Watch the Wall, My Darling Page 4

“All Lombard Street to a china orange he says it suits her,” said Ross, who had been waiting impatiently in the hallway. “And so it does. If you let them frizzle you up into modish curls, Cousin, you’re a greater fool than I think you. And if you want to see the property, you will come now. I cannot be waiting all morning.”

  “In that case …” With a lingering, apologetic look for her aunt, Christina yielded to temptation and followed him.

  In the hall he looked down at her soft slippers. “Pattens, however, you will need,” he said, “but there are plenty of those in the back entry. The rest is mere nonsense.”

  She had worn pattens only once, on a brief visit to Boston, and was grateful when he exclaimed, “What a barbarian!” snatched them from her fumbling hands and put them on for her, his hands as brisk and impersonal as if, she thought wryly, he was shoeing a horse. ‘There, you’ll soon get the knack of it” He took her arm for a second to steady her down the steep step into the stable yard, where she saw her carriage was almost ready to leave, the two men busy about harnessing up the horses. She felt, suddenly, an odd qualm. Those two were her only link with London, the outside world. What would it be like, left alone here in what, by all the evidence, seemed to be a den of smugglers?

  Late in the day, though, to be thinking thus. She smiled a carefully casual farewell to the two men and followed her cousin across the yard.

  “Was it really an abbey?” she asked as he bent his head to lead the way through a low arch into what seemed total darkness.

  “Good God, did your father tell you nothing? Best not let my mother hear you ask questions like that. She’d start all over again trying to prove you an imposter.”

  “She really thought that?” It was hard, somehow, to believe.

  “Of course, since it suited her.” Dismissing it. “Now, here we have one of the chapels of the abbey church. Not much left of it, as you can see.”

  “No.” Her eyes, used now to the half light, took in the bricked-up windows, the rough floor, the general air of dissolution and decay.

  “Our Great Hall,” he went on, “was once the presbytery. It’s the only part of the old building that’s still in use. The rest is as you see. What remains at all, that is. The greater part of the old buildings was torn down to be used as materials for the Grange.”

  She shivered, partly with cold. “A ruthless business. And the monks?”

  “Some of them settled happily enough into lay life. Some of them … well, I’ll leave my mother to tell you those stories. But I suppose you are longing to see the haunted cloister?”

  “Indeed I am. But is it really …?”

  His laugh was mocking. “Afraid?”

  “With you, Cousin?” Her voice matched the mockery in his.

  He made her a little, burlesqued bow. “I am inexpressibly flattered. We will not, however, tell my mother we have come here, nor will you come again, without my permission.” As he spoke, he took a key from his chain to unlock a small, inconspicuous door in a corner of the gloomy room.

  Following him through it, she noticed that it was a modern improvisation, strongly if roughly made; then she stopped to gasp with pleasure at the contrast on the other side of it. The cloisters were a ruin, but a beautiful one. On three sides they were open to the sky, and sunshine slanted down to make shadow patterns on gray stone. In the center, green grass, rankly growing, was filigreed here and there with the purple of wild asters. Where they stood, the walk was still roofed in a succession of bays, each with its central gargoyle, some laughing, some sad, all fantastic.

  “But it’s beautiful. And so quiet …” It was true; the heavy outside walls seemed to protect them completely from the sounds of the household, and even the voice of the sea was nothing, here, but a contented background murmur. He had stopped, as if expecting her merely to look and then return by the same door, but she moved forward, studying the gargoyles. “History,” she said. “I never saw anything like this before. May we make the round?” she turned back to ask him.

  “I suppose so.” Reluctantly. “There’s no other way out—now.”

  “What are the doors at the other corners, then?”

  He flung open the one they had reached, which hung crazily on its hinges. “Doors to danger.” His voice sounded oddly loud in this quiet place. And then, as she peered past him into darkness, “Careful!” His violent movement of the door had dislodged a big stone high up in the roof and it fell with a crash, uncomfortably close to them. “You see.” He closed the door. “I think that’s really why the cloisters got their bad name. They were used for a storehouse for a while. There were … accidents. Easy to blame a set of ghostly monks for the results of human carelessness. But, just the same, we keep them locked now.”

  “How sad. It’s so beautiful,” she said again.

  “Beautiful—and dangerous. Don’t decide this is a romantic place to come and indulge in maiden meditations.”

  “But the cloister itself seems safe enough.” She had indeed been thinking what an oasis of quiet this might prove in a strange household.

  “It may be.” They were back now at the corner they had started from. “But, aside from anything else, we’d have the servants leaving in a body. You may be too modern a young American to believe in ghosts, but the servants are terrified. They think I bear a charmed life.”

  “You come here then?”

  “When it’s necessary.” He pulled the door shut behind them and locked it. “But you will not even try to, Christina. Is that understood?”

  “I should find it difficult, I can see.” She watched him replace the key on his watch chain.

  “Yes, so don’t try. Your word?”

  “Word of a Tretteign?”

  If he noticed the echo of his own words the night before, he gave no sign. “Precisely.” He led her back through the forlorn little chapel and out once more into the stable yard. “Your friends are gone, I see.”

  “So they are.” Once again that odd little qualm.

  “So—here you are.” Disconcertingly, he seemed to have read her thought. “And now what would you like to see?”

  “Oh, the sea, please. It seems odd to be so little aware of it.”

  “You won’t think so when you’ve been here through the winter. I don’t know what pious freak made the monks build here in the first place, but of all the barbarous situations … well, come along and you shall see.” He turned and led the way, not through the house as she had expected, but under the arched entrance of the stable yard and so around to the front entrance. “Odd, isn’t it?”

  “It certainly is.” She had not seen this view of the house in daylight and was surprised to find that the drive by which she had arrived last night was the dividing line between grass and a sea of shingle. On its left, a few sheep were nibbling at short marsh turf, on its right lay the desolate shingle waste, with beyond it the sound of the invisible sea. The house itself was just a little higher than the surrounding country.

  “We’re on the tip of a spit of higher ground,” Ross explained. “The story is that when the monks built here, soon after the Conquest, it was a peninsula, like Dungeness now. They were Normans, of course, perhaps they felt safer so. But the sea betrayed them and here we are, between the marsh and the shingle. A bleak home you’ve come to, Cousin. As you see, Mr. Tretteign does not exactly believe in landscape gardening.”

  After her many glimpses, on the way down, of gentlemen’s mansions lurking in Palladian splendor among carefully landscaped grounds, she had indeed been surprised by the way marsh and shingle alike were allowed to come right up to the house, but a few stunted bushes, blown permanently sideways by the wind from the sea, provided at least part of the explanation. “It does seem a pity about the cloisters.” She spoke her thought involuntarily.

  “You will forget about the cloisters.” Iron in his voice now. Once again with a little qualm, half fear, half pleasure, she recognized last night’s bandit. How strange it was.… “You wanted to see the sea,” h
e went on, “so …” And, turning, he led the way across the broad carriage sweep, around the corner of the house and up a few steps to the paved terrace she had seen from her bedroom window. “There’s your sea.”

  She joined him at the gray-stone wall, leaned her elbows on it and gazed across the shingle waste. “But can’t one get down to it?”

  “Not in pattens. It’s farther, too, than you think.”

  “Oh.” She could see a ridged path running from somewhere to their right. “Where does the path start from?”

  “From the other side of the Great Hall. I’ll take you one day, though you’ll find it disappointing enough. Sand, at low tide, and weed, and, if you’re lucky, a preventive officer.”

  “Preventive? Oh—against smugglers.” Furious, she felt herself going fiery red. Why should the subject embarrass her, not him?

  But he had pulled out his watch. “And now, if you will excuse me, I have a company of the rawest marsh boobies you ever dreamed of to drill into some kind of shape.”

  “And I’ve been keeping you? I am so sorry, you should have said …” And yet, how fantastic: smuggler at night, captain of Volunteers in the daytime.

  “No hurry.” He shrugged. “They can wait. One does not greet a long-lost”—why the pause?—“relative every day. Surely you must have more questions, Cousin?” A touch of mockery now?

  “Of course I have. What’s that point?” She indicated the long low spit of land on their left. “And that one?” This time it was the higher cliff far off to the right.

  “Dungeness—and Fairlight. Rye, where you came from last night, is set back on the marsh. You can’t see it from here, but there is Rye Harbor, its port since the sea retreated.”

  “What are they doing there?” From her bedroom window that morning she had noticed and wondered at the signs of activity.

  “They plan to build what they call a Martello Tower to keep Bonaparte at bay.”

  “You think it won’t?” There had been no mistaking the irony of his tone.

  “I think it a great waste of time and money, like all the other panic preparations. Boney won’t land, Cousin. I doubt if he even means to try. No need to imagine yourself fighting a gallant rearguard action from your bedroom window. You’re as safe here as you were in America. Safer, I expect.”

  “So do I.” She thought of her father’s death, shivered, and made herself go on. “But they talk of nothing but invasion in London. Is it really all a hum?”

  “I think so. What’s he got at Boulogne? Flat-bottomed boats! Thousands of them, I grant you. But who cares whether he really has three thousand boats and a hundred and twenty thousand men ready to invade, as he claims, since his chances of getting them over here are negligible. Give him a flat calm and a thick fog and he might manage—always provided that the Channel Fleet had been miraculously stricken with the palsy, but otherwise … no, Cousin, if you want to fret, think of a serious subject, like how your grandfather will receive you.”

  “Our grandfather, you mean?”

  Now, oddly, when she did not mean to, she seemed to have touched him on the raw. He colored. “Of course.” He turned and led the way back around the house.

  The boy Jem was waiting on the carriage sweep, holding the reins of a big gray horse. “Oh, there you are, Mr. Ross. I was beginning to wonder …”

  “Thanks, Jem.… You’ll excuse me?” This to Christina, and then without more ado he swung himself up into the saddle and trotted away down the drive.

  Left alone, Christina stood for a little while, gazing after him. Was she quiet mad? How could she have accepted, so easily, this tacit complicity in his crimes? No use, by now, to try and pretend to herself that she might be mistaken. Several times he had as good as admitted to being last night’s brigand. Why was she not already on her way to the nearest magistrate? But, of course, from what she had already learned of English country life, the chances were high that her own grandfather held that position. And Ross was out, this minute, drilling the Volunteers. It was all fantastic.

  Go to the preventive officer on the beach? She remembered the glint in her cousin’s eye when he mentioned him. It had been almost a challenge, but one he had been sure she would never accept. No doubt, with his tall good looks, and his expectations, he must be the beau of the district and used to charming his way with females. Well, she must endeavor by her manner to show him that American young women were less easily bamboozled; that if she was prepared to keep his secret, it was merely from family feeling.

  Having come to this satisfactory conclusion, she found herself impatient to put it into practice. The morning dragged out interminably. Her aunt was absorbed in trying to make herself a silver-gilt reticule according to the instructions given in The Lady’s Magazine and making, Christina thought, a sad botch of it. At last she sighed and dropped it disconsolately on the table. “It’s no use. It will never do. I can’t think where I have gone wrong. And I was counting on carrying it if ever we go to a ball again. Papa is so mean—oh, Christina, you won’t tell him I said that!”

  “Of course I won’t.” Useless to be angry with the poor, grumbling creature.

  “I’m sure you won’t.” A sharp little glance. “Nor would it be the best way to his favor. Of all things, he says, he hates a talebearer.”

  Inevitably, Christina found herself wondering about the occasion for this remark. She picked up the poor little travesty of a purse. “Let me see.” Anything to change the subject. She bent over to read the instructions but found the fine print almost impossible to decipher in the dim light of the room. “This is the darkest house I ever saw.” She moved impatiently over to the window. “Why do you not ring for working candles, Aunt?”

  “Working candles? In the daytime? Papa would have a fit. You’ll get used to it—the house, I mean. Of course it is dark—I remember how gloomy it seemed to me when I first came here … lord, what a long time ago! It’s on account of having as few as possible windows facing the sea—and you’ll understand that when the winter winds begin to blow.”

  “It seems a pity,” said Christina absently, “with that splendid view of the sea. Ah, now I have it. It goes like this.” Her deft fingers twisted the giltwork first this way, then that. “There.” And then, cutting short her aunt’s enthusiastic thanks, “Will my cousin be back before I see Grandfather?”

  “Ross? Why did I never think of him! Of course, he is gone to Rye too, to drill his Volunteers. He will doubtless fetch your letter and Thomas will have his journey for his pains. And Papa will be so angry if he finds out. Of all things, he abominates waste. He really is—between ourselves and since I see I can trust you, my dear—well, just a little mean. If you knew what I have to live on! I only hope he sees fit to give you a proper allowance, because how we are to outfit you suitably otherwise is more than I can imagine.” Once again an expressive glance told Christina what her aunt thought of her plain gray dress. “I hope, in a way, that Ross does bring the letter, because if anyone can, he will be able to make Papa see sense, much more so than Richard. It’s the strangest thing …”

  “Strange? But why? His heir?”

  “Ross!” Bright spots of color outlined the rouge on Mrs. Tretteign’s cheekbones. “He’s not Papa’s heir.”

  “Not? But, Father said …”

  “Oh, you’re thinking of the entail. Of course, there is no way you should know, or your father either, since he never saw fit to tell us where he was—the entail was broken, years ago.… At least, well, there was an understanding, and of course Ross—such a stubborn boy—I never thought it should be considered as binding—signed under duress, but I might have known—Ross honored it as soon as he came of age. And now Papa has absolute right to dispose of everything as he pleases. You really did not know?” Another of her sharp little glances.

  “As you say, how could I have?”

  “You are come most timely, just the same. Since Papa’s last illness he has actually been talking about making a will. He even got his lawy
er down from London once—and then felt better, changed his mind, and sent him back again. Good gracious!” She gave a little start as the clock on the chimney piece struck twice. “Two o’clock and not a sign of the nuncheon I ordered for us. I don’t know what this household is coming to. Mrs. Emeret takes no more notice of me than if I was …” She stopped for a moment. “It would be different if Ross were here … they all dote on him. But I should have thought in your honor.… Ring the bell, there’s a good girl.”

  Christina did so and a parlor maid presently appeared, looked scared in answer to Mrs. Tretteign’s question, and then stammered out, “Please, mum, Mrs. Emeret says the master’s given strict orders about no more midmorning snacks—he calls them, mum. He says dinner’s good enough for him and must be good enough for his household. If you please, mum, and excusing me.” And she got herself out of the room in a way that suggested a healthy respect, at least for her mistress’s temper.

  “Well! What did I tell you!” Mrs. Tretteign’s color was unbecomingly higher than ever. “You never saw such a household! And as for Mrs. Emeret, there’s no reasoning with her.”

  Christina could hardly believe her ears. “But surely, you, as the mistress of the house—”

  “Who, I? Don’t make me laugh. When Ross signed the waiver to the entail, he signed away any rights I might have had here. I might as well be dead, for all the consideration I get. Sometimes I wish I was! And as for Ross, he just stands by and sees me insulted.”

  “Well!” Suddenly Christina found herself angry. “I, for one, am famished.” She gave the bell another firm tug, and when the girl reappeared, looking more frightened than ever, she said simply, “Tell Mrs. Emeret I would like a word with her, if you please.”

  “Christina! You can’t!” Was it the first time her aunt had addressed her by her Christian name?

  “Can’t I? Just watch, Aunt. Father told me, when I took over the housekeeping, that the one thing I must never endure was insolence from the servants … it’s quite a problem where I come from, you know, since they are all quite as good as oneself. But … it can be dealt with.… Ah, Mrs. Emeret?” A portly black-gowned figure had swung open the door and sailed into the room like a man-of-war to battle. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Miss Tretton—and, I am hungry.”