Frenchman's Creek Read online

  "Are there grapes?" said his mistress suddenly, breaking in upon the silence. "I have a fancy for grapes, black and succulent, with the bloom on them, all dusty."

  "Yes, my lady," said the servant, dragged back into the present, and he fetched her grapes, cutting a bunch with the silver scissors and putting them on her plate, his button mouth twisted as he thought of the news he would have to carry tomorrow, or the next day, when the spring tides were due again and the ship returned.

  "William," she said.

  "My lady?"

  "My nurse tells me that the servant girls upstairs are new to the house, that you sent for them when you heard I was arriving? She says one comes from Constantine, another from Gweek, even the cook himself is new, a fellow from Penzance."

  "That is perfectly true, my lady."

  "What was the reason, William? I understood always, and I think Sir Harry thought the same, that Navron was fully staffed?"

  "It seemed to me, my lady, possibly wrongly, that is for you to say, that one idle servant was sufficient about the house. For the last year I have lived here entirely alone."

  She glanced at him over her shoulder, biting her bunch of grapes.

  "I could dismiss you for that, William."

  "Yes, my lady."

  "I shall probably do so in the morning."

  "Yes, my lady."

  She went on eating her grapes, considering him as she did so, irritated and a little intrigued that a servant could be so baffling a person. Yet she knew she was not going to send him away.

  "Supposing I do not dismiss you, William, what then?"

  "I will serve you faithfully, my lady,"

  "How can I be sure of that?"

  "I have always served faithfully the people I love, my lady."

  And to this she could make no answer, for his small button mouth was as impassive as ever, and his eyes said nothing, but she felt in her heart that he was not laughing at her now, he was speaking the truth. "Am I to take that as a compliment then, William?" she said at last, rising to her feet, as he pulled away her chair.

  "It was intended as one, my lady," he said, and she swept from the room without a word, knowing that in this odd little man with his funny half-courteous, half-familiar manner she had found an ally, a friend. She laughed secretly to herself, thinking of Harry and how he would stare without comprehension: "What damned impertinence, the fellow needs whipping."

  It was all wrong of course, William had behaved disgracefully, he had no business to live alone in the house, and no wonder there was dust everywhere, and a graveyard smell. But she understood it for all that, because had she not come here to do the same thing herself? Perhaps William had a nagging wife, and an existence in another part of Cornwall too full of cares; perhaps he too had wished to escape? She wondered, as she rested in the salon, staring at the wood fire he had kindled, on her lap a book that she did not read, whether he had sat here amongst the sheets and coverlets before she came, and whether he begrudged her the use of the room now. Oh, the lovely luxury of stillness, to live alone like this, a cushion behind her head, a draught of air from the open window ruffling her hair, and to rest secure in the knowledge that no one would come blundering in upon her presence with a loud laugh, with a voice that grated-that all those things belonged to another world. a world of dusty cobbled stones, of street smells, of apprentice boys, of ugly music, of taverns, of false friendships and futility. Poor Harry, he would be supping now with Rockingham probably, bemoaning his fate at the Swan, dozing over cards, drinking a little too much, saying: "Damn it, she kept talking about a bird, saying she felt like a bird, what the devil did she mean?" And Rockingham, with his pointed, malicious smile and those narrow eyes that understood, or thought they understood, her baser qualities would murmur: "I wonderI very much wonder."

  Presently, when the fire had sunk, and the room cooled, she went upstairs to her bedroom, first passing through the children's rooms to see if all was well. Henrietta looked like a waxen doll, her fair curls framing her face, her mouth slightly pouted, while James in his cot frowned in his sleep, chubby and truculent, like a little pug-dog. She tucked his fist inside the cover, kissing it as she did so, and he opened one eye and smiled. She stole away, ashamed of her furtive tenderness for him-so primitive, so despicable, to be moved to folly, simply because he was male. He would no doubt grow up to be fat, and gross, and unattractive, making some woman miserable.

  Someone-William she supposed-had cut a sprig of lilac and placed it in her room, on the mantelshelf, beneath the portrait of herself. It filled the room with scent, heady and sweet. Thank God, she thought, as she undressed, there will be no pattering feet of spaniels, no scratching noises, no doggy smells, and the great deep bed is mine alone. Her own portrait looked down at her with interest. Have I that sulky mouth, she thought, that petulant frown? Did I look like that six, seven years ago? Do I look like it still?

  She pulled on her nightgown, silken and white, and cool, and stretched her arms above her head, and leant from the casement. The branches stirred against the sky. Below the garden, away down in the valley, the river ran to meet the tide. She pictured the fresh water, bubbling with the spring rains, surging against the salt waves, and how the two would mingle and become one, and break upon the beaches. She pulled the curtains back, so that the light should flood the room, and she turned to her bed, placing her candlestick on the table at her side.

  Then drowsing, half asleep, watching the moon play patterns on the floor, she wondered what other scent it was that mingled itself with the lilac, a stronger, harsher smell, something whose name eluded her. It stung her nostrils even now, as she turned her head on the pillow. It seemed to come from the drawer beneath the table, and stretching out her arm she opened the drawer, and looked inside. There was a book there, and a jar of tobacco. It was the tobacco she had smelt of course. She picked up the jar, the stuff was brown and strong and freshly cut. Surely William had not the audacity to sleep in her bed, to lie there, smoking, looking at her portrait? That was a little too much, that was really unforgivable. There was something so personal about this tobacco, so very unlike William, that surely she must be mistaken-and yet-if William had lived here at Navron, for a year, alone?

  She opened the book-was he then a reader as well? And now she was more baffled than before, for the book was a volume of poetry, French poetry, by the poet Ronsard, and on the fly-leaf someone had scribbled the initials "J. B. A. Finisterre" and underneath had drawn a tiny picture of a gull.

  Chapter IV

  WHEN SHE AWOKE, the next morning, her first thought was to send for William, and, confronting him with the jar of tobacco and the volume of poetry, to enquire whether he had slept ill on his new mattress, and whether he had missed the comfort of her bed. She played with the idea, amusing herself at the picture of his small inscrutable face colouring up at last, and his button mouth dropping in dismay, and then, when the heavy-footed maid brought her breakfast, stumbling and blushing in her awkwardness, raw country girl that she was, she decided to bide her time, to wait a few days, for something seemed to warn her that any admission of her discovery would be premature, out of place.

  So she left the tobacco-jar, and the poetry, in the table drawer beside her bed, and when she rose, and dressed, and went downstairs, she found the dining-hall and the salon been swept and cleaned, as she had commanded, there were fresh flowers in the rooms, the windows were opened wide, and William himself was polishing the tall candlesticks on the wall.

  He enquired at once if she had slept well, and she answered, "Yes," thinking instantly that this would be the moment, and could not prevent herself from adding, "And you too, I hope, were not fatigued by our arrival?" At which he permitted himself a smile, saying, "You are very thoughtful, my lady. No, I slept well, as always. I heard Master James cry once in the night, but the nurse soothed him. It seemed strange to hear a child's cry in the house after the long silence."

  "You did not mind?" she said.

&nb
sp; "No, my lady. The sound took me back to my own childhood. I was the eldest in a family of thirteen. There were always little ones arriving."

  "Is your home near here, William?"

  "No, my lady." And now there was a new quality in his voice, a note of finality. As though he said: "A servant's life is his own. Do not intrude upon it." And she had the insight to leave it, to question him no more. She glanced at his hands. They were clean and waxen white, no tobacco stains upon them, and there was an impersonal soapy texture about the whole of him, vastly different from that male tobacco smell, so harsh and brown, in the jar upstairs.

  Perhaps she maligned him, perhaps the jar had stood there for three years-since Harry's last visit to the estate, when she had not accompanied him. And yet Harry did not smoke strong tobacco. She wandered to the shelves where great leather-bound volumes stood in rows, books that nobody ever read, and she made a pretext of taking a volume down and glancing through it, while the servant continued to polish the candlesticks.

  "Are you a reader, William?" she said suddenly.

  "You have gathered I am not, my lady," he said, "because the books in those shelves are coated with dust. No, I have never handled them. But I will do so tomorrow. I will take them all down and dust them well."

  "You have no hobby then?"

  "Moths interest me, my lady. I have quite a fine collection in my room. The woods round Navron are excellent for moths." And with that she left him. She wandered out into the garden, hearing the children's voices. Really the little man was an oddity, she could not fathom him, and surely if it was he who read Ronsard in the night watches he would have browsed amongst these books, at least once or twice, out of curiosity.

  The children called her with delight, Henrietta dancing like a fairy, and James, still very unsteady, rolling after her like a drunken sailor, and the three wandered into the woods to gather bluebells. The flowers were just appearing in the young green, short and stubby and blue, next week or the week after there would be a carpet for them to lie upon.

  So the first day passed, and the next, and the one after, Dona exulting in her new-found freedom. Now she could live without a plan, without a decision, taking the days as they came, rising at noon if she had the mind or at six in the morning, it did not matter, eating when hunger came upon her, sleeping when she wished, in the day or at midnight. Her mood was one of lovely laziness. She would lie out in her garden hour after hour, her hands behind her head, watching the butterfles as they frolicked in the sun, and chased one another, and had their moment; listening to the birds intent upon domestic life among the branches, so busy, so ardent, like newly-wed couples proud of their first home polished as a pin. And all the while the bright sun shone down upon her, and little mackerel clouds scurried across the sky, and away in the valley beneath the woods there was the river, the river which she had not found yet, because she was too idle, because there was so much time; one day, quite soon, she would go down to it, early one morning, and stand in the shallows barefoot and let the water splash upon her, and smell the muddied river smell, pungent and sweet.

  The days were glorious and long, the children were browning like little gypsies. Even Henrietta was losing her town ways, and consented to run with naked feet upon the grass, to play leap-frog, to roll on the ground as James did, like a puppy.

  They were playing thus one afternoon, tumbling and falling upon Dona, who lay on her back with her gown anyhow and her ringlets in mad disorder (the disapproving Prue safely within the house), and as they pelted one another with daisy heads and honeysuckle, there came to Dona, warm and drugged, and foolish with the sun, the ominous sound of hoof-beats in the avenue, and presently a clatter into the courtyard before the house, and the jangle of the great bell. And horror upon horror there was William advancing towards her on the grass, and a stranger following him, a large, burly creature with a florid face and bulbous eyes, his wig over-curled, slashing at his boots as he walked with a gold-knobbed cane.

  "Lord Godolphin to see you, my lady," said William gravely, no whit abashed at her appearance, so tattered, so disgraceful. She rose to her feet at once, pulling at her gown, patting her ringlets: how infuriating, how embarrassing, and what a damnable intrusion. The creature stared at her in dismay, no wonder; well he must endure it, perhaps he would go the sooner. And then she curtsied, and said: "I am enchanted to see you," at which he bowed solemnly and made no reply. She led the way into the house, catching sight of herself in the mirror on the wall; there was honeysuckle behind her ear, she left it there obstinately, she did not care. And then they sat down on stiff chairs and stared at each other, while Lord Godolphin nibbled his gold-knobbed cane.

  "I had heard you were in residence," he said at length, "and I considered it a duty, or rather a pleasure, to pay my respects as soon as possible. It is many years since you and your husband condescended to visit Navron. In fact, I may say you have become strangers. I knew Harry very well when he lived here as a boy."

  "Indeed," said Dona, fascinated suddenly by the growth at the side of his nose; she had only just noticed it. How unfortunate, poor man. And then she glanced away quickly, for fear he should realise she was looking, and "Yes," he continued, "I may say that I used to count Harry as among my dearest friends. But since his marriage we have seen so little of him, he spends his time in Town."

  A reproach to me, she thought, very natural of course, and "I am sorry to say Harry is not with me," she told him, "I am here alone, with my children."

  "That is a great pity," he said, and she answered nothing, for what was there to say?

  "My wife would have accompanied me," he continued, "but she does not enjoy very good health at the moment. In short..." He paused, uncertain how to continue, and Dona smiled. "I quite understand, I have two small children myself," at which he looked a little abashed, and bowed. "We hope for an heir," he said, and "Of course," said Dona, fascinated once again by that growth at the end of his nose. How distressing for his wife, how did she endure it? But Godolphin was talking again, saying something about his wife being very glad to welcome her at any time, there were so few neighbours, and so on, and so forth. How boring and heavy he was, thought Dona, was there no middle course between this solemn pompous pretentiousness and the vicious frivolity of Rockingham? Would Harry become like this if he lived at Navron? A great turnip, with eyes that said nothing, and a mouth like a slit in a suet pudding. "I was hoping," Godolphin was saying, "that Harry would have given some assistance in the county. You have heard of our troubles, no doubt."

  "I have heard nothing," said Dona.

  "No? Perhaps you are too remote here for the news to reach you, though the talk and chatter has been rife for miles around. We have been vexed and harried, almost at our wits' end, in fact, with acts of piracy. Goods of considerable value have been lost at Penryn, and along the coast. An estate of my neighbour's was sacked a week or so ago."

  "How distressing," said Dona.

  "It is more than distressing, it is a positive outrage!" declared Godolphin, his face reddening, his eyes more bulbous than ever, "and no one knows how to deal with it. I have sent up complaints to London, and get no reply. They send us a handful of soldiers from the garrison at Bristol, but they are worse than useless. No, I can see that I and the rest of the landowners in the county will have to band ourselves together and deal with the menace. It is very unfortunate that Harry is not at Navron, very unfortunate."

  "Can I do anything to help you?" asked Dona, digging her nails into her hand to stop herself from smiling: he looked so provoked, so highly indignant, almost as though he blamed her for the acts of piracy.

  "My dear lady," he said, "there is nothing you can do, except ask your husband to come down, and rally round his friends, so that we can fight this damned Frenchman."

  "Frenchman?" she said.

  "Why, yes, that's the plague of it," he said, almost shouting in his anger; "the fellow's a low sneaking foreigner, who for some reason or other seems to know our coast l
ike the back of his hand, and slips away to the other side, to Brittany, before we can lay our hands on him. His craft is like quicksilver, none of our ships down here can catch him. He'll creep into our harbours by night, land silently like the stealthy rat he is, seize our goods, break open our stores and merchandise, and be away on the morning tide while our fellows are rubbing the sleep out of their eyes."

  "In fact, he is too clever for you," said Dona.

  "Why, yes, madam-if you like to put it that way," he answered haughtily, at once taking offence.

  "I'm afraid Harry would never catch him, he is far too lazy," she said.

  "I do not for a moment suggest that he could," said Godolphin, "but we need heads in this business, the more heads the better. And we have to catch this fellow if it means spending all the time and money at our disposal. You perhaps do not realise how serious the matter is. Down here we are constantly robbed, our womenfolk sleep in terror of their lives, and not only their lives."

  "Oh, he is that sort of pirate, then?" murmured Dona.

  "No lives have been lost as yet, and none of our women have been taken," said Godolphin stiffly, "but as the fellow is a Frenchman we all realise that it is only a question of time before something dastardly occurs."

  "Oh, quite," said Dona, and seized with sudden laughter she rose to her feet and walked towards the window, for his gravity and pomposity were beyond bearing, she could stand it no longer, her laughter would win control. But, thank heaven, he took her rising as a gesture of dismissal, for he bowed solemnly, and kissed the hand she gave him.

  "When you next send messages to your husband I trust you will remember me to him, and give him some account of our troubles," he said, and "Yes, of course," answered Dona, determined that whatever happened Harry should not come hotfoot down to Navron to deal with elusive pirates, breaking in upon her privacy and lovely freedom. When she had promised that she would call upon his wife, and he had uttered a few more formalities, she summoned William, and he withdrew, and she heard the steady trot of his horse as he vanished down the drive.