Bride of Pendorric (13 page)

This became a second home to me. I was here as much as I was in Devonshire. “

We had mounted to the second floor and Deborah opened several of the doors to show me rooms shrouded in dustsheets. They looked ghostly, as all such rooms do in large and silent houses.

Deborah smiled at me and I guessed she was reading my thoughts and perhaps trying to prove to me that I was not as immune from Cornish superstition as I should have liked her to believe.

” Now,” she said, and threw open a door. ” This is the music room.”

There were no dustsheets here. The huge windows gave me a view of the coast, with Polhorgan rising majestically on the cliff top; but it was not the view I looked at this time, but the room, and I think what struck me most was that it had the look of a room which was being lived in. There was a dais at one end of it and on this was a stand with a piece of music opened on it. Beside the stand, on a chair, was a violin, looking as though it had just been placed there; the case lay open on a nearby table.

Deborah was watching me gravely, and I said slowly:

” This is how it was on the day she died?”

Deborah nodded. ” A silly habit. But some people find comfort from it.

At first none of us could bear to move anything. Carrie dusts and puts things down exactly where they were. Carrie feels really fierce about it and it’s more for her sake than anything else that we leave it as it is. I can’t tell you how devoted she was to Barbarina. “

” And to you too.”

Deborah smiled.

“To me too. But Barbarina was her favourite.”

” You were identical twins?”

” Yes. Like Lowella and Hyson. When we were young some people found difficulty in telling us apart, but as we grew older all that passed.

She was gay and amusing; I was rather stolid and slow-witted. There’s more to looks than features,

isn’t there? It’s beginning to show in Hyson and Lowella. It’s only when they’re asleep that they seem so much alike. As I was saying, Barby was everybody’s favourite, and because she was as she was. I seemed more dull and less interesting than I should if she had not always been with me. “

“Did you resent it?”

” Resent it! I adored Barbarina with the rest. In fact she hadn’t a more devoted admirer. When she was praised I was happy because in a way it seemed as though I was being praised. It’s sometimes like that with twins; they can share each other’s triumphs and disasters more fully than ordinary people do.”

“And did she feel the same about you?”

” Absolutely. I wish you could have known Barbarina. She was a wonderful person. She was all that I should have liked to be myself;

and because she looked so like me and was my twin sister, when we were little I was quite happy that it should be so. “

” It must have been a blow to you when she married.”

” We didn’t let that part us more than we could help. I had to be in Devonshire for a good part of the time because our father needed me to look after him. Our mother had died when we were fifteen and he had never really got over the shock. But whenever I could I would be at Pendorric. She was very glad to see me. In fact, I don’t know what she would have done …” She hesitated and I had the impression that she was on the verge of confiding in me. Then she shrugged her shoulders and seemed to change her mind.

But here in Barbarina’s music room I was conscious of a great desire to learn more about her. I was—although I wouldn’t admit it at this stage—becoming more and more absorbed in the story of this woman who had been my immediate predecessor as a Pendorric Bride.

“Was it a happy marriage?” I asked.

Deborah turned away from me and went to the window;

I was embarrassed, realising that I had asked an awkward question, so I went to her and, laying my hand gently on her arm, said: ” I’m sorry. I’m being too inquisitive.”

She turned to me and I noticed how brilliant her eyes had become. She shook her head and smiled. ” Of course not, and naturally you’re interested. After all, you’re one of us now, arent you? There’s no reason why we should try to keep family secrets from you. Come and sit down and I will tell you about it.”

We sat in the window looking along the coast towards Rame Head and Plymouth. The headland jutted out darkly in the grey water and one could imagine it was a supine giantess who lay there. The tide was out and the tops of the jagged rocks were visible. I gazed at Polhorgan whose grey walls were the colour of the sea today.

” There’s a distant family connection between the Hysons and the Pendorrics,” said Deborah.

“Cousins, many times removed. So from our childhood we knew Petroc and his family. I don’t mean your Roe, of course, but his father who was Barbarina’s Petroc. When he was a boy he used to stay with us. He was a year older than we were.”

“He was like Roe, wasn’t he?”

” So like him that sometimes when I see Roe now I get a little shock and for the moment I think he’s Petroc come back.”

“In looks, you mean?”

” Oh … in many ways. The voice … the gestures … his ways … everything. There’s a very strong resemblance that runs through most of the Pendorric men. I used to hear stories of Petroc’s father—another Petroc—and all that I heard could have applied to his son. Barbarina fell in love with him when she was about seven. She remained in that state until she died.”

” She must have been happy when she married him.”

“A feverish sort of ecstasy. It used to frighten me. She cared for him so much.”

“And he for her?”

Deborah smiled a little wistfully. ” Petroc liked women in general too much to care very deeply for one in particular. That’s what I always felt, and so I saw how it would be. I warned Barbarina, but she wouldn’t listen of course.”

There was silence, and after a while she went on: “We used to ride on Dartmoor. Our place is on the moor, you know. You must come and see it. The view is wonderful—if you like that kind of view. You can step from our garden right on to the moor. Once we all went riding together and they lost me. The mist came up as it does on the moor, and however well you think you know the place you can easily be hopelessly lost.

You are apt to wander round and round in circles. It was really rather frightening. I found my way back but they didn’t come home until next day. They’d sheltered in some hut they’d discovered, and Petroc had had the fore sight to load up with chocolate. Sometimes I think he arranged the whole thing. “

” Why? I mean, if she was in love with him, couldn’t he have been with her … more comfortably?”

Again that silence. Then she sighed and said: “He was in love with some local girl whom he’d promised to marry. She was a farmer’s daughter. But the family wanted this marriage with the Hysons because our father was well off and money was badly needed at Pendorric.

Barbarina was very unhappy. She’d heard that Petroc was going to marry this girl, and she knew he must be very much in love with her because Pendorrie meant a great deal to him, and it was possible that if he couldn’t bring some money into the family something would have to be done about it. So she knew he must have been deeply in love with the girl to contemplate marrying someone who couldn’t bring a penny into the place. He was fond of Barbarina. It wouldn’t have been any hardship to marry her . if he hadn’t been so besottedly in love with this other woman. Petroc was the sort of man who would get along with any woman . like . Well, you know the type. ” I nodded uneasily.

“Were the Pendorrics very poor then?”

” Not exactly, but the great change had set in. Things weren’t what they had been for their sort of people. The house needed expensive renovations. And Petroc had gambled rather rashly in the hope of recuperating the family fortunes.”

” So he was a gambler.”

She nodded. ” As his father was.”

” And what happened after that night on the moor?”

” I think Petroc had made up his mind that he would have to marry Barbarina. Pendorric was important, so he would fall in with the wishes of his family and Barbarina’s. But he couldn’t tell Barbarina that … bluntly. So they got lost on the moors and Barbarina was seduced and … that made it all easy.”

” She told you this?”

” My dear Favel, Barbarina didn’t have to tell me things. We were as

close as two people can be. Don’t forget that during the months of our gestation we had been as one. I knew exactly what had happened and why.”

” And after that she married him and she was happy.”

“What do you expect? Petroc couldn’t be faithful. It wasn’t in his nature to be, any more than it had been in his father’s. He took up with the farmer’s daughter again. It was a notorious scandal. But she wasn’t the only one. Like his father he couldn’t resist a woman nor a chance to gamble. Women couldn’t resist them either. I thought that when Roe and Morwenna were born she would cease to fret for him, and for a while she did. I hoped that she would have more children and make them her life.”

“And you were disappointed?”

” Barbarina was a good mother, don’t mistake me; but she wasn’t one of those women who can ignore her husband’s infidelities and become completely absorbed in her children. Petroc meant too much to her for that.”

” So she was very unhappy?”

” You can imagine it, can’t you. A sensitive woman … in a place like this … and an unfaithful husband who didn’t make a secret of his infidelities; there was nothing secret about Petroc. He never tried to pretend he was other than he was—a reckless gambler and a philanderer. He seemed to take up the attitude: It’s a family characteristic, so there’s nothing
can do about it.”p>

” Poor Barbarina,” I murmured.

” I used to come down as often as I could, and then when my father died I almost lived here. It was through me that she became interested in her music again. I believe that in other circumstances she might have been a concert violinist. She was really very good. But she had never practised enough. However, she found great pleasure in it, particularly towards the end. In fact she was very gifted. I remember when we were at school … we must have been about fourteen then … she was in the school play. It was Hamlet and she was Ophelia, a part which suited her absolutely. I was the ghost. That was about the limit of my capabilities. I believe I was a very poor one. But Barbarina was the hit of the show.”

” I can imagine that—from her picture, I mean. Particularly the one in the gallery.”

” Oh, that’s Barbarina as she really was. Sometimes when

I look at it I almost imagine she will step out of the frame and speak to me. “

“Yes, there’s a touch of reality about it. The artist must have been a very good one.”

” It was painted about a year before her death. She took great pleasure in riding. In fact I sometimes felt it was a feverish sort of pleasure she was taking in things … her music … riding, and so on. She was lovely in that particular ensemble, and that was why she was painted in it. It was sad that she-like Ophelia—should have died before her time. I wish you could have heard her sing that song from the play. She had a strange voice … a little off-key, which suited the song and Ophelia. I remember at the school show how silent the audience was when she came on the stage in a flowering gown of white and flowers in her hair and in her hands. I can’t sing; but it’s that one that goes something like this:

‘ How should I your true love know From another one? By his cockle hat and staff, And his sandal shoon.

He is dead and gone, lady, He is dead and gone ;

At his head a grass-green turf, At his heels a stone. “”

She quoted the words in a low monotone; then she flashed her smile at me. ” I wish I could make you hear it as she sang it. There was something about it that made one shiver. Afterwards it became one of her favourite songs and there was a verse which she didn’t sing at the school play but she used to sing that later.

Then up he rose, and donn’d his clothes, And duped the chamber door;

Let in the maid, that out a maid [| Never departed more. “

- ” There would be an odd little smile about her lips as she sang that, and I always felt it had something to do with that night on the moor.”

” Poor Barbarina! I’m afraid she wasn’t very happy.” Deborah clenched her fists as though in sudden anger.

” And she was meant to be happy. I never knew anyone so capable of being happy. If Petroc had been all that she hoped he would be … if But what is the good? When is life ever what you hope it will be;

and in any case it is all so long ago. “

” I heard about it; the balustrade was faulty and she fell to the hall.”

” It was unfortunate that it happened in the gallery where Lowella Pendorric hung. That really gave rise to all the talk.”

” It must have revived the legend.”

” Oh, it didn’t take all that reviving. The people round about had always said that Pendorric was haunted by Lowella Pendorric, the Bride of long ago.”

” And now they say that Barbarina has taken her place.” Deborah laughed; then she looked over her shoulder. ” Although I’ve always laughed at such talk, sometimes when I’m in this house I feel a little more inclined to accept it.”

” It’s the atmosphere of old houses. The furniture is often standing in exactly the same place it was in hundreds of years ago. You cant help thinking that this house looked almost exactly the same to that Lowella whom they call the First Bride.”

” I only wish that Barbarina would come back!” said Deborah vehemently. ” I can’t tell you what I’d give to see her again.” She stood up. ” Let’s go for a wa’k. We’re getting morbid sitting here in Barbarina’s room. We’ll have to get mackintoshes. Look at those clouds. The wind’s in the southwest and that means rain’s not far off.”

I said I should enjoy that, and we left the east wing together She came with me to my room while I put on my outdoor things; then I went with her to hers; and when we were ready she led me round to the north wing and we paused on the gallery before the picture of Lowella ” This is where she fell,” explained Deborah. ” Look, you can see where the balustrade has been mended. It was wood worm, I believe. It should have been noticed long before. Actually the place is riddled with worm. It’s inevitable and it’ll cost a fortune to put it right.”