Brides of Aberdar

by Christianna Brand

  ‘But you were to be the bride—you cheated her out of her lover and became the bride-to-be and so you inherited the hauntings. To save you, she took the curse upon herself—she did it all for you.’

  ‘She did it all for Lawrence, really, Tetty. But what has that to do with it now. Arthur and I are in love, as we always were. I’m going away with him.’

  Now the stern figure did a little crumple. ‘Lyn, you don’t really mean it? You can’t do it! What will become of you?’

  ‘I shall be with Arthur. Lawrence must divorce me—’

  ‘Lawrence will never divorce you, he would never do such a thing.’

  ‘Well, then, we must live abroad. Arthur knows all the delightful places—’

  ‘There are no delightful places, as you’ll find out, for a woman who has left her husband and child.’

  ‘Who says I shall leave my child?’

  ‘Take her with you! A married woman, roaming the continent with your paramour, trying to find such acquaintance as you could bear to know, who would condescend to know you! You couldn’t be so cruel and so wicked!’

  ‘If I’m cruel and wicked, Tetty,’ said Lyneth, ‘it was you who made me so. Deep down inside you, you’re cruel and wicked yourself. If I robbed my sister of her true love, well, you aided and abetted me in that. If I condemned her to take my place in the life she leads now—you abetted me in that also. It was you who taught me to believe that whatever I wanted, that I must have. Well, I want to go away with Arthur. Whether or not I can bring myself to leave Christina, I’m not sure. I know it’s awful, I know I’m dreadful, Tetty, but I love him. I’m going away with Arthur, I’m leaving Lawrence…’

  Christine nowadays made little secret of her curious way of life. ‘I have taken on a burden which is not mine,’ her attitude seemed to say. ‘If others wish to conceal it, so they may. Why need I be ashamed of it?’ She was confined very much to her own rooms, however, up in the old nursery wing, only Tomos in faithful attendance and the oldest and most trusted of the housemaids. But it was impossible to keep her caged like a dangerous lunatic, in a house that was in fact all her own; and she would make her way downstairs occasionally, the servants peering out from behind curtains or half-closed doors to watch her in easy converse with a company unheard and unseen as she passed through the great hall on her way out to the gardens, or roamed without purpose through the once familiar rooms. Tomos, ever watchful to protect her from intrusion, came across her in the dining-room, holding little Christina by the hand. ‘It was in here, Tina, that the funny gentleman made the lady sit down in his lap, and your naughty aunt went off into lots and lots of giggling…!’ So entirely nowadays had she adopted her sister’s mantle that she almost forgot that it had been not she, but the real Lyneth, who had behaved so deplorably that evening. ‘You remember, Tomos?’

  ‘I don’t remember any lady sitting in a gentleman’s lap, Miss Lyn. I do remember that I tipped the soup into yours.’

  ‘Yes, yes, Christina—naughty Tomos, all the soup in my lap! And I didn’t even have my bib on, did I, Tomos?’

  The tiny girl fell to an extremity of giggling. ‘How delicious she is!’ said Richard, appearing in the doorway, watching them. ‘A miniature replica of you.’

  ‘After all, her mother is a replica of me.’

  ‘Nobody dere?’ said the little girl, scared and bewildered, staring towards the door, where her aunt stood smiling, gesturing, exchanging her pleasantries with—no one.

  Tomos looked anxious. ‘Why don’t you take her out into the sunshine, Miss Lyn? Her ladyship and Miss Christine are sitting on the lower terrace.’ He preceded them into the hall and caught up a large Paisley shawl. ‘Let me put this round you, Miss; you’re so thin, these days, you feel the cold more than most.’ With the loving familiarity of long years of service, he came round and taking one thin hand, so placed it at her bosom, as to keep the shawl secure. ‘Now, Miss Christina, you take your Aunt Lyneth out for a nice walk.’ Over the years, he had become aware that only within the house did his young mistress persist in her strange behaviour; outside it, she seemed free of the illusions that appeared to govern all her waking life.

  Arthur Hilbourne, just dismounted, stood with his friend in the open doorway. Dear God!—is this my Lyneth?’

  ‘Now you know why we weren’t in any hurry to bring you over to call on her.’

  ‘But she’s so thin! And so pale! But who is she—?’

  ‘Well, she talks to—we don’t understand,’ said Lawrence, hopelessly. ‘You knew she’d been ill.’

  ‘Yes, but… Oh, Tomos,’ he said, whispering to the manservant, well-remembered friend of his childhood days, ‘how thin and pale your young lady has grown!’

  ‘Take her out into the sunshine, Mr Arthur,’ said Tomos, urgently, whispering back. God forbid that the young gentleman should see her when one of them—attacks—came on! ‘Mr Lawrence, take her into the garden.’

  But already she had moved over to where Richard stood with Lenora, leaning in a familiar pose of elegant negligence on the newel post at the foot of the broad stair. ‘But, Lyn, I shall be sad if you go out; don’t go!’

  ‘And if you make Diccon sad, Lyneth, I shall be cross. And you don’t like that, do you?’

  ‘Well,’ she said, uncertainly, ‘if you really object—’

  Christina, however, had caught sight of her father and his friend, standing as though rooted to the spot, in the entrance doorway. ‘Papa! Cousin Arfur! Aunt Lyn, look!’—and Christine turned and saw them. ‘Oh, Lawrence…! And—Arthur, can it really be you? I heard that you were staying at Plas Dar—’

  ‘I’ve brought him over to visit you,’ said Lawrence, stepping into the breach of Arthur’s speechless distress.

  ‘… should have come sooner,’ mumbled Arthur.

  ‘Well, but it’s wonderful to see you now!’

  ‘And wonderful to see you, dear, sweet Lyn,’ he said, pulling himself together, coming forward to take her hand.

  ‘Wonderful, wonderful!’ mimicked Richard from the stairway, and Lenora said disparagingly: ‘Is this the famous first love?’

  She ignored the outstretched hand, turned back to them. In fact he had never been her first love; Lawrence had been her first and only—ever love. But she was Lyneth, whose first love indeed their cousin, Arthur Hilbourne, had been. ‘That’s long over,’ she said to the ghosts, earnestly.

  ‘Nobody dere?’ said the child again, clinging tight to her father’s hand.

  Not for other eyes to see; but there they were indeed, so beautiful, and bright, Lenora dark and brilliant, Diccon with his aureole of the golden Hilbourne hair. ‘There’s no need to be jealous,’ she was saying to him, pleadingly. ‘He was my first love but we were only children. Then I turned to Lawrence Jones because—because my sister loved him and wanted him; and I would have been his bride except that you and Lenora wanted me and so I gave him up to Christine—’

  ‘And yourself to Diccon for ever!’

  She stood trembling. ‘Yes, Lenora. Yes, Diccon, I did: I gave myself over to you for ever.’

  Arthur stood in the doorway, ashen and trembling. ‘Dear God, Lawrence, dear God!—what is happening?’ There at the foot of the broad stairs, smiling, pleading, responding to voices unheard, her own voice only half heard across the wide hall—gesturing, gesticulating; ludicrous, grotesque, infinitely pathetic…‘Who is she talking to? What is this all about? Is she mad?’

  ‘It’s what I tried to prepare you for,’ said Lawrence, almost as shaken as he. ‘It’s this—this Hilbourne sickness; they say that her mother was the same.’ He added quickly: ‘You’ve no need to be afraid—it seems to be inherited only by this branch of the family: your own would be free of it.’

  ‘Aren’t you anxious about the child?’

  ‘Her mother seems free enough of any taint of it. I can but pray, as indeed I do every night on my knees—that my beautiful Christine is safe and her precious Christina.’

  Arthur’s
heart turned over, sick within him at recollection of the treachery contemplated against his ever well-loved friend; and felt in himself the same cold shiver of apprehension as had come to his beloved—could he but have known it—on the night of her betrothal to another man: when first the bright ghost had appeared before her and her betrothal ring fallen into the water of the little fountain—when she had known the touch of that hand that was like a drift of mist in her own, chill and intangible… He came-to with a start and found that the sick girl had left the stairway—had indeed taken his hand in a hand as cold as ice and was leading them across the broad gravelled drive and on to the terrace. Below them, her sister sat in close conversation with their step-mother. Lawrence said, ‘We’ll go down and join them…’

  But he could not endure to go there, not yet: to be with these two old and dear friends, exchange sly glances with the girl he was planning to steal from them: to posture and pretend. ‘Could we walk a little, before we meet Lady Hilbourne?’

  ‘We’ll go round by the stables,’ said Lawrence immediately, glancing at the white face and trying to speak lightly. ‘There’s a new pair of carriage horses just arrived: Hil will be there receiving them. Just wait while I conduct Lyneth down the terrace steps…’

  ‘We’ll go veeeeeery quietly,’ said Christina to her aunt as he left them on the grassy pathway leading between the flowerbeds to the bench. ‘Give Mama a biiiiiiig deprise!’ She caught at Christine’s hand and led her, tip-toeing, to where the two sat, backs turned to them, lost in the intensity of their conversation.

  And Lyneth’s voice said, just raised in defiance: ‘I am leaving Lawrence, Tetty. I am going away with Arthur.’

  She cried out in an absolute agony, ‘Lyneth!’ and two white and startled faces were turned as she stumbled towards them. The little girl ran after her, clutching at her skirts. She cried: ‘Tetty—take her! Take her away, take her into the house!’ But her eyes were fixed on her sister’s face. ‘What did you say? Lyn? You can’t have said that? What did you say—?’

  Their step-mother scooped up the protesting child and was gone, pausing only to look back from the upper terrace to where they confronted one another, Lyneth ashen-faced, at bay. ‘I can’t help it, Christine. I’ve fallen in love with Arthur.’

  For this! All the huge out-pouring of sacrifice, to end in this! She stammered: ‘But Lyneth—you’re married to Lawrence.’

  ‘Darling… Christine, please understand, please understand! I can’t help it. One can’t help one’s feelings. I’ve fallen out of love with him, that’s all.’

  Christine stood ashen, gasping, clutching the bosom of her white dress; the Paisley shawl tumbled back from her shoulders to the ground. ‘Out of love! You can’t be! You can’t have fallen out of love with him. He’s your husband, you married him.’

  Lyneth’s face was terribly pale under the bright little, hard, high hat with its cocky red feather. ‘I married him because you wanted him Christine. Didn’t I? We both knew that. It’s terrible, I know: but it’s true. I don’t think I ever loved him at all, not really.’

  ‘But you taught him to love you. And he does, he married you and he loves you, he’ll never change. You can’t leave him, Lyn, you can’t! You must get over this and go back to loving him, Arthur must go away—’

  ‘Arthur loves me too.’

  ‘It’s not Arthur you’re married to. You gave your promise to Lawrence. And Lyn, you’re not going to break your promise to Lawrence, you’re not going to break his heart; you’re not going to, Lyn, I won’t let you.’

  Lyneth was recovering from the shock of confrontation, was growing resentful. ‘What business—?’

  Christine’s hand clawed ever more tensely at the white bosom of her dress. ‘What business? Of mine? Dear God!—do you ask that? I gave him to you, I handed him over to you because you wanted it, you’d cozened him into wanting it, too. I took all your terrible burden upon myself, Lyn; for your sake and his I gave myself over to the ghosts, I lowered myself into hell. What business is it of mine?—do you think I’m going to suffer this daily, this hourly—this nightly—sacrifice just to see you go off on some new flight of fancy, leaving Lawrence alone—?’

  ‘What use am I to Lawrence if I really love Arthur?’

  ‘You don’t really love Arthur, Lyn. It’s just a bit of romantic nonsense, an escape from everyday life. If Arthur goes away, you’ll turn back to Lawrence.’

  ‘What right have you to—?’ Lyneth sought evasion in digression. ‘All this fuss about your sacrifices! What’s so dreadful about it, after all? You’d lost Lawrence, there was no happiness for you any more, you said so yourself. Now you’ve got your ghosts—’

  ‘Who in fact are your ghosts—’

  ‘They let me go, they’ve no power over me any more.’

  ‘You’re still the Hilbourne bride, Lyneth. I changed places with you and they believed that I was the bride. But you are, really—that bride you were then. And if they came to understand that they’d been deceived…’ At the thought of their cold fury, a shudder ran through her thin body. ‘But if I must—I would tell them.’

  ‘Tell them what you like,’ said Lyneth. ‘I’m safe from them. They have no powers outside this house. Well, quite simply, I won’t go into the house again.’

  Below them the little river splashed its way over its silvery stones, about them were bright flowers and the scent of roses; but they stood confronting one another and in all the warmth of the afternoon sun, were thrilled through with the chill of cold fear. Christine said at last, slowly: ‘You will have to come into the house, Lyneth. Because if you don’t, you’ll never see your child again. Until you go in and fetch her—she’ll stay in the house. She won’t be allowed to go.’

  ‘Not allowed—? Who will keep her there?’

  ‘I will keep her there,’ said Christine. ‘And the ghosts will keep her there. And—and you know it of old, Lyneth—the house itself will keep her there.’

  Lyneth burst into tears again. ‘But if I come into the house—the house will keep me too, Christine. And I shall be in their power again. And if you tell them—if they’re angry…’

  And yet… A new hope rose in her. She cried out: ‘The Anathema! They’ve failed in the Anathema—they would haunt the bride, it said, but they haven’t haunted the bride, they’ve failed in it. There’s nothing to be afraid of after all: they’ve lost their powers, they’ll revert back to their Other World and the search for the Light and all the rest of it. They’ll never come back to Aberdar to haunt again.’

  Christine said steadily: ‘They may not, Lyn. But I will.’ And she left her sister and half running, stumbling, throwing out a hand for support to the balustrades of the terraces, pausing for breath, driven on by the sound of her sister’s footsteps behind her, she made her way up, half-fainting to the house and ran through the hall with its new-lit fire, and into the library and there stood, utterly exhausted, in the doorway.

  Tetty was there, sitting as though frozen in the big old wooden armchair that had been here in this room since un-remembered time; the little girl crouched, cowering, against her knee.

  And the ghosts were there.

  The child, set down, had run in ahead of Lady Hilbourne and found Tomos in the hall on his knees before the great fireplace. ‘I’m lighting a few sticks, Miss Christina, to make us all warm… Oh, m’lady, with your ladyship’s permission—it seems so cold today indoors, even if there’s sunshine outside. I thought I’d better light a fire or two for this evening.’

  ‘Yes, very well,’ she said absently.

  ‘And one in the library, m’lady? You’ll be sitting there after dinner?’ With Tante Louise gone, she had somewhat altered her habits, preferring to the more elegant rooms, the low-ceilinged library with its smell of polished oak and the leather bindings of the books—upstairs Christine would be communing with her ghosts and it was an agony to be with her. ‘Yes, Tomos, thank you,’ she said again vaguely.

  Christina clung to hi
s hand. ‘Tina light fire wiv Tomos, Tina help Tomos!’

  ‘Yes, yes, darling, we’ll go with Tomos.’ She dropped her shawl on to the arm of a chair and led the way through to the library and when the man was gone, fell wearily into the Squire’s old oak chair and stared bleakly into the flames that flickered and curled about the dry wood, reaching up bright hands towards the coals. The child, seeing herself abandoned to her own pursuits, stood on tiptoe to reach the treasures on the desk beneath the window—there was a gold seal with the family crest carved in agate which was a familiar delight. She took it over to the fire and crouched down as close as possible to its warmth. For it was very cold in here.

  Very cold—though through the multitude of little squared-off panes, the late afternoon sunshine still shone bright. A foreboding, thought the woman sitting staring into the fire. It had always come when something terrible was going to happen, the cold—this kind of cold. And now… How ill, down there on the terrace, Christine had looked! If Lyn were really to leave Plas Dar, to run away, to desert Lawrence… And she heard that young voice in her ears, that once so much-loved voice, Lyn’s voice: ‘Look inward, Tetty, and see whose fault it is! If I’m cruel and wicked, it was you who made me so; deep down inside you, you’re cruel and wicked yourself…’ And: ‘If I condemned my sister to take my place in the life she leads now—you abetted me in that…’ Oh, God, she thought, how black and withered is the bough of that once green tree that was so fresh and lovely when I was young…!

  She was roused by footsteps, running, stumbling. The door was flung open and Christine almost tumbled into the room. She looked dreadfully ill, her white face patched with high colour; seemed hardly able to catch her failing breath. She stood reeling in the doorway. She said: ‘You’re here!’ But she was not speaking to her step-mother.

  Tetty cried out: ‘The ghosts…!’

  Once before she had seen them like this: as in a dream had heard the rustle of silk against silk, had caught in the flicker of firelight, Rembrandt gleams of jewels and gold; had known the strange, musky scent that once again pervaded all the room. Once before in a—dream?—the little governess, promoted all in an hour to be mistress of this age-old house, of all this great domain—lying back, half-fainting, in the big oak chair that perhaps had been here when they’d come in their silks and velvets to plead their lost cause. And now they were come again, they stood there before her: the woman so dark and beautiful, with her curving figure like a painting by the French artist, Ingres—in glittering ruff and great blue velvet hooped skirt; the young man with his curling red-gold hair, in the doublet and hose of his day, the coat of softest leather hanging over one shoulder, the dagger at his thigh, and at his ear the great, softly gleaming, dangling pearl. And she heard their voices. They cried out together: ‘Lyneth!’ and ‘Lyneth!’