Brides of Aberdar

by Christianna Brand

  She bowed her head silently. He passed over Christine, next in line and moved on to Lyneth. Her soup was as yet untasted. ‘You have finished, Miss?’ the unaccustomed cotton gloves were uncomfortably tight perhaps, for it was not like Tomos to be unhandy; or his eyes at the critical moment were lifted to those of his mistress. He gave a startled exclamation: ‘Oh, Miss, I beg your pardon! Miss Lyn—I’m very sorry!’ and tipped the whole plateful into the young lady’s lap.

  Fish quenelles followed, a variety of entree-dishes covered the corners; a pair of fine roast fowl were carried in by a Tomos outwardly wearing an aspect of abashment, inwardly complacent in her ladyship’s covert gratitude.

  So far, Lyneth had made no reappearance; upstairs, changing into a different dress, struggling without assistance from a maid, since she must secretly converse with her ghosts. ‘Don’t come back to the dining-room! Please, please leave me alone! They will never forgive me. You make me say such dreadful things—’

  ‘The look on your face when Diccon sat down in that silly old woman’s lap!’

  ‘Yes, but—truly! The Jones’s will make Lawrence break off the engagement.’

  ‘What could be more desirable?’

  ‘Now, Richard!’ warned Lenora.

  ‘Well, well, I suppose she must marry the clod. But she shall not go to that other house. She remains here with us.’

  ‘If I didn’t live here, you couldn’t continue to haunt here,’ said Lyneth, caught by a new thought.

  ‘By the time all these decisions are made, Lyneth,’ said Lenora with an edge to her voice, ‘you will be in our—’

  ‘In your power?’ she said quickly, frightened by the ugly word.

  ‘You will be ours,’ said Richard, ‘that is all. You won’t want to escape from us.’

  Escape! ‘I could just go to Plas Dar; it would be my home. I need not come back—’

  ‘Not come back? To this house, to your friends and your family?’

  ‘They could come to me.’

  ‘Bringing the whole household with them—your pets, the little dogs, all the beasts in the stables—?’

  ‘Of course, I should take Mr Rochester with me. Anyway—for the sake of half a dozen dogs and a pair of riding horses, am I to submit to being haunted all the rest of my life? A short life, I know that: many things out of the past are becoming clearer to me now.’

  ‘Why do you struggle?’ said Lenora, in the cold voice she had come to dread. ‘You know very well you can never leave Aberdar Manor. The house wouldn’t let you go.’

  Richard came over to where Lyn stood, her arms up behind her neck, the last hook fastened. ‘Don’t let her frighten you, my sweeting! You provoked me and I am such an intolerant devil! I’m sorry we teased you. Go down now, go back to them, we’ll leave you alone—make your pretty little speeches, win back their good graces, agree to all their hopes and dreams about the west wing of Plas Dar. When the time comes, it will be soon enough to get your own way. Once you’re married to your clodhopper as it seems you must be—they can do nothing to force you to live there: we shall keep you safe here with us…’ And he put his chill wraith hands on her shoulders and gently urged her towards the door. ‘Go down and make it up with them and be happy. Make them all your friends again.’ To his sister, as the shivering girl slipped out of the door, closing it behind her, he said: ‘Poor sweet thing—with friends like us, she will need all the true friends she can keep!’

  She went slowly downstairs: stood a moment outside the door, bracing herself; went into the dining room. No one could behave more prettily than Lyneth, when she pleased. She went straight up to Lady Jones, bobbed a little curtsy. ‘I’m sorry! Please forgive me! I have such a headache, I hardly knew what I was saying.’ And she reached across the table for Sir Thomas’s thick red hand and held it for a moment in her own. ‘I’m so sorry! You know I didn’t mean it. You know I love Plas Dar.’ To the assembled table she bobbed a general curtsey. ‘I apologise to everyone. I behaved dreadfully badly, and darling Tetty, I’m so sorry I spoilt your lovely dinner-party.’ And she looked across the room with a twinkle, ‘Tomos was quite right to spill the soup in my lap!’ She slipped demurely into her chair and looked round at them all with a comic air of penitence. ‘We shall be as cosy as anything, dear Lady Jones, in our darling store-cupboard and the gilded cage.’

  ‘That child is an enchantress,’ said the various husbands to their wives, in their pillow-talk that night.

  ‘She is a minx,’ replied the wives unhesitatingly. What soft fools men could be!

  Despite all these amendes honorables, it was not to be expected that she could escape an inquest. The aunts and uncles had stayed the night, but as soon as they had driven away, she was sent for to Lady Hilbourne’s sitting-room; and now her tormentors were in attendance again. ‘Well, really, Tetty, I know I was naughty but to be expected to live in a broom-cupboard!—a young married lady to consider herself lucky to go in and out of her home without seeking permission… Was I to bear it like a simpering miss from a book by Charles Dickens?’

  ‘It was a strain,’ said Christine loyally. ‘She was naturally shy.’

  ‘Shy! She has known them all from her babyhood. If I had not brought you up to know better, Lyneth, I should suspect you of having drunk too much of Mr Weston’s good wine.’

  ‘Well, well, how literary we become! You top my Dickens with Miss Austen. You’ll accuse me next, I daresay, of behaving like a Trollope—without the final letter.’

  ‘Lyneth, how dare you—?’

  ‘Well, don’t nag at me, Tetty. We had just sat down to table, how could I have drunk too much wine? It was not at all easy, all those massed relatives looking me over, and Lawrence all eyes and anguish to see his loved one behave so ungraciously, his mama so horrified. But when she sat down on Diccon’s lap, oh, dear, I thought I should have died of…’ She broke off, looking scared. ‘On that wobbly chair, of course I mean.’

  ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with you. The chair is as safe as any other. You are talking sheer nonsense.’

  ‘I am talking nonsense to take the black look off your face. I behaved like an angel as soon as they left me alone—as soon as you and Christine left off, I mean, with your covert hints and nid-noddings.’ She caught sight of Christine’s face, the doubt and dread on it, and thought she must escape from one moment more of questioning. ‘This has all brought on a headache and I’ll forego eating up last night’s left-overs, if you will excuse me now, Tetty, from any more lecturing, and go to bed early…’

  And they will come again, she thought, and last night’s terrors will be forgotten… But she knew that by herself they would never now be entirely forgotten: that a knowledge had entered her soul of what was yet to be: that behind the laughter and the flattery and the petting—lay the seeds of her doom.

  That night, however, Lady Hilbourne descended to listen outside Lyneth’s door. Christine, bent upon the same errand, found her there. ‘Tetty?’

  ‘I was just hoping she’d got off to sleep. Really, last night and again this evening when I spoke to her—she was not herself.’

  They spoke in whispers. ‘Well, darling—it’s been a trying two days for her. One can only hope,’ said Christine, ‘that Lady Jones gets over it. I don’t think she quite accepted Lyn’s pretty little apologies. Suppose she doesn’t really forgive her, suppose she refuses to have her living at Plas Dar!’

  ‘Tant mieux,’ said her ladyship tartly. ‘If she doesn’t want Lyn there, Lawrence can just move in here and we’ll all be together still.’

  No one wonders, thought Christine sadly, how much I should like that: to live side by side with my sister’s happy bridegroom. She stood when her step-mother had left her, with her fisted hands against Lyneth’s door, leaning her forehead upon them. All my life! All my life! Smirking and posturing through this agony, for all the rest of my life! She would try, she would direct her heart towards other men, she would not sit like patience on a monument, hugging
her grief to her; but if she must live in the same house with him, day by day…

  Perhaps Sir Thomas’s sister may move from Plas Dar dower house, she thought, and let them live there. That Sir Thomas, still strong and virile, would make way for his son was in the last degree unlikely—and why should they build a new home for the couple, when there was but the one son, and so much room in the main mansion? But Lyneth won’t put up with it, she told herself wretchedly, if she’s not frankly and fully loved and accepted there; she’s too much used to being queen here. She will insist on their making their home at Aberdar. A thought rose in her which she would not call hope, that Lawrence might refuse, and so… But Lawrence was caught fast in Lyneth’s innocent net; his heart was like her own and once enchained would never go free. It reduces him, she thought, it weakens him. He will do whatever Lyn wants, he’s so much afraid of losing her. Well, I must bear it. If I have been able to live through the past months and endure, well, I can go on. Meanwhile she stood pressing her ear against the door. Let’s hope she’s happily asleep.

  Within, Lyneth’s voice, kept low, protested: You did it to scare me!’ and after a silence, ‘But I was only teasing when I said I wasn’t interested…’ and again, ‘Yes, of course I welcome your return… Of course, I welcome…’ And a little cry of agonised protest, ‘But I can’t!’ And: ‘Of course I couldn’t refuse to love him now!’ And, yet again: ‘But I’m promised to him!’

  She opened the door softly. ‘Lyn? Are you dreaming again? Are you having a nightmare?’

  Propped up against the pillows as she had been that other time. ‘Oh, Lyneth—you haven’t even gone to bed properly! No wonder you dream and talk…’

  She looked pale tonight, not glowing as she had on the first occasion. She said irritably, ‘Yes, well Christine, do leave me alone! I sleep best when I’m sitting up against the pillows.’

  ‘Well, I don’t, next door,’ said Christine. ‘You chat away at the top of your voice. Come, darling, lie down and really rest.’

  ‘I’m all right as I am.’

  ‘Well, if you want these dreams—’

  Her eyes darted, as though she were frightened, about the room. ‘Yes, I do want these dreams, as you call them. I do want them, I welcome them. Do go, Christine! You’ll frighten them away. Well, I mean that you frighten me, pouncing in like this at all hours of the night. If I’m keeping you awake next door, very well, I’ll talk in a whisper—I’ll teach myself in my dreams that any talking I do must be in a whisper—or my sister will come waking me up to ask me if I’m asleep, such a splendid recipe for giving anyone a restful night!’ She added quite savagely, ‘So please go away, go back to bed; and think yourself lucky if you get a few dreams like mine.’

  ‘I don’t think I want any dreams like yours,’ said Christine, staring back at her sister with fear in her eyes; and crept back to her room.

  ‘She is very close to us,’ said Richard, looking after her compassionately.

  ‘A little too close for comfort,’ said Lenora, frowning. Still—what could Christine do? They had their victim safe.

  CHAPTER 15

  SUMMER FADED AND THE autumn came, and with the changing of the seasons, there seemed to be changes also in the pretty little bride-to-be at Aberdar Manor. Lawrence sought out Christine. ‘Will you come riding with me? Lyneth won’t ride these days, she seems to prefer to stay at home.’ Leading his own horse, he walked with her down to the stables.

  ‘It’s just that she’s caught up with Tetty and Tante Louise, Lawrence dear, over the wedding arrangements.’

  ‘I begin to wonder, Christine, whether she cares for the wedding arrangements at all—or indeed for the wedding.’

  ‘Oh, Lawrence, you know how happy she is!’

  ‘She doesn’t seem so very happy with me,’ he said. ‘She seems hardly to listen to what I say, looks about her, smiles when there seems to be nothing to amuse her.’ He explained wretchedly: ‘My mother is—quite alarmed about her. She thinks she—well, Lyn does behave oddly, sometimes she seems quite hysterical; and now she has come to think that my mother is against her and refuses to visit her at all.’

  Christine had already prepared for riding, her horse was waiting. They picked their way down across the terraces to the stream, across the stepping stones, up the path on the other side, the horses, accustomed, following the way without attention from their riders. ‘Well, I won’t pretend not to know, Lawrence, that Lyn is shy of Plas Dar. But you know what a pet we make of her, here—she must be queen everywhere, and she doesn’t understand it if people are—well critical.’

  ‘She can’t help it if everyone spoils her. It’s because she’s so sweet.’

  ‘You won’t suppose that I’m criticising her!’ said Christine. Her slender form swayed with the gentle motion of the horse, moving easily up the rising path; the inevitable little dog had been lifted up by the groom, and now sat, alert and bright-eyed, in the hollow between her knee and the pommel. She ventured: ‘If you could, with delicacy, a little explain Lyneth’s character to your mother. One can do anything with her, if she knows she’s loved.’

  ‘She knows she’s loved by me,’ said Lawrence, ‘but I can’t do anything with her. Her mind seems always to be wandering somewhere else.’

  ‘To her trousseau and her new home, Lawrence. Any girl’s mind—’

  He cut her short. He said, ‘She won’t have a new home. She says she’ll never leave Aberdar.’

  ‘That’s because Lady Jones—’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with my mother. Something seems to bind Lyneth to Aberdar. But, Christine, a girl has to leave her home, she has to go with her husband; the Bible itself says so, it says a woman must leave her father’s tents…’

  She looked down and across to where the Manor stood, squat and heavy, flanked by its chain of out-buildings, curving round the hill behind it. ‘A funny old tent, Aberdar is! But of course it’s our home, it’s been home without a break to so many generations of our family. And you’ve known it all your life, too. Would you object so much to live there? There’s lots of room, you could have a whole wing to yourselves, live your own lives,’ (Please God! she said, in her breaking heart) ‘and within sight of your windows, would be your own land, here where we are now. You and your father could work alongside together just as you’ve always done.’ As he was silent she said sharply: ‘For God’s sake, Lawrence—you’re not repenting of your bargain?’

  ‘Oh, Christine,’ he said, ‘I love her with all my heart! I not love her? But if she… I believe I should go insane.’

  ‘I don’t think people go insane,’ said Christine steadily. ‘Not for unrequited love.’ But a thought was in the back of her mind and she knew that, if only through his mother, it must be in his. She said very deliberately: ‘People thought our mother was insane: but she wasn’t. She was ill, for a long time she was dying…’

  ‘Christine!—I’ve suggested no such thing.’ But it was true that his mother had hinted at some—mental instability—in the family. ‘And—I’d better tell it all, Christine—my old nurse, after the last time she saw us together, she said that the young lady reminded her of Sir Edward’s poor wife—Lyn’s mother, your mother—she behaved so distrait, though I daresay she used some other word; and she said that the Aberdar servants gossiped when your mother was alive, and said that the mistress was—well, queer, she said; and cried out in her sleep and talked, till sometimes one would think there was someone in her room with her, but there was nobody there…’

  ‘I will speak to Lyneth,’ said Christine, deathly pale. ‘I’ll go back now.’ She said quietly, unemotionally: ‘But be certain you do truly love her? If there’s any doubt in your mind—’

  ‘Oh, Christine, never, never! I’ve given her my hand and nothing can ever change it. Whatever might happen, she’s mine.’ He sat slumped in the saddle, shaken by the violence of his own feelings. ‘I don’t think anybody could ever really understand—’

  She said with a bitter irony
most unlike her gentle self: ‘Oh, no indeed, my dear! A faithful heart—you must be unique,’ and jerked on the rein quite sharply, and turned her horse’s head for home.

  She bathed and changed and sought out Lyneth in her bedroom. Her sister was sitting idly at the dressing-table.

  ‘Lyn—I’ve been riding with Lawrence,’ Lyneth hardly lifted her head. She said sharply: ‘Once and for all, Lyn—do you love Lawrence, or do you not?’

  Tears sprang to the blue eyes. ‘Oh, Christine, of course I do, of course I love him.’

  ‘You have a curious way of showing it. Lawrence is troubled; we are all troubled, everyone remarks it, Lady Jones is for ever in tears, it seems, the servants are gossiping. And they talk about our mother too, Lyn, it’s the old story. Do you want the world saying that you’re unbalanced in your mind?’

  ‘Oh, God, Christine!’ She crouched on the dressing-table stool, looking up in terror at her sister. ‘You see—nobody could believe me, nobody could understand… I’m not mad, I’m not mad. It’s just that there’s—somebody—’

  Christine’s heart sank. ‘Somebody?’ she gave a wild little laugh. Well—in fact nobody. No body—’

  Christine gazed back at her as wildly. ‘You mean—some emanation, something out of the past—?’

  ‘There has been a curse on this house, Christine; and now it turns its powers upon me. This—this person—’

  And he was there. ‘Lyneth! You have sworn to us. If you tell anyone… If Lenora knows of this…’ He threw out his hand towards Christine, standing bewildered and terrified at her sister’s side. Lyneth sobbed: ‘Christine, please go! Please go!’

  ‘How can I go, darling, and leave you alone?’

  Lyneth fell forward, pillowing her face in her arms, bitterly weeping. ‘Oh, darling,’ she said, sobbing, ‘can’t you see that I’m not alone, I’ll never be alone again…’ And she begged once more: ‘It will be much worse for me if you don’t go.’