Brides of Aberdar (7 page)

Here on this very spot, thirty years from now—that young girl was to speak those self same words to her.

T
HE MANOR HOUSE OF
Aberdar was perhaps four hundred years old and had been in the same hands for as long. During the first century, it retained much of its original simplicity but by 1540 King Henry VIII was grown fat and imperious and well into his monstrous stride and, with the dissolution of the monasteries, was bestowing right and left among his friends, rich gifts of the plundered lands. The Hilbourne family, small land-owners in the northerly marches of Wales had fought against Richard in the war that had brought Henry Tudor to the throne of England. Three in particular had been with him at Bosworth Field and now from his son, ‘Great Harry’, their sons reaped their rewards—John and Henry Hilbourne, brothers, and Edward, their cousin—whose descendants, three hundred years later, still kept to the old family names.

Edward, Squire of the modest manor of Aberdar, had been content to remain where he was, simply selling off his share and with the proceeds extending his house and enormously adding to the estate. Henry, the elder of the brothers tore down the old Abbey buildings and with their ancient stones, re-built in reckless magnificence; John, the younger, created for himself a sprawling mansion, half-timbered, all white and black with narrow windows, criss-crossed into little diamond panes—to have it replaced by his heirs two hundred years later, by a new Hilbourne Hall in all the light and charm of Georgian grace.

It was to this house that, on a winter’s day, Sir Edward Hilbourne came, his cousin’s carriage-horses breasting the steep incline from the railway station; and, looking up at the lovely Palladian pillars of the portico, felt his heart sink. For he saw that his mission had been ridiculous. It would all be in vain.

Henry, the elder brother, had arrived ahead of him from his Abbey home, together with Catherine his wife. The two sisters-in-law greeted their cousin somewhat warily; he was considered in the family to be a strange and difficult man. No wonder that his poor wife… Though for that matter, perhaps it was on account of her own peculiarities that he had been driven in upon himself? Well, well, as to all that—their husbands had instructed them, the less said the better. He was offered refreshment; with gracious inclinations of their charming heads, the ladies withdrew. Murmured confidences accompanied their departure. ‘Still no indication as to why he comes!’

‘Nor of why he wished me to be present—to be at home, at any rate. John could make no head nor tail of it: that was why he asked you and Henry to come over and join us, to see what was in the wind.’

‘My dear Maria, he gets odder every day.’ They settled themselves comfortably in Maria’s boudoir, for a chat. ‘How old and frail he looks! It’s hard to remember that Edward is the youngest of the three. I think he can’t be much more than thirty years of age?’

‘I suppose he may yet marry again?’

‘We wondered about that when he imported the foreigner.’

‘Not after you’d seen her? But there’s still the governess, Catherine. More unlikely things have happened.’

‘Oh, my dear, the poor thing! I saw her when last we stayed with Sir Thomas and Lady Jones at Plas Dar. Fair enough once, perhaps, but this terrible scar! And anyway, after Edward’s experience with poor Anne—’

‘Is it true that he wants your boys to discontinue visiting the Manor?’

‘Edward considers that the girls are “too old to receive boy playmates”. What on earth does he fear?’ said Catherine, as Tante Louise had asked before her. ‘Arthur’s not yet nine years old, and the little ones, five and three.’

‘Well, well, there are other nice, pretty little girls in the world—and will be nice pretty big girls too, for later on. And with such an heredity on their mother’s side—I don’t know that I should struggle too hard against the ban on their meeting their cousins.’

‘And in fact Arthur goes anyway,’ said Catherine shrugging. ‘He spends half his holidays with his friend, Lawrence, at Plas Dar and I’m sure they’re always hopping across the stream on secret assignations. The more they’re forbidden… Eventually, no doubt, it will have to be discouraged as you say, but his father will speak to him one day, all in good time. Meanwhile, about Edward… Why don’t we—?’ They stole back, stifling naughty giggles, to the sitting-room door.

At home at the Manor, Edward Hilbourne’s own rooms had been left with their splendid oak panelling and solid carved tables and chairs; but most of the rest had been transformed by Tante Louise into a sort of mock-Georgian, much painted and plastered, with bright wall-papers and hangings and the sort of furniture with which he was confronted now. Charmingly pretty, certainly, but so spindly and uncomfortable! And yet it was to this… Well, it was for his children’s sake and he must persevere. He sat upright, thin, pale, faded, a very wraith of a man in his sober grey suit, old-fashioned frock coat over the narrow grey trousers and pearly waistcoat, in contrast with his cousins’ bright, jolly checks and plaids. ‘Well, Edward, you look like a wisp of smoke these days, as if any puff of wind could blow you where it would. So what wind blows you here?’

‘You will think it a very strange one,’ said Edward. ‘And now that I’ve come, I recognise that it blows in vain.’ He looked round the lovely room with its high ceiling, so much in contrast to those low, heavy rooms at home. ‘I was wondering, John, if you would consider exchanging estates with me.’

‘Exchange estates?’

‘It’s a fair enough offer. My lands are far wider than yours and more yielding.’

‘Then why—?’

‘Our cousin—whatever she is, some vague relative to all of us—
enfin
, Madame Devalle, she doesn’t like the Manor, it’s too old for her and too—’

‘—gloomy?’

‘Well, gloomy. But it needn’t be gloomy, that’s only because—’

‘It has been a sad house for you, Edward, we understand that.’

‘And for the children. I’d prefer something for them more light and airy, a situation like this up on top of a hill—’

‘Unfortunately, I—and I think Maria—prefer it too.’

‘I’ve said already,’ said his cousin, ‘that now I am here I realise it was only a dream.’

John rose and poured sherry into elegant small glasses. ‘I’m sorry, my dear fellow, not to accommodate you. I daresay… But Maria would never consider it.’

‘That was the reason I asked for her to remain at home for my visit; I knew she would have to be consulted. But I see now that it was all unthinkable. I have just been foolish. In one’s solitude,’ said Edward Hilbourne, ‘and with many—anxieties—one loses a little of one’s sense of reality. Think no more of it.’

Henry lay back in his chair, wriggling a little as the fine carved back cut across his heavy shoulders. ‘But just a little longer let us think of it. Your Belgian Madame, Edward, objects to your house? Is she so dear to you, cousin, that you sacrifice all to her?’

‘She’s not dear to me at all,’ said the Squire, with his wan half-smile. ‘But infinitely precious. We have this excellent governess now, perfection with the children. I daren’t lose her. But she’s a young woman, she can’t remain in the place without some sort of chaperone; and who else shall I get to act the dragon but Louise Devalle?’

‘No one, certainly, could look the part more,’ said John, laughing.

‘So I must cling to her. And of course, as I said, there are other reasons too. The little girls—’

‘If all you want is a change of house,’ said Henry, breaking in with it impatiently, ‘then what about mine?’

‘Good old Henry!’ said John. ‘Ever an eye to the main chance! Edward’s property is greater than mine, but ten times greater than yours.’

‘It’s Edward who wants the change,’ said Henry. To his cousin, he suggested: ‘It’s an old house, and not so airy-fairy as this shell of John’s. But it stands high up—’

‘No, no!’ said Sir Edward, almost violently. ‘Not that! That wouldn’t do.’

‘—and harbours no ghosts, I promise you.’

Edward Hilbourne went the ashen grey that Miss Tetterman had observed on that day, now many months ago, when first she had come to Aberdar Manor. ‘Ghosts! What do you mean?’

‘Good heavens, my dear man, only a joke! Being an old abbey, or built from the stones of the abbey, de-consecrated by our villainous, but ever to be blest beneficiary, Great Harry, it has a reputation. But none of us has ever seen a haunting, not of any kind.’ He said curiously, ‘What ails you, man? Are you ill?’

‘He is not ill and you are a fool,’ said John. ‘Come, Edward, your anxieties and—imaginings—are your own business. But meanwhile, what do you say to Henry’s proposition? It sounds not impracticable?’

‘Impossible,’ said Edward, head bent, hands between his knees, bowed forward. ‘It wouldn’t answer.’

‘If one, why not the other? It’s a magnificent old place.’

‘I wouldn’t… Madame Devalle, she wouldn’t like that house either.’

Henry, in his rather brutal way, consigned Madame Devalle to perdition. John said, more gently: ‘This is all something more important than your dragon, Edward, isn’t it? Come—we are your friends…’

‘It was a mere suggestion,’ said Henry. ‘Nothing final to it. But in fact the Abbey is too large for me, the estate barely covers the cost of running it. And I have heavy expenses, a wife with sufficiently extravagant tastes—I say nothing against that, she must keep her carriage and be dressed accordingly, a woman in our situation must compete with her equals, and especially in her clothes and jewels, her furs and so on. And then five children, three boys to educate—’

Edward Hilbourne lifted his head sharply. He said again: ‘It won’t do.’

‘We could come to some arrangement about money—’

‘It won’t do,’ he repeated—quite savagely now; and cried out, almost explosively for so grey and quiet a man, ‘Good God, am I to remove my children from the place, only to bring other children there?’

‘If John and Maria—’

‘John and Maria have no children; and, as I understand it, John—forgive me!—are like to have none?’

‘Your children have sad memories,’ said John, gently. ‘There would be none there for other children: none for Henry’s boy, Arthur, and the younger ones. There would be no past for them, at Aberdar.’

‘There would be a future,’ said Edward Hilbourne and made a sign, again almost violently, as though forcing the whole subject aside. ‘Let it all be forgotten. I regret that I came.’

‘It’s forgotten, then, my dear fellow. I’m only sorry we can neither of us help you. Come, let’s have the ladies in and ask them for a cup of tea…’

The ladies, in fact, were not far to find, their coiffures still a little ruffled by close contact with the sitting-room door. Sweet-tempered and kindly, they had been much disturbed by the fruits of their eavesdropping and now set themselves to temper the evident pain of this strange, incomprehensible man.

He rose at last to depart, feeling a little as though pretty grooms had brought a rough mountain pony in out from the rain and, with brush and curry-comb, tenderly smoothed him down. He felt that he owed them some explanation of this visit and request for their presence and at last, haltingly, offered a word or two. ‘I’m afraid that I troubled you to no purpose. I wanted to discuss my—my present situation at the Manor, and thought that a—a little conference might somehow help me…’

‘You feel that your Belgian Dragon is hardly a confidante?’

‘It was to some extent
about
my Belgian Dragon,’ he said, smiling.

‘Edward dares not lose her,’ said John, ‘or he must face scandal on account of the children’s governess. But, also, Madame does not care for Aberdar Manor. Poor Edward’s at a loss how to reconcile his necessary dragon with her lair.’

‘He’d better build her another one,’ said Catherine, lightly, ‘and settle her in that.’

Sir Edward stared back at her blankly. In all these years of agony, so simple a solution had never even occurred to him—seemed never to have occurred to all those of his forebears who, generation after generation, had suffered as he had done. He stammered: ‘Build another house?
Keep
it all, keep everything I’ve known and loved all my life—simply take the children from the Manor itself, somewhere else on the estate, simply build another house…!’

But why should his hostess look at him suddenly so strangely?—and ask him, anxiously: ‘Do you feel it cold, Edward? Shall we build up the fire?’

T
OMOS STOOD IN THE
doorway, literally trembling with the shock of it. ‘I’m sorry, sir! I’m sorry, sir! I don’t know what happened. The door seemed to just—just be too heavy for my hand.’ He lent a strong forearm to help the Squire to his feet. ‘It hasn’t hurt you, sir? You’re not injured, sir? Your head—?’

‘A mere glancing blow, Tomos. The door slammed back and caught me on the forehead. It wasn’t your fault. Just help me over to the fire; I feel suddenly very cold and—a trifle unsteady.’ Collapsing into a chair, holding out his hands to the blaze, he repeated in his own kind way, but yet as though half-bemused: ‘No fault of yours. The door… It’s a very heavy old door…’

‘It seemed like I couldn’t hold it, sir. I feel right bad about it.’ The man pulled himself together. ‘Shall I call The Wall—shall I call Madam, sir? A glass of brandy, Squire, let me bring you a glass of brandy?’

‘Find Miss Tettyman, Tomos, and ask her to come. Not Madam, not for the moment. Then, yes, a half-glass of brandy.’ He put his hand to his head. ‘No cut, no blood. Just an ache, that’s all.’

She came flying down the broad oak staircase to him, knelt at his side. ‘Tomos says… Are you hurt? Are you ill?’

‘The hurt is nothing,’ he said. ‘The illness—I think that is mortal.’

For a moment she was frightened, but she supposed him hardly conscious of what he was saying. The man came with brandy. ‘Oh, Tomos, I think not—I know that it’s usual, but I think that for a—a blow on the head…’

Tomos glanced at the scarred cheek and looked swiftly away. ‘I daresay you know best, Miss. Whatever you say.’

‘Perhaps a hot drink, hot and sweet—ask Cook: the Squire seems so cold. And a rug, fetch a rug first, Tomos, and then, Tomos, send Bethan up to the nurseries—or perhaps Cook would go herself, they mustn’t be frightened and Menna’s so good with them. Go quickly, never mind the rugs after all, I’ll get the rugs.’ She ran off on her light feet, crinoline swaying, and came back with carriage furs from the cloakroom that led off from the hall. ‘Let me put these around you, sir; hug them close to you, you’re shivering…’