Victoria Holt (6 page)

“Aunt Patty, you are an old schemer. Just suppose she liked me and agreed to take me…I shouldn’t be with you.”

“My love, that little house will be waiting for you. School holidays will be our red-letter days. Dear old Vi will give an extra polish to the brass—she has a fetish about that brass of hers—I shall be in a whirl of excitement. Just imagine the rejoicing in the house, ‘Cordelia is coming home.’ This time next year I can see it all so clearly. We’ll all go to the carol service in the church. The rector is such a nice man. In fact it is a very friendly place.”

“Oh, Aunt Patty,” I said, “I was so looking forward to being with you. After all, in three years I have seen very little of you.”

“You will see more of me when you are in Devon. Not just Christmas and summer. There is a station about three miles from the house and we’ll have the little dog cart. I’ll come to meet you. Oh, I am so looking forward to it. And if you were at a school like Colby Abbey, where believe me the nobility send their daughters, you’d be getting into the right
genre
…if you know what I mean. We had a knight or two, but let me tell you, Daisy Hetherington has earls’ daughters and the odd duke’s.”

We were laughing as it was always so easy to do with Aunt Patty. She had the unique gift of making any situation amusing and tolerable.

My thoughts were in disorder. I had wanted to teach; in fact I had felt I had a special vocation for it; it was what I had been brought up to expect for years, but I did feel this situation was too much for me to take in all at once: the removal from Grantley; the prospect of a new home with Aunt Patty and Violet, and then to be presented with the possibility of a career in my chosen profession with a hope of my own school at the end of it! But in the forefront of my thoughts was Edward Compton, the man who had a habit of appearing mysteriously in my life and was at last taking on what I thought of as a natural image.

Before he had been like a fantasy, nameless, and I could not fit him into a home. Now I knew. He was Edward Compton of Compton Manor and he was coming to tea with us tomorrow afternoon. Sitting with Aunt Patty and Violet he would shed that aura of make-believe, and I wanted him to do that.

He excited me. He was so handsome with those beautifully chiseled features and that exciting look of another age, which had fallen from him a little in the wood. When he had said his name—with the slightest hesitation so that it had seemed as though he was reluctant to give it—he had become like a normal human being. I wondered why he had been a little reluctant to tell me. Perhaps he knew that coming upon us in the forest and again on me on deck he had created an aura of mystery and he wanted to cling to it.

I laughed. I was looking forward to seeing him more than I would care to admit to Aunt Patty; and he dominated my thoughts even to the extent of the coming of Daisy Hetherington and the effect this might have on my future.

***

My disappointment was so bitter next day when Edward Compton did not appear that I realized how deeply I had allowed my feelings to become involved.

Aunt Patty and Violet were ready and waiting for him. I had expected he would arrive a little before four o’clock as tea was served at that hour, but when at four thirty he had not appeared, Aunt Patty said we should start without him. And this we did.

I was listening all the time for his arrival and gave rather absent-minded answers to Aunt Patty and Violet who talked continuously about Daisy Hetherington’s visit.

“Perhaps,” said Aunt Patty, “he was called away suddenly.”

“He could have sent a message,” said Violet.

“Perhaps he did and it went to the wrong place.”

“Who could mistake Grantley Manor?”

“All sorts of things could happen,” said Aunt Patty. “He could have had an accident in the road coming here.”

“Shouldn’t we have heard?” I asked.

“Not necessarily,” replied Aunt Patty.

“Perhaps he changed his mind about coming,” suggested Violet.

“He asked for the invitation,” I said. “It was only yesterday.”

“Men!” said Violet, speaking from vast ignorance. “They can act very funny at times. It could be anything…You never know with men.”

“There’ll be an explanation,” said Aunt Patty, spreading her meringue with strawberry jam and giving herself up to the ecstatic enjoyment of it. “I tell you what,” she said when she had finished it, “we could send Jim to the Three Feathers. They’d know if there had been an accident.”

Jim was the stableman who looked after the carriage and our horses.

“Do you think it looks as though we’re too interested?” asked Violet.

“My dear, Vi, we
are
interested.”

“Yes, but him being a
man
…”

“Men have mishaps as well as women, Violet, and it seems a funny thing to me that he didn’t come when he said he would.”

They talked a little about Edward Compton and I explained how, with a party of girls, we had met him in the forest and afterwards by a strange coincidence he had been on the Channel boat. Then he happened to be here.

“Oh, I reckon he was called away suddenly,” said Aunt Patty. “He left a message to be delivered but you know what they are at the Three Feathers. Pleasant…but they can be forgetful. Do you remember, Vi, when one of the parents wanted to stay for a night and we booked her in and Mrs. White forgot to make a note of it. We had to put her up at the school.”

“I remember that well,” said Violet. “And she liked it so much she stayed an extra day and night and wanted to come again.”

“So you see,” said Aunt Patty and went on to talk of the preparations for Daisy Hetherington’s visit.

It was an hour later when Jim returned from the Three Feathers. No Mr. Compton had been staying there. All they had at the moment was two elderly ladies.

That seemed very strange. Hadn’t he said he was staying at the Three Feathers…or had I imagined that he must be?

I was not sure. When he had told me his name I had begun to feel that mysterious air retreating. Now it was back again.

There was something odd about this stranger from the forest.

***

There was no message from Edward Compton and I went to bed mystified and disappointed, for he had, after all, expressed a wish to call. I was sure something unexpected had happened.

I spent a disturbed night of jumbled dreams in which he figured mixed up with Daisy Hetherington. In one near nightmare I dreamed that I was at Colby Abbey Academy, which was some great menacing Gothic castle, and I was searching for Edward Compton. When I found him he was a monster—half man, half woman, himself and Daisy Hetherington; and I was trying to escape.

I sat up in bed breathless and I guessed I had been shouting in my sleep.

I lay still trying to quieten my mind.

Such a lot seemed to have happened in a short time that it was small wonder I had disturbed dreams. As for Edward Compton, if he had decided he did not want to visit us and had not the courtesy to let us know, so much for him. But I did not believe that was the case. What had been so striking about him had been that air of almost old-world chivalry.

It was all rather mysterious. I should probably find the solution soon. Perhaps a message would be on its way to me now.

When I went down breakfast was over and the girls were on their way to their various classes. Lessons were always a little perfunctory at such a time with break-up so near and the Christmas spirit everywhere.

During the morning I went into the town. Miss Stoker, the owner of the little linen drapers shop, was in the street inspecting her display of doilies and tablecloths laid out with branches of holly here and there designed to catch Christmas shoppers.

She greeted me with pleasure and said how upset she was because we were leaving. “The place won’t be the same without the school,” she said. “It’s been here so long. Mind you, when we heard it was to be a school…that was years ago…there was some of us that wasn’t too pleased. But then Miss Grant…she was a great favorite…and all the girls. It did you good to see them coming into the town. I tell you it won’t be the same.”

“We shall miss you all,” I said.

“Times change, I always say. Nothing stands still for long.”

“Not many people in the town just now,” I said.

“No. Well, who’d be here at this time of the year?”

“You’d notice strangers, wouldn’t you?”

I looked at her expectantly. Miss Stoker had the reputation of knowing everything that went on in the town.

“The Misses Brewer are at the Feathers again. They were here last year. They like to break the journey on the way to visit their cousins where they go for Christmas every year. They know they can trust the Feathers. And they’re glad of them there. Not much custom about in winter. Tom Carew was saying to me that there’s a tidy trade for spring, summer and autumn but the winter it’s as dead as a doornail.”

“And so the Misses Brewer are the only guests just now.”

“Yes…and lucky to have them.”

That was double confirmation. If anyone else was staying there, Miss Stoker would know.

All the same, when I escaped from her I went into the Three Feathers and wished the Carews the compliments of the season. They made me welcome and insisted that I drink a glass of cider.

“We were struck all of a heap when we heard Miss Grant had sold the Manor,” said Mrs. Carew. “Real shock, wasn’t it, Tom?”

Tom said: “My word yes. All shook up and no mistake.”

“It had to be,” I replied and they sighed.

I asked how business was.

“Stumbling on,” said Tom. “We’ve got two guests…the Misses Brewer. They’ve been here before.”

“Yes, I heard from Miss Stoker. And they are the only two?”

“Yes, the only two.”

I couldn’t be more sure than that.

“Your Jim seemed to think we might have a friend of yours…”

“We just thought he might be coming here. A Mr. Compton.”

“Perhaps he’ll come later on. We could give him a really nice room if he was to.”

I came out of the Three Feathers very disconsolate. I wandered through the town and then I remembered the Nag’s Head. It was scarcely an hotel, rather a small inn, but they did have a room or two which they let now and then.

I went into the Nag’s Head and saw Joe Brackett whom I knew slightly. He welcomed me and said how sorry he was that I was leaving. I came straight to the point and asked him if a Mr. Compton had taken a room with him.

He shook his head. “Not here, Miss Grant. Perhaps at the Feathers…”

“No,” I said, “he didn’t stay there either.”

“Are you sure he’s staying in this town? I can’t think where else he could be unless it’s Mrs. Shovell’s. She lets a room now and then…just bed and breakfast. But she’s laid up this last week…one of her turns.”

I said goodbye and made my way back to the Manor. Perhaps there would be a message, I thought.

But there was no message.

In the afternoon I helped the girls decorate the common room and late that afternoon Daisy Hetherington arrived.

***

I was definitely impressed by Daisy Hetherington. She was a spare, angular woman, very tall. She must have been five feet ten inches in her stockinged feet. I myself was tall but I felt almost dwarfed beside her. She had very clear ice-blue eyes and white hair, elegantly dressed. Her pallor and classic features gave her a look of having been carved out of stone. There was something stony about her, but there was an air of nobility. She would be a model headmistress, I knew at once, because she would inspire immediate awe and a great deal of respect. She would demand the best and those about her would give it because they knew she would accept nothing less. She would give perfection and want it in return.

The only thing which did not fit was her name. Daisy suggested a modest little flower hidden among the grass. She should have had a queenly name: Elizabeth, Alexandra, Eleanor or Victoria.

No one could have been less like Aunt Patty who seemed to become more rotund, more easy-going, and more frivolously lovable in her presence.

Aunt Patty had sent one of the maids to my room to tell me that Miss Hetherington had arrived and they were in the sitting room before going in to dinner. Would I join them there?

I remember I was wearing a blue velvet dress with a white jabot at the neck. I had dressed my thick straight chestnut-tinged hair high on my head to give me further height, and I hoped, dignity. I felt that, in the presence of Miss Hetherington, I should need all the self-esteem I could muster. I looked at myself in the mirror. I was not by any means good-looking. My light brown eyes were a little too far apart; my mouth too wide; my forehead too high to be fashionable; my nose, as Monique used to say, was “enquiring,” which meant it had a slight tilt at the tip which added a touch of humor to an otherwise rather serious face. I had wondered why Edward Compton had appeared to be more interested in me when Monique was very pretty and Lydia quite attractive. Frieda was a little severe but she had a directness which was appealing. I shared the freshness of youth but I certainly was not the most attractive of the four. It seemed odd that Edward Compton should have selected me. Unless, of course, our meetings had not been by chance. The one in the forest was and so was the one on the boat, but he had taken the trouble to come to Canterton and that must have been to see me. Then why had he made the arrangement to come to tea and then failed to do so?

There was only one explanation. We had met in the forest and he had forgotten all about the meeting until he saw me on the boat. He was passing through and had stopped off at Canterton. Then he remembered I lived there. We met by chance and perhaps I had forced him to accept the invitation, by making it so that it would be impolite to refuse. In any case he had thought better of coming and had slipped quietly away.

I must stop thinking of him. It was far more important to make a good impression on Daisy Hetherington.

I went down.

Aunt Patty was looking delighted. She sprang up and coming to me put her arm through mine.

“Here’s Cordelia. Daisy, this is my niece, Cordelia Grant. Cordelia, Miss Hetherington, who owns one of the finest scholastic establishments in the country.”