Voices in a Haunted Room (8 page)

“Sanity!” retorted Jonathan. “If sanity is devoting oneself exclusively to books and mathematics, then the world would not have progressed very far.”

“On the contrary,” contradicted David, “ideas… thought and education have done more to advance it than rash adventurers.”

“I would contest that.”

“That’s enough,” said Dickon. “I suppose you have all been moved to this by the arrival of those refugees. You should have heard some of the stories they have been telling us. France has become a land of savages.”

“There are fine people there still,” said Charlot, “and they are doing all they can to save the country.”

“They’ll have a hard task. I warned them years ago that they were heading for disaster.”

“It’s true,” said my mother. “You did, Dickon.”

“Then they were preaching against us… joining the American colonists. What fools! Who can be surprised at the state they are now in?”

“I can,” said Charlot. “But it is no use trying to make you understand.”

“I understand well enough. You are not very profound, you know. You’re just a little band of idiots. Now that’s an end of the matter. I want to enjoy my roast beef.”

Silence fell on the table. Sabrina, who had come down for the joy of having Dickon at the table and seeing him enjoy his roast beef, looked a little strained. She hated conflict.

My mother was anxious too. It was such a pity. After being away, even for such a short time, she wanted to enjoy her homecoming.

Dickon said he wanted to see Jonathan in his study after the meal. When I went upstairs I heard them talking quietly there.

My mother came to my bedroom. She sat on my bed and looked at me sorrowfully.

“How did all this come about?” she asked.

I told her how they had talked and become so absorbed in their plotting that the rest of us did not seem to exist for them.

“It was Charlot who started it, I think,” I said.

“Charlot was always a patriot. He is his father’s son. It is a pity he and Dickon cannot get on.”

“I don’t think they ever would. They have a natural antipathy.”

She sighed and I smiled at her.

“Dearest Maman,” I said, “you cannot have everything in life, can you? And you have so much.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “I have, and Claudine, remember this when you grow older: one of the best things in life is to have your happiness when you are mature enough to enjoy it.”

“Well, that is the way you have had it.”

She nodded. “Don’t worry about these foolish young men. They’ll realize their folly. Dickon will make them see it.”

But he did not.

They went off secretly the next day and nobody thought anything about them until evening when they did not return.

We spent an uneasy night and the next morning a letter arrived for Dickon from Jonathan.

They had arranged their passage in a boat calling at the Belgian coast and by the time Dickon received the note, they should be about to land.

O
UR HOUSEHOLD WAS DISRUPTED
. Dickon raged and my mother was plunged into melancholy. Although she had never been so close to Charlot as to me, and they had grown farther apart since her marriage to Dickon, he was her son, and I realized during the weeks which followed how his flight saddened her. She knew Charlot had never really wanted to stay in England, and she felt a certain guilt because she understood how frustrated he must have felt. He had come for a holiday—as we all had—and to have been forced to stay in England had angered him.

I had often heard him say that he wished he had gone back that time with my mother. He would never have come away if he had. He would have stayed behind to fight. David said: “You would not have been there long to fight. You would have been just another in the long march to the guillotine.”

One remembered these conversations now; one remembered so much. Rides had lost their savour. There was no fear, no hope, of Jonathan’s springing out on me. He had gone. What if he never came back?

My mother mourned secretly; she did not want to upset Dickon more than he already was. After a while he ceased to show a great deal of distress even though Jonathan, his son, had gone away and into danger so acute that it was hard for any who had not experienced it to imagine. I supposed that Dickon was not very emotionally involved with either of his sons; but they were his heirs, and like most men he had wanted sons. I wondered whether he considered the possibility of Jonathan’s not coming back. Perhaps he consoled himself that he still had David.

During the first weeks we looked out for them. I would find myself at the top of the house, watching the road; and sometimes my mother would creep up to watch with me. Then she would grip my hand and I knew that she was seeing herself once more in the
mairie
with the mob below her. Such experiences are never forgotten; and at times such as this, naturally they became more vivid.

Once she broke down and cried: “This terrible revolution. What good can it possibly bring compared with the evil it has wrought! My father lost his only son. Just think of it! He went out one day and he only came back all that time after when my father was dead. You wouldn’t have known him, Claudine.”

I pressed her hand; then I kissed it.

“Thank God I have you,” she said.

“I will always be near you.”

“Bless you, dearest child. I believe you will.”

I would have done anything at that moment to bring her comfort.

I think what Dickon felt most was anger. He had never liked Charlot, and I am sure would not have minded his going in the least. He was angry because it had upset my mother.

I doubted he had ever been so flouted in his life.

Sabrina became ill. I was sure it was with anxiety, and in a way this turned our thoughts from what was happening to them in France.

I would sit and read to her, which was what she liked, and she talked a great deal about the past. She remarked what a fortunate girl I was. I had been loved all my life; and she threw a little light on her own childhood, which made me see her differently.

She told me how when she was a little girl she had been forbidden to skate on a frozen pond because a thaw was setting in. She had disobeyed and fallen into the water, to be rescued by her mother, who caught a chill which shortened her life. Her father never forgave her. It was a shadow which had hung over her life. Only my great-grandmother, Clarissa, who was her cousin, had understood her. And then she had married the man whom Clarissa had loved.

I looked at her frail body, her white hair, and her thin but still-beautiful features, and I saw that her life had been overshadowed by guilt. She had shared Dickon with Clarissa and they had found their consolation in the son of the man whom they had both loved.

What happens in our young days must surely shape our natures. Dickon was arrogant, aggressive, seeing himself inheriting the earth as his right. Well, those two admiring women had helped to make him what he was. And Charlot… he had been brought up in France. It was his country and he would never tear himself away from it.

I prayed that he would never be caught by those who were making revolution. It would be a martyr’s death for him if he were. Louis Charles had always been something of a disciple. And Jonathan? No, I could not imagine anyone’s getting the better of Jonathan. He had that quality which was Dickon’s and somehow I felt he would always survive. I fostered that belief because it cheered me.

I was spending a great deal of time with David. I could discuss this alarming situation with him much more easily than I could with my mother.

I said: “I’m afraid for them. How I wish they would come home.”

“Jonathan will come, you’ll see. I don’t know about Charlot and Louis Charles. Charlot has been serious about this for a long time, and he carries Louis Charles with him. It is a new adventure for Jonathan. I fancy he will tire of it though. He does lose his enthusiasms rather quickly.”

The trip to London which was promised for my birthday was postponed. No one really felt in the mood for such frivolities.

“Perhaps,” said my mother pathetically, “when they come back we can all go together.”

Dickon, however, did go to London and my mother accompanied him. I wondered whether Jonathan had walked out on certain business commitments as well as his home.

The days passed quickly when the first shock was over. These consisted mainly of daily lessons for me. I spoke English fluently enough to satisfy even Dickon; and it was only rarely that a faint French accent could be detected.

David would often read passages to me from books which interested me, and I was learning something of the subjects which fascinated him. He liked me to ride round the estate with him and I was getting to know the tenants in the outlying districts. I took a great interest in the state of the cottages and when the young people were having babies. David was delighted and often commented on how popular I was with these people. He said that on those occasions when I was not with him they asked after me.

“The other day one of them said, ‘She’s one of us—Mistress Claudine is. No one would ever think she was aught else.’”

“It looks as though they have forgiven me for having a French father.”

“A great concession, I do assure you,” said David.

“Why are people so insular?”

“Because their horizons are as narrow as their minds.”

“Charlot was the same.”

I wished I had not said that. We were always trying to avoid any mention of what had happened.

“Charlot is so much a Frenchman that he cannot accept anything that is not French. My father is the same about England.”

“It seems to be a masculine failing.”

“Well, perhaps. Your mother, it seems, could be French or English… whatever is demanded. So can you, Claudine.”

“Home is where those whom you love are. It is not a house or a piece of land surely.”

“So this is your home, Claudine.”

“My mother is here. I suppose home would always be where she is.”

Then he said: “And others… perhaps.”

I looked at him steadily and replied: “Yes… and others.”

“Myself, for instance?”

“You, of course, David.”

“You will marry me, won’t you, Claudine?”

And I said: “Yes, David, I will.”

Afterwards I wondered why I had answered so promptly, for although since Jonathan left I had been more and more drawn to David, in my heart I was still unsure.

Looking back, I think I wanted to escape from this slough of despond into which we all seemed to have drifted. I wanted something to happen, anything which would lift us out of it. Since Jonathan had gone so lightly, so eagerly abandoning me for the sake of a new adventure, I had been telling myself that it was really David whom I loved, because I was sure that with David, I came first. And having promised, I tried to convince myself that I had done the right thing—that which in my heart I had always known.

David was jubilant, and almost at once the atmosphere in the house lightened. The gloom lifted and for a while I too felt quite joyous. The change in my mother was amazing and Dickon was so delighted that it appeared that what he wanted more than anything at this time was our marriage.

My mother threw herself into preparations with an almost feverish energy. When should the wedding be? There should not be too long a wait. Summer was the time for a wedding. Of course the summer would soon be over. This was August. There must be some time for preparation. What about the end of September? Or the beginning of October? It was finally decided that it must be October to give us the time we needed for preparation.

It had been late February when the young men had left for France. Somehow it seemed like years.

As the days began to pass I was telling myself twenty times a day that I had done the right thing. I was very happy. David and I had everything in common and we would be happy all our lives in the heart of the family.

“It is true,” I would say to myself. But why should I have to tell myself so insistently?

I was happy, however, to see my mother so absorbed. She was almost her old self wondering whether Molly Blackett was capable of making the wedding dress or whether she should risk hurting her by engaging a court dressmaker. While she concerned herself with such a matter at least she was not brooding about what might have happened to Charlot.

At length she decided that fashion must be sacrificed to human kindness and Molly set to work with yards and yards of pure white chiffon and delicate lace. And there was I standing, while she knelt at my feet, with the pincushion beside her, and my thoughts went back to another occasion when Jonathan had burst in on us and lured Molly away on a false pretext while he held me in his arms.

The dress turned out to be quite a triumph, and the joy of Molly Blackett’s life. It hung in my bedroom cupboard for a whole week before the wedding, and every night, before I got into bed, I would look at it, and very often I thought it was like a ghost standing there—not a ghost from the past, but the ghost of what was to come. Once I dreamed that I was wearing it and Jonathan came and slipped the bodice from my shoulders and kissed me.

I supposed that every girl felt a little apprehensive before her wedding. I often pondered on those marriages which were arranged in highborn families. How did the bride feel going to an unknown bridegroom? At least I knew David for a kindly, interesting person, someone who really loved me, and, I said almost defiantly to the ghost in the cupboard, “whom I love.”

During the days I was less fearful. Riding with David about the estate I felt contented. This was what our life would be. I should grow into it graciously. I should help him when he had little worries about something on the estate; we should take trips to London. Indeed we had planned to do so on our honeymoon. I often thought of the one we had planned in Italy, visiting Herculaneum or Pompeii—but that would not be easy now that we were at war with France. I often wondered what would happen to an Englishman found in France at this time. Dickon said that the country was in such a turmoil that they would pay little attention to foreigners; they were too intent on killing each other. But I feared for Charlot and Louis Charles as well as Jonathan.