Lady Catherine's Necklace (16 page)

The reason for his standing was now made evident: it was so that he could delve into his breeches' pockets. He did so, first in one, then the other, and finally brought forth a key.

‘Locked door – keep out thieves – meddlers—'

He lurched uncertainly to the door, thrust the key into the lock and turned it.

Lady Catherine was beside herself with wrath.

‘Do you mean to tell me that all this time –
all this time
– if I had known, I could have been free, have left this miserable den?'

‘Couldn't have gone far, though,' said the man. He leaned weakly against the wall and made a vague, fumbling gesture towards the vista beyond the doorway.

The noise of rushing water had grown considerably louder.

Lady Catherine stepped to the doorway and looked out.

Her spirits, which had risen a moment ago, sank sickeningly. She saw that the building which housed them stood on a point of rock between two overflowing watercourses. These met together beyond the point and poured into the ocean – white, tumultuous waves hurling themselves ferociously on to a rocky coast.

‘Can't get out till flood goes down. This is an island, now, see? Or as good as.'

The man, Ben Trelawny, turned indoors again and sat down on the mattress.

*   *   *

‘Terrible floods they've been having in the West Country,' said Mrs Jenkinson. ‘My sister writes from Bristol that rivers have been bursting their banks and tides have been extra high; my sister's letter has taken more than
ten days
to reach me. Do you think, Lord Luke, that it may be on account of these circumstances that we have heard no more relating to poor dear Lady Catherine? It is dreadfully worrying, indeed! One does not know what to think.'

‘Yes, there may be something in that,' agreed Lord Luke quite cheerfully. ‘I have been reading in
The Times
newspaper, which Mr Delaval was so kind as to bring me from Ashford, that the port of Brinmouth has been half washed away by the flooding of the Brin River bursting its banks and rushing down unexpectedly from the high moorland country farther inland, with great loss of life and many houses, and the harbour wall swept straight into the sea. Was not Brinmouth the port from which my sister proposed to take ship for Great Morran?'

‘Yes, indeed it was! Oh, gracious me! Poor Lady Catherine may be waiting to embark all this time at some wretched hostelry.'

‘You think, then, Mrs Jenkinson, that the ransom note may be nothing but a hoax?'

‘Oh, I do not know
what
to think!' exclaimed Mrs Jenkinson, bursting into tears. She clapped her hands to her brow, crying, ‘My head! Oh, my poor head! This will be the death of me!' and tottered away to her own room.

‘She has suffered from many more migraines since my mother left Rosings,' Anne remarked calmly. ‘You would think it would be otherwise, considering the hard life she leads when Mamma is at home.'

‘Perhaps she is one of those people who thrive best under a tyrannical rule,' suggested Miss Delaval.

‘She is worried about what will happen if my mother never comes back,' said Anne.

‘The boy Joss is here wishful to speak to you, my lord,' announced Frinton.

‘Oh, bless me! I wonder if he has made any find of importance?' Lord Luke hoisted himself eagerly from his chair. ‘I will see him in the library, Frinton,' and he hurried from the room.

‘Wait, Uncle! I have something for Joss. I will come with you,' Anne said, following Lord Luke. She paused in the doorway and turned to cast a somewhat satirical glance at Miss Delaval and Colonel FitzWilliam before she went out, leaving them together.

*   *   *

Maria Lucas, after practising on the church organ for an hour, felt herself reluctant to quit the sequestered, tranquil little building. Dearly though she loved her small niece and nephew, she sometimes found their addiction to non-stop games highly fatiguing. Furthermore, now that their father was returned from Hertfordshire, no place in the parsonage was safe either from the children's wish to play, or their father's loquacity.

The organ in Hunsford church was located in a gallery over the main entrance, looking down on to the nave. When she had played her fill, Maria transferred to the bench that ran along by the gallery rail, tucked her feet on a hassock and rested her elbows on the rail, her chin on her arms, and brooded.

I ought to go home, she thought. This Kentish visit has lasted too long already. Meeting Colonel FitzWilliam again has unsettled me. I thought I would know, after being in his company again, whether I loved him or not; but I still am not sure. Seeing him troubles me deeply – but is that love? It causes me acute pain to see him in the company of Priscilla Delaval – but is that love, or mere despicable jealousy? I do not feel the same pain, or not to that degree, when he talks to Anne de Bourgh. Perhaps because their manner to each other is so cold and distant; or, because I know he marries her only out of compliance to family ordinance. But
does
he marry her? Is it merely a flirtation that he conducts with Miss Delaval, or has he indeed transferred his affections to her? Oh, how I long to be at home, soothed and fortified by familiar companions and duties … But Mrs Jennings writes that she is not in good health just now, and hopes that I can defer my return visit to Berkeley Street for a few weeks, since she wishes to see me again on my way home but has not, at the present time, sufficient strength to enjoy the shopping and the sociability that my visit would entail … Dear, dear Mrs Jennings, I hope there is nothing greatly amiss with her; she is such a kind, good friend … I am sure
I
do not wish for shopping and sociability, but merely to see her, and enjoy a comfortable talk with her, and listen to her advice. Charlotte gives me advice, and it is well meant, but it does not chime with my own sentiments. I think life with Mr Collins is changing Charlotte. I would not go so far as to say that it is making her hard-hearted, but she is not so accessible as she was to other people's feelings. She has to protect herself, I suppose.

Charlotte wishes me to remain at Hunsford until Lady Catherine's return, but when will that be? There is something decidedly odd regarding that whole business of Lady Catherine's visit to her sister-in-law. Can the woman be dead? Or gone away? It is not like Lady Catherine to be at the centre of a mystery…

Maria's head drooped more heavily on her crossed arms. The silence, the smell of damp stone, beeswax and aged woodwork calmed and lulled her, and she sank into a light repose.

She was awakened by the sound of voices – men's voices. They were not loud, but seemed quite close at hand. After a moment or two Maria realized that the two men in question must be standing just down below her, in the nave of the church.

‘You have not heard from your uncle?'

‘No, not since the original arrangement was made.'

‘It is very disturbing…'

‘There was to have been a second note?'

‘Certainly. My uncle gave the first note to the maid, Hoskins, to be despatched from Launceston or Truro. Then the second note should have been despatched from Brinmouth.'

‘By which time the transfer to my uncle should have taken place and the – and the domicile established.'

‘Just so. Is it not strange that you have heard nothing from your uncle?'

‘Well – even at his best he is not communicative. I see no reason, simply from his silence, to conclude that the scheme has gone awry.'

‘It is disturbing, though. My uncle is far from easy in his mind. He fears that something – something untoward, some mischance, may have taken place.'

‘The whole affair – I collect such were to have been your uncle's intentions – was to have been merely a trick, a laughable artifice, nothing serious, a mere piece of foolery?'

‘Of
course!
'

‘Your uncle's aims in the matter being – not ransom?'

‘Dear me, no. His aim in the matter was –
don't
ask me why – some time for him to spend alone at Rosings, or at least without his sister's overbearing presence in the house, to search for something. Such a search as you have seen him daily concerned with. What his object is, he will by no means divulge – but to have my Aunt Catherine out of the way was to him a matter of prime importance. Connecting back, possibly, to some episode buried in the long-distant past when they were children together.'

‘There was no financial incentive? I know that my uncle was paid a certain sum—'

‘No such incentive was mentioned to me.'

While this exchange had been taking place, Maria was on tenterhooks.

Both voices were familiar to her. But by the time she had taken in the extraordinary, the outrageous nature of what was under discussion, it was too late to make her presence known. And in fact, she was too engrossed in listening, in trying to make sense of what they said, to wish to interrupt them.

‘So what can be done?'

‘Somebody should perhaps travel to the West Country to ascertain the state of affairs there.'

‘Indeed yes, I agree, but who?'

‘
You
are without doubt the properest person.'

‘But I undertook to remain here.'

‘Circumstances have altered, however.'

There was a longish pause. Then:

‘They have indeed! The death of poor Finglow, for instance.'

Another pause. Then, coldly:

‘What has that to say to anything?'

Maria decided that this had been going on long enough. She had brought a hymnal with her. She dropped this over the gallery rail and it fell into the nave with a loud thump.

There followed an appalled silence. Then a voice – that of FitzWilliam – called: ‘Is anybody up there?'

Maria said, ‘Yes.'

One set of hurried, running footsteps left the church. They sounded panic-stricken. After a moment slower, more measured steps could be heard mounting the stairs to the gallery.

Maria picked up her music and met Colonel FitzWilliam at the top of the stairway.

X

Letters found in the attics of Rosings House

My dearest, dearest L.,

It is Christmas night. The snow is ticking against the window panes. I lie in my chilly bed, with B. beside me, and listen to the sobbing of the wind. I do not sob myself, but my heart is heavy – very heavy, at the knowledge that never, nevermore in this life shall I lie beside you, shall I be able to reach out my hand to touch yours, that although hardly a mile of parkland divides us, we are as severed as if the whole globe lay between us, as if you were in the Antipodes or the Indies. Your hand! I can feel it between mine as if it lay there in fondness and comfort, as it has so many, many times.

It is queer to recall that all our times of joy together were in spring and summer, with the song of birds and the scent of cowslips and may blossom around us – very different from tonight's hoary gloom and the ceaseless, relentless wind. We hardly knew how happy we were during that tender time. Oh, yes, we did; oh, yes, indeed,
indeed
we did.

I am not ungrateful. I
had
the time, and shall cherish the recollection of it until my dying hour.

I have risen from my couch and write these lines by the last glow of the embers. B. will not notice my absence from his side – he has this idea that abstinence from his connubial rights will shorten his time in purgatory and win him a swifter passage to paradise. You can believe that I am glad of this.

I have a Christmas gift for you, but it is not of the kind that can be tucked into our secret hollow in the old sycamore. No, you will have to wait until March or perhaps April to have knowledge of it.

Goodnight my love, my love. A happy Christmas to you. I shall see you across the church tomorrow,

L.

Dearest L.,

The snowdrops in the parsonage garden are just beginning to show their tips above the ground. I wonder if yours are showing in the cherry orchard? (I think our garden is more sheltered.) I remember the wonderful greenish-white counterpane of snowdrops between the black cherry boles when you and I first met there. You said: ‘Are you telling your fortune by counting cherry trees, Mrs Godwin?' And I was shy, not knowing how to reply.

Later you made up a nonsense rhyme:

Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor,

Butcher, baker, collier, nailor,

Lawyer, farmer, carter, whaler,

Parson, mason, bosun, jailer

    None of these

    Her heart can please

Only one, in the cherry grove

Has power to capture Lucy's love.

By the time you made up that rhyme, the celandines and wood anemones were replacing the snowdrops, and our honey-time had begun … It makes me happy to remember.

As I walk abroad now, the village women are beginning to look at me in a friendly way and to wish me Godspeed. Your Christmas gift will perhaps arrive in time for Easter.

My love, my love,

L.

Dearest L.,

Now the daffodils, which yesterday were whipping in the gusty wind, making a brave show – now they are bent and shattered under sharp snow and slashing hail. May it not be so with my hopes. I walk heavily now, but my heart is joyful. My preparations are all made – I have a cradle, robes, shawls, caps and a most loving welcome ready for the reminder of our halcyon orchard days. B. has at last become aware of my condition – but it does not seem to cause him any wonder or dubiety or mistrust … He thinks it a gift from heaven (as do I), or that it must, somehow, have come about without his having been aware of the matter (which, you might say, is the case).

Do I wish for a boy, or a girl? I will not tempt Providence by expressing a wish…

This comes with all my love,

L.

My dearest, dearest L.,

Now my time will soon be here. After this week I do not think I shall be able to make my way to the hollow sycamore, so here is an end of our correspondence. And, should anything untoward happen, should this be my last letter, it comes only to express again my deep, undying love. You were right that our clandestine meetings must cease. They did not become us, they did not become our companions, our duties, our lives. But the feelings remain, and leave a glow that will irradiate all the rest of our days.