Voices in a Haunted Room

A Wedding at Eversleigh

OUR HOUSEHOLD WAS DISRUPTED. Dickon raged and my mother was plunged into melancholy. Although she had never been so close to Charlot as to me, and they had grown farther apart since her marriage to Dickon, he was her son, and I realized during the weeks which followed how his flight saddened her. She knew Charlot had never really wanted to stay in England, and she felt a certain guilt because she understood how frustrated he must have felt. He had come for a holiday—as we all had—and to have been forced to stay in England had angered him.

I had often heard him say that he wished he had gone back that time with my mother. He would never have come away if he had. He would have stayed behind to fight. David said: “You would not have been there long to fight. You would have been just another in the long march to the guillotine.”

One remembered these conversations now; one remembered so much. Rides had lost their savour. There was no fear, no hope, of Jonathan’s springing out on me. He had gone. What if he never came back?

My mother mourned secretly; she did not want to upset Dickon more than he already was. After a while he ceased to show a great deal of distress even though Jonathan, his son, had gone away and into danger so acute that it was hard for any who had not experienced it to imagine. I supposed that Dickon was not very emotionally involved with either of his sons; but they were his heirs, and like most men he had wanted sons. I wondered whether he considered the possibility of Jonathan’s not coming back. Perhaps he consoled himself that he still had David.

During the first weeks we looked out for them. I would find myself at the top of the house, watching the road; and sometimes my mother would creep up to watch with me. Then she would grip my hand and I knew that she was seeing herself once more in the mairie with the mob below her. Such experiences are never forgotten; and at times such as this, naturally they became more vivid.

Once she broke down and cried: “This terrible revolution. What good can it possibly bring compared with the evil it has wrought! My father lost his only son. Just think of it! He went out one day and he only came back all that time after when my father was dead. You wouldn’t have known him, Claudine.”

I pressed her hand; then I kissed it.

“Thank God I have you,” she said.

“I will always be near you.”

“Bless you, dearest child. I believe you will.”

I would have done anything at that moment to bring her comfort.

I think what Dickon felt most was anger. He had never liked Charlot, and I am sure would not have minded his going in the least. He was angry because it had upset my mother.

I doubted he had ever been so flouted in his life.

Sabrina became ill. I was sure it was with anxiety, and in a way this turned our thoughts from what was happening to them in France.

I would sit and read to her, which was what she liked, and she talked a great deal about the past. She remarked what a fortunate girl I was. I had been loved all my life; and she threw a little light on her own childhood, which made me see her differently.

She told me how when she was a little girl she had been forbidden to skate on a frozen pond because a thaw was setting in. She had disobeyed and fallen into the water, to be rescued by her mother, who caught a chill which shortened her life. Her father never forgave her. It was a shadow which had hung over her life. Only my great-grandmother, Clarissa, who was her cousin, had understood her. And then she had married the man whom Clarissa had loved.

I looked at her frail body, her white hair, and her thin but still-beautiful features, and I saw that her life had been overshadowed by guilt. She had shared Dickon with Clarissa and they had found their consolation in the son of the man whom they had both loved.

What happens in our young days must surely shape our natures. Dickon was arrogant, aggressive, seeing himself inheriting the earth as his right. Well, those two admiring women had helped to make him what he was. And Charlot… he had been brought up in France. It was his country and he would never tear himself away from it.

I prayed that he would never be caught by those who were making revolution. It would be a martyr’s death for him if he were. Louis Charles had always been something of a disciple. And Jonathan? No, I could not imagine anyone’s getting the better of Jonathan. He had that quality which was Dickon’s and somehow I felt he would always survive. I fostered that belief because it cheered me.

I was spending a great deal of time with David. I could discuss this alarming situation with him much more easily than I could with my mother.

I said: “I’m afraid for them. How I wish they would come home.”

“Jonathan will come, you’ll see. I don’t know about Charlot and Louis Charles. Charlot has been serious about this for a long time, and he carries Louis Charles with him. It is a new adventure for Jonathan. I fancy he will tire of it though. He does lose his enthusiasms rather quickly.”

The trip to London which was promised for my birthday was postponed. No one really felt in the mood for such frivolities.

“Perhaps,” said my mother pathetically, “when they come back we can all go together.”

Dickon, however, did go to London and my mother accompanied him. I wondered whether Jonathan had walked out on certain business commitments as well as his home.

The days passed quickly when the first shock was over. These consisted mainly of daily lessons for me. I spoke English fluently enough to satisfy even Dickon; and it was only rarely that a faint French accent could be detected.

David would often read passages to me from books which interested me, and I was learning something of the subjects which fascinated him. He liked me to ride round the estate with him and I was getting to know the tenants in the outlying districts. I took a great interest in the state of the cottages and when the young people were having babies. David was delighted and often commented on how popular I was with these people. He said that on those occasions when I was not with him they asked after me.

“The other day one of them said, ‘She’s one of us—Mistress Claudine is. No one would ever think she was aught else.’”

“It looks as though they have forgiven me for having a French father.”

“A great concession, I do assure you,” said David.

“Why are people so insular?”

“Because their horizons are as narrow as their minds.”

“Charlot was the same.”

I wished I had not said that. We were always trying to avoid any mention of what had happened.

“Charlot is so much a Frenchman that he cannot accept anything that is not French. My father is the same about England.”

“It seems to be a masculine failing.”

“Well, perhaps. Your mother, it seems, could be French or English… whatever is demanded. So can you, Claudine.”

“Home is where those whom you love are. It is not a house or a piece of land surely.”

“So this is your home, Claudine.”

“My mother is here. I suppose home would always be where she is.”

Then he said: “And others… perhaps.”

I looked at him steadily and replied: “Yes… and others.”

“Myself, for instance?”

“You, of course, David.”

“You will marry me, won’t you, Claudine?”

And I said: “Yes, David, I will.”

Afterwards I wondered why I had answered so promptly, for although since Jonathan left I had been more and more drawn to David, in my heart I was still unsure.

Looking back, I think I wanted to escape from this slough of despond into which we all seemed to have drifted. I wanted something to happen, anything which would lift us out of it. Since Jonathan had gone so lightly, so eagerly abandoning me for the sake of a new adventure, I had been telling myself that it was really David whom I loved, because I was sure that with David, I came first. And having promised, I tried to convince myself that I had done the right thing—that which in my heart I had always known.

David was jubilant, and almost at once the atmosphere in the house lightened. The gloom lifted and for a while I too felt quite joyous. The change in my mother was amazing and Dickon was so delighted that it appeared that what he wanted more than anything at this time was our marriage.

My mother threw herself into preparations with an almost feverish energy. When should the wedding be? There should not be too long a wait. Summer was the time for a wedding. Of course the summer would soon be over. This was August. There must be some time for preparation. What about the end of September? Or the beginning of October? It was finally decided that it must be October to give us the time we needed for preparation.

It had been late February when the young men had left for France. Somehow it seemed like years.

As the days began to pass I was telling myself twenty times a day that I had done the right thing. I was very happy. David and I had everything in common and we would be happy all our lives in the heart of the family.

“It is true,” I would say to myself. But why should I have to tell myself so insistently?

I was happy, however, to see my mother so absorbed. She was almost her old self wondering whether Molly Blackett was capable of making the wedding dress or whether she should risk hurting her by engaging a court dressmaker. While she concerned herself with such a matter at least she was not brooding about what might have happened to Charlot.

At length she decided that fashion must be sacrificed to human kindness and Molly set to work with yards and yards of pure white chiffon and delicate lace. And there was I standing, while she knelt at my feet, with the pincushion beside her, and my thoughts went back to another occasion when Jonathan had burst in on us and lured Molly away on a false pretext while he held me in his arms.

The dress turned out to be quite a triumph, and the joy of Molly Blackett’s life. It hung in my bedroom cupboard for a whole week before the wedding, and every night, before I got into bed, I would look at it, and very often I thought it was like a ghost standing there—not a ghost from the past, but the ghost of what was to come. Once I dreamed that I was wearing it and Jonathan came and slipped the bodice from my shoulders and kissed me.

I supposed that every girl felt a little apprehensive before her wedding. I often pondered on those marriages which were arranged in highborn families. How did the bride feel going to an unknown bridegroom? At least I knew David for a kindly, interesting person, someone who really loved me, and, I said almost defiantly to the ghost in the cupboard, “whom I love.”

During the days I was less fearful. Riding with David about the estate I felt contented. This was what our life would be. I should grow into it graciously. I should help him when he had little worries about something on the estate; we should take trips to London. Indeed we had planned to do so on our honeymoon. I often thought of the one we had planned in Italy, visiting Herculaneum or Pompeii—but that would not be easy now that we were at war with France. I often wondered what would happen to an Englishman found in France at this time. Dickon said that the country was in such a turmoil that they would pay little attention to foreigners; they were too intent on killing each other. But I feared for Charlot and Louis Charles as well as Jonathan.

We decided we would go to London… just for a week, say. We would sail up the river as far as Hampton; we would go to the theatre; and we would stay in the family house, which would be like home in a way.

I could not help thinking of Venice and Italian love songs as the gondoliers swept their way over darkened waters.

One day we came home past Grasslands, which belonged to Mrs. Trent, and as we were passing she came out and called to us.

I had never really liked her. There was a certain slyness about her. When I had visited Eversleigh the very first time—and I was quite young then—I had thought she was a witch and had been rather afraid of her.

Why I should have felt so I was not quite sure, for she must have been rather pretty when she was young; but there was a certain wariness about her which put me on my guard.

She called a greeting and said: “So it is our young bride and groom. Come and drink a glass of sloe gin… or if you would prefer it, the elderberry wine was very good this year.”

I wanted to refuse, but David was already thanking her and accepting the invitation. I guessed he did not want to go any more than I did, but he was too kindhearted to refuse.

Grasslands was a very small estate compared with Eversleigh. There were only two farms, but I had heard it said that Mrs. Trent had a very good manager.

We went into a hall—a lofty place with some magnificent oak beams—but small compared with ours at Eversleigh, and she led us into a parlour and called out for the serving girl to bring the elderberry wine and sloe gin.

Mrs. Trent was beaming her satisfaction. I knew that she did not have many visitors. I gathered that for some reason she had never been accepted in the neighbourhood. There was some scandal about her. Her mother had been housekeeper to my distant relative Carl Eversleigh—in fact she had been his mistress and the story was that she had robbed him right and left. There was some scandal, which was discovered by my grandmother Zipporah, and the lady had disappeared, but not before her daughter had gone to work for Andrew Mather at Grasslands, and so insinuated herself into his life that he had married her, and when he died shortly afterwards leaving her with a baby son, she had become the owner of Grasslands.

Rumour had branded her an adventuress, and soon after the death of her first husband she married Jack Trent, her manager—who was said to have been her lover—and had lived in outward respectability ever since, but such a past was not easily forgotten.

“Everyone is most excited about the wedding,” she said. “I reckon your mama is really pleased—and your step-papa too. It’s always nice when things turn out the way people want, don’t you think?”

David said we were also delighted about the coming marriage.

“Well, if you weren’t that would be a nice kettle of fish, wouldn’t it? I expect Mr. Jonathan’s nose will be put out of joint when he comes home and finds his brother has stolen a march on him.”

I felt myself flushing. Yes, that was what I remembered about Mrs. Trent. She seemed to be aware of one’s weaknesses and to find a pleasure in letting one know it—and to set one wondering how much she really knew. It was that witchlike quality.

The wine had arrived and she poured it out.

“Good ones this year—both sloe and elder,” she commented. “There now. Let’s drink to the wedding.”

We did. Then she went on: “And to the safe return of Mr. Jonathan.”

Her eyes glittered as she looked straight at me. I could almost feel her probing my mind.

She said: “I like things to happen. That’s one thing about the country… it can be a bit quiet. I started my life in London, you know. What a difference! Then my mother came to Eversleigh and it was the country life for me and has been ever since. There’s some that say I’ve been lucky, and in spite of everything I’d say I’ve much to be thankful for.”

Her bright eyes seemed to be looking back into the past and she was smirking at memories.

“I saw your step-papa out riding the other day. What a fine gentleman!” There was a special glitter in her eyes now, as though she knew something about Dickon which she would dearly love to tell.

I wondered whether I was imagining that certain slyness, this harbouring of secret knowledge, because in my childhood I had thought of her as the witch.

When she spoke of Jonathan and Dickon there was a note in her voice which seemed to suggest that she knew them very well indeed and was greatly amused by them.

I had a great desire to get away; she was depressing me. I wondered if she had the same effect on David. I caught his eye and tried to indicate that we should finish the wine and get out. There was something claustrophobic about Grasslands.

Mrs. Trent cocked her head as though listening. Then she called out: “I can see you… peeping in. Come and meet the happy pair.”

The two girls came in. They were dressed in riding habits. Evie looked very pretty, which made the contrast with her sister very noticeable.

“You know my Evie and Dolly,” said Mrs. Trent. She looked at Evie with pride, and I immediately felt sorry for Dolly, who hung back a little, for I guessed she was very much aware of her deformity.

The girls dropped a curtsy, and Mrs. Trent went on: “They think it’s lovely… you, Miss Claudine, and Mr. David, don’t you, girls?”

They nodded.

“Where’s your tongues?” demanded Mrs. Trent. “Haven’t you got something to say?”

“Congratulations, Miss de Tourville and Mr. Frenshaw,” said Evie.

“Thanks,” we replied simultaneously and David went on: “I saw you riding the other day. I must say you manage your horses well.”

“Oh yes,” said Mrs. Trent, “I’ve had them brought up in the right way, both of them. I was determined my girls should be as good as anyone else.”

“I’m sure you succeeded, Mrs. Trent,” I said. “I do agree about the wine being especially good this year. Thanks for letting us try it, and now I think we really ought to be going, don’t you, David?”

“I’m afraid so,” he said. “There is so much to do round the estate.”

“Don’t I know it,” said Mrs. Trent. “In my own little way, of course. Grasslands is no Eversleigh, but my goodness there’s enough to keep us busy. It was very gracious of you to call. We do appreciate that, don’t we, girls?”

Evie said: “Oh yes, we do.”

“And I’ll come and dance at your wedding. You girls will have to wait a bit for yours. But I’ve a feeling Evie won’t have so long. Well, we’ll see.”

We rose and thanked her for the wine, and she came out with us to our horses. Evie and Dolly came with her and stood looking at us while we mounted.

Mrs. Trent slapped the flanks of my horse affectionately.

“I’ll be at the wedding,” she said. “I have a special interest in your family.”

I don’t know why it was—perhaps because of the mood she aroused in me—but I thought the words sounded ominous.

As we rode away, David said: “She is rather ill-bred, but I don’t think she means any harm.”

So he must have felt the same as I did. I agreed that she was ill-bred, but I was not so sure of the harm; but my apprehension did seem rather foolish so I pressed my horse into a gallop. I felt I wanted to put a distance between myself and Grasslands.

We slowed down as we came to the road. “They must have been at Grasslands for a long time,” I said.

“Well, Mrs. Trent went there as housekeeper, and married old Andrew Mather.”

“Yes, I heard that. The girls’ father was her son.”

“Yes, by her first husband. He managed the estate very well until his death. Now she has quite a good manager.”

“Grasslands is very different from that other house… Enderby.”

“Very. Always was. It’s odd about Enderby.”

“Do you believe that houses have an effect on people? They do say that Enderby is unlucky.”

David laughed. “How can a house be? It’s only bricks or stone. They can’t change luck, can they?”

“Let’s go and look at the old place. Just a glimpse. It’s up this way, isn’t it?”

I turned off the road and David followed me. As we rounded a bend, there was the old house. I have to admit that even in broad daylight it sent a shiver through me. It looked dark and menacing, as neglected houses will sometimes. The shrubs about it were thick and untended.

“It looks very dejected,” said David.

“And at the same time defiant,” I replied.

He laughed. “Can a house look so?”

“Enderby does. Come on. I want a close look. Do you think anyone will ever buy it?”

“Not in the state it’s in. It’s been empty for years. Because of its reputation probably.”

“David, I want to look closer.”

“Hasn’t Grasslands been enough for one morning?”

“Perhaps because of Grasslands.”

He looked at me puzzled. Then he smiled and said: “All right. Let’s go.”

We tethered our horses to the post which was set there conveniently for the use of visitors and went to the front door. It was silent, eerie. There was a rusty bell which I pulled, and we stood listening to the jangling which echoed through the house.

“No use ringing the bell,” said David. “Whom do you expect to answer it?”

“Ghosts,” I said. “People who have lived in the house and can’t rest because of their sins. Wasn’t there a murder here once?”

“If there was it’s ancient history.”

“It’s ancient history that makes ghosts.”

“Claudine, I believe there’s a side to your nature which I have not discovered. You believe in evil spirits. Do you, Claudine?”

“I don’t know, but I should if I were made aware of them. In fact, David, I would believe anything in the world if I had evidence of it.”

“Well, that is the crux of the matter. Are you going to believe without proof?”

“Standing here… in the shadow of this house… I could.”

“We can’t get in because there is no one to let us in.”

“Is there a key somewhere… just in case of a prospective buyer?”

“I believe it is with Mrs. Trent. She’s the nearest neighbour. You’re not going to propose that we go back and ask for it, are you?”

I shook my head emphatically. “Still, I should like to explore a bit.”

David, ever willing to please, followed me round the house. We fought our way through overgrown weeds in the long grass. When I found the window with the broken latch, I pushed it open and looked into the hall.

“David,” I said excitedly. “We could climb through here. Do let’s.”

He did, and standing in the hall turned to help me in, and soon we were there, looking up at the vaulted ceiling and the minstrels’ gallery and the wide staircase at one end of the hall.

“That,” said David, “is said to be the haunted spot. It all started when someone in financial difficulties, I think, tried to hang himself with a rope suspended from the gallery. The rope was too long and he landed on his feet suffering terrible agonies. Ever since then the house has been cursed.”

“Sabrina lived here in her childhood.”

“Yes. But even when she was well she avoided coming here. The house was quite normal then because her mother, who was a very good woman, made it so. And after she died her husband was heartbroken and it reverted to its gloomy aspect. That shows, does it not, that it is people who make the house what it is—not stone and bricks?”

“You win,” I said.

And he laughed. He put an arm about me. “There you are, Madam. An undesirable property. But one which could be made desirable… by the right people.”

“Who in their right minds would want to live in such a place? Think of all the work which would have to be done.”

“Nothing that a few gardeners could not alter in a month. To my mind it’s the darkness. It’s all that growth outside.”

“Come and look at the haunted gallery then.”

We mounted the staircase. I parted the curtains. They were thick with dust. I went in and stood looking down on the hall. Yes, there was an eerie atmosphere. The house seemed silent, watchful.

I shivered, but said nothing to David. He would not notice. He was too practical.

We looked down to the other end of the hall, to the screens with the kitchens beyond. I could imagine the people who had danced in this hall; and I wondered what it would be like here when darkness fell. It really was ghostly, and one’s imagination might play tricks. No one would ever want to come and live here and the house would crumble and decay.

We went up the staircase, our footsteps echoing through the house. We looked into the bedrooms. There were many of them, and some of the furniture must have been there for years—such as the old court cupboard in one room and the four-poster bed in another.

I had a feeling that I wanted to be alone here—just for a few moments. David was too prosaic, too unimaginative to feel the atmosphere as I did. Of course, I was fanciful and was allowing myself to pretend I felt something which I had probably worked up within myself.

I slipped into one of the rooms. I could hear David’s footsteps in another and I guessed he was examining the old court cupboard.

Silence! Just a faint murmur in the trees which grew so thickly round the house. I heard a sound. It must have been the swaying lattice of the broken window downstairs, but it startled me.

Then suddenly I heard a sibilant whisper. It seemed to fill the room. It was: “Beware… beware, little bride.”

I felt myself go cold with horror. I looked quickly round. Someone had spoken. I had distinctly heard those words. I ran to the door and looked along the corridor to the staircase. There was no sign of anyone.

David emerged from the room in which he had been.

I said: “Did you hear someone?”

He looked surprised. “There’s no one here,” he said.

“I thought I heard…”

“You’re imagining things,” he said.

I nodded. I now had a great desire to get away. I had known there was something malevolent about the house.

We went quickly down the staircase to the hall. All the time I was looking about me to see if there was any sign of anyone’s being in the house.

There was nothing.

David helped me through the window. I tried to stop my hands trembling as he helped me into the saddle.

“Can you see anyone’s trying to make a home of that place?” said David.

“I can’t really. I think it is full of evil ghosts.”

“And cobwebs and spiders’ webs doubtless.”

“Horrible.”

“Never mind, my dearest. It makes you appreciate Eversleigh all the more.”

Eversleigh… My home forever… surrounded by love, the love of my mother and my husband. And if Jonathan ever came home…?

I tried not to think of that but I could not stop myself. I kept hearing those words: “Beware, little bride.”

The days which followed were very busy and I forgot our visit to Enderby. It was only occasionally—and in dreams—that those words kept coming back to my mind.

It was to be a moderately quiet wedding. The absence of Jonathan, Charlot and Louis Charles could not be lightly brushed aside. However much we tried to forget it, and while we were in doubt as to where they were and what was happening to them, ours must be an anxious household. It was seven months since they had left and that seemed a long time.

The hall was being decorated with plants from the greenhouses and there was an atmosphere of bustle everywhere; savoury smells emerged from the kitchen and the cook was making an enormous wedding cake over which she seemed to be puffing and groaning every time I went into the kitchen.

We should have a few people staying in the house—those who came from too far to be able to get home on the evening of the wedding day; those in the not-too-distant neighbourhood could attend the ceremony and the reception which was to follow and then start the journey home.

The marriage was to take place in the Eversleigh chapel, which was reached from the hall by a short spiral staircase. It was not small—as chapels in country houses go—but on the other hand it was not large and would therefore, I was sure, be overcrowded. My mother had said that the servants could sit on the staircase if there was not room for them inside the chapel.

The day after the wedding David and I would leave for London and would spend a week there before returning to Eversleigh.

“The honeymoon proper is temporarily postponed,” said David, “but only until life settles down more peacefully on the Continent. Then for us it will be the Grand Tour. We may go through France if that is possible and perhaps visit some of the people and places you once knew. And then… on to Italy. In the meantime we shall have to be satisfied. Will you accept that?”

“Needs must,” I said laughingly.

I began to thrust aside my doubts. My mother was so pleased. I knew she had always favoured David. Why was it that she, who had chosen Dickon, the wildest of adventurers, and one least likely to be a faithful husband, should have chosen serious David for me? Perhaps for the very reason that she herself had chosen Dickon. I believed my own father was a man whom she had shared with many women. So perhaps that was the very reason why she preferred the steady one for her daughter.

It was the night before my wedding. I opened the cupboard door and looked at my dress. Before the candles were lighted it looked like a woman standing there. Soft chiffon! The pride of Molly Blackett’s life. It was beautiful. I should be happy ever after.

I undressed and brushed my hair, braiding it neatly into two plaits. I went and sat by the window and I asked myself if everything would have been different if Jonathan had not gone away. Suppose I could go back to the days before my birthday. It was on my birthday, with the arrival of the refugees, that everything changed. It was they who had fired Jonathan and Charlot with the idea of going to France. Charlot had always wanted to go back.

Suppose those refugees had not escaped. Suppose they had never come to Eversleigh… Would this then be the eve of my wedding?

I looked out into the distance. How often had I stood there straining my eyes to the horizon looking for a rider who might be Jonathan returning from France.

But he had not come. Perhaps he never would come. Perhaps he would disappear as my Uncle Armand had—although he came back… when it was too late.

Would Jonathan?

I got into bed. It was difficult to sleep. I kept thinking about the future, sometimes fearfully. But what was there to fear? David loved me and he was the kindest of people.

And if Jonathan ever came back…? Well, what if he did? I should be married then. His coming and going would be no real concern of mine.

At last I slept and I awoke to find my mother standing by my bed.

“Wake up, little bride,” she said. “It’s your wedding day.”

I was coming out of my sleep and as I smiled at her I seemed to hear another voice, strange and ghostly: “Beware, little bride.”

So I was married to David in the chapel at Eversleigh. It was a simple ceremony performed by the priest who lived on the estate and officiated on all such occasions. I felt a sense of fatality standing on the red tiles where generations of Eversleigh brides had stood before me.

The chapel was so hot and the overpowering odour of so many flowers made me feel a little faint; but perhaps that was the excitement.

David was smiling as he put the ring on my finger and said the words required of him in a resolute voice. I hoped I sounded equally determined to do what was expected of me.

Then we were walking out of the chapel and I was aware of all the people there: Lord and Lady Pettigrew with their daughter Millicent; friends from the neighbourhood; and at the back of the chapel—suggesting to me a certain false modesty—were Mrs. Trent and her two grand-daughters.

I could feel their eyes on me. But this was natural, for was I not, as the bride, the focus of attention?

The servants who had been seated on the stairs hastily pressed themselves against the wall to make a passage for us, and so David and I, now husband and wife, came into the hall.

My mother was right behind us. She was flushed and looked very beautiful; with her dark blue eyes and luxuriant dark hair, she was still a strikingly handsome woman.

There were tears now in her lovely eyes. She whispered to me that it was so moving. “I kept thinking about the day you were born and all the funny little things you used to do.”

“I believe that is how mothers are on their daughters’ wedding days,” I said, “so, dearest Maman, you only acted true to form.”

“Come,” she said. “They are all returning now. We shall feed them right away.”

Soon they were assembled in the hall and there was a buzz of conversation. Dickon looked very pleased and I could hear his hearty laughter above the conversation. My mother was at his side and I thought: She is happier than she has been since the day Charlot left.

I cut the cake with David’s help and I smiled to note the cook’s anxious eyes on us while we performed this ceremony, for the servants had gathered in one corner of the room.

I nodded towards her to imply that it was perfect. She closed her eyes, and opening them, rolled them to the ceiling in ecstasy. David and I laughed together and went on cutting the cake.

Mrs. Evalina Trent was talking to Millicent Pettigrew, rather to Millicent’s consternation, for her mother would most certainly not approve of Mrs. Trent. I think Evalina Trent knew this and was rather maliciously keeping Millicent in conversation although it was clear that she wanted to escape.

“It’ll be your turn next, my dear,” I heard her say. “Oh yes it will. Take a piece of cake and put it under your pillow, my dear. Then tonight you will dream of your future husband.”

Millicent looked over Mrs. Trent’s head and Mrs. Trent went on, indicating her two grand-daughters, who were close by. “Now my girls will put that cake under their pillows, won’t you, girls? They’re determined to see their future husbands tonight.” She turned to Millicent: “You’ll be staying the night, I daresay.”

Millicent admitted that she would be.

“Too far to travel back by night,” went on Mrs. Trent. “Dangerous, too. I wouldn’t want to travel after daylight. Those gentlemen of the road are getting bolder. They’re not content with taking a lady’s purse… They want something else besides, so they tell me.”

Millicent murmured: “Excuse me!” and went over to join her mother.

People came up to congratulate us; toasts were drunk and there was a great deal of laughter. Dickon made a speech saying how happy he and my mother were, and he stressed what an unusual state of affairs this was when a man’s son could marry his wife’s daughter and it could be the most perfect union imaginable.

Everyone applauded, and the servants cleared away the food and dancing began. As was customary I opened the dance with Dickon, followed by David with my mother; and the others fell in behind us.

I was tired and a little apprehensive, half relieved and half fearful, when the guests began to depart, leaving only those who were staying in the house.

Mrs. Trent came to say goodbye to me before they left.

“I reckon you’re glad to see the back of us,” she said, her eyes sparkling as she almost leered at me. “Now,” she went on, “the real wedding can begin.”

I watched them leave and felt quite glad because they were no longer under our roof.

The carriages started to leave and we stood at the door waving to them as they clip-clopped off into the darkness.

Then David slipped his arm through mine, and together we went to the bridal chamber in which so many of my mother’s family had spent the first night of their married lives.