Winterwood

by Dorothy Eden

  For Jonathon would not mince words if he carried out his threat. It might be that she would be forced to tell Flora the whole story herself—and watch the child shrinking away from her, shocked and disillusioned, taking refuge in her invalidism, her chance of recovery postponed perhaps forever.

  How could she have become so emotionally involved with this child, who in the sunlit square in Venice had been so unlikable? She had never dreamed this would happen, nor that her emotions could involve her in such a dangerous situation. What was she to do? Go on fending off that drunken man’s advances, and praying for a miracle? But what was the miracle to be? She must, in the meantime, simply do as Daniel had asked and keep Flora happy. Then Christmas would be over, Simon and Edward would be at school, and Daniel would be free to wander Europe with his heiress daughter.

  Christmas was never meant to be a menace nor life so cruel.

  Disappointingly, in spite of daily massage and constant encouragement, Flora’s legs remained stubbornly lifeless. Finally one day she had one of her outbursts of temper, and struck Lavinia’s arm as she was rubbing the limp ankles.

  “Oh, leave me alone, Miss Hurst! It’s no use. I’m always going to be a cripple.”

  “I expect you are, if you want to be.”

  “Want to be!” Flora screeched. “How could anyone want to be ugly and horrid like this?”

  “Perhaps they might think they get petted and pampered this way.”

  “But I don’t! You scold me, and Papa goes out all day and takes Simon, and Mamma only wants Edward! I hate you! I hate everybody. I wish I were dead. I’d like to be buried with Great-aunt Tameson,” she went on, beginning to enjoy her morbidity. “She was the only one who loved me. I could eat some poisonous berries like Willie Jones. Only I would have to make my will first, wouldn’t I?”

  “Flora, stop being so precocious! You’re a silly little girl just showing off. Making your will, indeed!”

  “I shan’t put you in it if you’re going to be so horrid. I shan’t tell you who I’ll put in it. I’ll keep it a secret.”

  There was a commotion at the door as Edward banged on it unceremoniously and then burst in.

  “I heard you saying you’d got a secret, Flora. I’ve got one, too.”

  “You have not. You’re making that up,” Flora said bad-temperedly.

  “I am not. Mamma told me one.”

  “She did not.”

  “She did so. She told me an important one.” His lively little face began to grow uncertain. “But I don’t really want to go and live in London just with Mamma.”

  Flora pounced without mercy.

  “Is that the secret? You see, you haven’t kept it after all. What an untrustworthy little boy you are. Mamma ought to be more careful what she tells you.” Her face tightened as she said suspiciously, “Why is Mamma taking just you away? Why are you to live in London?”

  “I don’t know. She said I could see the Household Cavalry ride past every day, and we’d go to pantomimes and things. But I thought I was to go to school with Simon.”

  Flora’s mind was occupied broodingly on this startling information.

  “I wouldn’t care in the least for a hundred troops of Household Cavalry. Anyway, Papa would never allow you to go. Mamma’s just making up a story.”

  “She said there’d be no one else, not even Cousin Jonathon.” Edward was plainly worried. It didn’t seem that he had invented this fantasy. “I’d rather there was someone else, even old Bushie. Are you hoping to talk to old Bushie at the party, Flora? He’s hoping you will. He picked some berries and things for you to draw on our botany lesson this morning.” Edward added, in a clever imitation of Mr. Bush’s soft, hurrying voice, “I think these may provide a charming study for your sister, Master Edward. She’s very clever with her pencils. You’d do well to imitate her industry.”

  Flora’s bad temper was melting into blushes and giggles.

  “You don’t know what ‘imitate her industry’ means.”

  “No, and I don’t care. Grown-up talk is tiresome. Mamma makes me stay while she and Cousin Jonathon are talking. She says I’m not to leave because she doesn’t like to be alone with him.”

  “What nonsense. She’s often alone with him. She rides with him and walks with him, and laughs as if she likes it.”

  “No, she does not. He follows her, she says, and she has to pretend to be polite. Anyway, he’s getting married soon and going to America, and I’m jolly glad.”

  “Getting married! Cousin Jonathon!” Flora lifted her eyes to the ceiling. “I pity his bride. Who is she to be?”

  “How should I know? He just keeps saying he is going to America to settle down with his wife, and then we’ll never see him again. But he says it’s a pity that steamship passages are so expensive, especially for two.”

  “What else does he say?” Lavinia thought that her voice was admirably casual.

  “Nothing else. I don’t listen much. I don’t want to know about his old wife. Mamma doesn’t either. She says ‘the sooner the better’ and why doesn’t he go at once, and he says doesn’t she remember she begged him to stay to make Christmas jollier after the sad death in the house. And then he kisses her hand and she cries.”

  “Why does she cry?” Flora demanded.

  “I don’t know. Perhaps he bites her finger.”

  “Edward!” Flora giggled irrepressibly. “Mamma can’t cry because she’s jealous of this wife he is to marry. After all she has Papa. I wonder who this lady is.”

  Not content with wondering, Flora decided to ask Jonathon point-blank. This she chose to do that day at luncheon.

  “I hear you are to be married, Cousin Jonathon,” she said in her most grown-up voice. “I congratulate you.”

  Jonathon bowed toward her. His eyes glinted with amusement.

  “Thank you, Flora. That’s very civil of you, I’m sure.”

  “But it isn’t fair that we shouldn’t know who your wife is to be. Is it, Papa? Mamma?”

  “Is this the spirited young lady you talked about?” Charlotte inquired. “I believe you likened her to a blood horse.”

  “Someone from these parts, my boy?” asked Sir Timothy, who liked to know what was going on.

  Jonathon put his finger to his lips. “Silence!” he said. “I have promised the lady.”

  “There’s some reason for secrecy?” Daniel asked, with interest.

  “I bow to feminine whim. But this can scarcely interest you. She isn’t a lady whose family or background you know. I met her at her home in London quite some time ago. Since then, I have kept in touch. Ladies,” he addressed Flora specifically, “enjoy being wooed.”

  “Are you dying of love for her?” Flora asked. Her antagonism was temporarily forgotten in this new development.

  “I hope to survive. Though the lady in question has a fatal effect on men.”

  “Is she so beautiful?” Flora was impressed.

  “When you see her at her best. Fatally beautiful.”

  Charlotte made a sudden exclamation. “Jonathon! You’re being ridiculous. Don’t fill the child’s head with nonsense.”

  “But I wasn’t joking, dear Charlotte. Upon my word!”

  The result of that little exchange was that Flora informed Edward that Cousin Jonathon’s betrothed was a mysterious beautiful lady like a blood horse, and Edward began to neigh and stamp and begged Flora to fall in love with him. Both children were put out when Lavinia sharply told them to be sensible and not play such a silly game.

  “But, Miss Hurst, we’re so happy that Cousin Jonathon is getting married and going away. Even if he is to marry a horse!”

  The giggles broke out afresh and were unstoppable. Lavinia had to give up and let them go on with their nonsense. She supposed she had to be thankful that Jonathon’s enigmatic remarks were not as appallingly clear to Flora and everyone else as they were to her. She fancied Daniel had been suspiciously silent. But she was fancying things about everyone. The strain was becoming u
nbearable. She wished a hundred times that she had not made a promise to stay until after Christmas. She would so dearly like to quietly disappear into obscurity where no one would find her again. Then, a moment later, she would look across a room and see Daniel’s preoccupied face—he was scarcely outdoors at all now; only she knew that he was quietly and unobtrusively keeping everyone under observation—and doubt whether she could ever bring herself to leave Winterwood. The party spirit had never seemed so impossible to capture.

  To everyone’s surprise, Charlotte announced her intention of making a journey to London to do some shopping for Christmas. Daniel protested, asking her why, when she hadn’t accompanied him and Flora and Miss Hurst.

  “Because now I have changed my mind,” she said. Her voice was quite gay and good-tempered, but it seemed to have an underlying strain. Her fingers, Lavinia noticed, were never still. They fiddled with her rings, her pearl necklace, occasionally the small rosy pearls in her ears. “Anyway, my shopping is a secret. If everyone in this house is to have secrets, why shouldn’t I?”

  She would take Bertha, she said. They would stay overnight and return by the afternoon train the next day.

  “She’s going to find a house for her and Edward!” Flora hissed. “That’s what she means by it being a secret.”

  “Nonsense! She wouldn’t do that without telling Papa.” Since Flora seriously believed the absurdity, Lavinia added, “Where would she get the money to buy a house?”

  “She would sell some of her jewels.”

  “What a little romancer you are,” Lavinia said, but privately she, too, was almost certain that it was not something so innocent as Christmas shopping that took Charlotte on a journey she hated in midwinter.

  She was absent two days, and returned looking peaked and tired. She declared she was exhausted after that awful train journey, the carriage was full of soot and it was freezing cold. But she had accomplished her shopping successfully and no one was to ask a single question until Christmas Day.

  Someone, however, did ask a question, and that was Jonathon. His conversation with Charlotte was obviously not meant for other ears, for they were both abruptly silent when Lavinia, wheeling Flora into the long gallery where they proposed to decorate the Christmas tree, came unexpectedly on them.

  It had been impossible to hear the end of their conversation.

  “Not enough,” said Jonathon genially. “Sorry.”

  Charlotte saw Lavinia and Flora approaching, and cried gaily, “Cousin Jonathon says I should have bought more baubles for the Christmas tree. He has such extravagant ideas.”

  “It’s nothing to do with him,” Flora said in some surprise. “Simon and Miss Hurst and I are decorating the tree. Why are you here, Mamma? You have never wanted to help before.”

  “Perhaps I do want to this year.” Charlotte was twisting her hands nervously. Lavinia hoped Flora did not identify the peculiar light in her eyes as fear. It seemed very plain to her.

  “Our dear Flora knows what she wants, as usual,” observed Jonathon. “What an extraordinary daughter for you to have, Charlotte. You who never know your own mind. But that’s your fascination. Do as Flora suggests. Leave the tree to her and the admirable Miss Hurst. Come and tell me more about your expedition to London. I’m beginning to hanker for the big cities myself, delightful as Winterwood is. After Christmas…”

  Their voices died away. It seemed as if Charlotte were mesmerized into accompanying Jonathon to some other more private place where their conversation could be continued without interruption.

  “After Christmas can’t come quickly enough,” said Flora, “if it means saying goodbye to that horrible Mr. Peate. Even if Mamma takes Edward to London, I shall be happy here with you and Papa. You don’t dislike me quite so much now, do you, Miss Hurst?”

  “I find you tolerable,” Lavinia said gruffly.

  Flora really had an extraordinarily sweet smile. Perhaps Lavinia found it so because it was uncannily like her father’s.

  “Oh, thank you, Miss Hurst. I really believe you are speaking the truth at last.”

  When had she ever been speaking the truth? Lavinia wondered that, miserably, when, dressed in the yellow taffeta gown for the Christmas party, Flora pronounced that she was as beautiful as she had been at the opera in Venice when they had first noticed her.

  Lavinia twitched at the skirt uneasily.

  “It’s quite absurd, Flora, that I should dress like this. It’s unsuitable, to say the least.”

  “But I have ordered you to wear the dress I gave you,” Flora said regally. She sighed with sheer delight. “You really do look exceptionally well, Miss Hurst. Have you studied yourself in the mirror?”

  Lavinia had done that and turned away from her reflection. Of what use to look her best? The man she loved could not look at her, and the one she hated would look all too long.

  “I believe you are fatally beautiful like that lady Mr. Peate talks about,” Flora mused, and was startled when Lavinia begged her not to talk like that “Why not, Miss Hurst? I would adore to have a fatal beauty.”

  “Well, perhaps you will when you have your own party dress on,” Lavinia said brusquely. “You have stared enough at me. Now let us attend to you. Would you like your hair up?”

  Flora’s cheeks went pink with pleasure.

  “May I? Oh, I should like that above all things. It will compensate for having to sit in a chair. But if I am to have my hair up, aren’t I too old to wear a pink sash? And must I wear that baby necklace of coral beads? I’d much prefer Great-aunt Tameson’s diamonds. When shall I be old enough to wear them?”

  “What about living in the present?” Lavinia suggested. “Putting your hair up is a big enough step for one day.”

  But when Flora was dressed in the stiff white dress, and her swept-up hair gave her narrow, delicate face a premature maturity and showed her long neck, very white and slender and young, she promptly burst into tears.

  “What is the use, when I can’t walk? I thought I would be able to walk for Christmas and I can’t. Who is to admire me when I am a cripple?”

  “Hush, love, hush! Indeed no one will admire you if your face is red from crying. Stop it at once. I’ll get a little of my rice powder for your nose if you’ll stop this minute.”

  With a tremendous effort Flora controlled her tears, though her thin bosom still heaved. She let Lavinia dab her nose with powder and managed a wan smile.

  “But it is a tragedy all the same, Miss Hurst.”

  “Well, do you know, I think Mr. Bush would be too shy to talk to you if you were walking about like everyone else. As it is, I am sure he will sit beside you while the rest of us dance.”

  A little less mournful, Flora began to pat the neat cluster of ringlets tied with ribbon on the top of her head.

  “Do you think he will notice that my hair is up?”

  “We must assume he has remarkably poor sight if he doesn’t.”

  “Like Uncle Timothy,” Flora began to giggle. Then she had another of her mercurial changes of mood. “Oh, I do wish Great-aunt Tameson were here. She could have worn her violet velvet gown and all her jewels. She told me she loved parties. She used to have very grand ones in her palazzo in Venice. She said if the jewels of all the guests there were put in a gondola they would have sunk it. And there were thousands of candles and the floor of the ballroom was pink marble. All the same, Winterwood can be just as grand. I wish she were here tonight to see it.”

  Chapter 19

  THE CANDLES ON THE Christmas tree were alight and radiant. Logs crackled in the huge fireplace. The damask curtains were drawn across the many windows of the long gallery, and the portrait of Daniel’s mother, the girl with the curling dark hair and eyes that matched the gentians in her favorite blue garden, gleamed faintly. Shadows hung about the far end of the gallery, but here, in the center, gathered around the Christmas tree and the fireplace, all was warmth and color.

  Charlotte had added to the color by wearing a dramatic
crimson velvet gown, as if she had some private gloom she wanted to banish. Her jet black hair was piled high on her head; her eyes were shining, like colorless glass. Tonight her beauty had that touch of eeriness that was slightly repelling. Some emotion was held tight beneath the perfection of her flesh and bone.

  Whatever the emotion was, it changed when Lavinia appeared.

  “You are very grand, Miss Hurst. This is only a small family party. Not a night at the opera.”

  “Mamma, I made Miss Hurst wear her new gown,” Flora said. “It is my Christmas gift to her. Doesn’t she look beautiful in it? And have you noticed that I have my hair up?”

  “That is ridiculous for a girl of twelve. Miss Hurst’s influence again, I imagine?”

  Extremely disappointed by her mother’s disapproval, Flora looked about to weep. Daniel, more observant than he had appeared to be, said calmly, “Our daughter is growing up, my love. Shall we have our gifts off the tree before they catch on fire? Those candles look remarkably perilous to me. And then I believe Mr. Bush is going to play the piano for a little dancing. No doubt he will want your help to turn the pages, Flora.”

  Mr. Bush’s fair skin colored much too easily. He murmured something about being delighted, and Flora’s tears were banished by her own patent pleasure.

  The gifts were handed out one by one by Sir Timothy, whose privilege it was, as the oldest person present. He kept dropping his spectacles and misreading labels, but at last everyone had beribboned packages to open. Flora had a riding crop from her father. She looked about to burst into tears once more at this suggestion that she would soon be riding again. Then she forgot herself in her eagerness to watch the reception of her own lavish gifts. Perhaps she should not have been allowed so soon to display her riches. Edward and Simon, to be sure, were highly delighted with their extravagant gifts, but Charlotte held the little silver box on her lap and viewed it with a strange expression, almost of hate.