Читать книгу Look with the Heart - Барбара Картленд - Страница 2

Erlina Sherwood stood looking helplessly at the flames soaring higher and higher into the sky.

She could hardly believe that her home was being irretrievably destroyed.

There was a resounding crash as part of the roof fell in and she felt her brother’s hand slip into hers.

“I don’t think we can save anything more,” he sighed.

“No, we must – not go near – it again,” Erlina managed to say.

There was just a small number of chairs and pictures, which she and Gerry, who was eleven, had managed to pull into the garden.

As it was in the middle of the night and they were some distance from the village, no one had come to help them.

The old servants, Dawes and his wife, could only stand motionless staring at the flames and weeping.

It was in fact Dawes who had caused the fire.

He had got out of bed in the night and the candle he had left burning by his bedside had toppled over onto the bed.

He did not realise at first that the bedclothes were burning and, when he did, he tried to put out the fire himself.

When the blaze became too strong for him to cope with, his wife ran screaming out of the back door.

It was only then that he hurried as fast as she could through the house to wake Erlina.

He told her what had happened and had admitted that it was all his fault.

Erlina quickly woke her brother, who was sleeping in the next room.

They pulled on some clothes and ran rapidly downstairs.

By this time the flames were completely out of control.

Sherwood House was very old, in fact it had been built in Tudor times and the wooden beams and floors were dry and quickly caught fire.

Erlina and Gerry had only managed to bring half a dozen pieces out through the front door and into the garden.

The flames were speedily destroying everything she knew and loved.

Another part of the roof then fell in with a deafening crash.

Then there was just the crackle of the flames with the skeleton of the walls silhouetted against night sky.

“What are we going to do?” Gerry asked.

It was a question that Erlina was already asking herself.

She knew that she had to think of the two old servants as well.

“We will have to drive into the village,” she said. “Thank goodness the horses are safe and untouched.”

The stables were fortunately built at some distance from the house and it was obvious that the flames would not reach them.

“What shall we do about the Dawes’s?” Gerry asked.

“We will take them with us,” Erlina replied. “Go and put Nobby between the shafts of the pony cart.”

Gerry ran off.

He was only young, but he was a sensible and helpful little boy.

Erlina walked towards the old couple.

“’Tis really terrible – terrible!” the old woman was sobbing. “Everything’s been burnt, everything!”

Her voice was almost incoherent and Erlina could do nothing but pat her shoulder.

“We have to be brave,” she murmured.

“‘T’were my fault, miss,” Dawes said. “There’s no one to blame but me.”

“It is something that might have happened at any time,” Erlina said consolingly. “The house is so old that I think I always knew that if there was a fire nothing could save it.”

Mrs. Dawes was still sobbing and the tears were running down the old cook’s cheeks.

Erlina felt like crying herself, but she knew that it would do no good.

“I have sent Master Gerry to fetch the pony cart,” she said. “We will then drive into the village and ask the Vicar if we can stay with him for the rest of the night.”

She did not wait to hear what the Dawes’s had to say, but walked off towards the stables knowing that she must help Gerry.

He had already brought Nobby, who was a most reliable old pony, out of his stall and she helped Gerry fit him between the shafts.

The pony cart was old like everything else they possessed.

She thought despairingly that, unless they were to lay down on the straw with the horses, they would not have a roof over their heads.

“Have you fastened the shaft on your side?” she now asked Gerry.

“I think it is all right,” he answered. “It is difficult to see in the dark.”

There were stars overhead, but no moon.

Erlina knew, however, that Nobby would find his way over to the Vicarage without any trouble.

She climbed into the pony cart and picked up the reins.

Then, as Gerry would have joined her, she told him,

“Lock the door of the stables. We don’t want the horses let out tomorrow if people come up here to look at the fire.”

“I don’t suppose they will want to walk so far,” Gerry commented, “except, of course, for the Vicar and his family.”

Erlina did not answer. She only waited while he closed the stable door and had pushed the bolt into place.

Gerry then climbed into the pony cart and Erlina drove carefully out from the stables and down the cobbled way to the front of the house.

The Dawes’s were waiting where she had left them, but there was now even less of the house standing than there had been before.

She could not bear to look at it.

She did not want to know that everything she possessed, including all her clothes, would soon be nothing but ashes.

There was just the small number of things that she and Gerry had rescued lying on the grass some way from the fire.

She wished that they had had time to bring the pictures of their ancestors from the dining room and drawing room.

She had always loved the one of her father, who had been the fifth Baronet. Gerry was now the sixth.

Erlina pulled the pony cart to a standstill.

She then told Mr. and Mrs. Dawes to climb in and Gerry jumped out so that Mrs. Dawes could get in first.

She was still crying and Erlina tried to think of something comforting to say.

But the words would not come to her lips.

Gerry told Dawes to sit beside his wife and he sat next to Erlina.

They then drove off down the drive.

Erlina did not want to look back at the blazing building against the dark foliage of the trees behind it.

She could, however, still hear the crackle of the flames and a faint breeze was blowing burning cinders over the lawn.

Then there was only the clip-clop of Nobby’s hoofs on the gravelled drive.

When they reached the gates, the fire was out of sight.

Then there were only the stars overhead and, when they turned into it, the darkness of the village with its empty and ruined cottages.

Erlina drove the pony trap on until they came to the grey Norman Church where she had been christened and later confirmed.

Her mother and father were buried in the churchyard in the family vault and it contained all the previous members of the family who had lived in Sherwood House since it was first built.

The Vicarage, which was beside the Church, was only about a hundred years old.

The window frames and doors were badly in need of paint and, as Erlina knew, there was a hole in the roof that had not been repaired.

Gerry rushed out and raised the knocker on the front door.

He knocked twice before a window opened and the Vicar put out his head.

“Who is it?” he asked. “What do you want?”

“It is me, Erlina Sherwood. Our house is on fire and, as we have nowhere to go, we have come to you, Vicar.”

“Goodness gracious!” the Reverend Piran Garnet exclaimed. “I will come downstairs at once.”

It took some minutes for him to dress before he opened the front door.

The Vicar, a middle-aged man, had always been respected and loved by his parishioners and now there were very few remaining.

As he saw that Gerry was waiting for him on the doorstep, he put his arm round the boy and pulled him close.

“What has happened, Gerry?” he asked.

“The house caught fire, Vicar,” Gerry answered, “and already there is almost nothing left – nothing at all.”

Erlina thought afterwards that it was characteristic of the Vicar to have taken everything in his stride.

He sent the Dawes’s to the kitchen and asked them to make some coffee for Erlina and themselves.

And he found a glass of cider for Gerry to drink.

After Nobby had been put in the stable, they went into the sitting room.

“It was Dawes who accidentally started the fire,” Erlina explained to the Vicar, “and he is terribly upset about it. But once the flames had taken a hold in the strong wind, there was nothing that anybody could have done to stop it.”

“I can understand that,” the Vicar nodded. “I will go up to the house first thing in the morning to see if any of the furniture can be saved.”

Erlina shook her head.

“There is no chance of that. Gerry and I managed to carry a few things out of the hall, but it was too dangerous to attempt to rescue anything from any of the rooms.”

The Vicar wisely did not let them talk for long.

He took them upstairs and told Gerry to get into bed with one of his two sons.

By taking his daughter into his bed with him and his wife, he provided Erlina with a bed too.

She knew only too well that there were no habitable rooms on the top floor as the roof leaked and there was no one left in the village to do the repairs even if the Vicar had been able to pay for them.

Before Erlina fell asleep from sheer exhaustion, she was wondering despairingly where she and Gerry could go.

How and where would they be able to live in the future?

‘Please God – help us,” she prayed, “please – please.’

*

When Erlina, with dark lines under her eyes, came down for breakfast the next morning she found Gerry already seated at the table.

The Vicar’s two children were also there and Mrs. Garnet was bringing in their breakfast from the kitchen.

She put the plates down in front of the children before kissing Erlina.

“I am so sorry,” she said, “sorrier than I can possibly say. How can such a dreadful thing have happened to you and Gerry?”

“I have already spoken to old Henry,” the Vicar said. “He saw the fire through the trees last night and walked up at dawn to see what had happened.”

“That was kind of him,” Erlina remarked.

She knew that Henry was an old man from the village who found it difficult to walk far.

“I am afraid he came back with bad news,” the Vicar continued. “The fire is subsiding simply because there is now nothing more left to burn.”

It was only what Erlina had expected.

At the same time she felt that it was a dagger-thrust in her breast.

“Henry gave the horses water and some food,” the Vicar went on, “and told me that the chickens were all right.”

Erlina could not even smile her thanks.

“Now don’t start worrying until you have had some breakfast,” Mrs. Garnet said. “Thank Heaven, we have hens, otherwise we would be starving to death like everyone else who is left in this benighted place!”

As she finished speaking, she walked back into the kitchen.

Erlina looked at the Vicar.

“Have you heard anything from the Marquis?” she asked him in a low voice.

The Vicar shook his head.

“We are living only on what the Bishop can send me out of charity,” he replied. “He has written to his Lordship, but there has been no reply.”

“I cannot believe it!” Erlina cried. “How can he behave in this appalling manner to you as well as to everyone else in the Parish?”

“I cannot understand it myself,” the Vicar agreed, “and Meldon Hall is becoming almost as dilapidated as we are!”

There was no need for him to say anything further.

Erlina had talked and talked about the dreadful conditions in which they were all living and there were no words left to describe the behaviour of the Marquis of Meldon with.

When the old Marquis had died five years ago, his son had come into the title and the large estate. And everyone had expected things to go on as they always had in the past.

It had only been a question of when the new Marquis would come back to his home.

He would, they thought, reorganise the lives of the villagers as his father and grandfather had done before him.

Practically every man and woman worked in some capacity on the estate or in the ‘Big House’ as had always happened in so many villages throughout the country.

After six months had passed everybody began to be even more apprehensive.

And they asked nervously what was going on at Meldon Hall.

First of all, there was no sign of the Marquis.

Then Mr. Cranley, who had been the Manager in charge of the house and the estate for years, began to give the workers notice to leave.

“What’s ’appening? Why be us sent away?” they asked him indignantly.

Because it was so traditional, their fathers, their grandfathers and their great-grandfathers had all worked at Meldon over many years.

It was extremely difficult for Mr. Cranley, who was a kindly and warm-hearted man.

He had to explain that the new Marquis had no intention of spending any money on his estate.

He also would not keep any servants in the house, which he did not intend to visit at any time.

“But why? Why?” everybody asked forlornly over and over again.

Mr. Cranley could give them no explanation whatsoever.

Then, as a year passed by and then another, all the able men had left the village in search of jobs.

They had to find work elsewhere to keep themselves and their wives and children.

What was more, the cottages, which desperately needed repair, began to fall down from endless neglect.

Finally, after five years, there was hardly anyone left in the village except for four men who worked for Sir Richard Sherwood.

Then they too began to leave after he become so desperately ill.

“’Tis just like this, miss,” they explained to Erlina, ‘Our friends ’ave gone and there be nowhere in the village now the inn’s closed where us can even stop and ’ave a drink.”

“I know that,” Erlina replied, “but we need you. How can we work our land if you are not here?”

“I understands your feelings, miss,” one man said, “but the Missus says ’er’s not walkin’ two miles for a shop and you knows as Mister Geary’s gone broke.”

There was nothing that Erlina could say to comfort any of them.

She had wished despairingly that her father was well enough to even talk with the men.

But Sir Richard was a dying man because he had suffered a severe stroke for no apparent reason when he had seemed so fit and vigorous.

When he did die, she was left with Gerry to look after and the Dawes’s who had nowhere else to go even if they wanted to.

They stayed on in the house that Erlina loved and which had always been her home.

It was so heart-breaking to see the garden going to rack and ruin and to realise that their four hundred acres of land was now growing nothing but weeds.

It meant too that she and Gerry had very little income to live on.

Now that he was eleven, she knew that in a year’s time he ought to be going to Eton as it was where their father had been educated and most of their relations.

She would lie awake night after night wondering what on earth she could do.

Then in the morning she would struggle to keep the house clean and she had to drive nearly two miles to buy the small amount of food that they could actually afford.

She kept asking herself how they could go on like this, but could not find an answer.

The Garnets at the Vicarage were the only people who she could talk to.

But they could find no solution for their own problems let alone those of anyone else.

Every time Erlina drove through the village and could see the abandoned cottages and their weed-filled gardens, she hated the Marquis more and more.

It was quite impossible to tell him what she felt as he had not deigned even to answer the plaintive letters written to him by the Vicar.

It was Mrs. Garnet who was most voluble about it.

“The man is a murderer, that is what he is!” she said when she and Erlina were alone. “I know that the old people would have lived longer if they had kept their pensions and, if my husband did not receive a pittance from the Bishop, we too would starve to death!”

“Surely something can be done?” Erlina asked her.

“My husband thought of going up to London and speaking to the Marquis himself,” Mrs. Garnet said. “But it would be very expensive and I doubt if his Lordship would even trouble himself to see him!”

“Why is he behaving like this?” Erlina enquired.

“That is what we are all asking,” she replied. “There is plenty written in the newspapers about him enjoying himself, racing his horses at Newmarket, hunting in Leicestershire and attending parties given by the Prince Regent, all of which cost thousands and thousands of pounds.”

Erlina knew that Mrs. Garnet had a sister who lived in London and she would send her the newspapers from time to time and this was why she knew so much about the Marquis’s movements.

The more Erlina heard about him, the more she felt that he must be growing horns like the Devil himself.

He so obviously never gave a thought to the people who had always depended upon his family for employment and their pensions when they grew older.

“I hate him! I hate him!” she would say night after night.

But she was quite certain that, however violent her feelings were, they would not disturb the ‘Wicked Marquis’.

Now as Mrs. Garnet came back to the breakfast table to put a poached egg in front of Erlina, she said to her husband,

“Have you thought of where Erlina and Gerry can go? Much as we love them, you know, Piran, there is no room fit for them to stay here in the Vicarage.”

“I am aware of that,” the Vicar said quietly, “and there is only one place that they can go.”

“Where can that be?” Erlina asked him with some surprise in her voice.

She did not believe that he could be clever enough to find somewhere suitable for her and Gerry.

“Mr. Cranley must accommodate them at The Hall,” the Vicar responded.

If he had dropped a bomb on the table, Erlina could not have been more surprised.

“Do you mean – Meldon Hall?” she gasped.

“Why not? As you are well aware, there is really nowhere else,” the Vicar said. “There is not a cottage in the village that does not have leaks and, while we would love to have you, you know yourself that there is no room here unless you sleep on the floor.”

“I think that is a very sensible suggestion,” Mrs. Garnet said. “After all, Mr. Cranley is alone in that big house as he has been for the last five years and so he has had to look after himself since Lucy died.”

Lucy had been the last remaining servant, Erlina knew, who had stayed on at The Hall after all the other servants had been given notice to leave.

She was crippled with arthritis, had no relatives who anyone knew about and nowhere else to go.

She had been the Marquis’s nursery maid when he was a small boy and then, when Mr. Cranley had told her that she had to leave, she had answered him firmly,

“This be my home and the only way I’ll be leavin’ here be in a coffin!”

Mr. Cranley had not been able to pay her anything and he himself received only a very small wage from the Marquis’s Solicitors. And this was for acting as caretaker at Meldon Hall and managing the estate what was left of it.

It was the same money that he had received twenty years earlier when he had first gone there and he had hoped when the new Marquis took over that it would be increased.

What had happened was that his wages did arrive, but now he had to pay for his food and anything else that he required, which he had not had to do in the past.

He had stayed on because, as for Lucy, it had become his home and he had nowhere else to go as well.

Erlina had often thought that it was a miserable and lonely existence for him.

Mr. Cranley was an educated man who had served the family to the best of his ability for more than twenty years.

He had then been left to a life of loneliness on what was almost a starvation diet.

Still the house was there and, as she thought about it, Erlina just knew that the Vicar was right.

“It will give you a respite, Erlina,” he said now, “to write to your relatives and tell them what has happened. I feel sure that one of them will be able to take you in.”

“I very much doubt it,” Erlina answered. “As you know, Papa’s brothers and sisters are all dead. The few cousins that are left live in Yorkshire and I think there are two still alive in Cornwall.”

The Vicar knew without her saying anything more that she and Gerry certainly could not afford to travel such long distances.

“The first thing that you have to do is to have somewhere to sleep,” he said in a practical voice, “and after that we must think about your future.”

“You are so kind to me,” Erlina smiled.

She had noticed while they had been talking that Mrs. Garnet had no egg for breakfast and she was eating only toast with a thin scraping of butter.

She knew only too well that she and Gerry must not impose on their hospitality.

Yet she had never imagined for one moment that she might live at Meldon Hall, which was an enormous house.

It had been largely re-built in the last century and it was most impressive to look at from all directions.

Yet Erlina had heard that the whole top floor of the house was now uninhabitable.

In several of the State bedrooms, the ceilings had fallen in through years of untreated damp.

At the same time the structure of the building was strong and resilient.

It would take very much longer to destroy it than the cottages, which had all collapsed within five years or less without any attention or repairs.

The village inn, once it was closed, had quickly begun to fall into decay.

Aloud she now said,

“You are quite right, Vicar. Gerry and I will go up to The Hall and ask Mr. Cranley to take us in. At least we will have plenty of room there to move about in.”

She tried to speak bravely and with a smile.

But the tears were very near to the surface as she thought that she would never again be able to go home.

She drank a little coffee.

Then she said,

“I suppose I had better take the Dawes’s with me as well.”

“There is nowhere for them to stay in the village,” the Vicar said, “and they might be useful in cleaning up The Hall.”

“Mrs. Dawes is a good cook when she has any of the ingredients,” Erlina answered, “so perhaps Mr. Cranley would be pleased to have her there.”

She was hoping that this would be the case as there was nowhere else suitable in the vicinity.

So if Mr. Cranley refused to let them stay in the house where he was still in charge, they would have to sleep on hay bales in the stables with the horses and there was, she told herself, literally no other place for them.

Mrs. Garnet began to clear away the plates and the Vicar’s children had not left a crumb.

When Erlina looked at them, she felt that, attractive though they were, they were all three of them far too thin.

The Vicar too looked older than his age.

She felt her hatred for the Marquis well up inside her again and she wanted to denounce him as she had often done before.

Then she asked herself what was the point? He was impervious to anything that might be said of him.

It was therefore only poetic justice that she and Gerry should take shelter under his roof when they had nowhere else to go.

As the Vicar rose from his chair, she said,

“We will go up to The Hall now – and thank you a million times for being so kind to us.”

The Vicar put his hand on her shoulder.

“I wish I could do more,” he said, “but you know how difficult things are at present.”

“Of course I know,” Erlina answered, “and I only hope that the wicked, wicked Marquis burns in a special Hell that is kept for people as bad as he is!”

The Vicar’s eyes twinkled.

Then, as he kissed Erlina’s cheek, he said,

“You know quite well that I cannot say ‘Amen’ to that.”

They both laughed and somehow it broke the tension.

“I think it’s just spiffing that we are going to The Hall,” Gerry piped up. “I have always wanted to explore those big big rooms, but you would not let me.”

“You will have your chance now,” Erlina said, “and Goodness knows what we may find.”

“I expect it is full of ghosts!” Gerry said. “If Tom comes to see me tomorrow, we will play Hide and Seek.”

Tom Garnet was about the same age as Gerry and looked pleased at the idea.

“I would like that,” he said. “May I go, Papa?”

“I can see no reason why not,” the Vicar replied.

Then he turned to Erlina.

“You had better not give Mr. Cranley too much of a shock,” he said, “so I will send Tom up to play with Gerry as soon as you are settled in.”

“I want to go too,” Tom said, who was little more than one year younger than Gerry.

“And me! And me!” Helen cried, who was only five.

“We shall all go later,” the Vicar promised, “but you must understand that we cannot go today.”

The children looked disappointed, but they were very obedient and respectful.

“I cannot come to see you this afternoon,” the Vicar said to Erlina, “as I have promised my wife that I will take her to the shop in the next village.”

He paused for a moment to clear his throat and then continued,

“But I will come tomorrow and then perhaps we can make arrangements as to how Gerry is to continue with his lessons.”

Erlina had been teaching her brother in the best way that she could. It was the Vicar, however, who had taught him Latin and arithmetic besides giving him an interest in literature.

It had been an excellent arrangement.

Erlina, however, was always uncomfortably conscious that they should be paying for his tuition.

As that was impossible, she could only express how grateful she was to the Vicar over and over again.

“I know that Gerry will have no difficulties in getting into Eton,” she had said only last week.

She had been wondering constantly how she would ever be able to find enough money to pay for the school fees.

She just hoped that by some miracle something would happen before next September and that was when he was due to take his entrance tests.

She had thought that the only possibility was to ignore the fact that the best pictures in the house were entailed onto Gerry’s son when he had one.

The Trustees, who were supposed to see that the pictures were not sold, had not called at Sherwood House to inspect them for over three years now.

They were getting old and it was a long journey for each of them to undertake.

‘It may be cheating,’ Erlina had said to herself, ‘but what is the point of a picture on the wall if Gerry is unable to go to Eton?’

She therefore renewed her efforts to teach him herself and she had been more grateful than ever to the Vicar for doing the same.

She could not help feeling that the large library that she knew Meldon Hall contained would be of tremendous help to Gerry with his studies if to nobody else.

She had never been in The Hall and her father had not been particularly friendly with the last Marquis.

He naturally met him occasionally on committees in the County and at social gatherings such as local Race Meetings.

But the Marchioness had considered that she was too grand to bother with people in the County. With, of course, the exception of the Lord Lieutenant.

She had therefore not included Sir Richard and Lady Sherwood in any of her parties or special occasions.

She had in fact spent more time in Meldon House in London than she did at Meldon Hall.

It was only the old Marquis who, during the last few years of his life, had stayed put in the country and refused to leave it.

Erlina could remember seeing the present Marquis, when he was a youth, riding through the village.

She had never met him and he was eight years older than she was.

This meant that, as she was now nineteen, he would be twenty-seven.

He was, she thought bitterly, old enough to know how to behave.

*

Climbing into the pony cart, Erlina and Gerry waved goodbye to the Garnets.

As Erlina drove up the mile long drive that led to Meldon Hall, she could not suppress a little thrill of excitement.

She had seen the building from a distance, but only because she had taken the liberty of riding a little way up the drive. As she peeped at the magnificent house it had seemed to her a mystery house simply because she had never been inside it to see for herself.

Her father and mother had not been in the least perturbed at not being accepted by the Meldons.

Lady Sherwood had had a very sweet and gentle disposition.

She had never said an unkind word about anybody and she was also somewhat shy and reserved. She had no desire to push herself onto people who she thought were more at home in London Society than in the country.

She was, however, an excellent rider, just as she had taught her children to be and she was happiest when she was riding with her husband over their own land.

In the winter they hunted with a small pack nearby that was certainly not smart enough for the Meldons.

When her mother was alive, Erlina had felt that the house was always filled with laughter and love.

Sometimes they had friends to stay, but most of the time they were alone and enjoying their own company

But there had always seemed to be more than enough to do and life was very amenable.

She had been only sixteen when her mother had died and then her father fell ill shortly afterwards.

It was then that the days had seemed long and the evenings more and more lonely.

When she and Gerry were finally alone, it was very frightening. By this time the village was dying too and she felt sometimes as if a great black cloud had descended over them.

It seemed to be coming closer and closer until she had the feeling that she herself would be swallowed up.

The cause of it, of course, was the appalling behaviour of the ‘Wicked Marquis’.

It was he who had put an evil spell on everyone from which they could not escape.