Brides of Aberdar (23 page)

‘
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.

S
UMMER 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.’

Lenora slipped in as Christine dragged herself to the door. She said in a voice of ugly rage: ‘You are quite right, Lyneth. It will be much worse for you if you start foolish confidences to your sister. You forget that she may not hear us, but she hears what you say to us.’

‘And catches faint echoes of our voices,’ said Richard. ‘She’s too near us, Lenora. It’s this business of being an identical twin…’

‘It’s a pity the other wasn’t the bride,’ said Lenora, almost savagely. ‘She might have been more amenable than this silly little bitch.’

‘But then she wouldn’t have been so unhappy, my dear sister—and that wouldn’t have suited you, would it?’

‘It wouldn’t have suited the Anathema,’ said Lenora. But she suddenly changed tack. ‘Come, Lyn, my pretty one, this talk is above your innocent head. Cheer up, no harm shall come to you; you shall marry your dull, clodhopping young man with his eyes like a spaniel dog—indeed marry you must, to carry on the line. But you mustn’t go away with him, darling, that’s all we say, to that half-home that is all he can offer you. You shall stay at Aberdar where we may be close to you.’

‘But you will love me best,’ insisted Richard.

She raised her tear-stained face. ‘But I don’t love you, Richard, I don’t want to. I don’t want to live all my life with ghosts, I don’t want a lover who can’t put real arms around me—’

‘Your clod will put his arms around you,’ said Richard, ‘and real enough you’ll find them: and soon grow sick of it, I can promise you. But Lenora and I will be here, always in the background, no one ever gets sick of
us
.’

She cried out, almost screaming, ‘But I’m sick of you
now
, sick, ill, worn out with it all. I don’t
want
you in my background, it’s too frightening, already people think I’m going mad. My poor mother… It was because of you—my mother lived with you as you want
me
to live with you, it was you that she talked to, you that she lived with, keeping this terrible secret till she couldn’t bear it any more and so she died. And my poor father—no wonder he was always so sad and anxious, he knew there was something terrible behind it all—’

‘There is nothing terrible about us,’ said Lenora.

‘Do you think not? There is something terrible about
you
, Lenora,’ said Richard. ‘Nothing matters to you but your Anathema. You put your curse on them, all these innocent girls, down through the ages—’

‘For your sake, Diccon.’

‘For my sake. And so I’ve played your merciless game with you…’

Lyneth had subsided, exhausted, laying her head on her folded arms, only half-conscious of the lowered voices. Lenora stood rigid, her head thrust forward, venomous as the head of a beautiful snake. ‘You are
part
of my game, as you call it, Richard. I held you in my arms, dying—dying for love of that faithless girl, and cried aloud my Anathema, and it was for you, you were part of it, you are bound by it.’ She relaxed a little. She said curiously: ‘You have never felt like this before. Now and again—a little sentimentality and especially when the girl was fair-complexioned

‘Like Isabella,’ he said.

‘Like Isabella And these two girls…’ She said slowly: ‘Their ancestress: and alike as they are to one another, they are alike to her.’

‘So that this strange feeling… I haven’t understood it myself, Lenora, this feeling of a living love, a human love. But Isabella—they are twin images of Isabella: and it was for love of her that I died. I died for love.’

She was silent. She said at last: ‘And—so what then? You feel a human love, you would contract a human marriage, would you, little brother? With one or other of these earthly loves of yours—these twin Isabellas: hold a girl in your arms that will not be arms but thin air around her, hold her close to your body that is chill and vaporous against her own. Do you think that will bring them happiness, whom all of a sudden you find you love so much? That other with her soul like the leaves of the Sensitive Plant, shrinking from contact with any but the one, true and ever object of her too faithful heart?—or this one, here, sick for the embraces of her clodhopper, coarse and strong?’ But it brought her to recognition of Lyneth’s presence, lying with her tear-wet cheeks against her forearms, across the pretty little dressing-table. She lowered her voice: ‘How much has she heard?’