Bride of Pendorric Page 10

  The conversation became general, and after an hour we left.

  Roc was clearly amused as we walked home.

  “Another conquest for you,” he commented. “The old fellow certainly took to you. I’ve never known him so gracious before.”

  “Poor old man, I don’t think people try to understand him.”

  “They don’t need to,” retorted Roc. “He’s as easy to read as an A.B.C. He’s the typical self-made man—a character off the shelf. There are some people who mould themselves on old clichés. They decide the sort of person they’re going to be and start playing the part; after a while they’re so good at it that it becomes second nature. That’s why there are so many stock characters in the world.” He grinned at me. “You don’t believe me, do you? Well, look at Lord P. Started selling newspapers … perhaps not newspapers, but some such job. It’s the pattern that matters, not the detail. Never goes in for any fun, piles up the little capital to start with and, by the time he’s thirty, industry and skill have turned it into a big capital and he’s on the way to becoming a millionaire. That’s all very well, but he can’t be himself … he has to be one of the band of self-made men. He clings to his rough manners. ‘I came up from nothing and I’m proud of it!’ Doesn’t go in for the ordinary graces of conventional living. ‘Why should I change myself? I’m perfect as I am.’ Oh, I don’t have to try to understand Lord P If he were made of glass I shouldn’t be able to see through him more clearly.”

  “You don’t forgive him for building his house.”

  Roc shrugged his shoulders. “Perhaps not. It’s fake and I hate fakes. Suppose all the self-made men made up their minds to build along our coast? What a sight! No, I’m against these pseudo-antiques; and to have put one on our doorstep is an imposition. Polhorgan’s Folly is an outsider here on our coast with houses like Pendorric, Mount Mellyn, Mount Widden, Cotehele and the like … just as its master is … with his Midland manners calling himself Lord Polhorgan. As though Tre, Pol, and Pen did not belong to Cornishmen.”

  “How vehement you are!” I said, and trying to speak lightly added: “And if I made a conquest, what of you?”

  He was smiling as he turned to me. “Thea, you mean?”

  “You call her that?”

  “That’s her name, my dear. Althea Grey—Thea to her friends.”

  “Of whom you are one.”

  “Of course, and so will you be. As for my conquest,” he went on, “that’s one of long standing. She has been here eighteen months, you know.”

  Then he put his arm about me and began to sing:

  “Wherever you hear Tre Pol and Pen

  You’ll know that you’re with Cornishmen.”

  He smiled at me and continued:

  “Alas, I have to add a rider …

  One can’t ignore the rich outsider.”

  “I think,” I said, “that you prefer the nurse to the invalid.”

  I saw the teasing light in his eyes.

  “With you it’s exactly the reverse,” he commented. “That’s why it was such a successful visit. I took care of the nurse while you devoted yourself to your host.”

  Two days later, as we had arranged, I went to play chess with Lord Polhorgan. I came back and told Roc rather defiantly that I liked the old man even more than on the first occasion; which seemed to amuse him very much. Nurse Grey was not present, and I poured out the tea. The old man was delighted when he beat me, then he looked at me shrewdly and said: “Sure you’re not humoring the old man—letting him win, eh?” I replied that I had done my best to beat him, and that satisfied him. Before I left I had promised to call again in a day or so in order to give him a return match.

  I was settling into life at Pendorric. I did a little gardening with Morwenna, and it was pleasant to chat with her while we worked.

  “It’s a useful hobby,” she said, “because we haven’t the gardeners we once had. In my father’s day there were four of them; now it’s Bill Pascoe from the cottages three afternoons a week, with Toms working when he gets a chance. Both Roc and I were always fond of growing things.”

  “Roc doesn’t do much in the gardens now,” I put in.

  “Well, there’s the farm to take up his time. He and Charles work hard on that.” She sat back on her heels and smiled at the fork in her hands. “I’m so pleased they get on well together—but then of course they’re two wonderful people. I’ve often thought how lucky I am …”

  “I know what you mean,” I answered soberly. “We’re both lucky”

  Charles was very friendly to me in a quiet and unassuming way and I liked his chubby charm. When Roc took me round the farm for the first time I was immediately aware of the respect Charles had for Roc’s judgment, and that made me like him all the more.

  I even liked Rachel Bective a little better than I had in the beginning and reproached myself for a too hasty judgment because I had fancied I detected something rather sly in her sandy looks.

  On one occasion we went for a walk together and she volunteered a little information about herself, telling me how she had met Morwenna when they had been at school together and had come to spend a summer holiday at Pendorric. From then she had been there often. She had to earn her living and had taken up teaching, so she had agreed to take a leave of absence from her school for a year to supervise the twins’ education because she knew what a trial they were to their mother.

  The twins themselves had a habit of coming upon me at unexpected moments, and seemed to take a special pleasure in leaping out on me and startling me.

  Lowella addressed me as Bride, which at first I thought amusing but later was not so sure; Hyson had a habit of fixing her silent gaze on me whenever she was in my company, which I also found disconcerting.

  Deborah was as determined as the others to make me feel at home; she told me that she felt like a mother towards me because Roc had been like her own son.

  I was sitting in the quadrangle one afternoon when I suddenly had the eerie feeling that I was being watched. I shook off this feeling which was always ready to worry me when I was in the quadrangle, but it persisted and, when I looked up at the window on the west side where I had seen Deborah on the day she arrived, I almost expected to see her there.

  I stared for a few seconds at those curtained windows; then I turned and looked at the east side. I was certain then that I saw a movement.

  I waved and continued to look, but there was no response.

  Ten minutes later Deborah joined me in the quadrangle.

  “How you love this spot!” she said, and she pulled up one of the white and gilded chairs to sit close to me.

  “My feelings for the place are a little mixed,” I told her frankly. “I am immensely attracted, and yet I never feel exactly comfortable here.”

  “Why ever not?”

  I looked over my shoulder. “It’s the windows, I think.”

  “I often say it’s a pity that it is only corridor windows which look down on the quadrangle. It would make such a lovely view and a change from the great vistas of sea from south, west, and east, and country from the north.”

  “It’s the windows themselves. They take away privacy.”

  She laughed. “I believe you’re rather a fanciful person after all.”

  “Oh no, I’m not really. Were you on the east side a little while ago?”

  She shook her head.

  “I’m sure someone was looking down.”

  “I shouldn’t think so, dear, not from the east side. Those rooms are rarely used now. The furniture’s covered in dust sheets … except in her rooms.”

  “Her rooms?”

  “Barbarina’s. She always liked the east side. She didn’t mind Polhorgan in the least, like the others did. They couldn’t bear to look at it. She had her music room there. She said it was ideal because she could practice there to her heart’s content without disturbing anyone.”

  “Perhaps it was one of the twins I saw up there.”

  “That may
be so. The servants don’t go there very much. Carrie looks after Barbarina’s room. She gets rather angry if anyone else attempts to. But you should see them. You ought to see all over the house. You are, after all, its new mistress.”

  “I would love to see Barbarina’s rooms.”

  “We could go now.”

  I rose eagerly and she took my arm as we walked across the quadrangle to the east door. She seemed excited at the prospect of taking me on a tour of that part of the house.

  The door closed behind us and as we walked along a short corridor which led into the hall I was conscious of silence. I told myself that it had something to do with my mood, for naturally if there was no one in this wing why should the silence surprise me?

  “The servants say this is now the haunted part of the house,” Deborah told me.

  “And Barbarina is the ghost?” I asked.

  “You know the story then? Lowella Pendorric was supposed to have haunted the house until Barbarina took her place. A typical Cornish situation, my dear. I’m glad I was born on the other side of the Tamar. I shouldn’t want to be perpetually ingratiating myself with piskies and ghosties and things that go bump in the night.”

  I looked about the hall, which was an exact replica of the others in its proportions. There were the steel weapons on the walls, the pewter utensils on the refectory table, the suits of armor at the foot of the staircases. The pictures in the gallery were different, of course, and I gazed casually at them as we mounted the stairs.

  We reached the corridor and I glanced through the windows at the quadrangle, wondering at which one I had seen a movement.

  “Barby’s rooms were on the second floor,” Deborah told me. “I used to come and stay when she married. You see we had scarcely been separated all our lives and Barby didn’t see why we ever should be. This became a second home to me. I was here as much as I was in Devonshire.”

  We had mounted to the second floor and Deborah opened several of the doors to show me rooms shrouded in dust sheets. They looked ghostly, as all such rooms do in large and silent houses.

  Deborah smiled at me and I guessed she was reading my thoughts and perhaps trying to prove to me that I was not as immune from Cornish superstition as I should like her to believe.

  “Now,” she said, and threw open a door. “This is the music room.”

  There were no dust sheets here. The huge windows gave me a view of the coast with Polhorgan rising majestically on the cliff top; but it was not the view I looked at this time, but at the room, and I think what struck me most was that it had the look of a room which was being lived in. There was a dais at one end of it and on this was a stand with a piece of music opened on it. Beside the stand, on a chair, was a violin, looking as though it had just been placed there; the case lay open on a nearby table.

  Deborah nodded. “A silly habit. But some people find comfort from it. At first none of us could bear to move anything. Carrie dusts and puts things down exactly where they were. Carrie feels really fierce about it and it’s more for her sake than anything else that we leave it as it is. I can’t tell you how devoted she was to Barbarina.”

  “And to you too.”

  Deborah smiled. “To me too. But Barbarina was her favorite.”

  “You were identical twins?”

  “Yes. Like Lowella and Hyson. When we were young some people found difficulty in telling us apart, but as we grew older all that passed. She was gay and amusing; I was rather stolid and slow-witted. There’s more to looks than features, isn’t there. It’s beginning to show in Hyson and Lowella. It’s only when they’re asleep that they seem so much alike. As I was saying, Barby was everybody’s favorite, and because she was as she was … I seemed more dull and less interesting than I should if she had not always been with me.”

  “Did you resent it?”

  “Resent it! I adored Barbarina with the rest. In fact she hadn’t a more devoted admirer. When she was praised I was happy because in a way it seemed as though I were being praised. It’s sometimes like that with twins; they can share each other’s triumphs and disasters more fully than ordinary people do.”

  “And did she feel the same about you?”

  “Absolutely. I wish you could have known Barbarina. She was a wonderful person. She was all that I should have liked to be myself; and because she looked so like me and was my twin sister, when we were little I was quite happy that it should be so.”

  “It must have been a blow to you when she married.”

  “We didn’t let that part us more than we could help. I had to be in Devonshire for a good part of the time because our father needed me to look after him. Our mother had died when we were fifteen and he had never really got over the shock. But whenever I could I would be at Pendorric. She was very glad to see me. In fact, I don’t know what she would have done …” She hesitated and I had the impression that she was on the verge of confiding in me. Then she shrugged her shoulders and seemed to change her mind.

  But here in Barbarina’s music room I was conscious of a great desire to learn more about her. I was—although I wouldn’t admit it at this stage—becoming more and more absorbed in the story of this woman who had been my immediate predecessor as a Pendorric Bride.

  “Was it a happy marriage?” I asked.

  Deborah turned away from me and went to the window; I was embarrassed, realizing that I had asked an awkward question, so I went to her and, laying my hand gently on her arm, said: “I’m sorry. I’m being too inquisitive.”

  She turned to me and I noticed how brilliant her eyes had become. She shook her head and smiled. “Of course not, and naturally you’re interested. After all, you’re one of us now, aren’t you? There’s no reason why we should try to keep family secrets from you. Come and sit down and I will tell you about it.”

  We sat in the window looking along the coast towards Rame Head and Plymouth. The headland jutted out darkly in the gray water and one could imagine it was a supine giantess who lay there. The tide was out and the tops of the jagged rocks were visible. I gazed at Polhorgan whose gray walls were the color of the sea today.

  “There’s a distant family connection between the Hysons and the Pendorrics,” said Deborah. “Cousins, many times removed. So from our childhood we knew Petroc and his family. I don’t mean your Roc, of course, but his father, who was Barbarina’s Petroc. When he was a boy he used to stay with us. He was a year older than we were.”

  “He was like Roc, wasn’t he?”

  “So like him that sometimes when I see Roc now I get a little shock and for the moment I think he’s Petroc come back.”

  “In looks you mean.”

  “Oh … in many ways. The voice … the gestures … his ways … everything. There’s a very strong resemblance that runs through most of the Pendorric men. I used to hear stories of Petroc’s father—another Petroc—and all that I heard could have applied to his son. Barbarina fell in love with him when she was about seven. She remained in that state until she died.”

  “She must have been happy when she married him.”

  “A feverish sort of ecstasy. It used to frighten me. She cared for him so much.”

  “And he for her?”

  Deborah smiled a little wistfully. “Petroc liked women in general too much to care very deeply for one in particular. That’s what I always felt and so I saw how it would be. I warned Barbarina, but she wouldn’t listen of course.”

  There was silence and after a while she went on. “We used to ride on Dartmoor. Our place is on the moor, you know. You must come and see it. The view is wonderful … if you like that kind of view. You can step from our garden right onto the moor. Once we all went riding together and they lost me. The mist came up as it does on the moor and however well you think you know the place you can easily be hopelessly lost. You are apt to wander round and round in circles. It was really rather frightening. I found my way back but they didn’t come home until next day. They’d sheltered in some hut they’d discovered and
Petroc had had the foresight to load up with chocolate. Sometimes I think he arranged the whole thing.”

  “Why? I mean, if she was in love with him, couldn’t he have been with her … more comfortably?”

  Again that silence. Then she sighed and said: “He was in love with some local girl whom he’d promised to marry. She was a farmer’s daughter. But the family wanted this marriage with the Hysons because our father was well-off and money was badly needed at Pendorric. Barbarina was very unhappy. She’d heard that Petroc was going to marry this girl, and she knew he must be very much in love with her because Pendorric meant a great deal to him, and it was possible that if he couldn’t bring some money into the family something would have to be done about it. So she knew he must have been deeply in love with the girl to contemplate marrying someone who couldn’t bring a penny into the place. He was fond of Barbarina. It wouldn’t have been any hardship to marry her … if he hadn’t been so besottedly in love with this other woman. Petroc was the sort of man who would get along with any woman … like … well, you know the type.”

  I nodded uneasily.

  “Were the Pendorrics very poor then?”

  “Not exactly, but the great change had set in. Things weren’t what they had been for their sort of people. The house needed expensive renovations. And Petroc had gambled rather rashly in the hope of recuperating the family fortunes.”

  “So he was a gambler.”

  She nodded. “As his father was.”

  “And what happened after that night on the moor?”

  “I think Petroc had made up his mind that he would have to marry Barbarina. Pendorric was important, so he would fall in with the wishes of his family and Barbarina’s. But he couldn’t tell Barbarina that … bluntly. So they got lost on the moors and Barbarina was seduced and … that made it all easy.”

  “She told you this?”

  “My dear Favel, Barbarina didn’t have to tell me things. We were as close as two people can be. Don’t forget that during the months of our gestation we had been as one. I knew exactly what had happened and why.”