“It was the fellow who was asking after you at Mulliner’s.”
Annie was furious with me. “Do you mean to tell me, Rose Trelawney, that you have got another crack on the head and didn’t tell me!” she shrieked. She too hopped up, rescuing her tea before it hit the carpet, though the green silk got a splatter. She descended on me like a vulture, her claws scratching at my scalp for evidence of the attack. She was delighted when she found it. “Ah, this is a dandy one,” she told Ludwig, who had then to add his fingers to my hair to feel for himself. Abbie could not be left out of such good sport, and she too came to admire my acquisition.
“If you don’t mind!” I said, shaking them all out of my hair and trying to retrieve it into its bun. The effort was unsuccessful. It was tumbled well and good about my ears, and there it stayed till our meeting was over, being frequently disturbed by Annie, who couldn’t get enough of feeling the bump.
“For God’s sake leave the girl alone,” Kessler shouted at her, then proceeded thinking aloud in a milder tone. “All hogwash, then, this tale of a runaway match,” he said, with, I thought, a certain note of satisfaction. “It was Uxbridge, or someone working for him.”
“It can’t be that. I have nothing to do with the Grafton affair,” I reminded him.
“Who could it have been?” Abbie wondered. “If you’re not mixed up with the Grafton business, why would anyone want to hurt you?”
“I must be mixed up in some other mess,” I suggested.
“It was your captain come after you,” Annie told me. “You have given him the slip, minx, and he is jealous you’re here with Lud. Ha, and if Lud ain’t scowling at me like a Turk.”
“I wonder if the captain’s name was Ivor,” he said, looking at me with a question.
I hadn’t a notion, but to tell the truth, it sounded as rational as anything else, except that it was supposedly my father who enquired at Mulliner’s, and my captain who knocked me on the head. We discussed all manner of improbable imbroglios in which I was mixed up, till Sir Ludwig brought us to attention, just at the point where Annie had me switching my affections from a captain to a colonel.
“This is nonsense. There are too many similarities in the Grafton affair and Rose’s for them not to be connected. The art, and the time and place. The fellow needed some story to account for his enquiry and invented a captain and a runaway bride.” On only one point we were in agreement. There existed no doubt in anyone’s mind that the boot of which I had had a glimpse belonged to a gentleman who
said
he had come from Bath.
I was handed my bordeaux gown picked up in the village and told by my host to put it on for dinner. This gave rise to an immediate desire to leave it for another occasion, but in the end I was so curious to see how it looked that I did put it on. It fit well enough, but was a hard color to wear, and not the optimum choice for me. It made me look older, I thought. Also it was just a trifle snug, revealing somewhat more precise details of my anatomy than I usually paraded in public. When both Sir Ludwig and Annie showered me with compliments, I was sure it was in the worst of taste, but still it was no worse than the navy bombazine. I really didn’t feel it merited such attention as Kessler was granting it, especially from the waist up. Half a dozen times I caught him surveying it closely, and took the notion he was looking right through it. He wore an unaccustomed little smile, and looked sheepish when I twice caught him out at it.
After dinner, the subject of the satinwood cabinet came to the fore, and we all settled in for a battle royal. “Let’s get this thing out of here before we sit down,” Sir Ludwig suggested with a challenging look in my direction.
Annie’s blue eyes snapped. She walked forward and placed her little body before it, with her arms outstretched to protect it. “Ruth always liked it, and it must stay,” she declared in dramatic accents.
“Mama could never stand the sight of it, as it was a gift from Cousin Valerie. That is precisely the reason it was taken upstairs.”
“Who was Valerie?” I asked, hoping to divert them.
“My father’s first fiancée, who married another cousin and gave this cabinet as a wedding gift.”
“She had excellent taste,” I said, walking to the cabinet to point out the panels.
“She had the poor taste to break an engagement with my father,” Ludwig countered.
“I do not refer to judgment, Sir Ludwig, but aesthetic taste merely,” I answered discreetly, wishing to conciliate him. “These
pietra-dura
panels are exquisitely done, are they not?” I pointed hopefully to reproductions of scenes from classical antiquity, a brace of columns set amidst Hellenic shrubbery, a rendering of Venus on a pedestal.
“Was this
your
idea?” he asked in an accusing tone.
“It was
my
idea!” Annie insisted, “and you’re quite wrong about Valerie. She gave Ruth a silver teapot, which Ruth in spite promptly put on the kitchen table for the servants. There it sits to this very day, black as the ace of spades, for no one ever polishes it.”
“I think the cabinet is lovely,” I pressed on. “It lightens the air of this room remarkably. The Kent cabinet was so very dark and heavy.”
“I like furniture dark and heavy,” Ludwig asserted with a mulish set to his jaw. “Substantial,” he added, by way of explanation.
“What do you think, Abbie?” I asked, for he was fond of his sister.
“I think it’s ugly,” she disappointed me by saying. “The other is worse though,” she added to her brother.
Kessler continued to observe the thing as best he could through Annie’s body. She added nothing to its beauty I can tell you. “It’s too small, too flimsy,” he complained, tossing up his hands in disdain. “It makes the rest of the room look old and heavy.”
Noticing his eyes flickering to the draperies, I took a deep breath and adopted a voice as disinterested as I could make it. “With lighter draperies—rose or gold, perhaps—the cabinet would look less outstanding, less out of place, I mean.”
He seemed to be regarding the effects of that deep breath on my body. I thought at first he wasn’t listening at all, but he soon answered, “Yes, but we don’t have pink or yellow draperies. We have green.”
“I didn’t say pink or yellow. I said rose or gold.”
“A rose by any other name is usually pink,” he insisted.
“I always did hate those old dark green curtains,” Abbie said, glancing at them. No more than her brother, I don’t believe she even realized they were green till the discussion’s beginning.
“We’ll put up new curtains when we change the carpet,” Annie said, darting forward from the cabinet. “It can all be done in time for the New Year’s party.”
“I don’t plan to have the annual party this year,” Ludwig said.
All talking of furniture was deflected to a tirade from the two regular female residents upon this announcement. I had to hold in all my regret. Worried looks to myself told me I was the cause of canceling the party. I hastened on to assure them all I had no objection to it.
“Everyone will be gawking at you and asking questions,” Ludwig told me. I took the idea he would have liked pretty well to have the party, which informed me it was a long-standing tradition, for in general he was not much of a party goer. Even fewer people than usual had been coming lately. I had discovered from little comments let drop accidentally that this was in deference to my being amongst them, but I would not have objected to company. I was more of an excuse than a reason in Kessler’s thinking.
“I can stay abovestairs if that is all that’s stopping you,” I offered magnanimously, having, I must own, not the least intention of missing a moment of the do.
“Oh everyone will want to see
you,
Rose,” Annie assured me. “The party will be the best ever, with you to show to everyone. We never had such an interesting guest before. We had Lud’s cousin that had been in debtor’s prison once, but he was a dull dog after all. All the excitement occurred after he had left and taken a dozen place settings of silver with him. Pity the bump will be all gone down. Maybe we could give you a little tap . . .”
“You see what I mean,” Ludwig hastened in, trying to drown her out. “You would have a stream of guests in your boudoir, feeling your bump and giving it a twin.”
“Ha, and then there was the year Marion got drunk!” Annie rambled on, smiling broadly. “Cast up her accounts all over the . . .”
“Never mind, Annie!” Ludwig said in a grim voice.
“I don’t see why Miss Rose need stay abovestairs,” Abbie said. “Everyone in the village and for miles around has already seen her. At a party with dancing, they will have other things on their minds.”
“Carousing and sluicing and flirting,” Annie agreed. “I can hardly wait. If Marion pukes on the new carpet I’ll box her ears.”
“I leave it up to you ladies,” Sir Ludwig said, knowing full well we would rush on with plans for the party, “but I think it should be cancelled.”
“Good. What do you plan to do about replacing the curtains and rug, then?” Annie demanded. “We can’t let anyone into such a place of rack and ruin. When will you buy them?”
“In about ten years,” he replied, glancing with satisfaction at the mouldy draperies and thin carpet.
“Ludwig!” she shouted. “Take a look at this carpet. “Look at it!” He glanced down, with very little interest. “It’s threadbare!” she yelled.
“Nonsense, it is a trifle faded.”
“It’s full of holes, is what it is.” Annie got down on her hands and knees to stick a finger under surface threads, which ought to have had half an inch of wool on top of them. She broke a couple in the process, forming indeed a hole where her fingers invaded the underweave. “See that! Holes!”
He looked a little more closely. “It can be turned,” he decided.
“It’s shabby, Lud,” Abbie took it up. “It should have been replaced years ago.”
“Why didn’t you replace it then?” he asked, his tone becoming quite noticeably German, which is to say shouting. “I have enough to do looking after the farms and stables and orchard, without worrying about a damned carpet.”
“And the drapes?” Annie asked, advancing towards them with her poking fingers, ready to invent holes if she could not find any.
“I don’t want
pink
curtains,” he decreed stubbornly. As he was capitulating so far, I don’t see why he could not have done it with a little better grace. But then the Germans are too closely allied to their English cousins to take defeat lightly. The French hide their spleen better, I think, and the Italians can manage to make you think you’ve done them a favor by beating them in an argument. Of course, I don’t recall ever arguing with a
female
Italian.
“I hope you’re satisfied,” he said, looking daggers at me.
“I?” I asked, my face a mask of astonishment. “What has all this to do with me?”
“It is odd no one noticed the disarray of the room before your arrival.”
“So it is. I am convinced its disarray must have been outstanding for some several years before my coming. But if the refurbishing were
my
idea, you must know I would have begun with the paintings. I would have removed Messrs. Stubbs and Gainsborough and replaced . . .”
“No!” He stomped from the room with a wrathful eye to the satinwood cabinet. I thought he was gone to his study to sulk, but it turned out he was only changing out of his tea-stained trousers. An unaccustomed fit of dandyism on his part, or more likely an excuse for his returning so soon. At this point we women found it wise to discuss other things than the redoing of the Saloon. We had pretty well agreed on our decor during his absence, especially rose draperies, which would not be called pink by any of us. We played a hand of cards that evening, the first time we had done so. I was rather good at it, and so was Abbie. It was both unfortunate and unfair that the two worse players should get matched to take us on, but it was an amusing and lively game for all that.
It was Abbie’s idea to play for rose curtains, as a sort of joke to humor the German back into smiles. As this went down with no ill humor, I placed a bid on one of the Stubbs, and had ousted them both along with Gainsborough before the evening was over, at which time we were reminded the game had only been in fun. Sir Ludwig repeated several times that Annie was in league with us against him.
“Ha, I haven’t played cards in an age,” she excused herself. “I’m becoming addlepated, like Rose.” She smiled so sweetly on me that it was impossible to take offense.
In fact, in spite of all the bickering and arguing that went forth in the house, it was by no means an unpleasant atmosphere. It was homey—I was treated like a member of their small family, and acted like one. No formality survived beyond the first few days. I suppose that is why I was happy, despite my predicament, and why the days flew past so quickly. Annie never stayed up late. Soon she was yawning and taking her leave of us. As soon as she was gone, Kessler said to Abbie it was time for her to go, too, as she must be tired from her trip. Since it was perfectly clear he wanted some privacy with me, I did not make the missish suggestion of going with her.
“What is it you want?” I asked when we were alone.
“I’m worried about this fellow who was hanging around the grounds today and asking questions in the village. I don’t want you out alone, not even in the gardens or park. I’ll go into Wickey tomorrow and speak to Mulliner again, ask around at the inn and see if I can find out anything about him. I wish you will try to remember if there is anything might help us. This story about the captain, for instance. Do you think there’s anything in it?”
“I couldn’t tell you what Bath looks like, and I seem to remember
places.
Certain details of buildings and so on, I mean. I dream sometimes about Scotland. You mentioned that Miss Smith’s last post was there.”
He nodded, considering this. “Do you think you might come from there?”
“I don’t know. In my dream it was the highlands and sheep, not Edinburgh. And there was a kitten, too.”
“Not much help,” he said.
“No, except that Kitty . . . Oh, it’s nothing. It is just that a couple of times I called Miss Wickey Kitty.”