrong reasons, he thought, but now that she had him, there was surely no doubt about her devotion? And he… He has changed once, thought Hil to himself, but the early love was a boy’s love and now that he has come to a man’s love, it will be for ever. If, in the back of his mind, a thought stirred that said, ‘God help him!’ he refused to acknowledge it. One of his darlings must suffer but it was too late now to alter that.

  He put out his free hand to her, nevertheless, unobtrusively and she took it and came and walked close on the other side of him. ‘Your little hand is cold, Christine,’ he said, for a moment caught off his guard.

  ‘I think I have a slight chill. It’s nothing. I shall—get over it,’ she said: but he knew in his heart that it was a confidence between them, and did not refer to the chill.

  ‘I think she has bad nights,’ said Lyneth. To live skating over Christine’s griefs was impossible: all the household knew of her past love, all the household watched with compassion the drooping figure with the sad, pale face—however much, recollecting herself, she straightened up and spoke and smiled as though nothing afflicted her.

  Tetty knew, of course, Tante Louise knew—‘But Lyneth, you throw yourself away on the boy, ma chérie. I weesh for you a so-great marriage, you can be a fine lady; let Christine have thees boreeing Lawrence, tu es méchante, ma petite, you want heem only because you cannot have. And this is a game you know very well—it is the same game you play with heem. Every girl in France know this game, her Mama teach her, do not be too easy for to get.’ And the staff knew. Miss Christine had loved him since she was a little girl, but of course Miss Lyneth was so gay and clever, she could not help it if the young gentleman settled for her, at the last. You could not help Christine by pretending, thought Lyneth; and she could be trusted to accept that, and play the same game.

  Now Christine said smiling, that she would probably rest better for a little more quiet in the adjoining bedroom. ‘I suppose she is dreaming of you, Lawrence. She chatters like a magpie, in her sleep.’

  Hil stood stock still, their clinging hands fell away as he dropped his arms to his sides. ‘She—what?’

  ‘It’s a family habit,’ said Christine, lightly. ‘Our mother did it too. We used to press up against the door when we weren’t allowed to go and see her, do you remember, Lyn? We thought there was somebody with her but Papa said no, no, when she was feverish she talked in her sleep.’

  ‘And I am feverish for love of Lawrence,’ said Lyn, peeking round Hil to smile at her betrothed. Does she hear the ghosts too, she thought, or is it only me, replying to them? We must all keep quieter. Despite their abrupt departure the night before, there was no doubt in her mind that they would return; she had not seen them today but she had been mostly out of the house, and he couldn’t leave the Manor, Lenora had said, so—her mind toyed naughtily with the idea of teasing him; it was what Tante Louise had suggested—‘do not be too easy for to get’. Not that he was going to get her anyway, for all his fine figure and his red-gold Hilbourne hair. Her Lawrence was her true love; after all, she had given him her word.

  Hil wrote to her ladyship, one of his rare notes, always formal and cold. ‘I do not know if Christine has yet mentioned to you that since Lyneth became engaged to marry, she has taken to “talking in her sleep”. Their mother from the time of her marriage, increasingly talked with people whom no one else could see; she was thought by the uninitiated to be mad. One dreads that this may be the beginning of what their father wished to avoid when he tried to prevent the children from meeting possible future lovers. I have no idea that anything can possibly be done about it, but I take the liberty of bringing it to your ladyship’s attention.’ He dared make no suggestion—the response would be to take exactly the opposite course, to whose detriment it seemed not to matter at all. And anyway—suggest what? One might speak to Lyneth—but what could one say? If she were already in thrall to that curse which he had long believed hung over the family, she was unlikely to confess to it—to ‘betray’ those terrible visitors from the world unknown. Her mother, he knew, had never spoken of them; challenged, she would reply with a little start, ‘Oh, how ridiculous!—I must have been talking to myself,’ till the time came, when she would only murmur, ‘to my—friends…’ And so she had died.

  And so before her, Eleanor had died… And Margaret…. And Anastasia had had to be ‘kept away’. And the Christines and the Lyneths, the old family names, dying young or growing to a sad, mad old age… The sad, mad brides of Aberdar.

  The following morning, the housemaid emptied from her ladyship’s waste-basket the torn shreds of the note: patched them together but couldn’t make out Mr Hil’s handwriting, and tossed them on to the kitchen fire. And Lady Hilbourne summoned Tante Louise and opened consultations on the wedding arrangements.

  That night, in her prettiest peignoir, Lyneth curled up against her heaped pillows and—dreamed of Lawrence, of course. Nor, as an hour passed and another, were her dreams interrupted. She thought, It’s because I said that his—nonsense—meant nothing to me; that I was not for him. But I told them I was only teasing… And she remembered with a moment of chill that voice saying out of the darkness that she would find that it was not only she who ‘meant to tease’. Perhaps, she thought, after all it will be better if he doesn’t come again. They were so beautiful, so charming, it was all so—flattering; but sometimes just a tiny bit frightening, too…

  They returned, however; and this time as Lenora had subtly warned it might do, the teasing took on a very sharp edge…

  A dinner party had been arranged to introduce the young lady’s affianced, and his parents, to her nearest family, her father’s cousins, Henry Hilbourne and John, and Catherine and Maria, their wives. Their consent in fact had been necessary, but the match was an unexceptionable one, there could be no disagreement. Lawrence, dashing on
ahead, down the steep path on the other side of the river from Plas Dar, arrived first and was duly saluted and made much of. ‘My parents are using the carriage, they must come the long way round through the village…’

  Sir Thomas Jones was a full Welshman, a short, dark, bright-eyed man, forceful and a little pompous: very happy with a marriage that would unite even more closely the two manors marching together—pity it had not been the heiress but he had always been fond of that charming little minx, the twin sister. His wife was a pretty, pink and white woman, softly fat; conscious of a slight inferiority in birth, particularly pleased to be connected by marriage to her aristocratic neighbours.

  ‘But I hope our dear Lyneth will not inherit the family health,’ she said as their carriage rumbled up the winding drive to the Manor House. ‘The mother died so young. And she was a strange girl, you remember? When first she came as a bride, we were friendly enough and then she seemed gradually to become stand-offish—I thought at first it was personal to myself, but no, soon all the neighbours were treated the same, she would accept no invitations, or cancelled those she did agree to—’

  ‘She was fatally ill, my dear. Do you expect her to have capered about to oblige her acquaintance, till she fell down dead?’

  ‘But that is what I say, Sir Thomas. You take me up so quick. At the age of twenty-three—she takes ill and dies.’

  ‘Well, our own pretty chick is as blooming as a rose, there’s nothing wrong with her…’

  Perhaps not: he had to confess, however, that upon this occasion his favourite’s manner was not at all what one would have wished. He observed that the grim step-mother bent upon her a puzzled and anxious eye.

  For Lyneth, usually so easy and happy, confident in her modest little airs and graces, seemed suddenly over-whelmed with self-consciousness and affectation; with sideways glances about the room as though she exchanged private jokes with hidden friends—jokes, moreover, hardly complimentary to the present company; compensating with little bursts of rather feverish chattering, biting on her lip to conceal a naughty smile, actually bursting into smothered giggles as, with due formality, the guests took their places at the dining-table. What on earth had come to the child? ‘Lyneth!’ said Lady Hilbourne in a warning undertone.

  ‘Oh, Tetty! I’m sorry, but—’

  But They are here! Lenora, leaning with her beautiful curved white arm propped negligently against the oak, softly dark, of the high mantelshelf, Richard moving here and there in comic imitation of strutting Sir Thomas, of Maria and Catherine bowing their coiffured heads to left and right, full of graceful civilities; of Cousin Henry, huffing and puffing, and Lady Jones with her twittering anxiety to please—actually taking a chair, the wretch, the devil!—so that positively the poor woman sat down in his lap!

  ‘Oh, my lady—have a care!’ called Lyneth in involuntary warning; and blurted foolish explanations, ‘I was afraid the chair was unsafe—not quite comfortable—’

  ‘But indeed, dear child,’ piped Richard in her ladyship’s deprecating voice, ‘quite comfortable! Suits us both to perfection.’

  ‘The chair is like all the others,’ said Lady Hilbourne, stiffly. ‘Do you find it does not suit you, Lady Jones?’

  ‘Oh, entirely, entirely, what could be wrong with it?’ cried poor Lady Jones, bewildered at having apparently offended. She burst into a nervous paean of not very sincere compliments, full of little bobs and bows to the young lady’s rather intimidating gathering of relatives—at the prospect of having dear Lyneth at Plas Dar as their daughter. ‘So long we have known her as a—most welcome—visitor. Have we not, my dear?’

  Lyneth wore her prettiest dress for the evening, white frills and flounces frothing out over tight little bows of pink ribbon, holding all in place. Christine wore white also, devoid of all colour so that it was she who looked like a ghost, while the real ghosts hovered, effulgent in the evening dress of Lyn’s elegant imagination. Lady Hilbourne sat at the head of the table, stiff and grim as ever in her rich brown velvet, beaded in self-colour, the scar running in its narrow bleached chasm down her cheek. Above the murmur of well-mannered dinner-table conversation, rose Sir Thomas’s complacent boom and Lady Jones’s twitterings. ‘And you’ve always been so fond of the house, of Plas Dar—have you not, my dear?’

  ‘Though not exactly as a two-family mansion,’ said Lyneth, looking down her pretty little nose; for across the room, Richard, having removed himself from over-close association with Lady Jones, was going through a pantomime of horror at this threat of the bride’s removal. But she felt her step-mother’s scandalised face turned towards her, heard the little gasp of Christine’s indrawn breath and amended, faltering: ‘I mean, it is not such a very large house…’

  ‘As large as Aberdar,’ said Sir Thomas, riled by any reflection upon his extremely imposing mansion. ‘More self-contained, perhaps, less spread about. A Palladian design,’ he confided somewhat grandiosely to the assembled table, ‘by the architect Sir John Soane—must have got a mint of money bringing him all the way up here, but that was no consideration…’ He broke off slightly abashed and leaned back to allow Tomos (very grand these days in a uniform ordained by Tante Louise, complete with tight white cotton gloves) to place his soup plate. ‘Well—I don’t speak of myself—it was built before my time.’ What was there in the air, he wondered, that had inspired him to so rare a show of vulgarity?

  ‘You forget, my dear Sir Thomas, how often we have visited you there,’ said Henry Hilbourne, smiling, ‘delivering over to her ladyship’s kind hospitality, your Lawrence’s friend, our unregenerate small son.’

  ‘Not so small these days! And now gone off abroad, poor Arthur,’ said his wife, striving to speak light-heartedly, ‘we can only assume for a spell of big game hunting.’ She dipped a pretty little inclination of the head to the happy future mother-in-law. ‘Your ladyship’s gain is alas!—our loss.’

  Along the high mantelshelf, Lenora’s white fingers worked their way in a heavy plodding movement; and, ‘Perhaps he will bring back a pair of elephant feet,’ said Lyneth pertly, ‘to console both the mamas—Arthur’s for her loss and Lawrence’s for what she so kindly refers to as her gain.’

  Lady Hilbourne sat aghast: what on earth had come to the girl? She said with little pretence at concealing her repressive intention: ‘Such trophies more often than not are worked into waste-receptacles, my dear. Have a care that neither of these ladies develops an inclination to consign you to hers.’

  ‘Will you keep me in a corner of your drawing-room, Lady Jones?’ said Lyneth archly, refusing to be crushed, ‘—in an elephant’s foot. I’m sure I should be as well accommodated there as—’

  ‘Soup, Miss?’ said Tomos deftly interrupting.

  ‘You are serving the ladies out of turn, Tomos,’ hissed the hostess, sotto voce. He gave her back a look from his bright, dark Welsh eyes that returned her rather smartly to her neighbourly civilities.

  Lady Jones, increasingly tempted to betray indignation, was restrained by an anguished glance from her son and controlled herself sufficiently to suggest that it would be much nicer to have the little bride in the more commodious accommodation of the west wing, where they were planning a separate home for her reception. ‘Quite to yourselves, my dears!’ She outlined its promise to the politely attentive guests. ‘The place was evidently built with some such possible future in mind: there is already in the west wing an entrance which may very well serve as their front door, leading into quite a nice little opening for a hall; so that the young people may come and go as they will.’

  ‘It will be perfect, Mama,’ said Lawrence, watching in an agony of embarrassment the clouds gather upon his lady-love’s white brow. ‘I’ve told you about it, Lyn?’

  ‘Yes, indeed. Actually to go in and out from our own home, without first seeking permission to pass through your parent’s house. And the nice little hall! But what other cupboard will accommodate the household stores which I believe your ladyship keeps there no
w?’

  ‘The stores would be removed before you were asked to use the space for any other purposes,’ said Sir Thomas; the tone of his voice clearly adding, ‘—if, indeed, after this, you are ever invited to.’ The three Hilbourne ladies burst forth all at the same time, with comparisons as to the convenience of smaller hallways. ‘And we thought we might contrive a charming little salon for you, Lyneth—’ pursued poor Lady Jones, doggedly.

  Lyneth interrupted. ‘Don’t tell me, let me guess! The salon will be in what is now Sir Thomas’s gun-room?

  ‘It is very good of my father to think of giving it up to us.’

  ‘Shall we still have your trophies hanging round the wall, Sir Thomas? The antlers and the pigs’ heads—oh, dear, the boars’ heads, I think I ought to say…’

  Sir Thomas was by now beginning to look as though he would by no means object to featuring the young lady’s head among them. The cousins exchanged scandalised glances, her family were looking daggers but helpless to stem the tide of something too much like sheer insolence to be for much longer endurable. And yet how to stem it without a positive overt reproof, embarrassing to all? And Lady Jones was plunging wretchedly on, unable to bring the terrible conversation to a graceful end. ‘The room can be made quite nice, dear, I am sure: you must choose your own brocades and then with a plain gold stripe in the wallpaper, I thought, to give height—’

  Across the room, Richard hopped up and down with wings bent inwards, flapping. ‘I shall feel like a canary bird, Lady Jones, in a gilt cage—a rather small gilt cage.’

  Shall I be taken faint? thought Christine; what can I do to stop her? But that seemed too obviously a trick, and her mind was a blank. At the head of the table, Lady Hilbourne sat in an agony: we have not yet finished the soup course, how can we get through this terrible evening, if she continues like this? She dared not make too overt a sign of disapproval for fear of the lengths that Lyneth might go to yet. And suddenly Tomos was leaning over her, murmuring under cover of removal of her soup plate, ‘Your permission, m’lady?’