Brides of Aberdar (6 page)

He turned away his head and made no reply.

T
O ARRANGE A WORD
of private consultation with the Squire was no easy matter. Madame watched like a hawk over the comings and goings of Mees. That, having given his undertaking, Sir Edward would ever dislodge Tante Louise from the home he had offered her, should have been to her unthinkable; but life had taught the poor woman some bitter lessons and there was little room in her heart for simple trust. In any event, she had no wish to remain there as second fiddle to a new wife, and he seemed less repelled than she herself was, or at any rate professed to be, by the terrible scar. Moreover, all her life unloved and unloving, she was too realistic not to recognise herself as also unlovable. She knew that, dazed by the imminent death of his wife after years of whatever strange difficulties there had been, he had reached out blindly for succour and lit upon herself, perhaps
faute de mieux
, but at any rate without very much investigation; and had found his choice to have been an unhappy one. But by then, the poor Anne had died and it had been too late.

An odd business: it had all been a very odd business, thought Tante Louise. No diagnosis of the poor young woman’s malady had ever been advanced, she had been nursed by two old and devoted servants who had proved remarkably tight-lipped as to all that concerned their charge and, the moment it was over, disappeared into retirement. Other servants meanwhile had supplanted the old and by the time she, Madame Devalle, had appeared upon the scene, almost all the staff were new, the sickroom closed to all but immediate attendants, no information whatsoever forthcoming. That the lady of the house had been—well, funny like—had for some years kept largely to her own apartments and there at last had languished into premature death, was as much as her most searching enquiries could elicit. Always sweet and kind—and so pretty, the children just like her, but she’d been odd, not a doubt of it, shut away more and more in her own rooms and talking to herself—you could hear her now and again through the door, not raving or any of that, just chatting away, laughing sometimes, as you might to anyone. But there had been no one in there.

And then they’d heard she’d died and the nurses had gone and everyone else except Tomos and Menna, the cook; but Menna had been with the family from a girl, she’d never give anything away, nor Tomos either. Edward Hilbourne was adamant in refusing any discussion of his wife’s condition or of allowing her name to be mentioned in the presence of the little girls, he had taken upon himself the task of all such explanation and comfort as they received at her death. Not that they could have been personally deeply affected: brief visits, supervised by himself, had been all that within Tante Louise’s experience, they had been permitted.

So Madame had had to be satisfied with that, and now kept a wary eye upon the upstart governess; nor did she lose any opportunity of a subtle belittling. ‘Certainly she is well enough, Edouard, with the children.’ (A little too much so, in fact. Though Lyneth, in sufficiently innocent self-interest, might keep up what by now was largely a pretence of loving Tante Louise, Christine was too totally honest to do more than recognise that one must try to; and it was irksome to see how they hung about Mees, doting upon every word she spoke, all the fun and laughter she created for them.) ‘For myself,
mon cher
, I do not put so much trust in her. She has behind her some—mystery; well,
enfin
—something of mysterious. She receives letters—’ She conversed with him about equally in English and French. That she should practise more fluency in the language of her new home was self-evident.

‘She has a family. Anyone may receive letters.’

‘Yes, but—what becomes of these letters? She well hides them or at once they are destroyed. That is not curious?’

‘How do you know this?’

‘It is the duty, my dear Edouard, to guard carefully over the institutrice of these young children.’

‘For heaven’s sake—not to the extent of enquiring into her private correspondence?’

‘But—there is a ring, also,
mon cher
. With small stones, but the diamond is real and a ruby also and an emerald. Then only un grenat—’

‘A garnet. And I daresay an aquamarine?—it must be a “regard” ring,’ said Sir Edward, incautiously. ‘The jewels spell out the word r-e-g-a-r-d.’

‘Regard? To look?’

‘To think well of. To care for.’

‘Perhaps to love? This is a new possession; I think not yet much worn.’

He looked at her suddenly curious. ‘You must have examined into this very closely? I’ve never seen her wear a ring. How do you know of it?’ And his brow grew dark. ‘I won’t have you, Louise, intruding into Miss Tettyman’s room. She comes to us with excellent recommendations—’

‘From a man. Written to us by a man,’ said Madame. ‘Signed Charles B. Arden.’

‘Because Lady Arden was too unwell to write herself. Now, once and for all—there is nothing whatsoever to suggest that she is not a perfectly proper and well-conducted young lady and always has been. She came to us more or less directly after being employed from a young age in the Arden family. Whatever her past, it has clearly been blameless. Leave her alone.’

‘Oh, certainly, my dear,’ said Tante Louise. ‘An angel of virtue no doubt, and as you say, straight from the employment of Sir Charles Arden. I have look him in the book. Sir Charles Bell Arden. The father of her pupil. It is in the book!’

Engraved on the inside of the ring—three tiny letters. C.B.A.

Fortunately, Tante Louise, could not ride a horse and Miss Tetterman, as has been said, despite the scar, had professed herself able and willing to do so. To the undisguised astonishment of Madame, a well-fitting habit was produced and, mounted on a neat little bay cob, Mees would trot out with the children, Hil in easy familiarity accompanying them, and the inevitable scatter of little white dogs. And a day came when Sir Edward on his own beautiful Royalist, meeting them on the hillside path across the stream from the Manor, settled himself down to ride alongside them. Hil with a word dismissed himself. ‘If you’ll take charge, then, Squire, I could be seeing about those cattle in the third meadow.’

‘I wish you would, Hil; it would save me a wearisome ride.’

‘Owain will take the horses then, when you return.’ Hil, she had observed, never touched his cap to the master or called him Sir; it was always just ‘Squire’ and a little jerking half-bow as though to say, ‘You and I very well know my situation here.’

Now seemed a God-given opportunity to mention her misgivings regarding Hil’s familiarity with the little girls. ‘You go on ahead,’ said Miss Tetterman to her charges, ‘and see who will reach the fallen log first. Only mind!—no more than a canter, or the winning won’t count.’ To their father she said, fishing for an opening: ‘Hil must be a great help to you, sir, on the estate?’

‘I couldn’t manage without him. My father died when I was a child. When I came of an age to manage my own estates, Hil came to me and he helped me with it then as he helps me now. But the time seems to have come when I need more than that. I seem not able to do any of it. At my age! I am still a young man!’ He mused over it. ‘Over three hundred years of tenure—directly down through my branch of the family alone. Can you think what that must mean to a man? To say that I love it—well, that is to say nothing: it is a part of me, part of my blood and my bones, it’s at my very heart.’ He had reined in his horse and together they sat their saddles, looking out over the manor house and the lands that stretched for a thousand acres beyond it. ‘If I could be translated into this great estate, Miss Tettyman there would I be! Spread out before you, across the stream bricks and mortar for my bones and for my flesh and my blood the woods and the meadow-land, the little river, the wheatfields and cornfields and springs and wells; and the very beasts that graze the green grass and the men that work there and through generations of their families have worked for generations of mine. All part of me! All part of the Hilbourne family, all part of
me
!’ He stood up in his stirrups gazing out over it all, with uplifted head, grey eyes brilliant—for a brief moment handsome and strong and eager, and young again; and let his shoulders droop and sat back slackly in the saddle and, moving slowly onward up the slope, said hopelessly: ‘And already I feel it too great a burden, trying to care for it.’

Seen from this spot, the extent of the manor and its demesne indeed was vast. Into the steeper slope of the opposite hillside, it was as though a giant hand had scooped out an arc, into which had been folded the straight, blunt line of the house itself. To either side of it, hidden from view by banks and trees, strung along the length of the stream were its out-buildings. To its right, the domestic offices, the bakehouse, the laundries, the dairies, and so on to the garden sheds and stores, the glassed green-houses and the big, square, walled kitchen garden; to the left, the stable yard exactly balancing it and, between yard and house, the kennels, the tack rooms, the coach house, the smithy.

Beyond these again, curving the slope of the hill, the coachman’s lodge and so on to the Home Farm, with its storehouses, hay barns and byres—all running in their orderly pattern for perhaps a quarter of a mile along the twisting river bank. And beyond the hill-top, the endless acres of field and meadow, woodland and forest, dotted about with the tenant farms, the cottage homes of the workers. On the brow of the hill stood one larger than the rest, two cottages thrown together, considerably enlarged and embellished. The Squire pointed it out: ‘I daresay you have noticed it? Hil lives there.’ He said again: ‘God knows how I should manage if he were not with me!’

It brought her back to the subject of her anxieties. ‘I’m sure, sir, he is the most loyal and reliable of servants. It’s only—’

‘Hil is more than a servant,’ he said. He repeated it with a note of—almost of pride?—in his voice. ‘More than a servant. Hil is not a servant at Aberdar Manor.’

It was early December now: the light snowfall had ridged the bare branches meeting above their heads and crisped the curling rims of the fallen leaves. The path sloped gently up through the woods, opening at last into a little glade where the children had reined in their ponies and were amicably squabbling as to which first had reached the log, and there dismounted and stood again, all four of them now, looking across to where the old house lay so dark and bleak against the snow-bright hollowing-out of the hill. She saw how for a moment the children looked startled and clapped together their little gloved hands against the cold. It was indeed very cold up here. She felt it herself… So
cold
…

Just here—here on this spot, on a day far, far into the future, a woman would stand, erect, severe, in her brown stuff dress with its smoothly rounded bustle, watching in anxious disapproval as a girl took her lover’s hand and said, ‘Only a born Hilbourne could understand. And so I must explain to him, Tetty, and show him the house.’

‘There is no house now,’ she would reply; and with her company of little prancing white dogs, walk stiffly away.

Just here, on this very spot.

And now, also, she was anxious. The children were hitching their ponies to low branches, in earnest conformation with the teachings of beloved Hil, and setting the little dogs to hopping back and forth over the log, ‘Look Tetty, look Papa—a circus, a circus!’ She said: ‘Sir Edward, while I have the opportunity, there’s something that for a long time I’ve wanted to ask you. Hil—he is so very fond of the children, he plays with them, pets them, calls them by pretty names. May I ask you—you know how clinging and demonstrative they are—is it your wish that they should continue with him in this degree of—familiarity?’

‘With Hil?’ he said, almost as though taken aback; suddenly frowning.

‘I suggest nothing wrong, sir, God forbid, I myself have never seen any—well, harm in it. But they are babies no longer and one day will be children no longer—’

He broke out sharply: ‘Don’t speak to me of that!’—and immediately retracted in his courteous way. ‘I beg your pardon. I don’t mean to be abrupt. I—well, it’s just that for a father it’s difficult to envisage his little ones—changing. But Hil—’

‘I make no criticism, Sir Edward. But I’m sure you will think it proper of me to have consulted you? I think,’ she suggested hesitantly, ‘that, for example, with any other male member of-the staff—’

‘Hil is not a member of the staff; or at any rate,’ he said again, ‘not in the sense of being a servant. He is different from the rest.’

‘He is, sir, yes; I respect him very much, he seems to me to be a wonderful person.’ (Yes, indeed!—with that heavily curling red-gold hair and the deep blue eyes. His mouth took a little quirk to it, when he was—as he so often was by the children—delighted and amused.) She checked herself hastily, the fair cheek, unscarred, took on a faint uprise of colour.

He glanced at her curiously. ‘And so—?’

She had never asked—or daring to hint a question, never received any answer—what Hil had meant by that strange declaration as to the children, ‘I’m so desperately afraid for them.’ And yet surely it was important for her to know? She ventured: ‘And so, all I say is—it is with your consent that I continue to allow total freedom between himself and the little girls? For my part, I’m very glad that it should be so. I know that he is devoted to them—deeply devoted.’ She was scared to speak out, and yet…‘Sir Edward, will you forgive me if I ask you, only for the children’s sake—why should Hil feel so—anxious about them? Afraid for them?’

For a moment she thought that he would faint; his pale face took on a look of ashy grey, he put out a hand to an overhanging bough to steady himself. It seemed a huge effort for him to speak. He said at last: ‘Afraid for them?’

‘He has said as much, sir. I thought that it would be right for me to understand.’

‘Only a Hilbourne can understand,’ he said. He seemed to speak only to himself. ‘We are people apart. We are cursed.’ And he looked down at the heavy, dark line of the ancient manor house in the shadow of the hill. ‘We must leave this place,’ he said. ‘Three hundred years of it—but what does it all matter?—I must leave it, take them away. Three hundred years, yes—but every hour of it cursed: for two hundred and fifty of those years one generation after another fallen to disaster. Have we all been mad that we’ve lived with it, down through the ages, never moved away?’ He seemed to become aware of her, almost blindly reached out and caught at her gloved hand. ‘You must stay with us! Stay with them, stay with me, we need you, for God’s sake don’t leave me alone again with this terrible fear. But we’ll go away somewhere, we’ll leave Aberdar. I’ve been mad not to think of it before.’ And he raised the small gloved hand and held it for a moment against his pale cheek, and as she drew it gently away, released it with a little bow as though he relinquished with gratitude a blessing given and received. ‘You are very sweet and good, Miss Tettyman,’ he said. ‘Truly good and kind. Between us, we will guard these little ones. For the rest—accept it all from me, don’t try to understand.’ He repeated: ‘Only one born a Hilbourne can understand.’