Saraband for Two Sisters (55 page)

I could not understand it. A horrible desolation came over me. She had left us. How dull it would all seem now! But how could she have gone without her clothes? No. She was somewhere in the castle. But where? And how could she have left her room when she could only hobble in the utmost pain?

She had tried to walk. She had fallen. She was lying somewhere in pain. I must find her, for she must be here. She could not have left the house without her clothes.

As I stood there, my hand on the door, I heard light, running footsteps and they were coming towards this room.

My heart started to pound as I went into a dark corner of the room and stood very still there, waiting.

Harriet came running in. There was no sign of a hobble. She tripped round the room, pirouetted on her toes, and then looked at herself in the mirror which stood on the table.

She must either have sensed my presence or caught a movement in the mirror, for she spun round as I emerged from the shadows.

I said: “Your ankle is greatly improved.”

She opened her eyes very wide. Then she shrugged her shoulders.

“Well” she said, sitting down on the bed and smiling benignly at me, “it was never very bad. Though I did twist it. I slipped on the stairs. Then when it was a little swollen the idea came to me.”

I should have been warned that anyone who could show such little concern at being found out in a deception like this must have been in a similar situation before.

She smiled at me appealingly. “I so much wanted to stay,” she said.

“You wanted to stay here … when …”

“It’s comfortable,” she said. “More so than some dirty old inn, some poor lodging, not enough food because we can’t pay for it … Oh, much better than that.”

“But your Paris engagement …?”

“Our
hopes
of a Paris engagement. Do you think they would want us … a poor company of strolling players … in Paris!”

“But Monsieur Lamotte said …”

“Monsieur Lamotte has his dreams. Don’t we all? And it is nice to think they are realities. It’s a trick people have … particularly actors.”

“Are you telling me that you pretended to hurt your ankle so that you could stay here?”

“I did hurt my ankle and when I woke up warm in my bed … your bed shall we say … I thought: I wish I could stay here … for a little while. I wish I could talk to the interesting Arabella and become her friend, and be loved from afar by the adorable Lucas and bask in the admiration of the delectable babies …”

“You are talking like Monsieur Lamotte.”

“That’s because I am … or was … one of his players.”

“Are you going to join them now that you have discovered that you can walk quite painlessly?”

“It depends on you.”

“On me!”

“Certainly. If you decide to turn me out I shall join them. I shall tell them that the rest I have had and the ministrations of the good Madame Lambard have cured me. But I shall only do that if you turn me away.”

“Are you suggesting that you should
stay
here?”

“I have been thinking of it. Young Master Dick has been telling me of a very estimable lady who has, alas, gone to her Maker—Miss Black whose name is spoken with awe. She was the governess and it is a great misfortune that they are now without that one so necessary to their future.”

“I have been teaching them. Lucas has helped me.”

“That is admirable, but you have your duties about the
château.
Lucas is too young and has scarcely finished his own schooling. You need a governess. If you decided to engage me I should do my utmost to give satisfaction.”

“A governess? But you are an actress.”

“I could teach them literature. I am well versed in that. … I know the plays of England and France by heart … or some of them. I could teach them to sing … to dance … to carry themselves as they should. I could really supply a finish to their education.”

“Do you really mean that you
want
to stay here in this quiet, dull, old
château
!”

“Where there is good fire to warm myself, good food to fill myself and a certain companionship which I feel could become important to me.” She was looking at me earnestly, almost pleadingly. “Well, Arabella, I see you are the one who makes decisions here. What is your answer?”

I said: “You know I would never turn anyone away who needed shelter.”

Her smile was dazzling. I felt I wanted to keep looking at her as well as listening to her. Of course I wanted her to stay. Of course I was delighted that she had suggested it, even though I was a little shocked that she had pretended so convincingly, but then she was an actress.

When I told the children that Mistress Main was to be their new governess, Dick set the young ones leaping high into the air—their special way of conveying approval. Lucas thought it would be good for the children and that our parents would be pleased. I was not so sure of the latter and made up my mind that I should not tell them that Harriet had been a player before she had decided to become a governess—not until they had seen her for themselves that was, and had, as I was sure they would, succumbed to her charm. Jeanne, Marianne and Jacques were pleased to have a new excitement brought into their lives. Madame Lambard could not but approve of one who had so rapidly shown the efficacy of her cures.

And so Harriet Main settled in our household.

It changed at once as I had known it would. Even her clothes were different. She had dresses of brocade and velvet which looked wonderful in candlelight. The children thought her beautiful, which in a strange, exotic way she certainly was. They could not take their eyes from her. Lucas was ready to be her slave, but I was the one she wanted most to impress.

Sometimes she wore her magnificent hair in curls tied back with ribbons, at others she dressed it high and set glittering ornaments in it. The children thought she must be a princess to possess such jewels and I hadn’t the heart to tell them that they were the cheapest paste. On her they looked real; she had the power to transform anything she put on.

We were all becoming quite knowledgeable about plays, and lessons often took the form of dramatic acting. She would assign our parts, taking the best for herself—but how could I blame her for that?—and rehearse us, promising us that when we were ready we would perform for the servants and the Lambards.

We were all caught up in the excitement, particularly myself.

She said to me once: “You would have done quite well on the stage, Arabella.”

She had completely won our hearts, and I was afraid that one day she would grow tired of us and decide to rejoin the company of players, but she showed little sign of doing that and seemed perfectly content with our way of life. She made a habit of coming to my room after the others were in bed and we would talk—or mostly she talked and I listened.

She would always sit near the mirror and now and then glance at her reflection. I had the impression that she was outside the scene, looking in on the play. Sometimes it seemed to amuse her.

One night she said: “You don’t know me, Arabella. You are as young as innocence and I am as old as sin.”

I was always a little impatient with these theatrical utterances, largely because I felt they impeded the truth and I was anxious to discover the truth about Harriet.

“What nonsense,” I said. “I am seventeen years old. Is that so young?”

“It is not necessarily years which determine our age.”

“But it is exactly that.”

She shook her head. “You are gloriously young at seventeen … whereas I at twenty …” she hesitated and looked at me mischievously … “two,” she added. “Twenty-two … yes, not a day more, but since I am in a confessing mood tonight, I will whisper to you that I have been twenty-two for more than a year and sometimes I am merely twenty-one.”

“You mean you pretend to be younger than you are!”

“Or older. Whichever seems expedient. I am an adventuress, Arabella. Adventurers are made by fate. If I had had what I wanted from life I shouldn’t have had to go out and adventure for it, should I? Then I should have been a high-born lady living quite contentedly. Instead of which I am an adventuress.”

“High-born ladies have become exiles, don’t forget, so perhaps they have to adventure a little in these times.”

“It’s true. The Roundheads have made schemers of us all. However, I always wanted to be an actress. My father was an actor.”

“That explains your talents,” I cried.

“A strolling player,” she mused. “They used to come through the villages and stay where business was good. It must have been very good in Middle Chartley, for they stayed long enough there for him to seduce my mother, and this seduction resulted in the birth of one destined to become the finest jewel in the world of the theatre. Your own Harriet Main.”

The tone of her voice changed. She was a wonderful actress. She could make me see the strolling player, the simple country maiden, who was enchanted by his performance on the stage and equally so it seemed by that other performance under hedges and in the fields of Middle Chartley.

“It was August,” said Harriet, “for I am a May baby. Little did that simple country maiden realize what would happen when she dallied in the cornfields with her lover. He was very good looking—she told me afterwards, for I never saw him, nor did she after they left, for she did not know then that besides planting the seeds of love in her heart he had planted something else in another part of her anatomy.”

Her conversation grew racy and there were times when I was unsure of what she meant, but I gradually learned; she certainly was educating us all—myself no less than the others.

“In those days,” she went on, “there were no women players. Their parts were played by boys, which was trying for strolling players if they wanted women. No wonder they looked to the village maidens to supply their needs. Sometimes they played in big houses … castles, mansions. That was what they looked for, but they did very well on the village greens, because there was little that appealed to country folk so much as fairs and strolling players. So he played his romantic roles, Benedict, Romeo, Bassanio … He was one of the leading players and took these roles on account of his good looks. It was a busy life for him—always on the move, learning new parts, searching for girls and persuading them to supply his needs. Oh, yes, he was very handsome. My mother said he was, and I don’t think she ever really regretted what happened.

“The players moved on and he promised to come back for her. She waited but he never came. She used to make up all sorts of reasons why he hadn’t come back. She thought he had been killed in a brawl, for he was a great fighter and, she said, would pick a quarrel as easily as wink his eyes if anyone upset him. But she had her own burden to bear. A child whose father had disappeared. It was a great crime in the eyes of those who had never had the inclination or opportunity to be other than virtuous. Of course some girls would have gone to the river—there was one conveniently close to Middle Chartley—but my mother was not the sort for it. She had always had a great zest for life and she believed there was something good round the corner. She refused to see the dark side, and even when it was presented to her, black as soot, she’d swear she could see the light round the corner. ‘Only a matter of waiting,’ she used to say. ‘It’ll sort itself out.’ But of course my existence soon become apparent, and there were scenes of recrimination in the cottage on the village green. All the maidens who had succeeded in not getting caught, as they called it, were deeply shocked by my mother who had; they had to show their horror to prove their own innocence, you understand. She lived through that time, she told me after, because she was always hoping that he would come back. I was born and my mother worked hard in the fields and I was a constant reproof to her; all the local men thought that being no longer a virgin she was there to provide sport for them. She learned how to fight, for she was determined, as she said, to wait for my father.

“I was five years old when we went to the Hall. Squire Travers Main had taken a fancy to her when he was riding by with the hounds. In fact so taken with her was he that he decided that my mother was more interesting prey than the fox. I was with her at the time and he stopped, so she told me, to compliment her on the pretty child … myself. He was a kindly man with a wife who had had a hunting accident a year or so before and was an invalid. He was no lecher. He had the occasional mistress, which was understandable with a wife in such a condition. However, the outcome was that my mother was invited to the Hall to be a housekeeper or serve in some way … in the beginning undefined, and she went on condition that I went with her.

“Our fortunes changed from that day. My mother was companion and lady’s maid to her ladyship, who was also rather taken with her, and from this it was a short step into the Squire’s bed. There were no children, and both the Squire and Lady Travers Main took an interest in me.

“I was taught to read and write, at which, my dear Arabella, I made great progress. By this time I had decided I would be a lady. I had had a taste of cottage life. I had been informed by village hobbledehoys that I was a bastard, and I found the taste bitter. It was different at the Hall. The Squire and his lady never called me bastard; indeed their attitude towards me suggested that far from being not on an equal footing with the village children, I was superior to them; and they were determined to make me more so.

“My mother’s position grew more and more secure. Lady Travers Main relied on her. So did the Squire. He did not entertain very much, nor was he entertained; I think at that time everyone was becoming anxious, wondering what would happen in this conflict between the King and Parliament. It didn’t occur to any of them I was sure that there would be victory for the Roundheads. They all believed the army would soon deal with them.

“The Squire was too old for the army. We were far from any big town and it seemed to take months for news to reach us. We went on in the old way. They were so fond of me that they had a governess to teach me, and my mother was like the
châtelaine
giving orders. Her ladyship didn’t seem to mind. She realized that the Squire must have his woman, and she preferred it to be my mother rather than anyone else. It was a comfortable, cozy atmosphere I grew up in.”