104. A Heart Finds Love (2 page)

‘At least,’ Alnina thought to herself, ‘every creditor has been given some money, but there is still such a large amount outstanding, so there must be something more that I can sell.’

But all the silver had already gone, as well as her mother’s jewels.

She had already sold all the pictures that were of any value. And one or two of them proved to be valuable enough to keep most of the creditors at bay.

Now, having looked around the rooms that seemed extraordinarily empty, she walked up the stairs and into her mother’s bedroom.

She had felt it was almost sacrilege to sell any of her mother’s clothes. She wanted to wear them herself, but they were in some ways too old-fashioned for her.

Anyway, it was most unlikely than anyone would want to buy ball dresses that were out of date.

Her day clothes she knew would go for very small sums to the village women who would find them useful, but she was determined not to empty her mother’s room completely until the very last moment.

Her dearest Mama had died when she was fifteen and she had loved her dearly.

She had been extremely fond of her father and, although she wanted to love her brother, she had seen very little of him.

He was always enjoying himself either in London or on the Continent and it was terrible to think that it was his passion for Paris that had ended in his losing his life.

‘I am only so glad,’ she thought as she entered her mother’s bedroom, ‘that Mama is not alive to know that Charles died in such a horrible way.’

Now, as she looked round the room, she thought that she would have to part with the mirror on the dressing table. It was one she had loved ever since she had been tiny.

The gilt-wood was ornamented with little cupids climbing up the sides and at the very top was a carved bird with outstretched wings.

Alnina could remember counting the cupids when she was just old enough to be able to do so. Then she had asked her mother where the bird was flying to.

“Up into the sky among the stars,” her mother had said. “He is a bird and that signifies what we feel when we learn something very exciting and we lift up our hearts to Heaven.”

She had not understood at the time what her mother was saying, but now, as she looked at the little bird, she thought it was something she must try to do.

It was no use to sit too gloomily in the house which was being stripped of everything that was beautiful.

She realised that the gilt mirror would fetch some money as it was antique and so would the beautiful French secretaire that stood in one corner of the bedroom.

Then, as she hated to part with them, she quickly opened the wardrobe, wondering what was left inside.

The first thing she saw at the back of it, under a white linen cover, was her mother’s wedding dress.

It had always been the most fascinating dress and she could remember it ever since she was very small.

Because Lord Lester had enjoyed travelling, he had bought his wife’s wedding dress on a journey he had taken while they were still engaged.

It was indeed the most unusual wedding dress that Alnina had ever seen. She had forgotten about it until now, but was sure that it would sell for a large sum.

The whole dress was decorated with the wonderful embroidery that only the Chinese could do so well and it was always believed to have been done by small boys who should really have been at school.

But to make it really spectacular, Lord Lester had ordered diamante and pink stones to add to the embroidery.

This gave it the appearance of bunches of flowers, while the bodice glittered, Alnina had always thought, as if worn by a fairy.

She took it out of the cupboard and removed the white covering and then she hung it up so that she could look at it carefully.

It must have taken years to complete and was in a perfect condition as it had only been worn once.

‘I will certainly sell it,’ she now thought, ‘and ask a sum that should substantially reduce my debts to Charles’s creditors.’

She could imagine some woman being delighted to wear it at her wedding or it would certainly enhance any museum or even perhaps be worn on the stage.

After looking at it for some time, Alnina sat down at the secretaire.

She wrote a description of the gown to be put in an advertisement and she felt certain that the way she had worded it would attract someone who was interested in anything unusual.

She was sure that there was no other wedding dress in England that could compete with this one.

‘It must have cost Papa a fortune,’ she mused.

He, in a way, was very much like Charles and, if he wanted something, he bought it regardless of whether he could afford it or not.

She could not help wishing that they had both been a little more sensible, as now she had to spend her time selling everything she had loved ever since she was small.

When she had finished writing the advertisement, she went downstairs.

She then found Brooks, the butler, as she still called him, who with his wife had come to the house many years before her father’s death and then there had been a great number of servants.

Brooks had looked after Charles and with no other help unless he was giving a party.

It was typical of her brother, Alnina thought, when he had come home from White’s Club, having lost money at the card tables, immediately to throw a large party, but she thought the noise and laughter made him forget that he was a loser.

Now Alnina was worrying, if she sold the house, what she would do with Brooks and his wife, as they were both growing older.

It would be, she knew, very difficult for them to find another place after being here for so many years.

She smiled at Brooks, whose hair – what remained of it – was white, and handed him the letter.

He would give it to the postman, if he called later in the day. It was too far for the old man to go to the village.

As the Brookses were so well known, any food Mrs. Brooks wanted was usually sent up from the shops to The Hermitage as the house was called.

“What be you selling now, Miss Alnina?” Brooks asked when she handed him the letter.

“Mama’s wedding dress,” Alnina answered. “I hate to let it go, but it should, because it is so unusual, fetch quite a good sum of money.”

“Money! Money!” he muttered almost beneath his breath. “It’s all we has to think of nowadays.”

“I know and you and Mrs. Brooks have been very kind to me. So you can be sure that I will find somewhere for you in the future.”

“It ain’t right that you has to do all this for Master Charles,” Brooks said. “He always were a naughty boy even when he was very little. He never listened to anyone, not even your father when he was alive.”

There was nothing Alnina could say that she had not said already, so she therefore merely smiled at Brooks and said,

“We will win through in the end, you know that we will. You and Mrs. Brooks have been wonderful and I am very very grateful to you.”

“It ain’t right, Miss Alnina, when you should be going to dances and meeting young gentlemen, that you be stuck here a-worrying over money day in and day out,”

“I can think about dancing later when I have paid our debts,” Alnina replied. “Mind you don’t forget that letter. I just know that it will create an interest amongst the Curators of museums if no one else.”

She thought a little wistfully, as she turned away, that her mother’s tiara had been almost the first thing she had sold, as well as the diamond necklace that she wore at balls and the pearls she wore every day.

They had all gone very quickly and yet what she received for them was only a drop in the ocean of Charles’s debts.

Now, as she went upstairs again she was wondering if she would ever get married.

And if she did, what sort of gown she would wear. It certainly would not resemble her mother’s.

She had been told that it had been a sensation at the time, but several older members of the family had thought that it was too fantastic and had disapproved.

‘Mama must have looked so beautiful in it,’ Alnina had often said to herself.

She thought now as she walked past the mirror, which had not yet been sold, that she too would look very pretty at her wedding.

‘If anyone wants to marry me and I have to pay for my own dress, it will have to be a very cheap one,’ she told herself.

Then, because it was too frivolous a thought when she had to concentrate on the house, she went into another room to see what else could be sold.

It had never appealed to her to have a sale at the house and so she had only sold items one by one.

She thought on the whole it had brought in more money that if she had put them one after another under the hammer at an auction house.

At the same time it meant that raising money was much slower than a large sale would have achieved and yet she somehow could not bear to fill the house with strangers looking for a bargain.

The Hermitage was a particularly beautiful house.

It was first built in Elizabethan times and added to by various families until it fell into her great-grandfather’s hands and he had improved it out of all recognition.

He made the garden beautiful and greatly admired by everyone in the County and it was still lovely but wild.

Charles had dispensed with all the gardeners except for one who was too old to be moved and now the lawns were overgrown and the weeds thick in the flowerbeds.

Yet it was still, in Alnina’s eyes, the enchanted haven she had found it when she was a child.

Then the fountains had all been playing and, as she had watched them throwing their water up into the sky, she thought nothing could be more etherial.

Now every room was gradually being emptied.

As she went towards the front door, she missed the grandfather clock. It had always stood just inside the hall, but she had sold it for fifty pounds last week.

It was a clock that had delighted her as a child and when it was working there was a man at the top of it bringing down a hammer every time it struck the hour.

She had found it so fascinating when she was very small and she wondered if other children somewhere else in the country were finding it as fascinating now.

Then she told herself that it was no use thinking of the past all the time.

She had to concentrate on the future.

The most immediate problem being what would she do and where would she go if the house was sold.

She was hoping that whoever bought it would take on the Brookses, but she herself would have to leave.

‘Where can I go and what can I do?’ she asked and could find no answer.

Then, as she walked across the lawn, she looked up at the sky and saw a bird flying high overhead.

‘Perhaps,’ she now told herself, ‘he will carry my thoughts into an enchanted land where everything I want will come true.’

Then she laughed at herself.

It was the sort of thought she had had when she was growing up and then the world seemed an intriguing place waiting for her to explore it.

Because her father always talked of his travels, she wanted to travel too.

She imagined herself visiting different places in the world which so far she had only read about in books and it was this yearning for something so different, something so exciting, that had made her concentrate on languages when she was at school.

She had read all the books she could find on each country whose language she had been taught to speak.

There were French books that she read avidly once she knew French. There were German books, which she did not find so delightful as she thought that German was an ugly language.

But she had loved Italian, Greek and Spanish.

Then, just when she was nearly eighteen and should have been leaving to have a Season in London, she found herself captivated by Russian.

As Russian history books were so interesting, they helped her to overcome the difficulties of the language.

‘Now,’ she thought as she looked up at the sky, ‘I will never see the places I have read about and which Papa always found entrancing.’

The one thing she was absolutely sure of was that she could not now afford to travel, unless, of course, she could become a teacher to the children of Diplomats.

Or she could become a secretary at an Embassy, otherwise she would have to be content with books instead of reality.

It was sad, but, because she did not want to feel unhappy about herself, she walked back into the house.

She was thinking that there were still parts of it she had not fully explored where there might still be something saleable.

*

Her advertisement appeared in
The Times
four days later.

Brooks brought the newspaper in with breakfast and he had opened it so that she could read at a glance what she had written.

‘If that does not attract people,’ she thought to herself, ‘then nothing will.’

She hoped that she would obtain the one thousand pounds she was asking for and not have to reduce it.

She had learnt that many people, who were buying anything, always expected to get it for less than the seller asked.

So after the first two or three items she had sold, she always asked a price a little higher than she expected to receive.

She had, in fact, at the very last moment, increased the price she was asking for the wedding dress and so she would be prepared to reduce it, but, of course, appear reluctant as she did so.

“Well, I expects,” Brooks was saying, “you’ll have them knocking on the door to have a look at it. But if you asks me, you could have asked for even more than that.”

“I don’t think anyone spends more on a wedding dress,” Alnina replied. “In fact, I have seen advertisements offering them with a veil and a wreath for half that price.”

“Yes, but what they be selling ain’t a dress like your Mama’s,” Brooks insisted. “Your father always said it were the prettiest gown in the whole world.”

Alnina laughed.

“That is the sort of thing Papa would say. But one thousand pounds is a great deal of money these days and most brides have to buy their whole trousseau for less.”