Penmarric (72 page)

I had no idea whether she found me attractive or not, but Ĭ supposed I could be considered eligible enough now that I was master of Penmarric, and on the one occasion when I had taken her out to dinner we had found plenty to say to each other. But as soon as I thought of that evening nearly six years ago at the Metropole I began to feel worried. Perhaps she had resented the fact that I hadn’t asked her out a second time. Perhaps she had suspected my motive for dining with her and resented the fact that she had been used. Whatever her feelings on the subject it was essential that I transform our present prosaic friendship by injecting a shot of romance and behaving as if for some reason I had noticed her for the first time. It would certainly be no use trampling over the conventions like a bull in a china shop and saying in my usual blunt way, “Look, I’ve known you for six years and now I’ve suddenly realized I like you and your money would be more than useful to me. Why don’t we get married?”

That wouldn’t do at all. I must be delicate, subtle, even crafty. For this particular role I had to act out of character.

I worried about the problem for some time, but eventually hit on the idea of having a small dinner party at Penmarric for about eight or ten of my contemporaries in order to attract Helena’s attention and put our relationship on a new footing. Jeanne and I would be the host and hostess, and in addition to Helena and her brother I decided to invite William, Jan-Yves and possibly my sister-in-law Rebecca, whom I had seen little of for some months on account of her estrangement from my mother. I had no grudge against Rebecca; my quarrel had been with Hugh, not with her, and even the bitterness I had felt toward Hugh had ebbed since his death. In addition to Rebecca I still needed another female guest to make up the numbers, and since I thought I should flaunt my county background in front of Helena I decided the last guest would have to be Felicity Carnforth, Sir Justin’s only surviving child. Felicity, a horsey, hearty girl in her mid-twenties, was something of a joke, but I couldn’t think of anyone else to invite. Peter Waymark’s sisters were married now and the St. Enedoc girls were away in London; even Lizzie, who would have been a convenient solution, was spending Christmas with friends in Cambridge.

The dinner party was held on Christmas Eve and much to my amazement went far better than I had expected it would. I began by being absurdly nervous, but I soon recovered myself and after dinner I managed to sit next to Helena in the drawing room and pay her a compliment or two. That wasn’t difficult: She wore pale green and had her hair piled on top of her head and was without doubt the prettiest woman in the room.

Presently I said casually to her, “I hope well be able to see more of each other now that I lead a more conventional existence.”

“Conventional?”

“I was hardly conventional when I lived at the farm and worked at the mine. When I move to Penmarric in the new year things will be different.”

“Not too different, I hope,” she said with a smile. “You mustn’t change radically now that you’re master of Penmarric.”

“If I do,” I said, “it’ll be for the better, I promise you.”

And we smiled at each other.

I invited her to lunch at Penmarric the following week and took to calling regularly at Polzillan House. Every move I made met with nothing but success; no scheme could ever have gone so meticulously according to plan. By February I considered it was time for a visit to the Metropole again since I had now maneuvered myself into a position where I could explain away our previous visit there, and after traveling to Penzance in the Penmarric car we ate a first-class dinner in the Metropole’s grandiose dining room. I was hesitant about mentioning the previous visit, but presently when Helena herself referred to it without embarrassment I saw at once that she bore me no grudge and that there was no need for any awkward explanations. So relieved was I to discover this that I even suggested we leave the table for a dance, but I think she knew I disliked dancing, for she suggested a stroll outside on the esplanade instead. Unlike that other night when we had walked together along the esplanade, the sky was overcast and there was no moonlight. In Morrab Gardens the palm trees were shivering, their fronds sighing longingly for their native tropics. The sea thudded amiably on the beach and a cold breeze blew into our faces from the southwest.

I thought quickly. I had seen her now with great regularity for six weeks. We knew each other well by this time. The one awkward obstacle between us, the abortive dinner of six years ago, had been painlessly overcome. So far I had treated her with a more than friendly interest and had conducted a keen but decorous pursuit; unless she was stupid (which she wasn’t) she must have realized by this time that I wasn’t pursuing her without purpose, and matters had now reached the stage when a more concentrated interest was required unless I were to risk her becoming bored. I remembered that there was a new doctor, a young man called Donald McCrae, who visited her brother several times a week; I knew nothing about him, but his presence, however innocent, in her life was sufficient to remind me that she could attract other suitors besides myself. If I hesitated too long or failed to live up to her expectations of how a man should conduct a romance I might wake up one morning to find she was engaged to someone else.

“I must have been blind six years ago,” I said lightly. “Imagine dining with you once and then never dining with you again!” And as she turned to smile up at me I took her in my arms and stooped to kiss her.

I was surprised how warm her lips were. I had somehow always imagined women’s lips to be flabby and cold. But hers weren’t. They were warm and firm, pleasantly moist.

“Mmmmm!” I said, startled.

She sighed, closed her eyes for a moment, and when at last she opened them again I saw without a doubt that she loved me.

It was all easier than I had imagined it would be. After the evening in Penzance I saw her several more times during February and by early March decided that I ran no risk in proposing earlier than I had anticipated. Accordingly on one of those mild springlike March mornings when the air was enticingly warm, I took her for a walk over the moors and after a suitably romantic scene among the walls of Chûn I asked her if she would marry me.

I had my arm around her. I felt her shudder and thought for an aghast moment that she was going to burst into tears, but she didn’t. Jeanne would have done perhaps, or a thousand other women, but not Helena. Of all her many admirable qualities there wasn’t one I respected more than her indestructible self-possession.

She turned to look at me. Her eyes seemed to burn with joy. Her lips, slightly parted, were upturned to mine. After we had kissed I said, teasing her, “Does that mean yes?”

“Of course,” she said.

Her intensity made me uneasy, but I was flattered all the same. I was conscious of a warm glow of satisfaction at the thought of a difficult task successfully accomplished. It was a pleasant feeling.

The news of our engagement was received with varying degrees of excitement and surprise, ranging from my mother’s predictable ecstasy to Jan-Yves’s stupefaction. Why he was so surprised I had no idea, although I suspected he had made up his mind I would remain a bachelor and had become so accustomed to regarding himself as my heir that the prospect of my providing him with a usurping nephew was too distasteful to accept readily. William was pleasant, Gerald Meredith affable enough to call for champagne and Jeanne was almost as thrilled as my mother. Even Young Medlyn swelled with feudal approval on behalf of the Penmarric servants.

“That’s very good news, sir,” he purred. “Very good news indeed. I’m sure we all wish to congratulate you, sir, and offer you and Miss Meredith our very best wishes.”

My friends at the mine received the news with a roar of approval and everyone except Trevose pressed around to shake my hand and clap me on the back. Trevose sulked. I had expected this, but privately I thought he was being unreasonable. There was no harm in being a misogynist but it was a mistake to expect everyone else to give women as wide a berth as he did.

Fortunately by evening he had pulled himself together and was in the pub with the others to drink my health. He made no effort to apologize for his surliness—I knew him better than to expect an apology—but he was friendly enough, so I pushed the incident with relief to the back of my mind and forgot about it. I had too many other matters on my mind at that time to bother myself with trivialities.

We had decided to get married on the first Saturday in July, and while Helena began to make the preliminary arrangements I tackled the problem of what should be done about the members of my family who were then living at Penmarric. I knew William would be willing to move out once I moved in, for he had already told me as much after my father’s death and had suggested that it might be easier for us both if we kept our relationship on a friendly but businesslike footing. After consulting him about his preferences I granted him a nominal lease of an old stone house on the outskirts of St. Just; the previous tenant, a retired seaman, had died a month ago and the house had been vacant since his death. The house was larger than any of the village cottages, had an acre of garden and was structurally sound. William was pleased with the arrangement, and I was pleased too to think he was comfortably settled away from Penmarric; when he moved into his new home I wrote him a check to help him with his expenses, but he considered I had done enough for him and I saw later from a glance at my bank statement that he had never presented my check for payment.

However, he did accept a check from me shortly afterward in lieu of a wedding present; at long last Charity had bullied him into marrying her and had dragged him along to the nearest registry office. Nobody went to the wedding except Jan-Yves, and William never once referred to it afterward although Charity took care to wear the largest wedding ring she could lay her hands on and had a great time displaying herself to St. Just as Mrs. Parrish. Why William bothered to marry her I have no idea. It was true Charity had blackmailed him by refusing to keep house for him in his new home unless he married her, but William could have had another working-class woman on the terms be wanted—or, for that matter, he could have had a woman of his own class if he had reconciled himself to the idea of marriage. But William had a horror of marriage. He was eccentric on the subject, and I had always been surprised that someone so conventional should not only preach free love but practice it as well. However, if he had decided to abandon his unorthodox views, that was his business, not mine, and all I could do was wish him well while I wondered skeptically how long the marriage would last. I had a feeling both of them would soon find fidelity more trouble than it was worth.

From William I turned to Jan-Yves. In a way I felt sorry for him. He was in the unenviable position of having a small weekly wage, no capital and nowhere to live except Penmarric, and I couldn’t help thinking his circumstances were not entirely deserved. Since my father’s death I hadn’t been able to find any fault with him; he was behaving well about a marriage which would probably result in excluding him from any part of the Penmarric inheritance; he had worked hard at the mine, won Trevose’s respect (I still found that hard to believe), assimilated a detailed amount of knowledge rapidly and had now replaced Slater the clerk in giving Walter Hubert an able helping hand with the accounts. I decided to be generous to him, so finally I gave him enough money to build a house and leased him some land at a nominal rent. I couldn’t dispose of the land outright, of course, because of the trust, but the trustees thought a house would constitute an improvement to the estate and raised no objection when I told them what I had in mind. Jan-Yves said he was grateful, but I could see he had difficulty in believing the scheme was free of some hidden flaw and I doubted even then whether despite our recent cordiality we would ever fully trust each other.

Having provided for my brothers, I had my sisters to consider. Lizzie was still engaged in advanced academic studies at Cambridge, and there seemed every likelihood that she would make her home there; she was already provided for financially under the terms of my father’s will, so it seemed she presented no problems for the present. That left Jeanne. An unmarried woman was always entitled to a place in her brother’s house, so after breakfast one morning I told her she could live at Penmarric for as long as she liked.

“Oh, Philip, how kind of you!” she exclaimed, but then to my surprise she hesitated. “However, I … well, I do have other plans. Gerry must have someone to be with him once Helena leaves—he’ll be so lonely on his own, and no professional nurse can ever be as sympathetic as … well, as someone who cares for him, and so … well, I’m not quite sure how to explain, but I—I’ve promised to marry him. Now I don’t expect Mama to understand, but—”

“Understand!” I exploded. “She’ll have a fit!” And then as I saw the tears spring to her eyes at my tone of voice I added hastily, “As far as I’m concerned I wish you well—you’re old enough to know what you’re doing, you’ve been in love with the man for years, and if that’s the kind of marriage you want, good luck to you. But as far as Mama’s concerned—”

“I shall write her a note.” She had it all planned. “I’d rather explain everything in writing. If I try to explain matters to her face to face I know I shall get flustered and say the wrong thing.”

In the end, of course, I was the one who had to deliver the note, but when the news was duly presented to her my mother was more exasperated than upset.

“I didn’t think anyone could be quite so stupid,” she said with an impatient shrug of her shoulders. “It’s simply beyond my powers of comprehension. How absurd Jeanne is! Well, if she wants to make a fool of herself, let her, that’s all I can say, but I hope she doesn’t fall violently in love with an able-bodied man once she’s a married woman.”

So Jeanne too began to wear an engagement ring, and when she wasn’t talking about Helena’s wedding in July she was talking about her own wedding in October. I began to be very, tired of hearing about nothing but weddings and tried to keep on the sidelines as much as possible, but my mother kept asking me such questions as who was to be best man, when I was going to make arrangements for the honeymoon, hadn’t I better write to Mariana if I wanted Esmond to be a page, and I found it was impossible to leave all the wedding arrangements to Helena. Helena was busy enough as it was; wedding invitations were sent out, the reception as Polzillan House was organized, the trousseau was bought in London and designs for the bridesmaids’ dresses were chosen. And all the time spring was galloping into summer until I felt I had never known that the seasons could pass so quickly.