Frenchman's Creek Read online

  While Harry's lovable and slightly stupid laugh, his expression of half-shocked dismay: "You've made yourself the talk of the town, you know, the fellows are gossiping about you in the taverns," had not served as a rebuke but as an irritant. She had wished that he would be angry, would shout at her, insult her even-but he only laughed, shrugging his shoulders, and fondled her in heavy, clumsy fashion, so that she knew her folly had not touched him, that inwardly he was really quite pleased that men were gossiping about his wife and admiring her, because it made him a person of importance in their eyes. The coach lurched over a deep rut in the road, and James stirred in his sleep. His little face puckered as though to cry, and Dona reached for the toy that had slipped from his grasp, and he cuddled it to his mouth, and so slept once more. He looked like Harry did when demanding a reassurance of her affection, and she wondered why it was that a quality so attractive and touching in James should seem to her, in Harry, more than a little absurd and a secret source of irritation.

  Dressing that Friday night, placing the rubies in her ears minded suddenly of James snatching the pendant, and stuffing it in his mouth, and she had smiled to herself, thinking of him, and Harry, standing beside her, dusting the lace at his wrists, had caught the smile and turned it into an invitation. "Damn it, Dona," he had said, "why do you look at me like that? Don't let's go to the play, hang Rockingham, hang the world, why the devil don't we stay at home?" Poor Harry, how vain, how typical, provoked by a smile that was not for him into instant adoration. She had said: "How ridiculous you are," turning from him, so that he should not touch her bare shoulder with his clumsy hands, and at once his mouth had set in that grumpy, obstinate line she knew so well, so that they set out to the play, as they had done to other plays and to other suppers, times without number, with moods ill-tuned and tempers frayed, putting an edge upon the evening before it had begun.

  Then he had called to his spaniels, Duke and Duchess, and they had yapped up at him for sweetmeats, filling the room with their shrill barking, leaping and jumping at his hands.

  "Hey, Duke, hey, Duchess," he had said, "go seek, go find," throwing a sweetmeat across the room and on to her bed, so that they clawed at the curtains, and tried to spring upon it, yapping horribly the while, and Dona, her fingers in her ears to thrust out the sound, swept from the room and downstairs to her waiting chair, white, and cold, and angry, to be met with the hot street smells and the breathless vapid sky.

  Once more the coach shook and trembled in the deep ruts of the country road, and this time it was the nurse who stirred-poor wretched Prue, her foolish, honest face all heavy and mottled with fatigue, how she must grudge her mistress this sudden inexplicable journey-and Dona wondered whether she had left some young man forlorn in London who would prove false in all probability and marry somebody else and Prue's life would be blighted, all because of her, Dona, and her whims and fancies and savage ill-humour. What would poor Prue find to do at Navron House, but parade the children up and down the avenue and through the gardens, sighing for the streets of London hundreds of miles away. Were there gardens at Navron? She could not remember. It all seemed so long ago, that brief visit after she had married. There were trees surely, and a shining river, and great windows that opened from a long room, but more than this she had forgotten, because she had felt so ill during those days, with Henrietta on the way, and life one endless business of sofas, and sickness, and smelling bottles. Suddenly Dona felt hungry, the coach had just rumbled past an orchard and the apple trees were in blossom, and she knew she must eat now, at once, without more ado, on the side of the road in the sunshine, they must all eat-so she thrust her head out of the window and called up to her coachman: "We will halt here for a while, and eat. Come and help me spread the rugs beneath the hedge."

  The man stared down at her in bewilderment. "But, my lady, the ground may be damp, you will take cold."

  "Nonsense, Thomas, I am hungry, we are all hungry, we must eat."

  He climbed down from his seat, his face red with embarrassment, and his companion turned away also, coughing behind his hand.

  "There is a hostelry in Bodmin, my lady," the coachman ventured, "there you could eat in comfort, and rest perhaps; surely it would be more fitting. If anyone should pass this way, and see you by the side of the road. I hardly think Sir Harry would like..."

  "Damn it, Thomas, can't you obey orders?" said his mistress, and she opened the door of the coach herself, and stepped down into the muddy road, lifting her gown above her ankles in a most brazen way. Poor Sir Harry, thought the coachman, this was the sort of thing he had to contend with every day, and in less than five minutes she had them all assembled on the grass by the side of the road, the nurse barely awake blinking her round eyes, and the children staring in astonishment. "Let us all drink ale," said Dona, "we have some in the basket beneath the seat. I have a mad desire for ale. Yes, James, you shall have some." And there she sat, her petticoats tucked beneath her and her hood falling away from her face, quaffing her ale like any beggaring gypsy, handing some on the tip of her finger for her baby son to taste, smiling the while at the coachman to show him that she bore no malice for his rough driving and his obstinacy. "You must both drink, too, there is plenty for all," she said, and the men were obliged to drink with her, avoiding the eye of the nurse. She thought the whole proceeding unseemly, as they did, and was wishing for a quiet parlour in a hostelry, and fresh warm water where she could bathe the children's hands and faces.

  "Where are we going?" asked Henrietta for the twelfth time, looking about her in distaste, holding her dress close to her so that the mud should not stain it. "Is the drive nearly finished, and shall we soon be home?"

  We are going to another home," said Dona, "a new home, a much nicer home. You will be able to run free in the woods and dirty your clothes, and Prue will not scold you because it will not matter."

  "I don't want to dirty my clothes. I want to go home," said Henrietta, and her lip trembled; she looked up at Dona in reproach, and then, she was tired perhaps, it was all strange, this journey, this sitting by the roadside, she missed her monotonous routine, she began to cry, and James, placid and happy until then, opened his mouth wide and roared in sympathy. "There, my pets, there, my treasures, did they hate the nasty ditch and the prickly hedge," said Prue, folding them both in her arms, a world of meaning in her voice for her mistress, the cause of all this upset, so that Dona, her conscience stung, rose to her feet, kicking at the remains of the feast. "Come then, let us continue the journey by all means, but without tears, for pity's sake," and she stood for a moment, while the nurse, and the food, and the children packed themselves in the coach. Yes, there was apple blossom on the air, and the scent of gorse as well, and the tang of moss and peat from the moors away in the distance, and surely somewhere, not too distant, over the farther hills, a wet sea smell.

  Forget the children's tears, forget Prue's grievance, forget the pursed-up mouth of the coachman, forget Harry and his troubled, distressed blue eyes when she announced her decision. "But damn it, Dona, what have I done, what have I said, don't you know that I adore you?" Forget all these things, because this was freedom, to stand here for one minute with her face to the sun and the wind, this was living, to smile and to be alone.

  She had tried to explain it to Harry on the Friday night, after that foolish idiotic escapade at Hampton Court; she had tried to tell him what she meant, how the ridiculous prank on the Countess was only a thwarted, bastard idea of fun, a betrayal of her real mood; that in reality it was escape she wanted, escape from her own self, from the life they led together; that she had reached a crisis in her particular span of time and existence, and must travel through that crisis, alone.

  "Go to Navron by all means if you wish it," he said sulkily. "I will send word at once that preparation is made for you, that the house is opened up, the servants are ready. But I don't understand. Why suddenly, and why have you never expressed the desire before, and why do you not want me to come wi
th you?"

  "Because I would be alone, because my humour is such that if I am not alone I shall drive you mad, and myself as well," she said.

  "I don't understand," he went on, his mouth set, his eyes sullen, and she, in despair, tried to paint a picture of her mood.

  "Do you remember my father's aviary in Hampshire?" she said, "and how the birds there were well fed, and could fly about their cage? And one day I set a linnet free, and it flew straight out of my hands towards the sun?"

  "What of it?" he said, clasping his hands behind his back.

  "Because I feel like that. Like the linnet before it flew," she said, and then she turned away, smiling in spite of her sincerity, because he looked so puzzled, so hopelessly out of his depth, staring at her in his white nightshirt, and he shrugged his shoulders, poor dear, she could well understand it, he shrugged his shoulders, and climbed into bed, and turned his face to the wall away from her and said: "Oh, hell and damnation, Dona, why must you be so confounded tricky?"

  Chapter III

  SHE FUMBLED for a moment with the catch, it had jammed of course, through lack of use, probably it had not been touched for months, and then she flung the windows wide and let in the fresh air and the sun. "Faugh! The room smells like a tomb," she said, and as a shaft of sunlight struck the pane she caught the reflection of the manservant looking at her, she could have sworn he was smiling, but when she turned he was still and solemn as he had been from the first moment of their arrival, a thin, spare little man, with a button mouth and a curiously white face.

  "I don't remember you," she said, "you were not here when we came before."

  "No, my lady," he said.

  "There was an old man-I forget his name-but he had rheumatism in all his joints, and could scarcely walk, where is he now?"

  "In his grave, my lady."

  "I see." She bit her lip, and turned again to the window. was the fellow laughing at her or not?

  "And you replaced him then?" she said, over her shoulder, looking out towards the trees. "Yes, my lady."

  "And your name?"

  "William, my lady."

  She had forgotten the Cornish people spoke in so strange a way, foreign almost, a curious accent, at least she supposed it was Cornish, and when she turned to look at him again he wore that same slow smile she had noticed in the reflected window.

  "I fear we must have caused a good deal of trouble," she said, "our sudden arrival, the opening up of the house. The place has been closed far too long, of course. There is dust everywhere, I wonder you have not noticed it,"

  "I had noticed it, my lady," he said, "but as your ladyship never came to Navron it scarcely seemed worth my while to see that the rooms were cleaned. It is difficult to take pride in work that is neither seen nor appreciated."

  "In fact," said Dona, stung to amusement, "the idle mistress makes the idle servant?"

  "Naturally, my lady," he said gravely. Dona paced up and down the long room, fingering the stuff of the chairs, which was dull and faded. She touched the carving on the mantle, and looked up at the portraits on the wall-Harry's father, painted by Vandyke, what a tedious face he had-and surely this was Harry himself, this miniature in a case, taken the year they were married. She remembered it now; how youthful he looked and how pompous. She laid it aside, aware of the manservant's eyes upon her-what an odd creature he was-and then she pulled herself together; no servant had ever got the better of her before.

  "Will you please see that every room in the house is swept and dusted?" she said, "that all the silver is cleaned, that flowers are placed in the rooms, that everything takes place, in short, as though the mistress of the house had not been idle, but had been in residence here for many years?"

  "It will be my personal pleasure, my lady," he said, and then he bowed, and left the room, and Dona, vexed, realised that he had laughed at her once again, not openly, not with familiarity, but as it were secretly, behind his eyes.

  She stepped out of the window and on to the grass lawns in front of the house. The gardeners had done their work at least, the grass was fresh trimmed, and the formal hedges clipped, perhaps all in a rush yesterday, or the day before, when the word had come that their mistress was returning; poor devils, she understood their slackness, what a pest she must seem to them, upsetting the quiet tenor of their lives, breaking into their idle routine, intruding upon this queer fellow William-was it really Cornish, that accent of his?- and upsetting the slack disorder he had made for himself.

  Somewhere, from an open window in another part of the house, she could hear Prue's scolding voice, demanding hot water for the children, and a lusty roar from James-poor sweet, why must he be washed, and bathed, and undressed, why not tossed, just as he was, into a blanket in any dark corner and left to sleep-and then she walked across to the gap in the trees that she remembered from the last time, and yes-she had been right, it was the river down there, shining and still and soundless. The sun was still upon it, dappled green and gold, and a little breeze ruffled the surface, there should be a boat somewhere-she must remember to ask William if there was a boat-and she would embark in it, let it carry her to the sea. How absurd, what an adventure. James must come too, they would both dip their hands and faces in the water and become soaked with the spray, and fishes would jump out of the water and the sea-birds would scream at them. Oh, heaven, to have got away at last, to have escaped, to have broken free, it could not be possible, to know that she was at least three hundred miles away from St. James's Street, and dressing for dinner, and the Swan, and the smells in the Haymarket, and Rockingham's odious meaning smile, and Harry's yawn, and his blue reproachful eyes. Hundreds of miles too from the Dona she despised, the Dona who from devilry or from boredom or from a spice of both, had played that idiotic prank on the Countess at Hampton Court, had dressed up in Rockingham's breeches and cloaked and masked herself, and ridden with him and the others, leaving Harry at the Swan (too fuddled with drink to know what was happening), and had played at foot-pads, surrounding the Countess's carriage and forcing her to step down into the highroad.

  "Who are you, what do you want?" the poor little old woman had cried, trembling with fear, while Rockingham had been obliged to bury his face in his horse's neck, choking with silent laughter, and she, Dona, had played the leader, calling out in a clear cold voice: "A hundred guineas or your honour."

  And the Countess, poor wretch, sixty if she were a day, with her husband some twenty years in his grave, fumbled and felt in her purse for sovereigns, terrified that this young rip from the town should throw her down in the ditch-and when she handed over the money and looked up into Dona's masked face, there was a pitiful tremor at the corner of her mouth, and she said: "For God's sake spare me, I am very old, and very tired."

  So that Dona, swept in an instant by a wave of shame and degradation, had handed back the purse, and turned her horse's head, and ridden back to town, hot with self-loathing, blinded by tears of abasement, while Rockingham pursued her with shouts and cries of "What the devil now, and what has happened?" and Harry, who had been told the adventure would be nothing but a ride to Hampton Court by moonlight, walked home to bed, not too certain of his direction, to be confronted by his wife on the doorstep dressed up in his best friend's breeches.

  "I had forgotten-was there a masquerade-was the King present?" he said, staring at her stupidly, rubbing his eyes, and "No, damn you," said Dona, "what masquerade there was is over and done with, finished now for ever more. I'm going away."

  And so upstairs, and that interminable argument in the bedroom, followed by a sleepless night, and more arguments in the morning, then Rockingham calling and Dona refusing him admittance, then someone riding to Navron to give warning, the preparations for the journey, the journey itself, and so here at last to silence, and solitude, and still unbelievable freedom.

  Now the sun was setting behind the trees, leaving a dull red glow upon the river below, the rooks rose in the air, and clustered above their nests, the smoke fr
om the chimneys curled upwards in thin blue lines, and William was lighting the candles in the hall. She supped late, making her own time-early dinner, thank heaven, was now a thing of the past-and she ate with a new and guilty enjoyment, sitting all alone at the head of the long table, while William stood behind her chair and waited silently.

  They made a strange contrast, he in his sober dark clothes, his small inscrutable face, his little eyes, his button mouth, and she in her white gown, the ruby pendant round her throat, her hair caught back behind her ears in the fashionable ringlets.

  Tall candles stood on the table, and a draught from the open window caused a tremor in their flame, and the flame played a shadow on her features. Yes, thought the manservant, my mistress is beautiful, but petulant too, and a little sad. There is something of discontent about the mouth, and a faint trace of a line between the eyebrows. He filled her glass once more, comparing the reality before him to the likeness that hung on the wall in the bedroom upstairs. was it only last week that he had stood there, with someone beside him, and the someone had said jokingly, glancing up at her likeness: "Shall we ever see her, William, or will she remain forever a symbol of the unknown?" and looking closer, smiling a little, he had added: "The eyes are large and very lovely, William, but they hold shadows too. There are smudges beneath the lids as though someone had touched them with a dirty finger."