The Landower Legacy (56 page)

“It’s wonderful to have you here, Rosie. I shall miss you so much when you have gone.”

How right I was. I felt very lonely after she and Jago left.

THE SECRET OF

THE MINE

After Rosie had gone there seemed to be an anticlimax until one day when I met Paul in the lane leading to Tressidor just as I was going to one of the farms.

I noticed the change in him.

I said: “Something has happened.”

“She’s gone away,” he told me.

“Your wife?”

He nodded and a smile spread across his face. “You can’t imagine … the relief.”

“I think I can. Where has she gone? For how long?”

“She’s gone to Yorkshire … visiting an aunt.”

“I didn’t know she had an aunt.”

“Oh yes. They’ve corresponded apparently … spasmodically. She suddenly took it into her head to go and see her.”

“For how long?”

He lifted his shoulders. “Who knows? Not a brief visit … I hope.”

“She must have decided suddenly.”

“Yes. It was after Jago and Rosie left. She didn’t waste much time once she’d decided. I drove her to the station myself. She had to go to London first and take the train to Yorkshire from there.”

“She has never been away before.”

“All those years …” he said wearily. “At least this is a respite. I have wanted to talk with you so often … to be with you.”

I was silent and he went on: “What are we going to do, Caroline?”

“Much the same as we have been doing, I suppose,” I answered. “We seem to go on in the same way. What else can we do?”

“We must see each other sometimes … alone. We have to face up to facts. Here we are … in this impasse. We can’t go forward and we can’t go back. Are we going to deny ourselves forever? Are we going to live here like this, frustrated all our lives?”

“I had thought of going away for a while … going to London. Rosie suggested I should visit them.”

“Oh no,” he said.

“I thought it was a good idea. I need to get away … to think about everything.”

“You can’t leave Tressidor any more than I can leave Landower.”

I said: “I have Livia now. It makes me think very seriously about what I can do. Before I had a sort of freedom. There was a time when I had almost decided …”

“Decided what?”

“That I would risk everything to be with you.”

“Caroline?”

“Oh, yes I did. I almost did. I saw it all clearly … this liaison between us … secret meetings … living in fear of discovery … asking myself what discovery would mean. And there were times when I told myself that I did not care what the consequences would be, I would risk everything. Then I had my responsibilities … just as you have.”

He said: “We could go right away. God knows I’ve thought of it often enough. We could live abroad. France … do you remember France? What a long time ago that seems. I was so afraid for you then. I learned what you meant to me in those few days … and I learned it forever. I came to look at you when you were sleeping. I stood at the glass doors leading to the balcony.”

I said: “I was not sleeping.”

“I … almost came in. I often wondered if things would have been different if I had.”

“Yes, I wondered that too.”

“You would have taken me in then.”

“I did not know that you were married … married to save
Landower. I thought you had worked some miracle. I believed you were capable of miracles.”

“What a sordid miracle! A miracle that brought with it a lifetime’s bitterness.”

“Do you hate her so much?”

“I hated her for all sorts of reasons. I hated her for a hundred irritating habits. I hated her because she was herself and I hated her most of all because she stood between us.”

I said: “You are talking of her as though she were no longer there.”

“Let us think of her as gone.”

“She will be back soon.”

“Not yet … Let’s hope not yet.”

“It’s only a visit.”

“Let’s hope she stays away.”

“But when she comes back …”

“Let us not think of her.”

“How can we do anything else? She’s there and, as you said, she is between us.”

“Not at this moment. Forget her. Talk of us.”

“There is nothing more to say.”

“We are not going on like this.”

“But what is the alternative?”

“You know. And perhaps … one day … everything will come right for us.”

He leaned towards me and laid his hand over mine. Then he took it and held it to his lips.

“Caroline, the future is ours to make. Let us forget all this. Let us go away … somewhere we are not known …”

I shook my head and turned away.

I left him then but all that day I kept thinking of him and I wanted to be with him, to explore those avenues which he was begging me to travel with him.

Yet still I hesitated.

I was not quite sure when the rumours started.

Someone said he saw a black dog at the mine; then someone else immediately saw—or thought she saw—a white hare.

These were the harbingers of death. In the old days they had been said to foretell a disaster in the mine; now it was just the warning of death … but in the mine.

Old rumours were recalled. At the time when a man had murdered his wife and put her in the mine, people had seen a black dog; at the time when the man himself had gone down the shaft the dog had appeared again—and with it the white hare.

Now the sightings had begun again.

Something was due to happen at the mine.

I rode out there on one occasion and was surprised to see several people. Some were sitting about on the grass … others walking, and there was a rider or two.

I saw one of the grooms from the stable and greeted him.

“Don’t ‘ee go too near the mine, Miss Tressidor. They do say the black dog have been seen again.”

“I thought that was last week.”

“And again this, Miss Tressidor. There be something going to happen at the mine, sure as God made little apples. Aye, you can be sure of that.”

“I expect everyone is taking special care.”

” ‘Tis a bad thing to see the black dog.”

“I should have thought it would have been good to be warned.”

” ‘Tain’t like that, Miss Tressidor. If the black dog ‘ave come for you, ‘tis no use trying to escape from ‘un.”

“Well, there are quite a few people here. Aren’t they tempting fate?”

“Oh, I don’t know about that, Miss Tressidor. You’m not been in these parts long enough to pay proper attention like. But things happen here in the Duchy as perhaps don’t happen in other places.”

“I’m sure they do,” I said.

I rode home thinking about Paul and wondering what he was doing at this moment.

There were times when I almost went to him but something made me draw back. Then I would go and play with Livia. But for her perhaps I should have considered giving up everything, for I believed he had that in mind too. Landower was not the same to him since his marriage. It had had to be too dearly bought.

Then the terrible fear came to me.

It happened when I went to my room to find Bessie, my personal maid, dusting there. She apologised and said that there had been such a lot to do this morning that she was behind with her work.

I said: “That’s all right, Bessie. Just carry on.”

“I was wondering, Miss Tressidor,” she said, “if you’d heard from Mrs. Landower.”

“Heard from her? Why? She’s away. In Yorkshire … visiting her aunt.”

“Well, there be some as says …”

I said: “What do they say?”

“Well, there’s some as asks whether she did go to Yorkshire. She left … sudden like.”

I wanted to close the conversation but I had to know what lay behind Bessie’s words.

“I suppose she suddenly made up her mind,” I said. “She comes from Yorkshire, you know.”

“It’s Jenny … her maid … lady’s maid. She said she knew her mistress well and she didn’t say nothing to her about going to Yorkshire.”

“That was a matter for Mrs. Landower to decide surely.”

“Jenny said it was funny like … her not saying … and she’s left her comb behind.”

“Comb? What on earth are you talking about, Bessie?”

“Well, according to Jenny, she always used this comb when she was dressing up like. For her hair. You know what her hair was like. It was all over the place if it wasn’t held … like. This comb used to be stuck in the back. She was hardly ever without it.”

“It seems to me that Jenny’s trying to tell us something. What?”

Bessie looked embarrassed and said: “Well, I don’t want to talk out of turn, Miss Tressidor.”

“But you want to share this gossip with me. You know that I am outspoken and like others to be the same. So tell me quickly please, what is Jenny hinting?”

“Well, I don’t rightly know. She said she thought Mrs. Landower might not have gone to Yorkshire after all.”

“Well, where does the all-knowing Jenny think she went?”

“That’s what she’s worried about. She’s gone … and she’s left her comb.”

“I cannot imagine that a comb should play so big a part in Mrs. Landower’s life.”

“Well, seeing as how things are … up at Landower, I mean, Jenny just thought it was funny like.”

“I should think Jenny probably hasn’t got enough to do now that her mistress is away.”

Bessie was silent.

“She writ a letter. Jenny can write a good hand. She likes to show it off a bit, I think.”

“So she has written you say … To whom?”

“She’s writ to Mrs. Landower’s aunt. She knew her address because Mrs. Landower had it in a little book, and Mrs. Landower talked to Jenny a lot. She tells her things … and Jenny says they always talked together … like friends. It wasn’t like a mistress and maid, if you know what I mean.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Mrs. Landower liked to hear about everybody, and Jenny used to tell her what she knew. Well, Jenny have writ this letter to her aunt with a letter inside for Mrs. Landower … care of Miss Arkwright. Jenny knows how to do these things. Jenny reckoned she’d be missing that comb and perhaps sending for it and Jenny thought she’d ask her. That’s if she’s there …”

“If she’s there?”

“Jenny thinks it’s funny … and then there’s that black dog.”

I felt I could endure no more of this conversation.

“That’ll do, Bessie,” I said.

And she went out leaving me with a terrible fear in my heart.

Nanny Loman had taken Livia to Landower to play with Julian. Ever since that talk with Bessie I had been unable to throw off an ever increasing uneasiness.

Gossip! I thought. It is foolish to think too much of it. But I could not shut out of my mind the memory of the moors, with those people wandering about, whispering, their attention focussed on the mine as though they expected to see black dogs and white hares at any moment.

When Livia returned I would supervise getting her to bed, an undertaking which soothed me considerably. I would watch her absorption in Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood and occasionally diverge from the text so that she could have the pleasure of putting me right because she knew it off by heart.

I heard them return and went to the nursery.

Nanny Loman looked disturbed.

I said to her: “Is anything wrong, Nanny?”

She looked at Livia and I nodded. It was something she did not want to say in front of the child.

Cinderella seemed a long time reaching her happy ending that
evening, but as soon as I had tucked in Livia I sought out Nanny Loman.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Well, it’s very strange, Miss Tressidor. You know Jenny who acted as lady’s maid to Mrs. Landower …”

“Yes, of course.”

“Well, apparently she thought it was rather strange that Mrs. Landower had gone off to Yorkshire without telling her and she had not taken some comb or other which she usually wore.”

“Yes,” I said. “I did hear that.”

“Well, she wrote to Mrs. Landower’s aunt, because Mr. Landower said she had gone to her. The letter she enclosed to Mrs. Landower herself has come back with a note from the aunt saying Mrs. Landower had never been there and she hadn’t heard from her since Christmas.”

“Oh! What can that mean?”

“Well, it means … where is Mrs. Landower?”

“She must have gone to Yorkshire.”

Nanny Loman shook her head and turned away.

I could not read her thoughts, but I could guess the direction they were taking. I thought that our lives were an open book to them. Sometimes I wondered how much they knew of our secret thoughts. And what they did not know they would guess.