The House On The Strand Part 19

He stood there, looking down at her, and I knew instinctively that they had reached a point in their relations.h.i.+p, through proximity and sympathy during the past days, when his love for her could no longer smoulder and be contained, but must burn up and reach the sky, or else be quenched.

"I know you would, Roger," she said, "but any further suffering that may come my way I can bear alone. If I have brought dishonour on two houses, my husband's and Otto Bodrugan's, which doubtless will be said about me down the years, I'll not do the same to yours."

"Dishonour?" He spread out his hands and looked about him at the low walls encircling the yard, the narrow thatched dwelling where the ponies and the cows were housed. "This was my father's farm and will be Robbie's when I die, and had you sheltered here for one night only and not fifteen, you would have lent it grace enough to last through centuries."

She must have sensed the depth of feeling in his voice, and possibly the pa.s.sion too, for a sudden shadow came across her face, a wariness, as if prompted by an inner voice that murmured, 'Thus far, and no further.' Moving to the open gate she put her hand upon it, and looked out over the fields to the bay beyond.

"Fifteen nights," she repeated, "and on each one of them, since I have been with you, and in the daytime too, I have stood looking out across the sea to Chapel Point, remembering that his s.h.i.+p would anchor there, below Bodrugan, and this was the bay he sailed when he came to find me in the Treesmill creek. Part of me died with him, Roger, the day they drowned him, and I think you know it."

I wondered what Roger's dream had been, and whether, as we all do, he had created a fantasy that their lives would somehow fuse; not in marriage, not as lovers, even, but in some sort of drifting intimacy, intuitive and silent, that no one else would ever share. Whether it were so or not, the dream was shattered; by speaking Bodrugan's name she had made this plain.

"Yes," he said, "I have always known it. If I have given you cause to believe otherwise, forgive me."

He lifted his head and listened. She did the same, and beyond the dark copse above the farm came the sound of voices and tramping of feet, and then the figures of three of the Champernoune servants emerged through the naked trees.

"Roger Kylmerth?" one of them called. "Your road is too rough to drive the chariot down to your dwelling, and my lady waits within it on the hill."

"Then she must stay there", answered Roger, "or come on foot, with your a.s.sistance. It's one and the same to us."

The men hesitated a moment, conferring under the trees, and Isolda, at a sign from Roger, turned quickly and pa.s.sed across the yard into the house. Roger whistled, and Robbie came out of the door where the ponies were stabled.

"Lady Champernoune is above, and some of her servants," said Roger quietly. "She could have summoned others between here and Tywardreath, and we may have trouble. Stay within call should I need you."

Robbie nodded, and went back into the stables. It was growing darker every moment, colder, too, the trees in the copse etched more sharply against the sky. Presently I saw the lights of the first flares on the crest of the hill; Joanna was descending, three of the servants with her, and the monk as well. They came slowly and in silence, Joanna's dark cloak and the monk's habit blending as though the two were one; and standing beside Roger, watching their progress, it seemed to me that the group had something sinister about it; the hooded figures could have been walking in procession through a churchyard to a waiting grave.

When they arrived at the open gate Joanna paused and looked about her, then she said to Roger, "In all the ten years you served my household you never thought to bid me welcome here."

"No, my lady," he replied, "you neither asked for refuge nor desired it. Consolation was ever ready for you under your own roof."

The irony did not touch her, or if it did she chose to ignore it, and Roger led the way towards the house.

"Where must my servants wait?" she asked. "Have the courtesy to direct them to your kitchen."

"We ourselves live in the kitchen," he told her, "and Lady Carminowe will receive you there. Your men will find it warm enough in the byre amongst the cows, or with the ponies, whichever they please." He stood aside to let her pa.s.s with the monk, and followed after, and as we crossed the threshold I saw that the trestle table had been pulled close to the hearth, the tallow candles set upon it, and Isolda sat alone at the head of the table. Bess must have gone to the room above. Joanna stared about her, at a loss, I think, to find herself in such surroundings. G.o.d knows what she had expected-some greater attempt at comfort, perhaps, with furnis.h.i.+ngs pilfered from her own abandoned manor house.

"So..." she said at last, "this is the retreat, and snug enough, no doubt, on a winter's night, apart from the smell of beasts across the yard. How do you do, Isolda?"

"I do very well," as you see, "Isolda answered. I have lived better here, and had more kindness, in two weeks than in as many months or years spent at Tregesteynton or Carminowe."

"I don't doubt it," said Joanna. "Contrast ever whetted appet.i.te grown stale. You had a fancy for Bodrugan Castle once, but had Otto lived you would have become as weary there and of him as you have of other properties and other men, including your own husband. Well, this is a rich reward. Tell me, do both brothers share you here before the hearth?"

I heard Roger draw in his breath, and he moved forward, as though to place himself between the two women, but Isolda, her small face pale in the flickering light of two candles, only smiled.

"Not as yet," she said. "The elder is too proud, the younger too shy. My protestations of affection fall upon deaf ears. What do you want with me, Joanna? Have you brought a message from William? If so, speak plainly and have done with it."

The monk, who was still standing by the door, took a letter from his habit to give to Joanna, but she waved it aside.

"Read it to Lady Carminowe," she said. "I have no desire to strain my eyes in this dim light. And you may leave us," she added to Roger. "Family matters are no longer your concern. You meddled with them enough when you were my steward."

"This is his house, and he has the right to be here," said Isolda. "Besides, he is my friend, and I prefer him to stay."

Joanna shrugged, and sat down at the lower end of the table opposite Isolda.

"If Lady Carminowe permits," said the monk smoothly, "this is the letter from her brother, Sir William Ferrers, which came to Trelawn a few days since, Sir William thinking his messenger would find her there with Lady Champernoune. It reads thus: 'Dearest Sister, the news of your flight from Tregesteynton has only reached us here at Bere within the past week, because of the hard weather and the state of the roads. I am at a loss to understand either your action or your great imprudence. You must know that by deserting your husband and your children you forfeit all claims on his and their affection, and, I am bound to say, on mine as well. Whether Oliver, in Christian charity, will receive you at Carminowe again I cannot say, but I mis...o...b.. it, fearing your pernicious influence upon his daughters, and for my own part I could not offer you protection at Bere, for Matilda, as Oliver's sister, has too much sympathy for her brother to offer hospitality to his erring wife. Indeed, she is in so sore a state since hearing you have deserted him that she could not countenance your presence amongst us with our five sons. It seems, therefore, there is only one course open to you, which is to seek refuge in the nunnery of Cornworthy here in Devon, the Prioress being known to me, and to remain there in seclusion until such time as Oliver, or some other member of the family, may be willing to receive you. I have every confidence that our kinswoman, Joanna, will permit her servants to escort you to Cornworthy.

Farewell, in the power of Christ, Your sorrowful brother, William Ferrers'"

The monk folded the letter and pa.s.sed it across the table to Isolda.

"You may see for yourself, my lady," he murinured, "that the letter is in Sir William's own handwriting, and bears his signature. There is no deception."

She barely glanced at it. "You are very right, she said there is no deception."

Joanna smiled. "If William had known you were here and not at Trelawn, I doubt if he would have written so generously, nor would the Prioress at Cornworthy be willing to open her convent doors. However, you may count on me to keep it secret, and arrange your escort into Devon. Two days under my roof to make the necessary preparations, a change of attire, which I can see you need, and you can be on the road." She leant back in her chair, a look of triumph on her face. "I am told the air is mild at Cornworthy," she added. "The nuns there live to a great age."

"Then let us dwell behind convent walls together," replied Isolda. "Widows, when their sons marry, as your William does next year, must needs find new shelter, along with erring wives. We will be sisters in misfortune." Proud and defiant, she stared at Joanna down the length of the trestle table, and the candlelight, throwing shadows on the wall, distorted both their figures, turning Joanna, because of her hooded cloak and widow's veil, to the likeness of some monstrous crab.

"You forget," she said, playing with her mult.i.tude of rings, slipping them from one finger to another, "I have a licence to remarry, and can do so whenever I choose to pick a new husband from a chain of suitors. You are still bound to Oliver, and furthermore disgraced. There is a second course open to you other than the nunnery at Cornworthy, if you prefer it, and that is to remain as drab here to my one-time steward, but I warn you the parish might serve you as they served my tenant this day in Tywardreath, and have you riding to do penance in the manor chapel on the back of a black ram."

She broke into a peal of laughter, and, turning to the monk who was standing behind her chair, she said, "What do you say, Fr+re Jean? We could mount the one on a ram and the other on a ewe, and have them jog-trot together or forfeit the Kylmerth land."

I knew it must happen, and it did. Roger seized the monk and threw him back against the wall. Then, bending to Joanna, he jerked her to her feet.

"Insult me as you please, not Lady Carminowe," he said. "This is my house, and you shall leave it."

"I will do so", she replied, "when she has made her choice. I have three servants only in your cow-house in the yard, but a score or more waiting by my carriage on the hill, only too willing to pay off ancient grudges."

"Then summon them," said Roger, freeing her. "Robbie and I can defend our home against every one of your tenants, the whole parish if you will."

His voice, raised in anger, had penetrated to the sleeping-room above, and Bess came running down the ladder, pale and anxious, to take her stand behind Isolda's bench.

"Who's this?" asked Joanna. "A third for the sheep-fold? How many other slatterns do you harbour in your loft?"

"Bess is Roger's sister, and so my own," answered Isolda, putting her arm round the frightened girl. "And now, Joanna, call your servants so that this household can be rid of you. G.o.d knows we've borne your insults long enough."

"We?" queried Joanna. "Then you count yourself one of them?"

"Yes, while I receive their hospitality," said Isolda.

"So you do not intend to travel with me to Trelawn?"

Isolda hesitated, glancing first at Roger, then at Bess. But before she could reply the monk stepped out of the shadows on the wall and stood beside them.

"There is a third choice yet for Lady Carminowe," he murmured. "I sail from Fowey, within twenty-four hours, to the parent house of Saint Sergius and Bacchus at Angers. If she and the girl care to accompany me to France, I know very well I could find asylum for them there. No one would molest them, and they would be safe from all pursuit. Their very existence would be forgotten once they were in France, and Lady Carminowe herself be at liberty to start life anew in pleasanter surroundings than behind convent walls."

The proposal was so obvious a trick to get both Bess and Isolda out of Roger's care and into his own charge, to dispose of them as he wished, that I expected even his patroness to round upon him. Instead, she smiled, and shrugged her shoulders.

"Upon my word, Fr+re Jean, you show true Christian feeling," she said. "What do you say, Isolda? Now you have three alternatives: seclusion at Cornworthy, life in a pigsty at Kylmerth, or the protection of a Benedictine monk across the water. I know which I would choose." She glanced about her as she had first done when she entered the house, and moving round the room touched the smoke-grimed walls, grimacing, then examined her fingers, wiping them with the handkerchief she carried, and finally paused by the ladder leading to the loft above, her foot upon one rung.

"One pallet amongst four, and louse-ridden?" she asked. "If you travel into Devon or to France, Isolda, I'll thank you to sprinkle your gown with vinegar first."

The singing started in my ears, and the thunder. Their figures began to fade. All but Joanna's, standing there at the foot of the ladder. She stared towards me, her eyes opening wide, and I did not care what happened afterwards, I wanted to put my hands round her throat and choke her before she vanished, like the others, out of sight. I crossed the room and stood beside her, and she did not fade. She began to scream, as I shook her backwards and forwards, my hands round her plump, white neck.

"d.a.m.n you," I shouted, "d.a.m.n you... d.a.m.n you..." and the screaming was all around me, and above as well. I loosened my grip and looked up, and the boys were crouching there on the landing at the top of the back stairs, and Vita had fallen against the bannister beside me, and was staring at me, white-faced, terrified, her hands to her throat.

"Oh, my G.o.d!" I said. "Vita... darling... Oh, my G.o.d..." I fell forwards on to the bannister rail beside her, retching, seized by the uncontrollable, blasted vertigo, and she dragged herself away up the stairs to safety beside the boys, and they all started screaming once again.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE.

THERE WAS NOTHING I could do. I lay there on the stairs, clinging to the handrail, arms and legs splayed out grotesquely, with walls and ceiling reeling above my head. If I shut my eyes the vertigo increased, with streaks of golden light stabbing the darkness. Presently the screaming stopped; the boys were crying, and I could hear the crying die away as they ran into the kitchen overhead, slamming both the doors. Blinded by dizziness and nausea, I started to crawl upstairs, step by step, and when I had reached the top stood upright, swaying, and felt my way across the kitchen to the hall. The lights were on, the doors were open. Vita and the boys must have run up to the bedroom and locked themselves in. I staggered into the lobby and reached for the telephone, floor and ceiling blurring to become one. I sat there, holding the receiver in my hand, until the floor steadied, and the telephone directory, instead of being a jumble of black dots, straightened into words. I found Doctor Powell's number at last and dialled it, and when he answered the tension inside me broke, and I felt the sweat pouring down my face.

"It's Richard Young from Kilmarth," I said. You remember, the friend of Professor Lane.

"Oh yes?" He sounded surprised. After all, I was not one of his patients, and I must only be a face amongst hundreds of summer visitors.

"The most frightful thing has happened," I said. "I had a sort of black-out and tried to strangle my wife. I may have hurt her, I don't know."

My voice was calm, without emotion, yet all the time my heart was pounding, and the realisation of what had happened was clear and strong. There was no confusion. No merging of two worlds.

"Is she unconscious?" he asked.

"No," I said, "no, I don't think so. She's upstairs, with the boys. They must have locked themselves in the bedroom. I'm speaking to you from the lobby downstairs."

He was silent, and for one terrible moment I was afraid he was going to tell me it was none of his business and I had better call the police. Then, "All right, I'll be along straight away," he said, and rang off. I put down the receiver and wiped the sweat off my face. The vertigo had subsided, and I was able to stand without swaying. I walked slowly upstairs and through the dressing-room to the bathroom door. It was locked.

"Darling," I called, "don't worry, it's O.K. I've just telephoned the doctor. He's coming out at once. Stay there with the boys until you hear his car." She did not answer, and I called louder. "Vita," I shouted, "Teddy, Micky, don't be frightened, the doctor's coming. Everything's going to be all right."

I went back downstairs and opened the front door, and stood waiting there on the steps. It was a fine night, the sky ablaze with stars. There was no sound anywhere; the campers in the field across the Polkerris road must have turned in. I looked at my watch. It was twenty to eleven. Then I heard the sound of the doctor's car coming along the main road from Fowey, and I began to sweat again, not from fear but from relief. He turned down the drive and came to a standstill in the sweep before the house. I went through the garden to meet him.

"Thank G.o.d you've come," I said.

We went into the house together, and I pointed up the stairs. "First room at the top, on the right. That's my dressing-room, but she's locked the bathroom beyond. Tell them who you are. I'll wait for you down here."

He ran upstairs, two steps at a time, and I kept thinking that the silence from above meant that Vita was dying, that she was lying on the bed, and the boys were crouching beside her, too terrified to move. I went into the music-room and sat down, wondering what would happen if he told me Vita was dead. All of it was happening. All of it was true.

He was up there a long time, and presently I heard the sound of s.h.i.+fting furniture; they must be dragging the divan bed through the bathroom to the bedroom, and I could hear the doctor talking, and Teddy too. I wondered what the h.e.l.l they were doing. I went and listened at the foot of the stairs, but they had gone through to the bedroom again and shut the door. I sat on in the music-room, waiting. He came down just after the clock in the hail struck eleven. "Everything's under control," he said. "No panic stations. Your wife's all right, and so are your stepsons. Now what about you?"

I tried to stand up, but he pushed me back into the chair.

"Have I hurt her?" I asked.

"Slight bruising on the neck, nothing more," he said. "It may look a bit blue tomorrow, but it won't show if she wears a scarf."

"Did she tell you what happened?"

"Supposing you tell me?"

"I'd rather hear her version first," I said.

He took a cigarette out of a packet and lighted it. "Well," he said, "I gather you didn't want any dinner, for reasons known best to yourself, and she spent the evening in here with the boys, while you were in the library. Then they decided to go to bed, and she found you had gone to the kitchen and switched on the lights. There was bacon on the stove burnt to a frazzle, the stove still on, but n.o.body there. So she went down to the bas.e.m.e.nt. It seems you were standing there, near the old kitchen, so she said, waiting for her to come downstairs, and as soon as you saw her you went straight across to the foot of the stairs and began swearing at her, and then you put your hands round her throat and tried to throttle her."

"That's right," I said.

He looked at me sharply. Perhaps he thought I would deny it. "She insists you were fighting drunk and didn't know what you were doing," he said, "but it was a pretty grim experience for all of them, and she and those boys were scared out of their wits. More so, as I gather you're not a drinking type."

"No," I said, "I'm not. And I wasn't drunk."

He did not answer for a moment. Then he came and stood in front of me, and taking some sort of flash thing from the bag he had with him he examined my eyes. Afterwards he felt my pulse.

"What are you on?" he asked abruptly.

"On?"

"Yes, what drug. Tell me straight, and I'll know how to treat you."

"That's just it," I said. "I don't know."

"Was it something Professor Lane gave you?"

"Yes," I replied.

He sat down on the arm of the sofa beside my chair. "By mouth or by injection?"

"By mouth."

"Was he treating you for something specific?"

"He wasn't treating me for anything. It was an experiment. Something I volunteered to do for him. I've never taken drugs in my life before I came down here."

He went on looking at me with his shrewd eyes, and I knew there was nothing for it but to tell him everything.

"Was Professor Lane on the same drug when he walked into that goods-train?" he asked.

"Yes."

He got off the sofa and began walking up and down the room, fiddling with things on tables, picking them up and putting them down again, as Magnus himself used to do when coming to a decision.

"I ought to get you into hospital for observation," he said.

"No, I said, for G.o.d's sake..." I got up from my chair. "Look," I said, "I've got the stuff in a bottle upstairs. It's all there is left. One bottle. He told me to destroy everything I found here in his lab, and I did-it's all buried in the wood above the garden. I only kept the one bottle, and I used some of it today. It must be different in some way-stronger, I don't know-but you take it away, have it a.n.a.lysed, anything. Surely you realise, after what has happened tonight, I couldn't touch the stuff again? Christ! I might have killed my wife."

"I know," he said. "That's why you ought to be in hospital." He did not know. He did not understand. How could he understand?