“And the most fascinating of all is the Marsdon Chronicle?” Celia spoke in the same neutral tone, but she flushed, remembering the last time she had been in the library, in her bikini, the last time he had shown her lighthearted warmth—or any real love. And after that—the visit to Ightham Mote—fear, darkness, and a long void. A black tunnel.
“Well,” said Richard with an uneasy laugh, “I do find the family archives quite interesting. I don’t expect them to interest you. You had no part in them.”
“But she
did!
” said Akananda from the shadow at the foot of the stairs.
They had both forgotten him. Celia turned in some resentment. Richard, however, stared at the Hindu; his handsome face, which had been closed, subtly hostile, showed the same perplexity it had shown in the schoolroom two weeks ago.
“Celia did what?” Richard said, trying to laugh. “Except I suppose I entered our marriage date in the Chronicle last year—or intended to—I forget.”
Celia made a small choking sound. Her new strength began to crumble. She knew as surely as Akananda did that Richard had not recorded their marriage in that damnable book which she hadn’t known existed until the Saturday of the house party. A sea of desolation washed through her, and she clutched the banister.
Akananda looked at the small hand on the banister and said, “Sir Richard, your wife wears the Marsdon bridal ring; you gave it to her, but she also gave it to
you
on a certain occasion.”
“Nonsense,” said Richard, though he stared at the great amethyst heart set in massy gold. “You make me uncomfortable, Doctor, you’re a psychiatrist, aren’t you? I suppose that dealing with crackpots makes you . . . well . . .”
“A bit of a crackpot, too?” said Akananda nodding, while he thought, this is coming faster than I expected, and from a portion of his mind which was neither weary nor fearful he invoked a mantra for guidance. “Lady Marsdon,” he said, “as physician delegated by Sir Arthur for your care, and in view of the fact that you’re just out of hospital, I wish you to go to bed. Your mother will help you.”
Celia clutched the banister harder, her eyes flashed. “I’m not a child, Dr. Akananda, I don’t need either you or Mother to tell me what to do. Leave me alone with my husband!” But on the last word her voice wavered. What could she say to Richard? How could she approach the tall, indifferent stranger who had ceased even looking at her or the ring, and turned his back while he shifted, as though it were of great importance, a porcelain vaseful of glossophylia and carnations, pushing them sharply back on the polished walnut console.
“Courage . . . my child,” said Akananda so low that Celia did not quite hear, though she glanced at him, and felt through her distrust, a far-off comfort.
“See you tomorrow, Richard,” she said with all the lightness she could muster. “I guess the Doctor’s right. I am a bit wobbly.”
She slowly mounted the stairs.
“Lovely flowers—carnations,” said Akananda; he plucked a creamy pink hybrid from the vase which Richard had shoved. He sniffed it. “Delicious fragrance of cloves, with a touch of jasmine. The gillyflower of centuries past, though, of course, they never grew them as large as this.”
“I hate the smell,” said Richard. “Hate scents anyway, they give me hay fever. Are you going to turn in? I’m not up to chitchat.”
Akananda nodded. “I quite agree. But first, I wonder if you’d be so good as to show me the library. I’m one of those who likes a book to go to bed with. Even a whodunit, or don’t you give them houseroom?”
Richard smiled almost naturally. “Lord, yes, my father had a whole shelf of them. Conan Doyle and the lot.”
He began to walk rather jerkily towards the Victorian wing, and the Hindu followed.
The long pseudogothic room, its varnished fumed-oak stacks, its thousands of books, appeared as ordinary and homely as a loaf of bread when Richard switched on the lights. The windows depicting gaudy scenes from Tennyson’s
Idylls of the King
were open to the sultry July air, which felt thundery, breathless. There might well be a storm, Akananda thought, there was an odd yellow light over the Downs. He hoped there would be, hoped for any outside aid to explode the tension.
“Over here are the detective stories,” said Richard indicating a shelf in the bay nearest the courtyard. “Take your pick.”
Akananda inhaled deeply and held his breath for a minute. He glanced along the rows of titles while Richard stood aside impatiently.
“Actual mysteries are perhaps more exciting, don’t you think?” said Akananda moving into the next alcove, which held the lectern and older books. “I’ve heard so much about your Chronicle.” He paused. “I mean,” he said carefully, “I got some idea, possibly quite wrong, that there was a mystery in your own archives, some past puzzle not solved.”
Richard stiffened and his face grew black. “Who said so?”
“Tonight . . . the way Lady Marsdon spoke, other ways too—and then you told me something when I was here a fortnight ago. Your unconscious mind remembers, I wish it to become conscious.
Sir Richard, sit down!
” said Akananda, indicating the armchair which stood by the window. “You obeyed me in the schoolroom, though you’ve forgotten. You will obey me now, for my sole purpose is to help you.”
“You can’t! I don’t want help! Leave me alone!” Richard backed away.
“Oh, yes, you do—and you’re not manic now, Sir Richard, you need no injections, no chemical restraints, you will surrender to your hidden self and its true wishes—so if you won’t sit—bring me the Chronicle! No, I’ll get it. I know where it is.”
Akananda reached up for the great vellum-bound book and thrust it in Richard’s hands. “Find the passage which has so long disturbed you. Ah, see it opens easily. Here—read it to me. Quick!”
Though Richard looked down at the faded brown curlicues and flourishes, he spoke from memory in a flat, mechanical voice:
“All Hallow’s Eve, the thirtieth year of Her Majesty’s reign, and a time of rejoicing since our fleet has sunk the wicked Spaniard . . .” He jerked back his head and glowered at Akananda. “What do you think you’re doing? This is just a lot of stuff about some monk in the family—seems to have philandered, got a girl pregnant—wouldn’t mean a thing nowadays.”
“What happened to the girl, Richard?”
Both men jumped and gaped at Celia. She stood at the corner of the alcove, very still, wearing a shimmering yellow silk night robe.
“There’s going to be a thunderstorm,” said Celia. “You know they scare me.” She looked up into her husband’s face and smiled with tenderness and pleading. “I thought I’d find company. I heard what you were saying . . . what did happen to the girl . . . the pregnant girl?”
Richard winced and did not answer; he passed his hand over his forehead as though to brush away cobwebs.
Akananda moved quickly out of that alcove and back into the one which held the mystery stories. There he stood, controlling his breath, immersed in a sustaining inner light. He listened with relief to a rumble of thunder, he also listened to the voices behind the bookstack.
“Let’s read the whole entry,” said Celia, “let me read it, too—if you’ll help me, all those squiggles and the funny spelling. Let’s see.”
Akananda listened to the duet of voices, Richard’s slow and angrily reluctant, prompting Celia when she hesitated. Celia’s voice alone finished the excerpt . . .“Find the murdered girl for Christian burial . . .”
There was a long silence, while the thunder cracked nearer over Alfriston.
“Do you think you were once Stephen, and I that walled-up girl?” Celia’s question was clear, gentle, assertive—yet tinged with sadness. The Hindu held himself tense, his body quivered. He waited.
“
Yes, by God,
I
do!
”
It was a strangled violent cry which shocked Akananda into immediate awareness as a physician. He touched the syringe he had in his pocket. One never knew, and with a case like Richard’s—a sudden breakthrough into realization—and alone with the woman he had previously loved, hated, betrayed his vows for, and then ended his life by suicide on her account, believing that she might have betrayed
him.
“But then . . .” said Celia, in the same calm dispassionate tones, “you could hardly give those old bones of mine a Christian burial
now.
The guide at Ightham Mote said they’d been ‘dispersed’—I’d rather not try to find them, and what more would they mean, darling, than a dress I wore constantly in Chicago when I was twelve. Mama finally cut up the pretty sleeves for a rag rug my aunt was making, and the rest went to the Salvation Army, I guess.”
Outside there was a thunderclap, Akananda saw a zigzag of lightning and quietly closed the window in his alcove. Rain began to spatter on the tiles but he could still hear Celia.
“Richard, my dear love—or Stephen, if you wish—that’s all finished.
I
am carrying your child
now,
in the present—shall it not have welcome, and a father, as the other one did not?”
For a long time there was no answer. The lightning streaked again and there was thunder further to the south, then a lull, during which Akananda heard a different sound—that of a man’s broken, barely audible sobbing.
On Thursday, August 8, at four o’clock, the village of Medfield and certain guests who had been invited from London gathered in the church for a ceremony, aspects of which some of them thought bizarre—particularly the holding of a wedding on a Thursday—though the sentimental ladies of the parish agreed that it was all sweetly different. Sir Richard and Lady Marsdon had recently decided on a religious ceremony to supplement the registry marriage in London.
The rector was in his glory. It was always suspected that he had High-Church leanings, and Sir Richard, who presented the living, must have given the little man his head. The church reeked with incense, many candles were lit on the altar. Masses of flowers from the Medfield Place gardens were bunched along the aisles. The choir quavered raggedly through some old Latin chants—obviously requested.
The marriage ceremony followed the Authorized Version and was properly very brief, but a slight divergence before the final blessing startled a few. The congregation was politely, blankly waiting until they should be released and could go to the manor house where everyone had been invited to the reception.
The divergence consisted of prayers for the repose of the souls of Stephen Marsdon and Celia de Bohun.
“That’s creepy,” whispered Myra to Harry Jones, who was sitting next to her in a side pew. “The padre’s rung in a memorial service. And, look at this,” she put her hand on the old marble tomb in the niche beside her, then pointed to a shiny new brass inscription above it, Stephen Marsdon, OSB 15251559,
Requiescat in face, Misereatur tut omnipotens Deus, et dismissis peccatis tuis, perducat te ad vitam aeternum.
“Can he be doing an obit for
this
Stephen Marsdon?”
“Whole thing’s peculiar,” Harry whispered back. “Got a ‘Celia’ in it, too, wonder who
she
was—and a couple of R.I.P.’s tacked onto a
wedding!
Could they have died the same day? But then, Richard always was an odd duck.”
“It’s touching, somehow,” Myra murmured, her long green eyes misting. She knelt, bowing her auburn head, which was swathed in a wisp of golden tulle, as the rector held up his plump hands and said, “Let us pray—for the souls of Thy departed servants, Stephen and Celia, unto God’s gracious mercy and protection we commit them. The Lord bless them and keep them. The Lord make His face to shine upon them. The Lord lift up His countenance upon them and give them peace, both now and forever more . . .” He lowered his hands majestically, and put them on the shoulders of the couple who were kneeling at the altar rail. He went on smoothly to finish the marriage service as Sir Richard had asked. “God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost bless and preserve and keep you . . . that you may so live together in this life, that in the world to come you may have life everlasting . . . Amen.”
Richard and Celia Marsdon did not kiss when they arose. They looked long into each other’s eyes, while the organ wheezed, blatted, then burst into Mendelssohn’s triumphal march.
The Marsdons proceeded slowly down the aisle. Celia wore a long chiffon gown of a subtle cream color which seemed tinged with rose when it rippled. It made her look taller, as did the heart-shaped little silver headdress. Only Igor could have designed so flattering and lovely a creation, as indeed he had, and sent it from London two days ago as a wedding present.
Richard was imposing in the conventional cutaway and small white carnation.
There were no attendants, but Lily and Akananda, who had sat together in the front pew, followed the bridal couple some paces after. On the faces of the American mother and the Hindu doctor were expressions of quiet joy; though Lily had wept throughout the ceremonies she was now at peace and her soft blue picture-hat hid any trace of tears.
The church bell clanged out with such congratulatory peals that they shook the little belfry, while the Marsdons paused between the churchyard and the lych gate to greet their guests.
Myra rushed up first, and kissed Celia. “Oh, my dear,” she said, “so
sweet,
all of it, and
thank you
for asking us!” She glanced at Harry, who stood beaming beside her. “In this melting mood, I’m almost inspired to do likewise! May God bless you both,” she added seriously. “You’ve had a rough time since the house party in June. I’ve worried a lot about you.” Myra’s beautiful face looked surprised, for those words were not mere courtesy. She had inquired every day while Celia was in the clinic, she had had two unhappy dreams about Celia. “I’m very fond of you, hinny—as we say in the North.”
She moved back to let Nanny, resplendent in gray bombazine and a round flowered hat, extend her congratulations, and bridle happily as Richard bent to kiss her.
“That’s a guid laddie,” she murmured. “An’ I bless the luik in ye’re bonny face today.” She scurried off to help at the manor.
The next to come up was Igor, who was a gorgeous if startling sight in tight red velvet pants and a frilled white shirt. “Too utterly charming,” he said, kissing Celia’s hand. “The quaintness—touch of Merry England as it was—do we now have dancing on the green? I’d simply adore to trip the light fantastic in your honor—though actually I’d not live back in
those days
for anything. I’m satisfied with the present.”