Penmarric (7 page)

I had noticed the improvement in her speech since she had begun to talk to me and I found her correctness of manner surprising. The Cornish lilt was still much in evidence, but she had an odd veneer of education and quality which was unexpected in a woman of her position. I tried to place her in some convenient category of class against an appropriate background, but could not.

“My name is Castallack,” I said slowly. “Mark Castallack. I come from Gweek, near Helston.”

There was a slight pause before she said, “Castallack? There’s a village of that name between Mousehole and Lamorna… Well, how do you do, Mr. Castallack. May I offer you a glass of elderberry wine?”

“That would be delightful, Mrs. Roslyn. Thank you. I was on my way to Zillan from my father’s house at Morvah, and somehow I managed to lose my way, so I decided to stop at your farm to ask directions…” The lies slipped smoothly from my tongue as I followed her out of the kitchen down a passage to the front of the house. She was tall for a woman, but slender, very graceful. As I followed her down the passage to the stairs and hall I noticed how her plain drab dress clung to her waist and lingered in clinging folds about her hips. At the front of the house she opened a door and led the way into a neat parlor, scrupulously clean and well dusted. There were even flowers on the mantel-shelf above the fireplace, a fact that surprised me, for I had thought the working classes seldom used the “front room” of their homes. By the window which faced the herb garden and the moors stood a small oak table, and Mrs. Roslyn asked me to be seated while she fetched the wine.

When she returned she sat down opposite me. Her drab black dress was buttoned up to her throat, and my glance traveled instinctively from her waist to her neck and back to her waist again before I remembered my manners and stared out of the window to regain my composure.

“Will you be long in this part of Cornwall, Mr. Castallack?” she asked effortlessly while I struggled with an unexpected wave of self-consciousness. I was suddenly much too aware of my youth, my lack of inches, my plain features and my thickset frame.

“For a few weeks, perhaps.” I made a great effort, determined to overcome my reserve. She was, after all, only a working-class woman, despite her airs and graces. There was no need for me to feel so paralytically shy. I took a sip of the home-made wine and began to explain that I had just finished my studies at Oxford and had decided to visit my father, who was spending the summer at Deveral Farm. The wine, powerful as only home-made wine can be, soon enabled me to summon the boldness to question her about herself: Had she always lived in Cornwall? Were her stepsons in the habit of persecuting her in such a distasteful fashion? Had it been hard for her since her husband died? I learned that, yes, she had always lived in Cornwall and in fact had never been east of the Tamar, and that, yes, her stepsons entertained nothing but ill-will toward her since her husband had left the house to her in his will, but she was not afraid of her stepsons since there was nothing they could do to evict her from her home. She managed well enough; she had had to work harder since her husband’s death, but she had help; the young servant girl Annie was half-witted but very biddable, and there was always Griselda.

“Griselda?” I said.

“Griselda came with me from St. Ives when I married,” said Mrs. Roslyn, and some small edge to her voice told me that she did not wish to pursue the subject.

“I hear St. Ives is a very picturesque town,” I said after a slight pause. “I’ve long wanted to visit it some day.”

She smiled but said nothing, and I realized then that the distasteful subject was not the unknown Griselda at all but the town where she had lived until her marriage.

“I have friends there,” I said rapidly. “The St. Enedocs—or at least Russell St. Enedoc was a friend of mine at school although I haven’t seen him for a year or two now …” And I went on talking of matters of no particular importance, the parts of Cornwall I knew best, the local gentry with whom I happened to be acquainted, my impressions of Morvah and Zillan, until at last her polite silence hinted that she was waiting for me to leave.

I rose to my feet so clumsily that I almost upset my empty wineglass. “If you’ll excuse me, Mrs. Roslyn, I think I should be on my way.”

“Ah yes,” she said, “you told me you were on your way to Zillan when you became lost and decided to stop at the farm to seek directions.” Her clear eyes looked straight into mine and I thought I saw a flicker of irony in her expression as she repeated the lie I had told her. “Take the lane down to the road, then cross the road and you will see Zillan before you across the moors.”

“Thank you.” We were in the hall by this time and she was opening the front door. As she turned to face me again I held out my hand and after a slight hesitation she put her hand in mine. Her fingers were long and sinuous. I could imagine how they might feel under different circumstances, and because my imagination was unusually vivid I held her hand too long and she was obliged to withdraw it to preserve the proprieties.

I said clumsily, “May I call again?”

“Please do,” she said, “if you happen to be in this neighborhood.” But her voice was merely civil. It was not an encouraging invitation. “The mornings are the best time,” she added, just as I was beginning to feel unpleasantly rebuffed, “because in the afternoons I try to rest or at least to do some sewing or ironing before I cook the evening meal. But don’t call on Thursday. Thursday is the big market day in Penzance and I spend all day there selling the farm produce.”

I felt appeased. After we had parted I walked down the path to the lane before I looked back over my shoulder, but she had already gone back into the house and the front door was closed. When I reached the lane I glanced back a second time as if unable to believe that she was no longer watching me, and strangely enough my instinct was correct. The curtain on one side of the parlor window moved slightly; she had been watching me all the time.

I was so disturbed by the meeting and so restless that I was quite unable to sleep that night and arose the next morning feeling that the last thing I desired was to accompany my father to church at Zillan and lunch afterward with Mr., Mrs. and Miss Barnwell at the rectory. But I could hardly explain to my father that I would have preferred to ease my intolerable restlessness by walking to Penzance and buying a discreet list of female names and addresses from the head porter of the Metropole Hotel. Controlling myself with an effort, I accompanied him meekly in the ponytrap to church and spent the entire service, I regret to say, imagining what might happen if Mrs. Roslyn and I were alone together behind the locked door of a darkened room. It was not that I was irreligious; on the contrary, I was then much more religious than I am now, for my father had instilled churchgoing habits into both Nigel and myself at an early age, and this religious background was so closely interwoven with my father’s standards which I admired so deeply that my acceptance of it was complete. Despite the post-Darwin tides of atheism I had encountered at Oxford and the independence of thought fostered by the academic climate, it had never occurred to me not to believe in God and worship Him dutifully every Sunday, and even later in life when I moved toward agnosticism I still derived a sense of security from regular attendance at church. Hypocritical perhaps, but when I was twenty I was not aware of any hypocrisy. My father believed, and if he believed, then I believed too.

During the first hymn I glanced over my shoulder and nearly dropped my hymnbook when I saw Mrs. Roslyn in one of the back pews. I had not seen her enter the church and had assumed she was not attending matins that week. When I managed to look at her a second time I noticed the ugly hunched old crone who was standing next to her and realized with a shock that this must be the mysterious Griselda who had accompanied Mrs. Roslyn to Zillan on her marriage. The old crone looked little better than a fishwife. I wondered what her connection was with Mrs. Roslyn, and not for the first time I began to speculate about Mrs. Roslyn’s early life in St. Ives.

The service ended at last, but there was no chance for a word with Mrs. Roslyn, for she and the crone left immediately and I was detained in the aisle to be introduced to the rector’s wife and daughter before we all retreated to the rectory for luncheon. As I had suspected; the meal turned out to be dinner served early to spare the servants undue labor on the Sabbath, and I ate hungrily as I observed my host and his family. Mrs. Barnwell was a gossipy woman with a long nose that clearly enjoyed poking its way into other people’s business; I was surprised that the rector, who was an interesting man, should have selected such an uninteresting woman to be his life-long companion. Their daughter Miriam at first appeared to be as dreary as her mother, although where Mrs. Barnwell was garrulous Miriam was quiet and where Miriam was sedate Mrs. Barnwell was effusive, but after lunch when Mrs. Barnwell suggested coyly that her daughter might take me on a “grand tour of the garden,” I found that Miss Miriam Barnwell was not nearly so negative as I had supposed. I had felt sorry for her, knowing how hard it was for daughters of clergymen to meet suitable young men, and reflecting how isolated her existence must be at Zillan rectory, but I soon realized that not only was she uninterested in my sympathy but she was also uninterested in me as a possible suitor. At first I felt affronted since as far as she was concerned I was eligible enough and could expect to be treated as such, but presently my sense of humor enabled me to see the funny side of the situation and I began to wonder idly where her interests lay. Looking at her more closely, I saw to my surprise that she was not unattractive. She had her father’s fine dark eyes, a quantity of soft brown hair and one of those small delicate figures that some men with a penchant for porcelain find irresistible.

“I am very well acquainted with your cousins,” she said casually as we toured the hydrangea bushes at the far edge of the lawn. “Did Papa tell you? I used to do my lessons with them at Penmarric.”

“No, he didn’t mention it.”

“I haven’t seen much of them recently. Poor Raymond had been abroad for some time before he died in Cairo, and Clarissa was too busy with her London debut last year to be much at Penmarric. I was invited to her ball, but did not go.” Dislike, polite but deadly, tinged her voice and was gone. “Harry I still see occasionally, but he is often in London nowadays… Will you be calling regularly now at Penmarric, Mr. Castallack? After all, now that Mr. Penmar has made you his heir …” She stopped abruptly and gazed for one long angry moment at the nearest hydrangea bush as she bit her lip.

“How you intrigue me, Miss Barnwell! I said dryly after my initial surprise had worn off. “How could you possibly know I’m Giles Penmar’s heir? It’s no secret, I grant you, but it’s hardly common knowledge either at present! Are you a mind reader by any chance?”

She laughed and blushed very prettily. I was already feeling much less sorry for her. It occurred to me that she was a young woman who could be most adept at fending for herself, and I decided that if she were a governess she would have the unattached master of the house proposing to her in less time than it took Mr. Rochester to say good morning to Jane Eyre.

“Miss Barnwell,” I persisted, amused, “before I expire with curiosity, do, I entreat you, enlighten me. How did you hear the news so fast?”

“Well, you see …” She began to explain. She had recently become acquainted with a Mr. Michael Vincent, a young man from Launceston whose family was known to her father. He had come to Penzance earlier that year to join the firm of Holmes, Holmes, Trebarvah and Holmes—

“The Penmar solicitors,” I said. “I think I’m beginning to understand.” It occurred to me that a young lawyer would be a very seemly match for her, and I thought I could now understand her lack of interest in me as a possible suitor.

“Mr. Vincent dined with us yesterday—he dines with us quite often—and he happened to mention—in a most oblique way, of course, I’m sure he did nothing improper—”

“Of course,” I murmured soothingly.

“Mr. Vincent is often at Penmarric. On business.” But her voice implied that his business provided him with a convenient excuse for calling there.

“Oh?” I said. “Is he a friend of Harry’s?”

“No,” said Miriam, spiteful as a cat with unsheathed claws, “but he is infatuated with Clarissa. She considers it a great joke.”

So that, I thought, was how the land lay. Miriam was in love with the young solicitor, who was infatuated with my unusually striking cousin-by-adoption. No wonder I had heard the dislike in Miriam’s voice when she had spoken of Clarissa earlier! And I thought of the one time I had seen Clarissa, those brief minutes four years before at Penmarric, and remembered her brilliant dark eyes and wide passionate mouth. I had not been in London the previous summer when Clarissa had made her debut in society, but word of her success had still managed to reach me. One of my friends at Oxford had met her and sent her a sonnet a day until his inspiration was exhausted; she was reported to be on the verge of marrying either a duke or an earl or a rich American; her own sex, particularly her fellow-debutantes, were reported to be stupefied by such undeserved success—undeserved because Clarissa did not conform to the conventional standards of feminine beauty—and were delighted when for some unaccountable reason she married none of her ardent suitors and merely returned to Cornwall when the Season had reached its end. The scandal began soon afterward. After all, there had to be some reason why her suitors’ ardor had cooled; it was said she returned to Cornwall in disgrace. How true all this gossip was I had no idea, but it was true that Clarissa now had a “reputation” and that this young solicitor Michael Vincent was only one of a long line of men who had found her unconventional looks irresistible.

In the ponytrap on the way home from Zillan that afternoon I said to my father, “I fancy Miss Barnwell has an unrequited passion for that young man Michael Vincent whom Mr. Barnwell mentioned just before we left.”