Читать книгу High of Heart - Emilie Loring - Страница 6

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The plump, short, white-haired woman in creaking black taffeta, snowy collar and cuffs of incredible fineness, who had spoken, was halfway between the door and the fireplace. Her cheeks, crisscrossed with wrinkles like a waffle, burned with the color of a red Mackintosh apple, her brown eyes were worried. This must be “Bunny” the beloved housekeeper of whom her father had spoken, Con decided. It must have been ESP, that “extra-sensory perception,” which had brought her into the room at the critical moment to prevent a battle of wills.

“You know I didn’t ring.” Lord Gowan’s voice had lost its aggressiveness as if the woman’s presence had been a reminder. “Constance, this is Mrs. Bunthorne, who came to the Towers when your father was a little boy.”

“And he never forgot her. He told me how wonderful she had been to him.”

Tears flooded the housekeeper’s eyes in response to the warmth of Con’s smile and the unsteadiness of her voice.

“Did he? Did he really, my lady? Master Gordon was the darling of my heart and you’re as bonny as I knew his child would be.” She brushed away a tear with a plump hand.

“Tut! Tut! No crying,” Lord Gowan interrupted testily. “Bunthorne, show my granddaughter about the Towers while I talk with the bailiff. Tell Sacks to send him here. Come back to the hall before you go, Constance.”

Mrs. Bunthorne led the way from room to room chattering ceaselessly. “His lordship’s very proud of that word granddaughter, I can see, my lady. This is the gold salon with the famous Fragonard panels. Many’s the time I’ve lingered outside when your father was playing on that very piano. Often it seemed to me I could feel the brush of angels’ wings as they bent down from heaven to listen. He would have been a great musician had he been given the chance.

“Behind this door are iron stairs descending to a dungeon and a tunneled outlet in the stone wall.

“That ceiling painting was discovered under lath and plaster only fifty years ago.”

She led the way up the marble stairway, along a broad corridor, and opened a door.

“And here, my dear, is where the Spanish Bride appears.”

Her hushed voice and the caution with which she tiptoed into the room whose ceilings were adorned with figures and inscriptions painted in raw colors, whose walls were hung with faded shell-pink brocade into which had been woven the family crest, set Con’s nerves a-tingle. The sense of unreality persisted as she looked at the great four-poster bed with the crest carved in the headboard and embroidered in gold on the pink satin spread.

“And who is the Spanish Bride?” she asked in a voice designed to break the magic web which an unseen force seemed to be weaving close about her.

“Didn’t your father tell you, my lady? Didn’t he tell you of the ghost of a woman in gauzy silver draperies who appears at that long window with our coat of arms enameled in colors on the glass, when the waning moon is visible from this room? She comes before the marriage of an heir to the Trent-Gowan title and estates. There is a legend that she loved an untitled man of her own country when in obedience to her father she married one of your ancestors. She brought him a fortune but died. She returns to remind bride or groom to be true to the loved one.”

“She must have skipped a personal appearance when my father—m-married across the ocean,” Con said in a tone she had intended to be sophisticatedly amused but which was punctuated by a nervous gulp.

“I saw her, child. It’s only those who are loyal and true of heart who see her. I thought then we would hear of Master Ernest’s marriage, he was your father’s elder brother. I set down the date in my diary, I have a day by day record of what’s happened at the Towers since I came here forty years ago and photographs of the family at all ages, but since his lordship had his son Gordon traced I’ve learned that the ghost of the Spanish Bride appeared to me the week before his wedding day.”

Con incredulously regarded the woman’s flushed face and excited brown eyes. How could she believe that stuff? She slipped an arm about her ample waist.

“Sometime I’ll sleep in this room, maybe the lady in silver gauze will drop in on me,” she teased. “Oh, come on, Bunny, let’s call it a day about the ghost. You don’t mind if I call you Bunny, do you? That was Dad’s name for you. You needn’t call me ‘my lady,’ either.”

“It makes me proud and happy, my la—dearie, to know that Master Gordon thought of me in exile. I still think of them as ‘Master’ as I called them when they were little boys. He was the darling of my heart.” Mrs. Bunthorne sniffed and swallowed hard. “The Lord was good to us when He sent you to carry on at Trentmere Towers instead of Captain Ivor Hardwick, after his lordship passes on.”

They were descending the white marble stairway, when the housekeeper made the startling statement. Con stopped and regarded her in amazement.

“You don’t think for a minute that I intend to stay here? To live in England, do you?”

“Why of course, my lady.” It was Mrs. Bunthorne’s turn to register surprise. “You couldn’t let his lordship grow old and die without anyone of his own about him, could you?”

“I not only could, but I will.” Sudden tears scalded Con’s eyes. “He let my father die without any of his own family near him, didn’t he?”

“There, dearie, there,” the plump hand patted the girl’s shoulder. “I didn’t mean to tear open an old wound. His lordship loved his younger son, he was his favorite.”

“He took a grand way of showing it, to turn him out of his house and never try to find him. Do you call that love?”

“It’s a part of love, my lady. It’s a twist disappointment gives to love sometimes. The deeper the love the deeper the hurt. Have you never felt bitter toward one you love?”

“I? No. I—”

Con’s indignant denial broke in the middle as into her mind flashed the memory of the unbearable hurt of Peter’s engagement. She remembered the bitter things she had said to him, remembered her repentance after she had put out the light at night, her resolve never again to hurt him and she remembered how the very next day, perhaps, her certainty that he was wrecking his life would get the better of her and her tongue would slip its leash. She loved him more than anyone in the world, he had taken her father’s place, and she had been hateful to him. Who was she to judge her grandfather?

She pressed her lips impulsively to the housekeeper’s wrinkled cheek.

“I’ll remember what you have said, Bunny, dear. Now let’s go back to the hall and I will say good-bye. Peter is arriving tonight and I must be at Cherrytree Farm to welcome him. I shudder to think of his reaction when he sees the battered wreck which once was the cocky Whiskers. That dog adores him. I believe he senses Peter’s presence when he is miles away.”

She was smiling at the thought of Peter’s coming as with her free, graceful walk she crossed the jewel-toned rugs toward Lord Gowan who sat in the carved chair near the fireplace. She hesitated as the man seated opposite him demanded:

“You want me to marry her? No money for me, only the empty title, if I don’t? I say, that’s frightfully unfair. But you’ve got me. This debt must be paid. Settle it for me and I will—” He left the sentence dangling as he saw Con and rose.

As if drawn and held by a powerful magnet her eyes met and clung to his. Her heart seemed to drop. It was too fleeting a sensation to be a premonition, too formless to be a warning. His eyes were brown with topaz lights. They were compelling eyes. His features were the most perfect she had ever seen on a man’s face. His skin, now darkly red as if from anger, made his light brown hair and small mustache seem blond. His clothes were perfection. When he smiled and disclosed teeth almost as even and white as Peter’s, she liked him, liked him tremendously. He came forward with outstretched hand.

“So this is the long-lost heir,” he said in a voice which set her heart beating queerly. As she continued to look at him in puzzled questioning, he added gaily:

“I say, I’m the man you’ve pushed out. I am your cousin, Ivor Hardwick.”

He turned to her grandfather who was standing before the fire glowering from beneath bushy brows.

“By Jove, I withdraw my objections to your plan, Lord Van. I’m awfully keen for it. Now will the Honorable Constance Trent pour a cup of tea for an abject admirer?”

Con looked at her grandfather’s frowning face and then back to the man who was twisting an infinitesimal mustache as he regarded her with intent eyes. She laughed.

“And I had always heard that the British were slow. You’re the fastest worker I’ve ever met, Cousin Ivor. Lemon or milk?”

Half an hour later as she passed between the lacy iron entrance gates of Trentmere Towers into the road which led to Cherrytree Farm she looked back. Against a shrimp-pink sky the house towered tall and forbidding like a grim overlord frowning down upon the farms and light-suffused fields, upon the slim white spires of parish churches, upon ranks of trees standing stiff and immovable as a regiment of soldiers on parade and upon the silver ribbon of river and the faraway blue hills.

She walked on and the vision of the great house went with her. She thought of the man, her father’s father, who ruled there and of her curious feeling in the hall that after many years she had come home from a far country. She remembered the flicker in Ivor Hardwick’s eyes, the hint of earnestness in his laughing voice as he said:

“By Jove, I withdraw my objection to your plan, Lord Van.”

What had he meant by that? Had the plan concerned her? She felt a sudden inner conviction that it had. Was it her grandfather’s intention to force her life into a pattern of his choosing? Little chills rilled through her veins.

Don’t be foolish, she rebuked herself sternly. We are not living in the Middle Ages. Besides, Peter is coming and if Peter isn’t a match for “his lordship” I’ve missed my guess.

Peter is coming! The words ran like a refrain beneath the surface of her thought which was occupied with the summing up of the events of the last hour. She tried to bring order out of the chaos of impressions.

Her grandfather was as hard, as stalwart, as tough of resistance as one of his own oaks. Apparently he had learned nothing from his experience with his younger son. Would he attempt to break her to his will as he had tried to break her father? Let him try. He would find that she didn’t break.

She smiled as she visualized tender-hearted Bunny and her belief in the visitation of the ghost. She was just the type to be such a goose. Her father’s description of the housekeeper’s dovelike personality had been perfect. So the Spanish Bride had appeared before his marriage? Pity she hadn’t warned, “Stop! Don’t do it!” in a whisper which would have been heard by him across the water.

Curious that she had never seen a picture of her mother. By the time she was old enough to realize that she had run away, all photographs of her had disappeared. When once she had asked about her Gordon Trent had answered, sharply for him:

“That’s behind us, Connie. Forget it.”

She thought of her grandfather’s suggestion that a woman might appear and falsely claim to be her mother. How could he prove that her claim wasn’t just? But, if she were alive, wouldn’t she have appealed to her husband for a divorce long ago? Lord Gowan might be right, maybe she was dead but how could one be sure? Peter and Tim had tried to trace her. If they couldn’t no one could.

It would be interesting to know what the girl whom her father married had looked like. Not like me apparently, she reflected. Dad used to say that I was all Trent-Gowan, except the nose. Allah be praised that I wasn’t endowed with that Romanesque feature.

It was quite evident from the tone in which Mrs. Bunthorne pronounced his name that she had no use for Captain Ivor Hardwick. After that first queer sensation as if her heart had dropped down a dark and dangerous elevator well, she, herself, had liked him. He was breath-takingly good-looking. He had a sense of humor, if slightly imbedded, not the American brand, but it was there. He was carefree and debonair, apparently. There had been a caressing friendliness in his voice which had set her pulses quickstepping and her mind tingling with repartee. In short, in a moment they had been friends. She couldn’t remember ever before having felt such a quick response to a stranger’s personality.

Wonder if Peter will like him, she asked herself and had a prompt conviction that he wouldn’t. She was glad she had firmly refused Ivor’s suggestion that he walk back to Cherrytree Farm with her. She had told him she wanted to be alone, that she might catalogue her impressions, to which he had replied with a quick look at Lord Gowan:

“Right ho. While you’re doing that frightful lot of thinking remember to put me in number-one place in your heart and jolly old England second.”

The word England switched her thoughts to the present. She had been moving like a sleepwalker through this late-afternoon world. And what a beautiful world!

She filled her lungs with the fragrant air cooled by the approach of evening and opened wide the eyes of her mind and senses to the beauty about her. She passed a low stone farmhouse from beside which stole the faint perfume from a row of magnolias. Their boles and boughs glistened like bronze. A million shell-like petals shone mother-of-pearl. A woman’s face peered from behind a lattice window, quite in the manner of a neighborhood busybody in a movie. A little girl in blue-checked gingham swinging on a creaking gate jumped off and bobbed a funny curtsy. She stuck a finger in her mouth and regarded Con with black, saucerlike eyes. The bleat of sheep came from behind the house, with the smell of a barnyard.

A man approached driving loitering black-and-white cows across the road. He was big and ruddy and had a spatulate nose. Con had seen only one like it and that had been in a motion picture. She had wondered then if noses really grew that way or if it were a product of the make-up man. His cotton clothing was as clean as the child’s gingham frock. He touched his red hair in lieu of a cap.

“Welcome home to yer ladyship. I’m farmer Chettle, my missus’ brother is butler up h’at the Towers.”

His voice was courteous, but she didn’t like his eyes. They were small eyes, secrets peered from behind them. She felt the same queer drop of her heart she had experienced when hers had met Ivor Hardwick’s for the first time. As if he felt her distrust he pointed to the cottage garden where early tulips, crimson, white, pink, bronze, yellow and purple, jostled daffodils and narcissus, which, in turn, crowded the polyanthus and the stiff crown imperials. The hum of bees above them sounded like the purr of a faraway plane.

“It tykes a dye like this to bring the posies and the bees h’out proper, ye ladyship.”

He pulled at his hair again and herded the lowing cows through the broad gate of the farmyard.

Con’s eyes followed him until he was out of sight. Was he a Trentmere tenant? He had said, “Welcome home!” Was he, like the occupants of the house towering on top of the slope, taking it for granted that she had come to stay? Could they make her? She had an instant’s panicky sense of futility.

As she approached the stone house, its upper story half-timbered old oak, which sprawled within a frame of yew hedges at Cherrytree Farm, her mind was exclusively preoccupied with a plan for firmly, but politely, impressing upon Major General Lord Vandemere Trent-Gowan, Retired, the fact that she did not intend to remain in England. She was so preoccupied that not until she was almost upon it did she see the shining limousine with two men in green livery before the gate, the posts of which were topped with huge balls.

One of the footmen sprang to the ground and stood rigidly with finger-tips at his hat. She noticed the crest blazoned in colors on the car door. Must be at least a marchioness, calling, she decided.

The afternoon had had such a fairylike quality that she wouldn’t have been surprised to see the footman turn into a fish, like the footman in Alice in Wonderland, see him produce a great letter, hear him declare solemnly:

“For the Duchess. An invitation from the Queen to play croquet.”

As she stepped into the hall, something held her motionless for a second. She had the curious sense that she was on the threshold of a mystery, a mystery which reached far, far back into the past, that she had but to wrench open a tightly locked door in her memory and she would find the truth for which she had been searching confronting her in a blaze of blinding light.

“Silly,” she said under her breath. “Silly. You are not searching for anything, are you? Doubtless you’re having an attack of jitters from the hang-over of a previous incarnation. Perhaps once you lived in this very house. That Spanish Bride stuff got under your skin. Forward, Miss Trent, to meet the Duchess, if it is a Duchess.”