Brides of Aberdar (24 page)

‘I don’t understand it all,’ said Lyneth, half-drugged with terror and misery. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘We’re talking about your future, my child—which is all too tightly bound up with ours—or we have none. And your future is clear. You shall have your earthling, but to us in all but your earthly body, you belong. But outside this house, you cannot belong to us: so see that you make this clear to everyone, my child: on your marriage, your husband moves with all his possessions into this house.’ Her soft and lovely voice took on a too-well recognised note of cruelty: ‘Or else…’

Christine sought out her step-mother. ‘I’m frightened about Lyneth, Tetty, I’m terrified. She looks so ill, she’s so pale and her hands tremble as though she were afraid of something.’

Her ladyship sat upright at her elegant desk in the elegant room that, years ago, Madame had furnished for her own use and now was seldom permitted to enter: consultations were held in the housekeeper’s room. ‘Oh, poor little Lyn! But I daresay she’s just caught a chill.’

‘At this time of the year?’

‘Well, you yourself always complain of the cold.’

‘The cold is much more than we’ve ever accepted, Tetty. So often—and for no apparent reason… You’ve felt it too. The cold touch on our faces: “the hands” Lyn and I used to call it when we were little girls, cold hands brushing against our faces. You’ve felt the hands too. Don’t pretend that you haven’t. Hil says—’

‘You know better, Christine, than to mention that name to me.’

‘Well, it’s time that I did. Hil has always believed there was something—not of this world—that threatened us, threatened the Hilbournes. He’s a Hilbourne himself. We’ve realised that for a long time. And you married into our family—don’t pretend not to understand.’

‘What has this to do with your sister getting a little overheated at some time and so catching a chill?’

‘I’ve been in her room with her when—some presence was there. More than one presence, I think—unseen, unheard, but there. Lyn was terrified, she said there was a curse on the Hilbournes, well surely this we’ve known, if only vaguely; we’ve recognised it? She sobbed and cried out that she wasn’t alone, that she’d never be alone; and then the air seemed to get colder than ever, icy cold, my hands were shaking with it; and she seemed to listen as though someone were speaking to her and then she begged me to go, she said it would be much worse for her, those were her words, much worse for her if I didn’t go. And leave her alone, Tetty—with whatever, whoever—was there.’

Tetty’s heart shrank within her, but the old habit of resistance was strong upon her. ‘She must be in a high fever, I’ll go to her…’

She said peremptorily: ‘Stay here, Tetty, please. Lyneth is not in a fever. She’s ill, yes—with whatever sickness our mother was ill with. And our mother talked to people who weren’t there. You’ve heard Lyn yourself, you’ve heard her doing the same thing.’

‘One dreads,’ Hil had written to her, ‘that this may be the beginning of what their father wished to avoid, when he tried to prevent the children from meeting possible future husbands.’ She had gone against their father’s wishes—because she knew them to coincide with Hil’s; and the old, hateful words spoken at that long-ago children’s party, echoed guiltily in her ears: ‘Something within me tells me that one day you will betray them.’

Her heart cried out in terror, but the forces of evil that still fought within her against the essential good, as ever prevailed. ‘I shall send for the doctor. This is too grave to keep it all in our hands.’ Meanwhile, however, she insisted, say nothing to anyone. ‘Not to anyone, Christine? You understand me?’

‘I understand that you mean me not to tell Hil,’ said Christine. ‘But I shall tell him, Tetty. If you won’t help us, we must go to his house and talk to Hil.’ And upstairs, Lyneth refused all commands to remain in her bed until the doctor should come. ‘I want to go with Christine and talk to Hil.’

Within her, perhaps, Lady Hilbourne was thankful. The situation had clearly gone beyond her and she was secretly terrified by her powerlessness to help or even to understand what was happening to her treasured darling—to her two darlings, for still in that beaten and darkened heart of hers, there remained a total devotion to her two lovely girls. Horses were brought to the door, small dogs handed up by the groom to sit perched alertly on their mistresses’ knees, as the horses picked their way up the steep incline.

Hil came out to meet them and they slid from the saddles and stood with him, the little dogs scampering about their feet, the horses nibbling at the grass along the pathway—looking out over the wide domain of the manor of Aberdar with its fields and copses, its far-away farms, its comfortably grazing cattle, the river curving its silver way into the blue distance. With Hil there were no reserves, because there was no resistance: it all came pouring out. ‘They will be angry with me, Hil, if I tell. But I don’t see how they can know; they’ve told me that they can’t haunt me outside our house.’

They three of the Hilbourne blood: it was within them to apprehend and accept. ‘Your father saw them, Lyn, or dreamed that he saw them. But he remembered nothing; only that there had been a dream. But the long family history—we recognised between us what must have been some malediction on the children of each generation as the years went by. That’s why he didn’t want you to marry and carry on the line.’

‘It’s something to do with our ancestress, Isabella; the one with the big memorial in the church. There’s a portrait of her at Aberdar, “on her marriage”. She looks exactly like us.’

He said thoughtfully: ‘She was the first of these young girls to come to grief. Her husband was killed in the first year of their marriage—John Lloyd, he was: those fields over there were part of his manor. She died when her twins were born,’ Hil continued. ‘There are quite a few twins in the family tree.’

‘She looked exactly like us, you and me, Christine; that’s what—They were saying today. We take after Isabella. That’s why Richard sort of loves me. He doesn’t usually love people, he can’t, he’s a ghost and he has no heart, he doesn’t mind if the girls marry. But he doesn’t want
me
to marry, it’s Lenora who says I must, so as to carry on the line.’ She said to Christine: ‘And I think he loves you too.’

‘He loves
me
?’

‘Because of your looking like Isabella. He saw you before he saw me.’

‘And I saw him,’ said Christine, struck suddenly by the memory. ‘On the night of our party, when you—when you and Lawrence were engaged. I saw him and the sister, I remember now that I told Tetty and we couldn’t think who they could be.’

‘He sort of fell in love with you—seeing you first. I think he rather hopes,’ said Lyn guilelessly, ‘that if he could keep me to himself, Lawrence would turn back to you, Christine, and you two would have children for them to haunt in their turn. And perhaps Lawrence would?—he only loved me best because I—well, I took him away from you, I tried to make him love me best.’

‘He does love you best now, Lyneth,’ said Christine slowly.

‘And I love him too,’ said Lyneth, beginning to cry. ‘I know I didn’t show it but that was because they—teased me and made me be horrid to him; but I do love him really, I shall die if I can’t marry him. Oh, Christine…!’

Is it true, thought Christine, that if he could never have Lyn, he would come back to me? And her heart turned over at the thought of it, the thought that after so much suffering, all this agony of silent endurance, she might yet have him for her own, the one true love for her in all the world. And I need do nothing, she thought; I needn’t work and allure as Lyn did to take him away from me. I have only to wait; indeed, what can I do but wait?—it’s all out of my hands…

Across the little stream, far down below them, the woodland path leading up through the Plas Dar woodlands, that path where she had ridden with Lawrence alone and he had told her of Lyneth’s coldness and said… His voice seemed to echo at this moment, clearly in her ear: ‘Oh, Christine—I love her with all my heart.
I
not love her? But if
she
… I believe I should go insane.’ She said now, quietly and steadily: ‘I know that Lawrence loves you, Lyn. He would never turn to any other girl.’

‘Except you, Christine. We both know that he hardly knew which of us to love, lots of our admirers have been the same, hardly knowing the difference between us. Richard recognises that, he says that Lawrence might as well love you as love me. I mean, they only chose me because I was the one who was going to marry.’

‘Yet
he
chose you,’ said Hil. ‘And puts up this struggle to keep you.’

‘Because of me marrying, having a family,’ insisted Lyneth, ‘to carry on the line.’

L
YNETH HAD BEEN RIGHT
. The ghosts appeared in her room again that night and it was clear that no hint had reached them of that conversation with her sister and Hil at that little house up above Aberdar. Nor had they been angry or threatening as they had been before; more likely that they had agreed upon a return to their first approach, happy and smiling, admiring, delighted, tenderly teasing. ‘But something they did let slip, Christine. I realise now that they can’t haunt unless I’m actually present…’

Christine stood staring unseeingly out of the window of their sitting-room upstairs. She said, not replying directly: ‘You’re going to Plas Dar today, Lyn, are you?’

‘Aren’t you coming with me? Do come, Christine, and protect me. Lady J. wants to go over these wretched rooms again, to be set aside for us, when Lawrence and I are married. I dare not tell her that we shan’t be using them.’

‘Lyn, darling—’

‘Don’t argue, Christine. What’s the use? We know it all now, more clearly: the house wouldn’t let me go. Papa tried to take us away, Tetty tried to take us away: but Aberdar Manor is on Their side, Christine—Papa died, there was the fire, you and I became ill and couldn’t be moved—they wouldn’t let us go. I can never leave here.’

‘What can you say to Lady Jones?’

‘Simply agree that it’s all splendid, and only when I’ve got him safely, play missish and just refuse to budge. If I ever do get him safely,’ she added, sadly.

‘Well, I think it’s best that you and Lawrence should be with Lady J. alone. I’m not very good at making faces and living through lies.’

But her reasons went deeper and as soon as her sister had started off with Lawrence on the way to the Plas, she sought out Tetty. Tetty looked up from a desk spread with notes and jottings, lists of tradesmen, of outside staff for hire, of wedding guests—and was shocked by what she saw. ‘Christine—what is wrong? You are so pale.’

‘Never mind that. I must talk to you—’

‘Well then, take a chair. You look really ill. You are suffering my poor darling child, don’t suppose that I don’t see that.’

‘If I suffer, Tetty, it’s to some extent your fault—’

‘My fault? That you are in love with your sister’s lover?’ She ignored the proffered chair, stood very straight beside the desk, the lovely young face grown cold and stern. ‘I am in love with my own lover. He was
my
lover—Lyneth stole him from me. And you connived at it. You wanted your pet to have her way—as always.’

‘Christine—don’t speak to me like that; don’t dare!’

‘Don’t dare? I do dare. I’ve got to dare now. You did me a wrong; all the other things, I haven’t cared about, but this was everything in the world to me—’

‘How could I know that your heart was so set on this boy? You were a child—’

‘I’m not a child now,’ said Christine. ‘No one could suffer as I have and still be a child. And you could have saved me, a word here, a little encouragement there—you know how to manage Lyneth—and without one serious pang on her part, she could have turned to any of a dozen others and left my one love to me. But no—it’s the pink and blue ribbons all over again, from the first day that you came here; it’s the black pony against the white, the dolls on the Christmas tree, it’s every treat or dress or bonnet we’ve ever argued over, it’s the lace dress and the dress with the flounces on the evening Lyneth began her flirtation with Lawrence—with your pet winning every time.’

‘And all these years, you’ve harboured this resentment?’

‘I’ve harboured no resentment, none. They were all small, petty wrongs and they did me no harm. But I think they did Lyneth harm, she became so used to it that nothing must ever stand in her way. And this time it
has
done me harm, it’s done both of us harm, irreparable harm. But I’ll tell you something—it has done you the most harm of all. Because it’s brought disaster to her which, if you’d left things alone would have fallen on
me
. You’d have cared about that, but you care more about her; and it’s your fault that she is the one to suffer now.’

Tetty sat absolutely rigid in her chair, her face almost as white as Christine’s. She said: ‘You’ve found out something, Christine? Some truth?’

‘Lyneth has told me. She’s explained everything.’

‘To you? Not to me? But—what is it? Tell me what she’s told you!’ She implored: ‘Christine—I’m in agony—’

‘No, Tetty,’ said Christine. ‘I won’t tell you. In two minutes, you’d have us both in bed and the doctor sent for; poor dears, a little chill, high fever, don’t know what they’re saying… You just wouldn’t understand. And it’s not that you couldn’t; you don’t want to accept that there’s anything wrong: anything—other worldly. And the reason you refuse to accept it, Tetty, is that Hil
does
.’

The chair legs scraped along the polished floor; she rose to her full height, stiff, grim, ugly with outrage. ‘How dare you? How dare you?’

‘How dare
you
, Tetty? How dare you sacrifice our lives, Lyneth’s and mine, to your own bitter prejudices? All these years, ever since my father died. I don’t ask what went wrong between you and Hil, it’s no business of ours, we don’t even ask ourselves. But we weren’t deaf and blind, even as little girls. You married my father on his deathbed; but that can’t have been all—Menna whom we loved so much, went away without even a word of explanation or goodbye and from that time on, Hil’s name was not to be mentioned in your presence. Well, it’s being mentioned now. Because what Lyneth told me, she told to Hil too, and Hil accepts it: I think at the back of his mind, he’s always known it, only half understood it, perhaps, but understood. He has Hilbourne blood; he is—as it were disposed to accept and understand. But I’ve talked to him since. I went there alone, without Lyneth. And I’ve told him that Lyneth can be saved—perhaps can be saved. I’ve said…’ She broke off, biting on her lip, turning away her head. ‘Well—anyway, I’ve asked him to help me. But he blankly refuses.’