Secret for a Nightingale

The Wedding

On the night before my wedding I had a strange dream from which I awoke in terror. I was in the church and Aubrey was beside me. The scent of flowers was strong upon the air-lilies, heavy, overpowering, the odour of death. Uncle James the Reverend James Sandown was standing before us. The church was that which had become so familiar to me during my schooldays when I had stayed at the rectory with Uncle James and Aunt Grace because I could not join my father at the Indian outpost where he might be stationed. I heard my voice disembodied as though echoing in an empty place: T, Susanna, take thee, Aubrey, to my wedded husband . ” Aubrey was holding the ring. He took my hand and his face was coming nearer and nearer … and then the terror overtook me. It was not Aubrey’s face, and yet it was. It was not the face I knew. It was distorted … leering, strange, horrible, frightening. I heard a voice crying: No! No! And it was my own.

I was sitting up in bed, shivering, staring into darkness, my hands, clammy, clutching the sheets. The dream had been so vivid that it was some time before I recovered. Then I told myself that it was nonsense.

I was going to be married in the morning. I wanted to be married. I was in love with Aubrey. What could have brought about that dream?

“Wedding eve nerves!” Aunt Grace, that most practical of women, would have said. And she would be right. I attempted to shake off the effects of that dream but they would not go. It had seemed so real.

I got out of bed and went to the window. There was the church with its Norman tower, visible in the starlight, standing there as it had stood tor eight hundred years impregnable, defiantly facing the wind, the rain and the centuries, marvelled at and visited by many, the pride of Uncle James’s heart.

“It is a privilege to be married in such a church,” he said.

Tomorrow my father would lead me down the aisle and there I should stand beside Aubrey. I was shivering still. But it would not be anything like the dream.

I went to my wardrobe and looked at my dress white satin trimmed with Honiton lace; and there was a wreath of orange blossom to go with it.

Beyond the church in the Black Boar the only inn in Humberston Aubrey would be sleeping.

“A bridegroom must not spend the night under the same roof as his bride,” said my Aunt Grace. Would he be disturbed by dreams of the day to come?

I went back to bed. I did not want to sleep. I was afraid that the dream would continue and that I should go on from that moment when I had shouted “No! No!” while Aubrey stood there forcing the ring on my finger.

I lay in bed thinking about it all.

I met Aubrey for the first time in India where my father was stationed. I had just gone out to join him after seven years in England where I had been at school, spending my holidays at the rectory with my Uncle James and Aunt Grace, who had nobly stepped into the breach to look after a brother-in-law’s daughter who must, like all English young ladies of good family, be educated in England. The necessity naturally caused the usual complications to people serving in the outposts of Empire and, as was generally the case, good-natured relatives came to the rescue.

I remembered the joy of reaching my seventeenth birthday. It was June and I was at school at the time, but I did know that would be my last term, and in August I should be returning to India where I had spent the first ten years of my life.

It was ungrateful perhaps to be so eager to go, even though I should be joining my father. Uncle James and Aunt Grace, together with my cousin Ellen, had been very kind to me and did all they could to make a home for me. But it must have been something of an intrusion particularly at the beginning. They had their lives to lead and parish affairs were demanding. Cousin Ellen was twelve years older than I and deeply interested in her father’s curate whom she would marry as soon as he found a living; Uncle James had his flock of devoted parishioners; Aunt Grace had innumerable activities organizing sales of work, garden parties, carol singers something for every occasion, including the Mothers’ Union and sewing parties. I dare say I was trying. My heart was far across the seas, and because I was aware of being something of a burden, no doubt I assumed an attitude of indifference and arrogance mingled with critical comparisons between an ancient, draughty rectory with one cook, one maid and a twee ny and a Colonel’s residence with numerous native servants scurrying around to gratify our wishes.

I was not exactly an angelic child and my ayah and Mrs. Fearnley, who had been my governess up to the time I was ten years old, had said they never knew what to expect of me. There were two sides to my nature. I could be sunny-tempered, amenable, gentle and affectionate.

“It is like the moon,” said Mrs. Fearnley, who liked to make an educational point out of every situation. There is the bright side and the dark side. ” Unlike the moon, I showed my dark side now and then.

“Not often, thank goodness,” said Mrs. Fearnley; but it worried her that it was there. Then I could be obstinate. I could make up my mind and nothing would make me diverge from it. I would disobey orders to get my own way. I was really a most recalcitrant child on these occasions quite different from the sunny-tempered one who was so pleasant to teach and be with.

“We must fight the dark side,” said Mrs. Fearnley.

“Susanna, you are one of the most unpredictable children I ever met.”

My ayah to whom I was devoted put it differently.

“There are two spirits in this little body. They fight together and we shall see which one is the victor. But not yet … not now while you are little more than a baba … but when you full grown-up lady.”

During those years in England memories of my Indian childhood stayed with me. I dare say they became more delightful the farther I grew away from them. Vivid pictures came into my mind as I lay in bed remembering, before I drifted off to sleep.

After the death of my mother my life had been dominated by my ayah. My father was there in the background, grand, important, second only to God. He was loving and tender but he could not be with me as much as he wished, and I know now that I was an anxiety to him. The hours we spent together were very precious. He would tell me about the regiment and how important it was; I was very proud of him because he was honoured wherever he went.

But it was my ayah, familiar, musk-scented, my constant companion, who was perhaps more important to me than anyone else at that time. I loved the thrill of going into the streets with her. She would hold my hand in hers and warn me never to let go. That gave me a sense of danger to the expeditions which rendered them doubly exciting. There was noise and colour everywhere as we wended our way among representatives from every tribe and caste. I came to know them all the Buddhist priests because of their shaven heads, their saffron-coloured robes swishing as they hurried along without glancing at the crowds; the Parsees in their odd-shaped hats carrying umbrellas; the women who must not show their faces and whose black-rimmed eyes looked out through the slits in their veils. There was the fascination of the turbaned snake-charmer, who played his weird music while the sinuous and sinister cobra rose from the basket to writhe menacingly for the wonder of the watchers. I was always allowed to drop a rupee into the jar beside him, for which I received fulsome thanks and a promise of a happy life, blessed with many children, the firstborn a son.

The musky smell hung about the air; there were other smells less pleasant. If I had shut my eyes I should have known by the smell that I was in India. I was fascinated by the brilliantly coloured saris of the women who were unveiled because, said my ayah, they were of low caste. I said they were a lot prettier than the higher caste ones with their shapeless robes and veiled faces.

Mrs. Fearnley told me that Bombay was called the “Gateway to India’ and that it was given to us when Charles the Second married Catherine of Braganza.

“What a lovely wedding present!” I exclaimed.

“When I get married I should like a present like that.”

“It is only kings who get them,” said Mrs. Fearnley, ‘and they are often more of a burden than a blessing. “

We would ride in the pony cart up Malabar Hill and I could see the Governor’s house looking grand and imposing on Malabar Point; and around it were gardens and the clubs frequented by the officers and British residents. Mrs. Fearnley was almost always with me on these jaunts and she made use of every opportunity to improve my education.

But sometimes I was with my ayah who told me more of the things I liked to hear. I was far more interested in the burial grounds where the naked bodies of the dead were left out in the open to be stripped of their flesh by the vultures and their bones to whiten in the sun which, said my ayah, was more dignified than leaving them to worms than of accounts of how the Moguls had once dominated the country before the coming of the East India Company, and how fortunate the Indians were now because our great Queen was going to look after them.

Often in school holidays during those years in England I would sit in my bedroom in the rectory overlooking the graveyard with its grey stones, the inscriptions on many of which had long since been half obliterated by time, and think of the hot sun, the blue sea, the chanting voices, the colourful saris and mysterious-looking eyes seen through the slits in veils. I would think of the servants who had looked after our needs the boys in their long white shirts and white trousers; the shrewd and wily Khansamah, who ruled the kitchen and sallied forth each day to the markets like a maharajah, with his menials a few paces behind ready to rush forward at his command and bear off his purchases when the conference, which each transaction seemed to demand, was over.

I thought of the carts pulled by the patient-looking, long-suffering bullocks; the narrow streets; the vicious, persistent flies; the bales of brilliant coloured silks in the shops, water-carriers, hungry-looking dogs, goats with bells round their necks which tinkled as they walked, country women, come in from the nearby villages to sell their wares; coolies, peasants, Tamils, Pathans, Brahmins, all mingling in the colourful streets; and here and there would be a dignified gentleman in his beautifully arranged puggree with a smattering of brilliant jewels. And in contrast the beggars. Never would I forget the beggars . the diseased and the deformed, with their appealing dark eyes which I feared would haunt me forever and of which I dreamed after my ayah had tucked me in and left me under my protective net which kept me safe from the marauding insects of the night.

Vaguely I remembered my mother tender, loving, gentle and beautiful.

I was four years old when she died. Before that she seemed to be always with me. She used to talk to me about Home, which was England, and when she did so there would be a great longing in her voice and in her eyes which, young as I was, I was aware of. It told me that she wanted to be there. She talked of green fields, the buttercups and a special sort of English rain soft and gentle and a sun which was warm and benevolent and never or hardly ever fierce. I thought it was a sort of Heaven.

She would sing English songs to me. Drink to me only with Thine Eyes, Sally in Our Alley and The Vicar of Bray. She told me about the days when she was as little as I was. She had been in the Humberston rectory then, for her father had been the rector. Her brother James had taken on the living on his death, so when my turn came to go, it was not an entirely strange place, for I felt I had been there with my mother in those early days.

Then came the day when I did not see her and they would not let me go to her because she was suffering from some sort of fever which was infectious. I remembered how my father took me on his knee and told me that we had only each other now.

I was perhaps too young to understand the tragedy in our household, but I was vaguely aware of loss and sadness, though the magnitude of the disaster did not strike me immediately. Well-meaning ladies officers’ wives mainly invaded the nursery; they made much of me and told me my mother had gone to Heaven. I thought it was a trip to a land where there would be green fields and gentle rain, like going to the hills, only more exotic, and perhaps taking tea with God and the angels instead of officers’ wives. I presumed that she would come back after a while and tell me all about it.

It was then that Mrs. Fearnley came. The same fever which had killed my mother attacked her husband who had been one of the officers. He died during the same week as my mother. Mrs. Fearnley, who had been a governess before her marriage, was very uncertain about her future and my father suggested that while she made up her mind what she wanted to do, she might act as governess to his motherless daughter.

It seemed a Heavensent opportunity both to my father and Mrs. Fearnley and that was how she came to me.

She must have been thirty-five years old; she was well-meaning, conscientious and determined to do right by me. I was fond of her in a negative way. It was my ayah who was a source of excitement to me, alien, exotic, with soulful eyes and long dark hair which I liked to brush. I would lay aside the brush and rub my fingers through it. She would say: “That soothes me, little Su-Su. There is goodness in your hands.” Then she would tell me about her childhood in the Punjab and how she had come to Bombay to be with a rich family, and how her good friend the Khansamah had brought her into the Colonel’s household and that the great happiness of her life was to be with me.

When my mother died my father would be with me almost every day just for an hour or more, and I grew to know him better. He always seemed sad. There were tea-parties with a number of people and they talked to me and asked me how I was getting on with my lessons. There were one or two children with the regiment and I would go to parties arranged by the parents and then Mrs. Fearnley would arrange for me to return this hospitality.

The ayah used to come and watch us while we played games. Poor Jenny is a-weeping and The Farmer’s in His Den and musical chairs with Mrs. Fearnley or one of the other ladies playing the piano. My ayah used to sing some of the songs afterwards. Her rendering of Poor Jenny was really quite pathetic and she made The Farmer’s in His Den sound like martial music.

The officers’ wives were sorry for me because I had no mother. I understood this as I grew older and realized that her journey to Heaven was not the temporary absence I had at first imagined it to be.

Death was something irrevocable. It happened all around. One of the houseboys told me that many of the beggars I saw in the streets would be dead the next morning.

“They come with a cart to collect them,” he said. It was like the plague of London, I thought, when I heard that.

“Bring out your dead!” But the beggars on the streets of Bombay did not have to be brought out, for they had no homes to come out of.

It was a strange world of splendour and squalor, of bustling life and silent death; and memories of it would be with me forever. Flashes of it would come back to me throughout my life. I would see the Khansamah in the market-place, a smile of triumph on his face, and I knew later that meant he was making a profit on all his purchases. I had heard the wives talking about it and telling each other the sad tale of Emma Alderston who had thought she would outwit her dishonest Khansamah by doing the shopping herself, and how the market salesmen had conspired to charge her so much that she was paying far more than the Khansamah’s ‘commission’. “It is a way of life,” said Grace Girling, a captain’s wife.

“Better accept it.”

I liked to sit in the kitchen, watching our Khansamah at work. He was big and important; he sensed my admiration and he found it irresistible. He gave me little tasters and folding his hands across his large stomach watched me intently while I sampled them. I wanted to please him and forced my features into an expression of ecstasy.

“Nobody make Tandoori chicken like Colonel Sahib’s Khansamah. Best Khansamah in India.

Here, Missee Su-Su, look! Ghostaba! ” He would thrust a meat ball made of finely ground lamb at me.

“You find good, eh? Now drink. Ah good?

Nimboo pani. “

I would drink the chilled juice of limes flavoured with rose syrup and listen to his chatter about his dishes and above all himself.

For ten years that was my life the first impressionable years so it was small wonder that these memories remained with me. There was one which was more vivid than any other.

I can recall it in detail. The sun was already hot although it was morning and the real heat of the day was to come. With my ayah I had passed through the narrow streets of the market, pausing at the trinket stall to admire its contents while my ayah had a word with the owner, past the rows of saris which were hanging on a rail, past the cavern-like interior in which strange-looking tarts were being cooked, avoiding the goats which blundered past, skirting the occasional cow, looking out for the quick brown bodies of young boys who insinuated themselves between the people, and being even more watchful for their quicker brown fingers. So we came through the market-place to the wider street, and there it happened.

There was a great deal of traffic on that morning. Here and there a loaded camel made its ponderous and disdainful way towards the bazaar; the bullock carts came lumbering in. Just as my ayah was remarking that it was time we made our way home, a boy of about four or five ran out in front of one of the bullock carts. I stared in horror as he was kicked aside just before the cart would have run over him.

We rushed out to pick him up. He was white and very shaken. We laid him on the side of the road. A crowd gathered and there was a great deal of talk but it was in a dialect I did not understand. Someone went off to get help.

Meanwhile the boy lay on the ground. I knelt beside him and some impulse made me lay my hand on his brow. It was strange but I felt something I am not sure what but a feeling of exultation, I think.

Simultaneously the boy’s face changed. It was almost as though for a moment he had ceased to feel pain. My ayah was watching me.

I said to him in English: “It will be all right. They will come soon.

They will make you better. “

But it was not my words which soothed him. It was the touch of my hands.

It was all over very quickly. They came to take him away. They lifted him gently and put him in a cart which was soon moving off. When I had taken my hand from his brow, the last I saw of the boy was his dark eyes looking at me and the lines of pain beginning to re-form on his face.

It was a strange feeling, for when I had touched him it was as though some power had passed from me.

My ayah and I continued our walk in silence. We did not refer to the incident, but I knew it was uppermost in both our minds.

That night when she tucked me into my bed she took my hands and kissed them reverently.

She said: “There is power in these hands, little Su-Su. It may be that you have the healing touch.”

I was excited.

“Do you mean that boy … this morning?” I asked.

“I saw,” she said.

“What did it mean?”

“It means that you have a gift. It is there in these beautiful little hands.”

“A gift? Do you mean to make people well?”

“To ease pain,” she said.

“I do not know. It is in higher hands than ours.”

Some evenings I went riding with my father. I had my own pony who was one of the delights of my life; and it was a very proud moment when, in my white shirt and riding skirt, I rode out by his side. The older I grew the closer we became. He was a little shy with very young children. I loved him dearly the more because he was a little remote. I was at an age when familiarity could breed contempt. I wanted a father to look up to and that was what I had.

He used to talk to me about the regiment and India and the task of the British. I would glow with pride in the regiment and the Empire and mostly in him. He talked to me about my mother and said she had never really liked India. She was constantly homesick, but bravely she had tried not to show it. He worried about me a motherless child whose father could not give her the attention he wished.

I told him I was well and happy, that Mrs. Fearnley was a good companion, that I was fond of her and loved my ayah.

He said: “You’re a good girl, Susanna.”

I told him about the incident with the boy in the road.

“It was so strange. Father. When I touched him I felt something pass from me, and he felt it too because when I laid my hand on his forehead he ceased to feel the pain. It was obvious that he did.”

My father smiled.

“Your good deed for the day,” he said.

“You don’t really believe there was something, do you?” I said.

“You were the good Samaritan. I hope he received proper attention. The hospitals here are less than adequate. If he has broken bones. God help him. It’s a matter of luck whether they will be reset as they should be.”

“You don’t think then that I have … a special touch … or something. Ayah does.”

“Ayah!” His smile was kindly but faintly contemptuous.

“What would a native know about such things?”

“Well, she said something about a healing touch. Really, Father, it was miraculous.”

“I dare say the boy thought it was pleasant to have an English lady kneeling beside him.”

I was silent. I could see it was no use talking to him, any more than it would have been to Mrs. Fearnley, of mystic matters. They were too practical, too civilized, they would say. But I could not dismiss the matter so lightly. I felt it was one of the most important things that had happened to me.

After my tenth birthday my father said to me during one of our rides:

“Susanna, you can’t go on like this. You have to be educated, you know.”

“Mrs. Fearnley says I am doing very well.”

“But, my dear, there must come a time when you will outgrow Mrs. Fearnley. She tells me you are already outclassing her and, moreover, she has decided to go home.”

“Oh! Does that mean you will have to find someone else to take her place?”

“Not exactly. There is only one place where English young ladies should be educated and that is England.”

I was silent, contemplating the enormity of what he was suggesting.

“What about you?” I asked.

“I must stay here, of course.”

“You mean I must go to England … alone?”

“My dear Susanna, it is what happens to all young people here. You have seen that. The time will soon come when it will be your turn. In fact, some would say you should have gone before.”

He then started to outline his plans. Mrs. Fearnley was being most accommodating. She had been a very good friend to us. She was making plans to return to England and when she went I should go with her. She would take me to my mother’s brother James and his wife Grace at the Humberston rectory, and that would be my home until I could rejoin him in India when I was seventeen or eighteen.

“But that is seven years away! A lifetime!”

“Hardly that, my dear. I hate the thought of parting as much as you do perhaps even more … but it is necessary. We cannot have you growing up without education.”

“But I am educated. I read a great deal. I have learned such a lot.”

“It is not only book learning, my dear child. It is the social graces how to mix in society … real society, not what we have here.

No, my dear, there is no way out. If there were I should have found it, for the last thing I want to do is lose you. You will write to me. We will be together through our letters. I shall want to know everything that happens to you. I may come to England for a long leave eventually. Then we shall be together. In the meantime you will go to school and the rectory will be your home during holidays. Time will soon pass. I shall miss you so much. As you know, since your mother died, you have been everything to me. “

He was looking straight ahead, afraid to look at me, afraid to show the emotion he felt. I was less restrained. One of the things I had to learn in England was to control my feelings.

I saw the sea, the hills, the white building through a haze of tears.

Life was changing. Everything was going to change . not slowly as life usually did, but drastically.

There had been more than a month to get used to the idea, and after the first shock I began to experience a glimmer of excitement. I had often watched the big ships coming into the harbour and seen them sail away. I had seen boys and girls take farewells of their parents and depart. It was a way of life and now it was my turn.

Mrs. Fearnley was busy with her arrangements and lessons were not so regular.

“There is little more I can teach you,” she said.

“You should be well up to others of your age. Read as much as you can. That is the best thing you can do.”

She was cheerful, looking forward to going home. She was to stay with a cousin until, as she said, she ‘found her feet’.

It was different with my ayah. This was a sad parting for her and for me. We had been so close closer than I had been to Mrs. Fearnley.

Ayah had known me from the time I was a baby. She had known my mother, and the bond between us had grown very strong since my mother’s death.

She looked at me with the patient acceptance of her race and said: “It is always so with the ayah. She must lose her little ones. They are not hers. They are only lent.”

I told her she would find another little one. My father would see that she did.

“To start again?” she said.

“And where is there another Su-Su?”

Then she took my hands and looked at them.

“They are like lotus blossoms,” she said.

“Slightly grubby ones,” I pointed out.

“They are beautiful.” She kissed them.

“There is power in these hands.

It must be used. To waste what is given is not good. Your god . my gods . they do not like to see their gifts despised. It will be your task, little one, to use the gifts which have been given. “

“Oh no, ayah dear, you imagine there is something special about me because you love me. My father says that that little boy liked to have me kneel beside him and that was why he seemed to forget his pain.

That was all it was, my father says. “

“The Colonel Sahib is a very great man, but great men do not know all… and sometimes the beggar of the lowest caste has certain knowledge which is denied the greatest rajah.”

“All right, ayah dear, I am wonderful. I am special. I wilt guard my beautiful hands.”

Then she kissed them solemnly and raised her soulful eyes to my face.

“I will think of you always and one day you will come back.”

“Of course I’ll come back. As soon as I have finished with school I’ll be here. And you will have to give up everything and come back to me.”

She shook her head.

“You will not want me then.”

“I shall always want you. I shall never forget you.”

She rose and left me.

I had said goodbye to all my friends. On the last night father and I dined alone. It was his wish. There was a hush atmosphere in the house. The servants were subdued and watched me silently. The Khansamah had excelled himself with one of his favourite dishes which he called yakhni - a soil of spiced lamb which I had always particularly enjoyed. But I did not on that evening. We were too emotional to want to eat and it was as much as we could do to make a show of eating and afterwards to tackle the mangoes, nectarines and grape^ which were set before us. ^ It seemed that the entire household was in mourning for my departure.

Conversation was stilted on that last night. I knew that my father was trying hard to conceal his feelings, which he did admirably of course, and none would have realized how moved he was except that his voice was brittle and his laughter forced.

He talked to me a great deal about England and how different it was from India. I should have to expect a certain discipline at school, and I must remember, of course, that I was a guest of Uncle James and Aunt Grace, who had so kindly come to our rescue and offered us holiday hospitality.

I was rather glad when I could retire to my room and lie for the last time under the mosquito net, sleepless and wondering what the new life in England would be like.

The ship already lay in the bay. I had looked at it many times and tried to imagine what it would be like when that ship sailed away with me in it. But it is hard to imagine a place without oneself.

The day came. We said our goodbyes, and there we were on board, in the cabin Mrs. Fearnley and I were going to share. The moment had come. We stood on deck waving. My father was standing very straight, watching.

I threw a kiss to which he responded. And I saw my ayah. Her eyes were fixed on me. I waved to her and she lifted a hand.

I longed for the ship to go. This parting was too sad to be prolonged.

The excitement of the journey helped me over the sadness of saying farewell to those I loved. Mrs. Fearnley was a brisk and quite pleasant companion. She was determined to carry out the promise she had made to my father to take great care of me and scarcely let me out of her sight.

I knew I was going to be desperately homesick for my father, for my ayah and for India. Going to a new home was not all I had to face.

There was school as well. Perhaps it was good that there would be so much change, so many new experiences that I should have less time to brood. Everyone was kind, but in a remote sort of way.

Mrs. Fearnley in due course delivered me to the rectory before she departed with the cousin who had met us at the docks with the air of a person who has performed an arduous task commendably; and I said goodbye to her without much emotion. It was only when I was alone in the room with the j low ceiling, the heavy oak beams and the latticed window ? looking out on the churchyard that I realized the enormity of my aloneness. On the ship there had been too many experiences: the wonder of sailing on a sea which could be wildly turbulent or smooth as a lake; meeting my fellow passengers seeing new places Cape Town with its magnificent bay and mountains; Madeira with its colourful flowers: Lisbon with its beautiful harbour such experiences had helped to banishj fears of the future from my mind. That little room was to become so familiar to me. Everyone tried to make me feel at home. Uncle James, who was very dedicated to his work and was so serious, tried so hard to be . I jolly that his attempts at lightness were always laboured and had quite the reverse effect of what he had intended. Every morning he would say: “Hello, Susanna. Up with the lark?” And if I did a little work in the garden: “Ha, ha, the labourer is worthy of his hire.” Such remarks were always accompanied by a funny little laugh which somehow did not belong to him. But I knew he was trying hard to help me settle in. Aunt Grace was rather brusque, not because she wanted to be but because she rarely showed her feelings, and faced with a lonely child she found the situation embarrassing. Ellen was kind in an absentminded way, but she was twelve years older than I and completely absorbed in her father’s curate, Mr. Bonner, who would marry her as soon as he found a living. “’, For the first weeks I hated school and then I began to like it. I became something of a celebrity because I had lived in India and, in the dormitory after lights out, I was prevailed” upon to tell stories of that exotic land. I revelled in the popularity this brought me and invented the most hair-raising adventures. That helped me a great deal during the first weeks. Then because I was up to the standard of my age group thanks to the meticulous care of Mrs. Fearnley - I was accepted. I was neither dull nor brilliant, which is a far more lovable attribute than being very good or very bad.

By the end of the first year I found school enjoyable and I was during the holiday, caught up in village activities fetes, bazaars, carol-singing and so on. I was part of what was happening about me. The servants took me to their hearts.

“Poor motherless mite,” I heard the cook say to the maid.

“Sent across the world like that to her uncle and aunt… strangers, you might say. And living in heathen parts. That’s no life for a child. It’s a good thing she’s here. I never could abide foreigners.”

I smiled. They didn’t understand. I missed my dear ayah so sadly.

My father wrote regularly long letters about the regiment and the troubles out there.

Sometimes I’m glad you’re home [he wrote]. I want to hear all about it. How are you liking the rectory? Your mother talked about it a great deal. She was homesick for it. The Khansamah was married last week. There was quite a ceremony. He and his bride rode through the town in a flower-decked cart. There was a fine procession. You know what these weddings are like. The bride will be living here. She will do some sort of work in the place, I suppose. I only hope the marriage is not quite as fruitful as everyone seems to be wishing on them. Ayah is happy. She is with a very nice family. Time will soon pass and before long you will be making your plans to come back. You’ll be a young lady, then . finished, as they say. There will be a great deal for you to do out here then, I hope you will like it. You will be the Colonel’s Lady. You know what that means. You’ll have to be with me on official occasions. Well, that’s in the future and I am sure then you will perform your duties with the requisite grace and charm.

After all, you’ll be an English lady, nicely ‘finished off at an expensive school which you will have to go to for the last year. More of that anon.

In the meantime, I send you my fondest love. I am thinking of you, longing to see you again, hating this separation and telling myself that it will soon pass.

What lovely letters he wrote! He was more revealing on paper than in person. Some people are like that. I should be happy to have such a father. And I was. I was lucky to have good kind Uncle James and Aunt Grace and Cousin Ellen who made such efforts to make me feel one of the family.

A year passed then two. There was trouble in India and my father was not able to come home for that promised leave. It was a great disappointment. Then it would seem terribly important whether or not I was chosen for the school play or how many marks I had in history and I did not think of India. One summer holiday I went to the home of one of my friends a very pleasant Tudor manor with acres of land which they farmed. There was a haunted room which intrigued me, and my friend Marjorie and I slept in it one night. The ghost, disobligingly, did not show itself. Then Marjorie came to the . rectory for a holiday.

“It is only right,” said Aunt Grace, ‘that you should return hospitality. “

Yes, I could see they were trying hard to make me feel wanted. These were, on the whole, happy memories. Cousin Ellen’s belated wedding caused a great deal of excited preparation; and after that there was her departure with Mr. Bonner to the living in Somerset. I tried to supply a little of that help which Aunt Grace had had from her, for I wanted to show them that I was grateful for all they had done for me.

I took a greater interest in church activities. I listened to Uncle James’s sermons with assumed interest and I laughed at his little jokes.

Time was passing.

There was one incident which stands out in my mind. It happened just before Ellen’s marriage. I was paying a call with her. I remember it was early autumn because the fruit was being gathered in.

As we came to the Jennings’s farm we saw a group of people under one of the apple trees and Ellen said to me: “There’s been an accident.”

We hurried along, and lying on the ground was one of the Jennings’s sons groaning in agony.

Mrs. Jennings was in a state of great anxiety.

“Tom has fallen, Miss Sandown,” she said to Ellen.

“They’ve gone for the doctor. They’ve been a long time gone.”

“Has he broken something, do you think?” asked Ellen.

“That we don’t know. It’s why we’re waiting for the doctor.”

Someone was kneeling by Tom Jennings and strapping his leg to a piece of wood. On impulse I knelt down on the other side of him. I watched the first aid being applied and I could see that Tom was in great pain.

I took out my handkerchief and wiped his brow, and as I did so I was aware of the feeling which I had experienced before in India when the young boy had fallen under the bullock cart.

Tom looked at me and his expression eased a little. He stopped moaning. I stroked his forehead.

Ellen was looking at me in surprise and I thought she was going to tell me to get up; but Tom was watching me intently as I went on stroking his forehead.

It must have been about ten minutes before the doctor came. He complimented the man who had bound the leg to the wood and said it was the best thing that could have been done. Now they would have to move him very carefully.

Ellen said: “If there is anything we can do, Mrs. Jennings …”

“Thank you, Miss,” replied Mrs. Jennings.

“He’ll be all right now doctor’s here.”

Ellen was rather thoughtful as we walked back to the rectory.

“You seemed to soothe him,” she said.

“Yes. That sort of thing happened once before.” I told her about the boy in India. She listened in her kindly, rather absentminded way, and I guessed she was really thinking about what sort of house she would go to with Mr. Bonner for he had only just acquired it at that time.

But I remembered that incident; and I wondered what my ayah would have thought of it.

It was mentioned during the evening meal.

“He fell off the ladder,” said Aunt Grace.

“I don’t know why there are not more accidents. They can be rather careless.”

“Susanna was very good,” said Ellen.

“She stroked his broi while George Grieves did a little first aid. The doctor said i was the right thing and George is very proud of himself. But I must say he did seem to find Susanna comforting.”

“Ministering angel,” put in Uncle James, smiling at me.

I thought about the incident later. I looked at my hands. I was just comforting to have someone stroke one’s forehead when one was in pain.

Anyone would have done.

Living in this calm prosaic world, I was beginning to thin, like those about me. My dear ayah had been full of fancies. C course she was. She was a foreigner.

And then at last it was my seventeenth birthday.

It was all arranged. A Mrs. Emery was taking out ht daughter Constance to be married to one of the officers. Sh would be delighted to take me with them. My father was relieved and so were Aunt Grace and Uncle James. It would have been unseemly for a young girl of seventeen t travel alone.

The great day came. I said my goodbyes. I went down Tilbury in the company of the Emerys and at last I was setting sail for India.

It was a smooth voyage; the Emerys were pleasant companions, Constance was obsessed by her coming marriage and could talk of little else but the perfections of her fiance. I did not mind. I had my own obsession.

What an impressive sight Bombay harbour is with its mountainous island fringed with palm trees rising to the magnificent peaks of the Western Ghats.

My father was waiting for me. We embraced. Then he het me at arm’s length, looking at me.

“I wouldn’t have known you.”

“It’s been a long time. You look the same, Father.”

“Old men don’t change. It is only little girls who grow int beautiful ladies.”

“Are you in the same house?”

“Strangely enough, yes. We’ve had some troubled time since you’ve been away, and I have moved round a bit, as you know. But here I am now … just as you left me.”

My father thanked the Emerys when I introduced them. The fiance was waiting for them and he took them off after we had promised to see each other soon.

“You were happy at Humberston?” my father asked me.

“Oh yes. They were good to me. But it isn’t home.”

He nodded.

“And the Emerys, they were good too?”

“Very good.”

“We shall have to see more of them. I shall have to thank them properly.”

“And what of everyone here? Ayah?”

“Oh, she is with the Freelings now. There are two children quite young. Mrs. Freeling is a rather frivolous young woman … attractive, they say.”

“I’m longing to see my ayah.”

“You will.”

“And the Khansamah?”

“A family man. He has two boys. He is very proud of himself. But come along. We must get home.”

And there I was, feeling as though I had never left.

But of course there were changes. I was no longer a child. I had my duties, and as the first days passed, I discovered that these could be demanding. I had come back, ‘finished’ as they say a young English lady fitted to sit at the Colonel’s table and fulfill the duties expected of me.

In a very short time I was caught up in the army life. It was like living in a little world of its own, surrounded by the strangeness of a foreign country. It was not quite the same as it had been, or perhaps I had lived in the imagination too long. I was more bothered by unsavoury detail than I had been in my childhood. I was more conscious of the poverty and disease I was less enchanted; and there were times when I thought rather longingly of cool breezes which used to blow across the ancient church and the peace of the garden with the lavender and buddleia, tall sunflowers and hollyhocks; then I began to feel a nostalgia for the gentle rain, for the Easter and Harvest festivals. Of course my father was here; but I think that if I could have taken him with me I would have preferred to go to that place which had now become Home to me, as it was apparently to so many of those about me.

I took the first opportunity to go and see my ayah. Mrs. Freeling was delighted that I wished to call. I had quickly realized that my father’s position made everyone want to please him, and that meant pleasing his daughter also, and some of the wives were almost sycophantic, believing no doubt that to curry favour with the Colonel helped their husbands on the long road to higher rank.

The Freelings had a pleasant bungalow, surrounded by beautiful flowering shrubs whose names I did not know. Phyllis Freeling was young, very pretty, rather coquettish I thought, and I was sure I should not find her the most interesting of the wives. She fluttered round me as though I did her a great honour by visiting her. She gave me tea.

“We do try to keep up the English customs,” she told me.

“One must, mustn’t one. One doesn’t want to go native.”

I listened to her chatter, all the time wondering when I was going to see my ayah, which was the sole reason for my coming. She talked about the dance they were having soon.

“I dare say you will be on the committee. There are such preparations to be made. If you want a really good dressmaker, I can put you on to the very best.” She folded her hands and said in a voice with an Indian accent: ‘“The very best durzi in Bombay …” So he tells me and I have every reason to believe him. “

I accepted the tea and one of the little scented cakes.

“Khansamah is greatly honoured to make tea for the Colonel’s daughter,” I was told.

I asked about the children and the ayah.

“She is very good. The children are angels. They love Ayah and she is so good with them. Sometimes I wonder whether it is wise to leave them with a native … but what can one do? One has so many responsibilities … to one’s husband, to the regiment…”

At length I thought I could come to the reason for my visit. I reminded her that I wanted to see the ayah.

“But of course. She will be so honoured.”

I was taken to the nursery where the children were having their afternoon nap. She was sitting there waiting, for she knew I was coming.

We looked at each other; she had aged a little, which was natural in seven years.

I ran to her and threw my arms about her. I did not know what Mrs. Freeling thought and I did not care.

“Ayah,” I said.

“Missee Su-Su.”

I felt deeply moved to hear the baby version of my name. I said: “I have thought of you often.”

She nodded. A servant came up and said something in a quiet voice to Mrs. Freeling.

“Well, I’ll leave you,” she said.

“I expect you would like to have a little chat.”

I thought that was tactful of her.

We sat down still looking at each other. We talked in whispers because of the sleeping children in the next room. She told me how she had missed me. The babalog Freelings were nice but they were not Missee Su-Su. There would never be another like her.

I told her about life in England, but I could see she found it difficult to visualize. She said there had been troubles throughout India and dangers . and there was more to come. She shook her head.

“There are murmurings. There are dark secret things … not good.”

She saw changes in me. I was not the same as the little girl who had left Bombay all those years ago.

“Seven years is a long time,” I reminded her.

“It seems long when much happens, short when it does not. Time is in the head.”

It was wonderful to see her again. I said: “I wish I could take you home with me.”

Her face was illumined by a dazzling smile.

“How I wish it. But you do not need an ayah now like the Freeling babalog.”

“Are you happy here. Ayah dear?”

She was silent and I felt a twinge of alarm as I saw the shadow flit across her face. I was puzzled. Mrs. Freeling had not given me the impression that she would interfere in the nursery. I should have thought her ayah would have a free hand; more so than she had had with me, for then there had been Mrs. Fearnley to contend with.

She would be too loyal to tell tales of her mistress, I knew; but I did feel uneasy.

She sensed this and said: “Nowhere could I be content as I was with you.”

I was deeply touched, and surprised that she could feel thus when I remembered how difficult I had been at times. Perhaps time was playing its old tricks in making what was past seem more rosy than it had actually been.

“I shall see you often now that I am here,” I said.

“I am sure Mrs. Freeling won’t mind my coming.”

She shook her head.

“You should not come here, Missee Su-Su. Not too much.”

“Why ever not?”

“Better not. We meet. Perhaps I come to you.” She lifted her shoulders.

“I am just Old Ayah … not yours any more.”

“What nonsense! You will always be mine. And why shouldn’t I come to see you? I shall insist. I am the Colonel’s Lady now. I shall make the rules.”

“Not here,” she said.

“No … no … that not good.”

I did not pursue the subject because I thought there might be some absurd notion in her mind about the propriety of the Colonel’s daughter visiting her old nurse in another household.

Her dark eyes were soulful and prophetic.

“You will go away,” she said.

“I do not see you here … for long.”

“You’re wrong. I shall stay with my father. I have not come all this way to go home again almost immediately. Do you realize how far it is, dear Ayah, right across the seas? I shall stay here, and we shall meet often. It will be like the old days … or almost.”

She smiled.

“Yes … no sadness. Do not let us talk of partings. You have just come. It is a happy day.”

“That’s better,” I said; and I plunged into conversation which was punctuated with “Do you remember when …” And it was amazing how much of the past, which I thought I had forgotten, came back to me.

The children awoke and I was introduced to them. They were round-faced, chubby little creatures of about four and two, I guessed.

When I left them I went down to say goodbye to Mrs. Freeling.

She was sitting on a sofa and beside her was a young man. They rose as I entered.

“Oh, there you are,” said Mrs. Freeling.

“Miss Pleydell has been seeing her old ayah who happens to be mine now. Wasn’t that gracious of her!”

“It wasn’t,” I said.

“I happen to be very fond of her.”

“One is of one’s nanny. But I’m forgetting you don’t know each other.

This is Aubrey St. Clare. Aubrey, this is Miss Susanna Pleydell, the Colonel’s daughter. “

That was the first time I saw Aubrey, and I was immediately struck by his charm and good looks. He was about my height but then I was exceptionally tall. He had fair hair almost golden, vivid blue eyes, and his features were clear-cut.

He took my hand and pressed it firmly.

“What a pleasure to meet you!” he said.

“Do sit down. Miss Pleydell,” said Mrs. Freeling.

“You must have a drink. It’s a little early. But no matter. It is never really too early.”

I sat down beside him.

“You have just come back to India, I believe,” he said.

I explained.

“Fresh from school!” said Phyllis Freeling with a rather shrill, trilling laugh.

“Isn’t that exciting!”

“It must be,” he said, ‘to come back to India. Strange, exciting country, is it not. Miss Pleydell? “

I agreed that it was.

“Do you notice any changes?”

“I was so young when I went away ten years old, to be exact. I think I took a somewhat glamourized picture with me. Now I see it more as it really is.”

“Ah,” he said, ‘one of the penalties of growing up. “

I noticed that he was regarding me intently and I was pleasantly stimulated by his interest. I had known few young men only those who had lived in Humberston and friends of Uncle James and Aunt Grace. I had been very closely, though unobtrusively, guarded, I realized. Now I felt a certain freedom. Yes, I was now grown up. And it was exhilarating.

Aubrey St. Clare talked rather knowledgeably about India, which he appeared to know very well. I gathered he was not connected with the regiment. I wondered what he was doing in India but felt it would be impertinent to ask. Mrs. Freeling took charge of the conversation. I thought she was rather flirtatious with her visitor, and I wondered whether I thought so because I was still under the influence of the Humberston rectory where everything was conducted in a most conventional manner.

At length I said I must go and Aubrey St. Clare immediately rose and asked if he might take me home.

It was only a short way, I told him.

“Nevertheless …” he began, and Mrs. Freeling added: “Oh yes, you should have an escort.”

I thanked her for her hospitality and left with Aubrey St. Clare.

As I came out of the bungalow I looked back and saw a flutter of curtains. Ayah was standing at the window. Did I imagine it or did she really look disturbed?

After that I saw a great deal of Aubrey St. Clare. I became fascinated and flattered because he paid so much attention to me. He was attentive to Phyllis Freeling, but that seemed different because she was married.

My father liked him and I think he was pleased for me to have an escort. I gathered that he would have preferred us to have been in England where I could have been launched into society in the conventional manner. He was eager for me to enjoy life and he regretted that he did not have more time to spend with me.

Aubrey was charming. He had a wonderful personality that could change and be different according to the people he was with.

With my father he was serious and talked about the problems of India; he told me about his travels round the world; he had been in Arabia; he had met people of many races; he found exploring different cultures fascinating and he had a vivid way of expressing himself; yet with Mrs. Freeling he could be extremely frivolous, being exactly the sort of man whom I was sure she would find attractive. It was a great gift.

He was becoming my constant companion. My father was ready to let me go into the bazaars with him, although I should not have been allowed to go by myself. Things were not quite what they had been when I was a child here, he told me. There were undercurrents of unrest. The regiment was on the alert.

Oh, nothing serious, he insisted. But the natives were unpredictable.

They did not reason in quite the same way as we did. Therefore he liked me to go where I wanted but in the company of a strong man.

They were pleasant days.

I saw my ayah several times, but she was always uneasy about my going to the Freeling bungalow. I suggested that she come to us. She did once or twice, but it was difficult for her to get away. I knew something was bothering her but I could not guess what; and to tell the truth I was so caught up in all that was going on, particularly with my new friend, that I did not pay as much attention to her as I would otherwise have done.

One day when we were in the garden under the apricot trees, one of the boys brought us a cooling drink and Aubrey said to me: “I shall have to be thinking of going home soon.”

I was dismayed. I had never thought of his leaving and I suddenly realized how much I had begun to depend on his companionship. I felt vaguely depressed.

“I have had grave news from home,” he went on.

“I am sorry.”

“So am I. It’s my brother my elder brother. He’s ill. In fact I believe he cannot live very long. It will make a great deal of difference to me.”

“You are very fond of him.”

“We have never been great friends. There are only two of us and we are so different. He inherited everything … quite a large estate.

Since he has no children I shall take over everything if he dies, which it now seems certain that he will before very long. I doubt he can last another year. “

“How distressing for you.”

“So … I should be there. Soon I shall have to be making plans to leave.”

“We shall miss you.”

He leaned towards me and, taking my hand, pressed it.

“I shall miss everyone … everything here … and particularly you.”

I felt excited. He had always implied that he admired me and I was aware of an attraction between us; but I felt myself to be such a novice in these matters and I was very uncertain of myself. All I knew was that I should be very sad when he went away.

He talked to me about his home. The estate was in Buckinghamshire. It had been in the family for centuries.

“My brother is very proud of it,” he said.

“I never had the same feeling for houses. I wanted to travel, to see the world. He wanted to absorb himself in squiral duties. If he dies it will fall on my shoulders. I am rather hoping my sister-in-law, Amelia, will have a son before he dies.”

“Is that likely now that he is so ill?”

“One never knows.”

“When shall you be going?”

“Rest assured I shall stay as long as I possibly can.”

When I was dining alone with my father that evening I mentioned to him that Aubrey would be leaving us soon.

“I’m sorry about that. You’ll miss him, won’t you?”

He was watching me intently, and I said with faint hesitation:

“Oh yes, very much.”

“Well, he might not be the only one who is leaving.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know there has been a lot of unrest here lately. Nothing serious, but a kind of undercurrent. And there is something you don’t know, Susanna. Two years ago I had an illness.”

“An illness! What sort of illness? You didn’t tell me.”

“I didn’t want to make a fuss. It passed. But it did not go unnoticed by HQ.”

“Father, what are you telling me?”

“That Anno Domini is catching up with me.”

“But you are amazingly fit. Look what you do.”

“The fact remains, I am getting old. There are hints, Susanna.”

Hints? “

“I think that soon I shall be working at the War Office in London.”

“Do you really mean that? And what was this illness?”

“Some little trouble with the heart. It passed.”

“Oh, Father, and you didn’t tell me!”

“There was no need to when it was all over.”

“I should have been told.”

“Quite unnecessary. But, as I say, there will be changes here.”

“When shall we go home?”

“You know HQ. When the decision is made there will be no delay. It will be a case of up and gone, and the new chap will be here to take my place.”

“Oh, Father, how will you like it?”

“As a matter of fact, I shan’t be sorry.”

“But all the years you have been in India … and you let me come out.”

“I had a reason for that. I realized from your letters that you were building up a picture of the place. I believed that if you had not come you would have regretted it all your life. I wanted you to come back and see it with adult eyes. Besides, think how disappointed you would have been if you hadn’t.”

“You are so good to me.”

“Dear child, I felt there was so much to make up for. That lonely childhood … sending you off to strangers, which they were, of course, although related.”

“You did your best and it is what happens to all children in our position.”

“True, but that does not make it easier. But never mind motives. I am expecting orders at any moment and then it will be up and away. “

I was not entirely dismayed. I was already wondering whether I should see Aubrey in England.

That night in bed I thought about my ayah. I had neglected her somewhat. When I had come out I had thought with great pleasure of our reunion. But, as my father said, things change. I should never forget her and what we had been to each other in my childhood; but I was no longer a child. I was making exciting excursions into the adult world, and the feelings Aubrey inspired in me had so fascinated me that I had been inclined to forget other matters.

I promised myself that the very next day I would go to see her.

I chose a time when I knew Mrs. Freeling would be at the Regimental Club. She was often there. I had seen her with some of the young officers. She invited Aubrey there, too. He told me he went quite frequently. Moreover, I had seen him there with her. I felt no jealousy. It did not occur to me that there could be any serious relationship between them, because she was a married woman. I was very naive in those days.

My ayah was glad to see me and I felt ashamed because there had been too long a gap between our last meeting and this.

“The children are-asleep,” she said.

We sat in the next room with the door ajar so that she could hear if they awoke.

She looked at me with her sad eyes and I said: “You were right about my not staying long. My father has told me that any day he could be receiving orders from the War Office.”

“You will go away from here … yes. Perhaps it is best for you.”

“Ayah dear, I feel as though I have only just come.”

“There are bad things here. You are not a little girl any more.”

“There are bad things everywhere, I dare say.”

She shook her head. I took her hand and said: “You have something on your mind. Why don’t you tell me? You are not happy here.

I could ask my father to find you another place. “

She said: “I love the little ones.”

“And Mrs. Freeling and the Captain … they are not good to you? You can tell me, you know.”

“I am left with the children. The Captain loves them.”

“Then it is Mrs. Freeling? Does she interfere? Does she complain?”

She shook her head. She hesitated for a few seconds, then she burst out: “There are parties … meetings … they do strange things. I know what it is. They grow it in the villages. I have seen it … so much … when I was a little one. It grows well in India … so pretty it looks, with the poppies waving their heads … so innocent.

You would not believe it. It flourishes if the soil is fine and loose and fed with manure and much water. I have seen the sowing in November, and in January it is ready when the flower seeds are the size of a hen’s eggs. “

“What are you talking about?”

“They call it opium,” she told me.

“It is here … everywhere. Some sell it for money. Some grow it for themselves. They smoke it in their pipes, and they become strange … very strange.”

“Do you mean they are drugged? Tell me about it.”

“I must not. It is no concern of mine. I should not want my little one to be with such people.”

“You mean Mrs. Freeling …”

“Please forget I speak.”

“You mean here … there are parties … orgies. I must tell my father.”

“Oh no, no. Please do not. I should not have speak. I am wrong.

Forget. Please to forget. “

“How can I? They are smoking opium, you say. That should be stopped.”

She shook her head.

“No. No. It-has always been. Here in the villages it is so easy to grow. Please do not talk of it. Only do not go to these places. Do not let them tempt you to try.”

“Tempt me! Of course they never would. Ayah, are you sure?”

She shook her head.

“Not sure. Not all sure …”

“But you told me …”

She closed her eyes and shook her head. I believed that she was afraid and tried to soothe her.

“I have seen them here. They look strange. They seem strange. There is a man. He comes here often. He is the Devil Doctor. He wants opium. He buys it. He takes it away. He watches people and tempts them. I believe he is a devil.”

Oh, I thought with relief, she is romancing now.

“Tell me about this Devil Doctor,” I said.

“He is tall; his hair is black like the night. I saw him once. He wore a black cloak and a black hat.”

“He sounds satanic. Tell me, did he have cloven feet?”

“I believe so she said.

I breathed more easily. I remembered some of the stories with which she had beguiled me during my childhood: the exploits of the gods, Siva, Vishnu and Brahma in which she fervently believed. I did not take her stories seriously. Perhaps she had seen certain frivolous behaviour among Mrs. Freeling’s guests and had construed it as the manner in which people acted when they had been smoking opium; and her concern for me had made her exaggerate what she had seen. I did wonder whether I ought to mention to my father what she had said; but as she implored me not to, I put the matter from my mind. There was so much more to think of, because two weeks after my father had spoken to me, despatches came from London.

Colonel Bronsen-Grey was on his way to take over my father’s duties and we were to make immediate preparations for our departure.

It seemed like fate. I could not help feeling very excited. This time I should not leave India with the same reluctance.

Aubrey St. Clare was delighted, and when he heard that we were booked on the Aurora Star, he decided he would return home on the same ship.

It proved the state of my feelings when I did not feel any great regret because we were going with him.

We had no home in England and my father decided that we should stay at an hotel while we looked for a temporary home and he ascertained from the War Office what his duties would be. When he knew we could set about finding a more permanent residence, which he expected would be in London.

My ayah took a tearful farewell of me. She was fatalistic and that helped her to overcome her sorrow at parting. It was ordained, she said and she had known that when I returned, I would not stay long in India.

“It is well that you go,” she said, ‘even though those who love you suffer at the parting. There will be trouble here and I am happy to know that you will be safe. The monsoons have failed to bring the rain and the crops are bad. When there is famine people look round for those to blame, and they blame those they envy . those who may have what they would like themselves. Yes, I should rejoice. It is best for you. Do not be impulsive as you have always been, little Su-Su. Think first. Do not seize the dross in mistake for the gold. “

“I promise you, dear ayah, that I will curb my impulses. I will think of you always and try to be wise.”

Then she embraced me and kissed me solemnly.

As I stood on deck the last person I saw as we sailed away was my ayah, standing there, looking lonely and forlorn, her pale blue said moving gently in the breeze.

It was a magic voyage. I felt very happy. How different from that time when I, a lonely little girl under the vigilance of Mrs. Fearnley, had tried hard not to burst into noisy protestations at being dragged away from my father and my beloved India. This was quite different. My father seemed younger. Only now did I realize the strain under which he had been living. He had never talked to me about the fear of trouble; but it must have always been there an undercurrent of apprehension. I remember moonlit nights, leaning over the rail, looking up to the rich velvety sky and the golden stars, listening to the gentle movement of the sea below. Aubrey was my constant companion; in the morning we paced the decks together; we played games; we indulged in lengthy discussions at meals with our table companions; we danced afterwards; and I wanted those days to go on and on. I tried not to look too far ahead when we should reach Tilbury and say goodbye, my father and I going to London and Aubrey to that stately home in Buckinghamshire.

There was something unreal about life on the ship. One felt that one was floating in a little world apart from the real one. There were no troubles here nothing but long sunny days, lying on deck, watching the porpoises and the dolphins frolic, while the flying fish skimmed the water, and here and there the hump of a whale could be seen.

One day an albatross, and presumably his mate, followed the ship for three days. We marvelled at the beautiful creatures with their twelve-foot wing span; they circled above us and there were times when we thought they were going to land on deck. They were waiting for the food, left over from meals, to be thrown into the water.

They were magic days with calm seas and blue skies and the ship sailing peacefully home.

Even so one was reminded of change. There was a day when we skirted a hurricane and the chairs slid across the deck and it was impossible to stand up. That was symbolic, I thought. Nothing lasts forever; and the most perfect peace can be quickly shattered.

We reached Cape Town, which I remembered from that other journey. This was different. My father, Aubrey and I went out in a flower-decorated carriage drawn by two horses in straw bonnets. It seemed far more exciting than on that previous occasion; perhaps that was due to the company.

It was the night after we left Cape Town. We had had a rough passage round the Cape and were now sailing northwards to the Canaries. We had left the tropical heat behind and the weather was bland with hardly any wind.

My father had gone to bed, which he often did after dinner, and that left me alone with Aubrey. We found our favourite spot on deck and sat side by side listening to the gentle swishing of the water against the side of the ship.

“It won’t be long now,” said Aubrey.

“We shall soon be home.”

I agreed a little sombrely.

“It has been a wonderful voyage.”

“For a particular reason,” he replied.

I waited and he turned to me and, taking my hand, kissed it.

“You,” he said.

I laughed.

“You have contributed to the enjoyment. My father is delighted that you are here and he can go to bed with a free conscience and leave me in good hands.”

“So he thinks that of me, does he?”

“You know he does.”

“Susanna, I have been thinking. When we get to England … what?”

“What? It is all planned. Father and I will go to an hotel and look immediately for a house. And you … you have your arrangements.”

“We are not going to say ” Goodbye, it was nice to have known you” when we get to England, are we?”

“I don’t know what will happen when we get to England.”

“Doesn’t that rather depend on us?”

“There is one theory which says that everything that happens depends on ourselves, while another believes in fate. What is to be, will be.”

“I think we are masters of our fates. Will you marry me?”

“Do you … mean that seriously?”

“I am deadly serious.”

“Aubrey …” I murmured.

“You are not going to say, ” This is so sudden”, are you?”

“No.”

“Then you will?”

“I think I will.”

“You only think?”

“Well, I have never had a proposal of marriage before, and I don’t quite know how to deal with it.”

He burst out laughing and, turning to me, took me in his arms and kissed me.

“I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time,” he said.

“Have you been wanting me to?”

“Yes, I think I have.”

“You think! Don’t you know? You are so definite in your views on every other subject.”

“I feel such a novice … at love.”

“That is what I love about you. So young … so fresh … so innocent… so honest.”

“I would rather be more worldly like some of the wives .. Mrs. Freeling, for instance.”

For a moment he was silent. I thought he looked uncertain and was about to say something. He appeared to change his mind and I wondered if I had imagined it.

“Those people are not really worldly, you know,” he said at length.

“They are older than you and pose all the time as socialites. Don’t be like they are, for Heaven’s sake. Just be yourself, Susanna. That’s what I want.”

He held my hand tightly and we looked out over the sea.

“What a perfect night,” he said.

“A calm sea, a gentle breeze and Susanna has promised to marry me.”

When I told my father he was faintly disturbed.

“You are very young,” he said.

“I am eighteen. That’s a marriageable age.”

“In some cases … yes. But you have come straight from school. You haven’t really met any people.”

“I don’t have to. I know I love Aubrey.”

“Well … I suppose it is all right. There is that place in Buckinghamshire which I presume will be his one day. He seems fairly solid.”

“It’s no use trying to play the mercenary Papa because you don’t do it very well. You know that if I want it and I’m happy that will be all right with you.”

“That’s about it,” he agreed.

“Trust you to sum up the situation in a few words. So you are engaged. It is amazing how many people become engaged on sea voyages. It must be something in the air.”

Tropical seas . flying fishes . dolphins . “

“Hurricanes, rolling breakers and nausea.”

Don’t be unromantic, Father. It doesn’t suit you. Say you are pleased and proud of your daughter who has managed to find a husband without the expensive London season you were planning, to launch her into society. “

“My dear child, all I want is your happiness. You chose this man and if he makes you happy that is all I ask.”

He kissed me.

“You’ll have to help me choose a place in London,” he said.

“Even though doubtless you will be obsessed by your own affairs.”

“I shall indeed. Oh, Father, I was planning to look after you!”

“And now you will have a husband to look after instead. I am deeply hurt.”

I hugged him and felt a sudden twinge of apprehension. How ill had he been? And why had Head Quarters decided that he should leave India?

I was so happy. The future loomed ahead, so exciting that I had to warn myself that there was rarely complete perfection in life. I had to look for the worm in the wood, the flaw in the diamond. Nothing could be quite so perfect as it seemed that night when Aubrey asked me to marry him.

There was so much to talk of, so much to plan. Aubrey was to accompany us to London and see us into our hotel before going on to his home.

Then it had been decided that my father and I should pay an early visit to Minster St. Clare in Buckinghamshire.

I was looking forward to the arrival at Tilbury not dreading it as I had anticipated when I had thought it might mean saying goodbye to Aubrey for ever. As for Aubrey himself, he was in a state of euphoria, and I was immensely gratified to know that I had created it.

So we said au revoir with promises to visit Aubrey’s home in two weeks’ time. Amelia, his sister-in-law, would be delighted to receive us, he was sure. As for his brother, he did not know how he would find him.

I wondered whether, as his brother was so ill, guests would be welcome in the house, but he assured me that it was a big house and there were plenty of people to look after everything and both his brother and his wife would surely want to meet me.

We had comfortable rooms in a somewhat old-fashioned hotel close to Piccadilly recommended by Uncle James who used it on his brief visits to London; and on the following day I went house-hunting and my father presented himself at the War Office.

I found a small house in Albemarle Street which was to be let furnished, and I planned to take my father along to see it at the first opportunity.

When he came home he seemed quite excited. He was to have a job of some responsibility at the War Office, which he thought would be very demanding. He looked at the house and decided we should take it and move in at the beginning of the next week. I had a few very busy days engaging servants to start with and making arrangements to go into our new home, which we had taken on rental for three months.

I said: “That will give us time to look round for a real home and if we haven’t found it by then, we can no doubt stay here a little longer.”

My father said rather sadly, “It will probably be a bachelor’s apartment which I shall need, for you are bent on making a home with someone else.”

“Weddings take a long time to arrange and I shall be with you for a while. And in any case I shall be visiting you often.

Buckinghamshire is not so very far away. ” I had found the search quite exciting. I had always been interested in houses. They seemed to have personalities of their own. Some seemed happy houses, others mysterious, some even mildly menacing. My father laughed at my fancifuli ideas; but I really did feel atmospheric sensations quite vividly. J I was pleased, too, that my father was enjoying the War, Office. I had feared that after having been on active service he might find work in an office dull. Not so. He was absorbed and I could not help feeling that it had been a good move to bring him home. Sometimes he looked a little tired, but of course he was no longer a young man and that was natural. I wondered now and then about that illness he had had, but he was rather reticent about it and I fancied it disturbed him to talk about it so I did not mention it. He was well now and life was too exciting for me to want to cloud over the brightness, so I assured myself that there was nothing to worry about and that we were all going to be happy ever after.

We settled into the furnished house, which we found ideal; the two servants I had engaged, Jane and Polly, were very good, willing girls. They were sisters who were delighted to have found jobs together.

My father decided he must have a carriage to take him to and from the War Office and he acquired one and a coachman to go with it. Joe Tugg, a widower in his late forties, was glad to come to us for, as he boasted often, he had driven the mail coach from London to Bath for twenty years until as he said “Steam took away me living,” by which he meant that the coming of the railroads had been the ruin of many of the old coachmen. There were two rooms over the stabling in the mews at the back of the house and Joe settled in. We were a very contented household.

I said: “We must keep them all when we find the house.” And my father agreed.

I had a letter from Aubrey’s sister-in-law signed Amelia St. Clare. She wrote that she would be delighted to see me and congratulated me on my engagement. Her husband was very ill indeed but he wanted to meet me very much. They were not entertaining generally on account other husband’s illness, but they would regard me as one of the family.

It was a warm and welcoming letter.

Aubrey wrote that he was longing to see me and would meet us at the station.

Two days before the visit my father came home one evening looking very disturbed.

“I don’t think I can possibly go,” he said.

“I can’t leave the office.

I shall have to be there . perhaps over the weekend. Something of vital importance has cropped up. It’s India, and my special knowledge of the country makes my presence necessary. “

I felt hideously disappointed. Then I said: “I can go without you.

Father. Jane and Polly will look after you. “

He frowned.

“Oh come,” I said.

“I am not a child. I am a much travelled woman. And if you are thinking of chaperons, there is Mrs. Amelia St. Clare.”

He was hesitating.

“I shall go, Father,” I said firmly.

“You must, of course, stay. You could not leave your post particularly as you have just taken it up. I’ll go on ahead and perhaps you can come down? afterwards. I must go. After all, I am engaged to be married.”

“Well…” he said. He was still hesitating.

“I suppose I could put you on the train. Aubrey could pick you up at the other I end.”

“For Heaven’s sake! You make me sound like a parcel.” And so it happened that on that hot and sultry day I set out for Minster St. Clare.

My father had, as he said, ‘put me’ in a first-class carriage, and” as I waved goodbye to him I tried to set aside my anxieties. I did worry about his health and that mysterious illness he had] had some time before, and I made up my mind that I was going to make him tell me all about it as soon as I was withj him again.

But as I grew nearer and nearer to my destination I ga myself up to excited anticipation. Aubrey was standing on the platform waiting for me. He smiled as he hurried to me and took my hands.

“Welcome, Susanna. It is good to see you.” He put an arm round me and called to the porter, who was standing by watching us with interest: “Here, Bates. Put the luggage in the carriage, will you?”

“Yes, sir,” said Bates; and Aubrey took me out of the station yard.

He led me to a carriage. I opened my eyes in amazement. It was so splendid. It was mulberry colour and drawn by two magnificent greys. I did not know much about horses but I could see that these two were very fine.

He noticed my admiration for the carriage.

“It’s so grand,” I said.

“I’ve taken it over from my brother. He can’t drive it now.”

“How is he?”

“Very, very ill.”

“Perhaps I shouldn’t have come.”

“Nonsense. In there. Bates. That’s right. Come, Susanna, up beside the driver.” He helped me into the carriage. Then he climbed in beside me and took the reins.

“Tell me about your brother,” I said.

“Poor Stephen. He has been dying for the last weeks. The doctors think he cannot last for more than three months … or he could go at any moment.”

“How very distressing.”

“You see why I had to come home. Amelia is most anxious to meet you.”

“She wrote me a very kind letter.”

“She would. It is hard for her, poor girl.”

“I am sorry Father could not come. You understand?”

“But of course, and as a matter of fact it was you whom I wanted to see. I hope you like the house. You have to, you know. It’s going to be your home.”

“I am so excited.”

“These old houses take a bit of getting used to. For us who are brought up in them they seem like part of the family.”

“Yet you were away from home for quite a while. I know how much you’ve travelled. You must tell me all about it sometime.”

“Well, the house will be mine now. Things seem different when they belong to someone else. Oh, it was always my home, but my brother was master of it. I was afraid that I should feel like a guest.”

“I understand.”

“I think you’ll find it interesting. There is little of the Minster left. The house was built by an ancestor of mine in the sixteenth century when a great deal of building and reconstruction was done on the site of old monasteries and abbeys. It’s a real Tudor building late Elizabethan and there are only fragments of old ruined walls and a buttress or two about the place to remind you what it was before the Dissolution.”

“I had no idea it had such a history. I just imagined an old manor house.”

“Well, you will see for yourself.”

We had come to a stretch of road and the horses broke into a gallop. I was thrown against Aubrey and he laughed.

“They can really go, these greys,” he said.

“I’ll show you one day what they can do.”

I laughed. It was exhilarating to be beside him and to contemplate arriving at this old house which was to be my home. I was struck by his masterly handling of the horses. He clearly enjoyed driving them.

We had come to a stone wall. Massive iron gates stood open and we passed into a drive. The horses were trotting now.

Then I saw the house. I caught my breath. I had not expected it to be so grand. The central keep with gateway and portcullis was flanked by two machicolated towers.

Aubrey glanced at me, well pleased by my obvious admiration.

“It’s wonderful,” I stammered.

“How could you have left it for so long.”

“I told you. I did not know it was to be mine.”

We drove through a gateway into a courtyard where two grooms appeared.

Aubrey threw the reins to one of them, leaped down and then helped me out.

“This is Miss Pleydell, Jim,” he said.

I smiled and the man touched his forelock.

“Have the baggage sent in at once,” commanded Aubrey. He turned to me and, taking my arm, said: “Come along.”

He led me from the courtyard to a quadrangle. The walls were creeper-covered and the latticed windows looked like eyes peering out from under shaggy brows. There was a table with some chairs on which were flame-coloured cushions; and a number of pots containing flowering shrubs added colour to the spot. It was very attractive, and yet I had a sense of claustrophobia, as though the walls were closing in on me.

There was a passage with moulded vaulting; we passed through this to a bigger courtyard. Before us was a door heavy, iron-studded, with a panel in it which I presumed could be drawn back so that those who were inside could see who was without, before admitting them.

Aubrey pushed open the door, which creaked loudly. We were in a lofty hall. I glanced up at the hammer beam roof and my eyes went to the whitewashed walls on which hung arms and trophies; two suits of armour stood at either end of the hall, like sentinels guarding the place. I looked with wonder at the heraldic panels on the windows and I noticed they all had the fleur-de-lys prominently displayed.

Aubrey was watching me with an almost childish joy which was very appealing.

“It’s so … exciting,” I said.

“I see you are impressed. Most people are. At the same time you’re a little alarmed. Don’t be. This is the ancient part of the house. We leave it as it is. We have more comfortable quarters in which to live.

I am sure you will agree that although we want to preserve antiquity it is more satisfying to allow a few modern comforts to creep in. Oh, here is Amelia. Amelia, come and meet Susanna. Susanna, this is Amelia, Mrs. St. Clare. “

She had descended the staircase which was at one end of the hall. She was elegant rather than beautiful and appeared to be in her early thirties. Her fair hair was piled high on her head to give her height, I supposed, for she was not very tall or perhaps I thought this as I was well above the average in that respect. Her blue eyes were speculative. That was natural, of course, and she seemed pleasant.

She took my hand and clasped it.

“Welcome to the Minster,” she said.

“I am so pleased you came, even though your father could not. Would you like to go straight to your room? You probably want to rest after the journey. “

“It is not very far from London and I don’t feel in the least tired. I am so impressed by this wonderful house. I had no idea it would be so baronial.”

“Yes, it is fascinating. My husband made the care of this house and the estate which goes with it… his life.”

There was an infinite sadness in her voice and I warmed towards her.

“Do come this way,” she said.

“I’ll have hot water sent up. I am sure you want to wash. They are taking up your luggage now.”

I followed her up the stairs. At the top I turned to look back. Aubrey was looking up at us with an expression I could not interpret.

We came to a gallery lined with portraits; there was a dais at one end on which was a piano.

“We call this the long gallery. Just above it is the solarium. Both rooms get the sun and particularly the solarium.” We passed through the gallery and ascended a short spiral staircase. We were in a corridor.

“The main bedrooms are here. I have put you in the green room. It has pleasant views. Most of the rooms do.”

The green room was big with a high, vaulted ceiling and windows looking out on the drive. There was a walnut fourposter bed with a cover of green silk quilting. There was an escritoire in walnut and the chair seats had been worked in tapestry the predominant colour of which was green.

I said: “It’s beautiful.”

“There is an alcove here. Oh yes, there is the hot-water can. And here is your luggage. One of the maids will help you unpack.”

“I can do it myself,” I said.

“There is not very much.”

“I hope you will be comfortable.” She hesitated.

“My husband very much wants to see you.”

“I want to see him.”

“He is very ill.”

“Yes, I know.”

Her lips trembled.

“Well,” she went on with an attempt at brightness, “I’ll leave you. When you are ready ring the bell. I’ll come for you or maybe one of the maids will.”

“That’s kind of you,” I said.

She went out. A tremendous excitement gripped me. I imagined myself living in this house . mistress of it. Then I thought of Amelia, who had been in that position and still was, and I wondered if she regarded me as a usurper.

I liked her. She had shown me a welcome which I believed to be genuine and she gave me the impression that she cared deeply for her husband.

I washed quickly, unpacked my bags and changed into a light afternoon dress. Then I rang the bell.

A maid appeared. She was young and I could see by her expression, very inquisitive; she could not take her eyes from me. I asked her her name and she said it was Emily. I told her that I was ready to join my host and hostess.

“Oh yes. Miss,” she said.

“Did you want me to unpack?”

I told her I had already done it and she looked disappointed. I guessed she wanted to give the servants’ hall a description of my clothes.

“Just show me the way, please, Emily,” I said.

“Oh yes. Miss. There’s tea in the winter parlour, Miss. If you’ll follow me …”

I did so down the spiral staircase and then down another. Emily knocked on a door and opened it. I went in. Amelia was presiding over a tea-tray. Aubrey rose as I entered.

It was a pleasant room high-ceilinged like all of them, the walls lined with tapestries and the seats of the chairs were in needlepoint.

It was a cosy room.

“You have been quick,” said Aubrey.

“I hope you find the room pleasant.”

“It’s more than pleasant. It’s splendid. I don’t think I shall ever get used to being in such a house.”

“That is something you will have to do, nevertheless,” said Aubrey.

“How do you like your tea?” asked Amelia.

“Strong? Weak? Cream?

Sugar? “

I told her and she handed me the cup. She said: “after tea, you must come and see Stephen. He has heard you have arrived and is so eager to meet you.”

“I shall be delighted. Is he in bed?”

“At the moment, yes. Sometimes he gets up and sits in his chair in the window. That is on one of his good days.”

“I am ready whenever it is convenient.”

“Cook has made these cakes for you. You have to try them. She gets hurry if her food is not appreciated.”

“Thank you. They look delicious.”

“I want to show you the house,” said Aubrey.

“I’m longing to see it.”

I glanced through the windows.

“Those are the stables,” said Aubrey.

“They seem rather extensive.”

“My father kept a good stable and Stephen has been the same. We’re a horsey family.”

“Do you like riding?” asked Amelia.

“I haven’t ridden a great deal. I used to amble round on my pony in India and then when I went to school we didn’t ride very much. I was with my uncle and aunt in the country and I rode a little then. I like it but I would not call myself a horsewoman.”

“We’ll soon remedy that,” said Aubrey.

“You need a horse here. We’re isolated.”

“The town is about two miles from us,” added Amelia.

“And then it is only a small one.”

She asked me about India and I told her of my childhood and how during the days in my uncle’s rectory I had felt a longing to return.

“I saw it through rose-coloured glasses all those years when I was at school, and then when I went back …”

“You had taken off the glasses,” said Amelia, ‘and you saw it in the cold light of day. “

“She had put them back when she saw me,” said Aubrey.

Amelia looked a little startled but Aubrey was laughing.

When tea was over Amelia said she would go and see how Stephen was and if he was awake she thought it would be a good time for me to see him.

She left me with Aubrey for a few moments. He sat still, watching me intently.

“This is very sad for Amelia,” I said.

“She must be very worried about her husband.”

“He has been ill for some time. She has known for weeks that he cannot live.”

“She is very brave.”

He was silent. Then he said: “Do you think you will like this house?”

“Y-yes, I think so.”

“You’re hesitating.”

“At the moment it seems a little strange. Alien, perhaps.”

“Alien! What do you mean?”

“You said that houses are a part of the family. Families often resent newcomers. And I’m to be that.”

“Nonsense. Did you feel that Amelia resents you?”

“No. Certainly not.”

“The gatehouse? The portcullis? The winter parlour? Do they?”

“Well, it has taken me by surprise. I was not imagining such an ancient place. You didn’t warn me enough.”

“I didn’t want to overpraise and have you disappointed.”

“As if I could have been!”

The door opened.

“He’s awake,” said Amelia.

“He wants very much to see you.”

“Come on, then,” said Aubrey.

Stephen St. Clare was propped up in the big fourposter bed with its hanging of petit-point embroidery on a cream background. He was obviously very ill. His face was a yellowish grey, his dark eyes sunken; his clawlike hands lay on the counterpane.

“This is Susanna, Stephen,” said Aubrey.

The sunken eyes surveyed me with interest.

“I am delighted to meet you,” he said.

“And I you,” I replied.

Amelia placed a chair beside the bed and I sat down. She and Aubrey took chairs a little farther away.

Amelia said I would stay with them for a week and then go home to make arrangements for the wedding.

“I think that’s what you intend, isn’t it?”

I said it was.

“The wedding will take place at your home, I imagine,” said Stephen.

“My father and I have discussed it,” I replied.

“We thought it should be at my uncle’s rectory. My uncle would like to officiate and I did pass a great deal of my childhood there.” I smiled at Aubrey.

“We haven’t talked much about the arrangements yet.”

“I hope you will not delay too long,” said Stephen.

“There is no reason for any delay,” Aubrey put in, smiling at me, and added: “I hope.”

Stephen nodded.

“I haven’t been able to do very much for some time, have I, Amelia?” he said.

“No, but we have a good manager. Things run smoothly. And now that Aubrey is home …”

“Amelia has been a great help to me,” said Stephen.

“As you will be to Aubrey.”

“I shall do my best,” I said.

He nodded.

Amelia looked anxiously at her husband.

“I think you want to go to sleep, Stephen,” she said.

“There’ll be plenty of time to see Susanna before she goes. I may call you Susanna, mayn’t I?”

“Of course.”

“And we must be Amelia and Stephen. After all, you are coming into the family. Stephen, Susanna will come and see you tomorrow.”

Stephen nodded; his eyes were half closed.

Amelia rose and I did the same. , I leaned over the bed and said: “I shall come to see you soon.”

The sunken eyes opened and he smiled at me.

We came out of the room and Amelia shut the door.

“He’s feeble today,” said Aubrey.

“I know. But he did want to meet Susanna.” Aubrey said he would take me for a walk round the gardens and show me the stables.

Amelia left us and we went out.

During the next days I became familiar with Minster St. Clare and its occupants. I felt I knew Aubrey better than I had before. People often seem different against the background of their homes. I was amazed at his enthusiasm for the Minster. In India he had seemed something of a nomad, the man of the world, perhaps a little cynical. Now he was almost like a different person. Certain traits which I had not seen before were revealed to me. His passionate love of the house which seemed to have developed because it would shortly be his and very soon, I could not help thinking, for his brother was undoubtedly very ill indeed. There was his love of horses. He delighted in the stables; he proudly drew my attention to the fine points of the horses. There was a recklessness about him which was apparent when he drove his carriage. He loved to control the magnificent greys and would have them galloping at a tremendous speed so that when I drove with him I was almost thrown out of the carriage the faster he went, the better he liked it. I thought it was a little dangerous and told him so.

“Not with me,” he said proudly.

“I am in complete control.” It seemed to me that he loved danger for its own sake, and if he had not been such a superb horseman I should have feared for him. He was rather naively conceited about his prowess with the horses and that made him seem more vulnerable than before. I found that lovable.

When I rose each day I would go to the window and look out on the drive and I would say to myself: This great house will be my home.

Shall I be happy here?

I was excited by the place. Every day new aspects were revealed; yet there was something about it which was a little repellent. I supposed that was the case with most old houses. The past was too close; it was as though it had been imprisoned within those walls and it continually intruded on the present. But I was too fanciful. I wished that my father had come with me. He would have laughed at my fancies.

Amelia it was easy to think of her as Amelia for she had been so warm and friendly had shown me the house, the various bedrooms, the solarium with its settees, chairs and long mirrors, its windows, its alcoves, in one of which was an ancient spinning-wheel. She had conducted me to the long gallery with its portraits and even to the kitchens where I was introduced to the cook whom I did not forget to congratulate on her culinary excellence and the kitchen court with its pots and querns which were still used for grinding grain and pease.

Each day I seemed to become more friendly with Amelia. There was a sadness about her which made me want to comfort her. She loved her husband; their life together had clearly been a happy one and now she was about to lose it. She was very interested in the house; she showed me certain improvements she had made; she told me how the roof had had to be renovated and how difficult it had been to find weatherproof medieval tiles; she showed me the furnishings she had chosen for some of the bedrooms because the original ones were too threadbare to be kept any longer. She loved the house and she was going to lose not only her husband but her home as well. But, I thought, perhaps she will stay here. After all, big families did go on living in the ancestral home; and she had been mistress of this one so it would always be her home.

But I wondered. It was too indelicate a matter to speak of. Nor did I broach it with Aubrey. It was one of those situations which must be sorted out naturally.

Aubrey and I rode round the estate. I was a little fearful that I might prove inadequate on horseback; but he was most assiduous in his care for me. He constantly restrained himself and when we galloped he kept his eyes on me so that I felt I was being looked after. But when I rode with him in his carriage, he was very reckless so eager was he to show me his skill; and he certainly had that The horses responded to his lightest touch. I was falling more and more in love.

I loved him the more for his vanity and his obsessive love of the no use I felt now, as I had not before, that he needed me to care for him; and that was very gratifying.

There were one or two dinner-parties very small affairs because, as Aubrey said, there could be little entertaining at the Minster now that Stephen was so ill just a few neighbours to meet me and some close friends of the family. I did meet Amelia’s parents, Sir Henry and Lady Carberry, who were travelling back to their home in London after staying with friends in the country. They had just called for luncheon. I found them charming and they had a young woman with them who was introduced as the Honourable Henrietta Marlington. She was the daughter of some very old friends of theirs who had been staying with the people they had visited and was being taken to London to stay with them for a short while. I was struck with her; she was extraordinarily attractive and she owed this to her vitality even more than to her good looks, which were considerable. She talked a great deal about the season and amused us with her descriptions of being presented to the Queen at the Royal Drawing Room and the solemnity of waiting in the queue with her train over her left arm until the magic moment when she entered, her train spread out in glory behind her. The Queen had given her a piercing look, she said, and extended her hand to be kissed, as though she were weighing her up and finding her wanting.

“She is very perceptive, they say,” she added.

Amelia’s parents were obviously very fond of Henrietta and I could understand that. I was sorry their visit was so short.

I enjoyed my sessions alone with Amelia, which were quite frequent because Aubrey had so much to learn about the estate, having been abroad for so long, and he often spent the greater part of the morning with the estate manager.

One day Amelia talked to me more intimately than ever before, She said: “I don’t know how I shall live without Stephen.”

“Perhaps,” I said rather falsely, for I knew this could not be, ‘he will recover. “

“No,” she replied sadly. It is impossible. Right up to a month ago I went on hoping that he might get well. There were times when he was almost his old self. But really he was gradually getting worse. He has always talked to me a good deal about the estate. It is only recently that he realized it would pass to Aubrey, who has never till now shown much interest in it. “

“He certainly has a great deal now.”

“Yes, he’s changed. I suppose it is because he knows it can’t be long before it is his. We ; .. Stephen and I … always thought that there could be children.”

We were silent for a few moments and then she burst out:

“Oh, Susanna, I can’t tell you how much I have longed for children.

Stephen did too. It was the one thing in which I failed him. “

“You can’t blame yourself for fate.”

“I would have done anything. I had three miscarriages.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“The first … I think was my own fault. In four months I should have had my child. I went riding and lost it. I was so fond of riding. We all were … Stephen, Aubrey and myself. We rode everywhere. It was folly. That was the first. And sometimes when that sort of thing starts it goes on.”

“How very sad.”

“I was so careful the next time. But after two months I had lost the child. I went to three the next time.”

“That must have been terrible.”

“A great disappointment to us both and I think particularly to me. I felt so strongly that I had failed Stephen. He desperately wanted a child … a boy whom he could train to look after things here.”

“I do understand.”

“Oh well… that’s life, I suppose.”

“I suppose so.”

“Forgive my outburst. But you seem so sympathetic. I am sure you will be very good for Aubrey. He needs someone like you.”

“Oh, I think he is very well able to stand on his own feet.”

She did not answer. She just looked infinitely sad thinking of those lost children, I supposed.

One day I was alone with Stephen. Aubrey had gone to one of the farms on the estate. I was in my room when Amelia came to me and said that Stephen would-like to see me.

I went down to the sickroom. He was seated in a chair wrapped up in blankets. I thought he looked even more ill than he did in bed.

I sat beside him and after we had talked a little Amelia left us alone for a short while.

Stephen said to me: “I am glad that you are marrying Aubrey.”

“I am so pleased you feel like that. Many families disapprove of newcomers to the circle. I had no idea when I met Aubrey that he lived in a place like this.”

He nodded.

“It’s a responsibility. He will be the one to carry on. It is like a chain that has been forged over the centuries. One doesn’t like to think of its being broken. If I’ had had a son …”

He shook his head sadly and I thought of what Amelia had told me.

“But now … I’m glad you’re here. He needs someone … steady .. someone who will look after him and prevent his …” He paused. I believe he was on the point of saying something important, but he changed his mind. He patted my hand, and went on: “I am sure since I have met you … that you are the one for him.”

“Thank you.”

“You will be strong. Strength is what he needs. You see …”

I looked at him steadily, but he was silent.

I prompted him.

“Yes … you were saying …”

The sunken eyes seemed to probe my mind. He was trying to tell me something. Or perhaps trying to make up his mind whether to or not. A great curiosity came to me. I was sure it was something I should know. And it concerned Aubrey.

Then he lay back in his chair and closed his eyes. Amelia came in.

We had tea together.

I wondered what it was he had been going to tell me.

It was late afternoon. There were dark clouds overhead and I thought there would be a storm before the day was out. I was in the long gallery looking at the portraits. I could see how like some of his ancestors Aubrey was. I studied the faces, some pensive, some smiling, some merry, some serious; and they all seemed to be looking out of their canvases assessing me!

It was quite an eerie feeling, standing there as it grew visibly darker. There were moments in this house when I fancied I was being watched, that unseen figures from the past were close to me interested in this girl who had the temerity to attempt to intrude into the family circle.

There was one portrait which interested me particularly, perhaps because the face of the man reminded me of Aubrey’s. His eyes followed me wherever I was, and the expression seemed to change as I watched. I fancied I could see the lips curl up in amusement because the subject of the picture knew that he both fascinated and repelled me. The white curls of his wig hung down almost to his shoulders and were crowned by a wide-brimmed hat which had just a touch of the military about it.

His coat was mulberry-coloured velvet caught in at the waist; beneath it, his waistcoat was elaborately embroidered and almost as long as the coat. It was closely fitted to the waist and then flared out. The buttons were like jewels. His knee breeches were caught just below the knees with ornamental buckles. His legs were well shaped and the buckles on his shoes matched those at his knees. He was a very elegant gentleman.

“Hello!”

I started; and such was my mood that for a moment I thought it was the dandy in the picture who had spoken. I spun round. Aubrey must have come in very quietly and so absorbed was I that I had not heard him. He slipped his arm through mine.

“I think you are rather fascinated by Harry St. Clare,” he said.

“You wouldn’t be the first one, I am sure.”

“So he is Harry St. Clare, is he? He must be quite a distant relative.

That must have been painted about a hundred years ago. “

“That’s true. The hat gives it away. It’s Dettingen.. named after the battle. You ought to know the date. Somewhere in the I740S, I believe.”

“Yes.”

“They were all the rage, those hats, after the battle. And you can imagine that Harry would always be in the height of fashion.”

“Do you know the history of all your ancestors?”

“Only those who distinguished themselves like Harry.”

“How did he distinguish himself? At Dettingen?”

“Not on your life! He was too clever for that. Harry was a Rake. Harry was the Devil Incarnate. He was involved in some fine old scandals and incurred the wrath of his father, grandfather and in fact the whole family.”

“What did he do?”

“Nothing that was good. If there was mischief, Harry was in it. He nearly lost the family fortunes. He died young. They said the Devil claimed Harry. I expect he is now having a riotous time in Hell. It would be just what he would revel in.”

“I think you rather like him.”

“Well, aren’t villains always more exciting than saints? Not that we’ve had a great many of the latter in the family. Harry was a member of one of the Hell-Fire Clubs, which were a fashion in those days among the lazy good-for-nothing young men who had the inclination for dissipation and a certain amount of money which allowed them to indulge in it.”

“What did he do?”

“Evil. Dabbled in the black arts. Worshipped the Devil. Indulged in depravity generally. He was a member of Sir Francis Dashwood’s club at Medmenham near West Wycombe. Dashwood built a place in the form of a monastery and there the members worshipped the Devil. Black Mass . depravity orgies. You could never imagine what practices they indulged in. ” Aubrey’s eyes shone with excitement.

“Harry wasn’t content with that. The story is that he formed his own club and went one better than Dashwood.”

“A very clever artist painted the portrait,” I said.

“When you look at it, it seems to come alive.”

“That’s Harry’s character coming across to you. You can see, can’t you, that he is no ordinary man. Now take a look at Joseph St. Clare over here with his daughter Charity. They lived a hundred years before Harry. They are the virtuous St. Clares. But don’t you think Harry is more interesting?”

“I think his is a finer portrait.”

“Don’t deceive yourself. That’s Harry looking out at you. He’s wondering how he can tempt you to folly. He’d like to make you a member of his Hell-Fire Club.”

“How dark it is. It seems to have got worse suddenly.”

He lighted one of the lamps which stood on a console table nearby. He held up the lamp. Harry St. Clare looked malevolent in lamp light.

Aubrey laughed and as I turned and looked at him I thought that with that gleam in his eyes, he bore a strong resemblance to his ancestor.

I shivered and just then I heard the faint rumble of thunder in the distance. He put his arm round me and for a few moments we looked at the picture.

Then he put the lamp down on the table and, turning to me, took me in his arms and kissed me in a passionate and demanding manner. He had never held me quite in the same way before.

I felt faintly uneasy. I looked over my shoulder. It was as though Harry St. Clare were laughing at me.

After dinner that evening Amelia delivered her astounding news.

We had eaten in the winter parlour which we did as there were only three of us. I had gathered that the main dining-room was used only when there were several guests as it was too big for so few.

There was a little ante-room leading from the winter parlour, like a comfortable sitting-room, and here we retired to have coffee.

Amelia had been abstracted during the meal and I thought she seemed nervous.

Then, as though bracing herself she said: “I have something to tell you. I didn’t want to mention it until I was absolutely sure. I am going to have a child.”

The silence was intense. I did not look at Aubrey but I was aware of him.

Amelia stumbled on: “Of course … it will make a difference. Stephen is so pleased. I think it has done him a lot of good.”

I cried: “Congratulations. You must be overjoyed. It is what you always wanted.”

She turned to me almost gratefully.

“I couldn’t believe it at first. I thought I was imagining it. I didn’t want to talk of it until I could be absolutely sure. But now the doctor has confirmed it.”

I got up and, going to her, embraced her. I was happy for her. She had moved me so deeply when she had told me of her longing for children and her disappointments. At the same time I guessed how Aubrey must be feeling. He seemed to have developed an obsession about the Minster since he had believed it was to be his. I wondered what was going on in his mind. For a few moments he appeared to be too stunned for speech.

I glanced at him expectantly and, as though with a great effort, he spoke.

“Well, I must add my congratulations to those of Susanna. When .?”

“It is only two months yet … I wanted to make absolutely sure before I mentioned it. There’s quite a long time to go, of course. I intend to take the greatest care this time. It’s like a miracle. After all my disappointments … and Stephen as he is … It will give me something to live for. I can’t tell you how I am feeling … but, of course, this will make changes for you …”

“Yes, indeed,” said Aubrey wryly.

“I do understand,” said Amelia.

“I’m sorry … in a way … and yet I find it hard to be because more than anything that is possible … I want this …”

I could see that Aubrey was grappling with his feelings. I said: “We should drink to a happy outcome.”

“I shall not drink any alcohol,” insisted Amelia.

“I am going to be so careful.”

“Then we will drink, Susanna and I,” said Aubrey, ‘to a happy outcome.”

Amelia could talk of nothing else.

“It’s a miracle,” she insisted again.

“It’s as though I have been compensated.”

“There are often compensations in life, I believe,” I agreed.

“It must have happened just before Stephen became so very ill, for there were occasions when he really was quite his old self. It is only recently that he has become so very ill.”

“I am so glad for you, Amelia.”

“I knew you would be. It’s different for Aubrey. You see, this is his home. I know what he is feeling now.. but Stephen is so happy because his son will be the next master of Minster St. Clare … or his daughter its mistress.”

She said she was going to watch every step she took. She would consult the doctor and follow his advice in every way. There should not be another mishap.

Aubrey gave vent to his disappointment when we were alone. He was bitter.

“To think that this could happen! Do you believe that Stephen could conceive a child?”

“He has. Amelia says there have been periods when he has been quite well. It is only in the last month that he has been so very ill.”

“She would say that, wouldn’t she?”

“What are you suggesting.. , that this child is not Stephen’s? Oh, Aubrey!”

“Why not? It’s a desperate situation, it’s a way for her to keep her hold on everything.”

I looked at him in horror.

“How can you say such a thing … of Amelia!”

“Because it could very well be.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Do you realize what a difference this is going to make to us?”

“I hadn’t thought much about that.”

His exasperation was apparent.

“My brother will want me to stay here.

I’ll be a sort of regent until the child is of age. A guardian to this infant who will one day wear the crown. “

“Well, why not?”

He looked at me almost with dislike.

“Don’t you understand?”

“Of course I understand.”

“You won’t be mistress of your own house. Amelia will be that. Can’t you see?”

“If we stay here I shall be content. I am really fond of Amelia. We’ve become friends.”

He turned away impatiently. He looked peevish, as a child does who has had a toy snatched away from him. I felt tender towards him. I felt I had to soothe him.

I said: “It will be all right, Aubrey. We’ll be together. That’s the important thing. It’s relationships that count … not houses.”

He smiled at me faintly.

“You’re a good girl, Susanna. I suppose I am lucky, aren’t I?”

I said that I hoped he was. I hoped that we both were.

Aubrey seemed to have dismissed his disappointment from his mind. He hardly mentioned it. Instead we made plans for our wedding.

“It must be as soon as possible,” said Aubrey; and I was delighted by his impatience.

I had first fallen in love with him because he was good-looking, charming, and seemed so knowledgeable of the world, without really knowing much else about him. I suppose those were qualities which would appeal to a young girl who had had little experience of life and men. Now I saw him differently. I could imagine him as a little boy, growing up in this wonderful old house. I saw him as rather lazy, not wanting to be burdened with responsibilities and yet not caring to take second place. Had he been a little jealous of his elder brother? Perhaps. That would be natural. Then he had gone away, travelled extensively, trying to make a life for himself. Being called back, realizing that he would one day inherit the family estate had changed him, made him realize how much he loved his old home.

Then, suddenly, when he had thought it was about to be his, another claimant was about to appear. I knew how deeply disappointed he was and that made him vulnerable and me very tender towards him.

I agreed that we should marry as soon as possible.

“This is hardly the place for a wedding,” he said.

“By the look of Stephen it seems more likely that we shall have a funeral.”

“Poor Stephen. I think he will now cling to life. He will want to see his child.”

“Perhaps.”

“My father says I should be married from the rectory. My uncle and aunt would like that and my uncle would officiate. After all, it was my home for a long time. I know my father would not want me to be married from a furnished house.”

“How soon?” asked Aubrey.

“Five weeks … six … two months.”

“The shorter period the better.”

“As soon as I return I will set everything in motion. I think I shall have to stay with Uncle James and Aunt Grace for a few weeks. They have to read the banns and so on. There will be a great deal to do and time will fly.”

“Then please set about it without delay.”

And that was what we arranged to do.

When I sat with Stephen again I thought he was much better. There was no doubt that the news of the coming child had acted like a tonic.

He spoke more clearly and there was a shine in his eyes.

“I’m glad you’re getting married soon,” he said.

“Aubrey needs you. Look after him.” I smiled and said I would. I guessed Stephen saw Aubrey as the young brother who had never been able to take care of himself.

It was the day before my departure. I had wandered out after luncheon.

I was fascinated by the grounds which surrounded the Minster. In them one would come upon relics of the old monastery quite unexpectedly a crumbling wall on which creeper was growing, paved stones among the grass a stump of something which might have been a column.

I found it fascinating.

The Minster was already exerting its spell on me. I wondered if we should live there. If Stephen recovered we would surely not do so; and I could not imagine Aubrey enjoying his role of regent, as he called it.

But Stephen could not recover. The change in him was merely superficial. He looked better because he was happier, but happiness could not cure his malady.

It was hard to visualize the future, although only a few days before I had imagined I could do so. I had thought of our living here, having children, for my desire for them was as intense as Amelia’s, and of loving the old house and having the portraits of my children hanging in the long gallery.

I had come to a copse. I had been as far as this before but not beyond. The fir trees grew close together, giving an atmosphere of darkness and secrecy to the little wood. I made my way through the tall straight trunks with their reddish bark, and as I did so, I felt as I often did at Minster St. Clare that I was making a discovery. The copse was not large and when I came to the other side I saw that the ground sloped upwards forming a little hillock.

I climbed this and looked down. There was a sharp drop of about seven feet. I scrambled down through the mass of creeper which covered the drop and in doing so I disturbed the covering of plants. To my amazement I saw that it was not earth behind them but what could be a door. I brushed aside the creeper. Yes, indeed, it was a door. I felt a great excitement as I examined it, wondering where it led. It seemed a strange place for a door leading to what appeared to be a cave under the hillock. There was a keyhole. I pushed the door but it did not budge. I looked about me. There was silence everywhere.

Again I had the feeling that someone was watching me and that there was something malevolent in the air.

I walked away from the door and stood back some distance looking at it. The creeper had fallen back and as the door was no longer visible the hillock looked like a feature of the landscape . rather unusual but not so very remarkable. It occurred to me then that the hillock was not a natural one and I wondered what was behind that door.

I skirted the hillock and made my way back to the copse. As soon as I entered it I felt I was being followed. It was an uneasy feeling.

There was the sudden dislodging of a stone, and the crackle of undergrowth. It was foolish. It was broad daylight but my heart began to beat uncomfortably. I hurried on.

Then suddenly my arm was caught and held tightly. I gasped and turned to face . Aubrey.

“Why, Susanna, what’s the matter?” he demanded.

“Oh … you startled me. I thought I was being followed.”

“You were.

Amelia told me you’d gone for a walk and I came to find you. “

“Why didn’t you call out or let me know it was you?”

“I like to surprise you. Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”

“Not now you’re here. It was silly of me. I had just seen a door.”

“A door!”

“Yes. Leading under the hillock.”

“What’s strange about that? You’ll find all sorts of odd things here, you know. It’s the remains of the old Minster. There’d be an outcry if we attempted to move anything. Relics of the past, and all that.”

“Yes, I know. But-this was a door. It must lead somewhere.”

His eyes were glinting. He was rather amused by my whimsical feelings.

I supposed because he wanted to assure me that he was there to protect me.

He put his arm through mine.

“Were you going back to the house?”

“Yes.”

“Why should a door startle you?”

“I don’t know. It was odd … standing there …”

“Did you expect it to open and the Devil to walk out?”

I laughed.

“It seemed so strange, and then coming through the wood and feeling that I was followed …”

“I’m sorry I scared you, dearest Susanna. I always thought you were so practical.”

“I don’t think I am, really. I am a little fanciful.”

“And are you weaving fancies about that door? Well, houses like this are places where the most down-to-earth may be forgiven a few flights of fancy. I’ll tell you, you are not the first to discover that door.

We actually had it opened once . Oh, that was long ago, when I was a boy. There is nothing behind it. It’s just a cave. It might have been a storage place for the monks. The door was put back and left.”

“Oh, I see. I thought there must be something … rather significant… behind such a strong-looking door.”

“Susanna; I’m sorry I startled you.”

“Oh, I was silly to be startled.”

As he walked back to the house he talked enthusiastically about the wedding.

Next day I left the Minster. Aubrey insisted on taking me home. On the journey back to London he seemed different. He had reverted now to the man I had known in India and on the ship suave, carefree, confident; and he did not mention the coming baby who had blighted his hopes of inheritance.

My father was delighted to see me. He said that Jane and Polly had looked after him splendidly and as far as material comforts were concerned he had not missed me.

Aubrey returned to Buckinghamshire that day and when he had gone my father demanded a detailed account of the visit, watching me anxiously as I gave it. I told him everything.

“And you are still as eager to marry Aubrey as you were?” he asked.

I told him that I was.

“Well, we shall have to be practical. I think you should write off immediately to your Uncle James and we should get things in motion.

You’ll want to shop and you’ll do that in London. You’ll have to be with your aunt and uncle for a month before the wedding. I dare say you’ll have plenty to do. Time will fly. I’ve decided that I like this house and Jane and Polly manage it and me very well. I have already written asking for an extension of the tenancy. There is no point in our getting a house which you are going to leave almost immediately. I can manage here very well. It will be your home whenever you want it. “

“I see you have everything in order. Military precision, I suppose you call it.”

“You might say that. My dear daughter, I shall be so glad to see you happily settled.”

“Poor Father! I must have been a great responsibility to you.”

“Well … away from home … a little girl to bring up. I did have a few anxious moments. But it worked out well and I always knew my daughter would know how to take care of herself.”

“I hope your confidence is not misplaced.”

He looked at me anxiously for a moment.

“Why do you say that? Has something happened?”

“No,” I said fervently.

“No.”

But I, too, was wondering why I had said that. Could it be that a certain uneasiness was beginning to creep in somewhere?

The next weeks flew by. I was fitted for my wedding-dress. I bought certain clothes which I thought I should need. We were going to Venice for the honeymoon. It was to last a whole month and some friends of the St. Clare family had lent us their palazzo.

Uncle James and Aunt Grace were as helpful as I had known they would be. They were very gratified that the wedding was to take place in the old Norman church and that Uncle James would officiate. I was to go to them a month before the wedding. My father could come down for weekends or any time he could manage. It would be a rather quiet wedding because of the illness of the bridegroom’s brother.

Aubrey was to come down to Humberston a few days before the ceremony and a room had been booked for him at the Black Boar.

Everything seemed to be working smoothly towards the desired goal.

In due course I arrived in Humberston. I felt very emotional as I sat in that bedroom looking out through the little window at the churchyard. Memories came back, the terrible loneliness, the homesickness, the longing for India, my father, my ayah.

I wondered what she was doing now. She had not been completely happy with the Freelings. She had become rather mystical, hinting at something. I was not sure what.

It was different now. Soon I should be leaving Humberston; my home would be at the Minster; but first there would be the magical honeymoon in Venice.

I was happy, I kept telling myself. I was contented.

Most young women would think they were indeed fortunate to be in my position. After all, I was not exactly a beauty. My reddish hair was startling in colour but it was thick and straight, and although it contained a wave or two it was not becomingly curly and was often unmanageable. And then my green eyes. They went with my hair, of course, but my lashes were fair and so were my eyebrows; and my skin was very white. It had given my poor ayah great anxiety. She had moaned about its delicacy and feared what the fierce Indian sun might do to it. I had never been allowed out without a big shady hat, even on dull days. But my height was what made me feel I lacked female attractiveness. I was too tall. I had looked down on quite a number of the young men of my acquaintance and I believed that was not an appealing trait. Men like to look down on their women figuratively perhaps, but physically most certainly.

And I, not exactly plain but definitely not greatly attractive in all eyes, had achieved what so many beautiful girls would have given a great deal for. I was lucky.

Cousin Ellen arrived with her two daughters the day before the wedding. She was so pleased that I was to be married; and she talked with less restraint than I remembered, recalling incidents of the past. It was rather pleasant. She remembered so much. She reminded me of one incident which I had not thought of for a long time.

“Do you remember Tom Jennings … the young man who fell from the ladder?”

“Oh yes. He broke his leg.”

“I shall never forget the sight of you, kneeling there beside him. All you did was stroke his forehead and speak soothingly to him and you seemed to comfort him.”

I spread my hands and looked at them.

“My ayah said I had healing hands.”

“They have those ideas out there, I suppose.”

“There was a boy in Bombay. I did the same for him. That was when she noticed.”

“Perhaps you should be a nurse.”

I was thoughtful.

“Do you know … I think I should rather like that.”

Ellen laughed.

“Thank goodness there is no question of it! You are going to marry .. very well. We are ever so pleased. Nursing is considered hardly suitable for a lady … one of the lowest, professions … like soldiering.”

“You are talking to a soldier’s daughter.”

“Oh, of course I didn’t mean men like your father. I mean the common soldier. Why do they go into it? Because they are unemployable at anything else … or they have been in trouble. And they say nurses are much the same.”

“That seems terrible,” I said.

“Isn’t protecting one’s country a noble thing. Isn’t nursing the sick?”

“It should be, but so much which should be is not. But why waste time discussing such things when there is so much to be done, so much to arrange. You must be in a whirl.”

There was certainly a great deal to do but the conversation had brought back memories. I looked at my hands, well shaped, very white; there was a certain delicacy about the long tapering fingers, and yet they had a strength. I smiled at them. They were my only real beauty.

And so the time passed.

It was the night before my wedding. Everything was in order. My father had arrived at Humberston and was sleeping in one of the little bedrooms along the corridor. Ellen and her family were in two more.

The rectory was full to overflowing. And beyond the churchyard, Aubrey was sleeping in the Black Boar.

I went to bed and then I had the dream. the dream which was to set me pondering on what could have conjured it up in my imagination.