Whispers in the Dark (8 page)

“Well, girl, what is it? What brings you here?”

Her voice was sharp and unwelcoming. I stammered my long-rehearsed reply.

“Please, m-ma’am. I . . . I’ve come to see Mr. and Miss Ayrton. I mean Sir Anthony and Miss Antonia.”

I think she almost laughed. There must, after all, have been much in my appearance and the directness of my request that was droll, even absurd. But if she felt any humor in the situation, she suppressed it readily enough.

“Get on your way, you cheeky young baggage, before I tell Hutton to set the dogs on you.”

“No, ma’am, please.” Fear overcame my hesitancy. “I’ve walked a long way. From Newcastle. I must speak with them. They’re my cousins. That is. . .

She had been about to shut the door in my face, but at the word “cousins” she froze.

“What? What did you say, child?”

“I meant. . . My father was their cousin. So I suppose I must be. . .

I think my accent had caught her ear. She looked me up and down.

“Father? You say your father? What is your name?”

“Charlotte, ma’am. Charlotte Metcalf.”

For a moment something like real pity moved across her face. I could not understand the look she gave me. She frowned and pursed her lips.

“Wait here, girl. Don’t move from that spot if you value your life.”

She closed the door with a bang. I heard her footsteps move away across the black and white marble floor whose shining face I had seen through the shadows in the entrance hall behind her.

It was growing very cold. I was so tired, I wanted to lie down on the doorstep and go to sleep. Even inside the partial protection of the portico, the biting wind found its way to me. Behind the house, a dog barked loudly, and I wondered if the tall woman had gone to set the beasts on me as she had threatened. Shivering, I waited. I had nowhere else to go.

The door opened again. The woman in black was there again, her face still impassive, looking down at me as though I were a species of snail that had crept into her path.

“You are to come with me,” she said. “Stay close behind me and keep your hands to your sides.”

I took a deep breath and crossed the threshold. How simple that is to write: "I crossed the threshold.” But there are certain steps that take us farther than we think, and once we have taken them we can never go back. That movement of two or three paces was one such. I have never gone back. I can never again be that child on the doorstep, that shivering, half-clad wretch with so little to hope for.

She closed the door behind me. I found myself standing in a high, shadow-filled hall lit by a huge candelabra in the center. Neither gas nor electric lighting had reached that far from town, even by that late date. Here they still used candles or oil.

All around the borders of the hall were pillars of dark pink marble atop which were set busts of Roman emperors in white stone. There was an enormous fireplace of white marble, unlit, and above it a great mirror in which tiny reflected candles sparkled. I had expected decay, and instead here was opulence such as I had never seen. Barras Hall may not have been the grandest of houses—it lacked the stateliness of nearby Wallington or Seaton Delaval—but coming as I did out of such an utter wasteland, everything in it filled me with awe.

The tall woman went ahead of me along a long unlit corridor, then along a side passage lit by a single oil lamp, at the end of which we came to a narrow flight of stairs.

“Watch your step here,” she said. “The steps are worn, and you’ll break your neck if you slip.”

I followed her up gingerly. We entered a wide corridor into which the rays of the setting sun were falling through a line of sash windows. Everything had turned red, for the sun had crept out from beneath its covering of cloud. Between the windows, hanging from long cords, were large portraits done in oils, men and women dressed in the fashions of one hundred and more years ago. All along the corridor, small Chinese cabinets and gold-painted chairs captured the sunlight. I almost stumbled on the faded carpet, realizing with a shock that it was the first on which I had set foot in years, apart from the one in the Lincott’s drawing room. The feeling of softness beneath my feet was almost sinful.

We came at last to a high, gilded door. The tall woman paused, holding her candle at chest height, then knocked. A weak voice answered, and she opened the door.

“You are to go in,” she said. “Miss Antonia is waiting for you.”

I felt so frightened. What had I come to do? To claim an inheritance to which I knew I had no right? To thrust myself on a relative who had already turned my family away empty-handed? The tall woman had made no reference to Arthur. He must not have made it here after all. I shivered as I stepped into the room.

I had expected . . . I do not know quite what. Something infinitely grand and imposing, a salon filled with gilded furniture and rich tapestries, a room in which soirees were held, glittering, full of glittering people. But this was only a small drawing room, lit by row upon row of candles, comfortably furnished in a thoroughly Victorian style. There were no mirrors: that struck me almost at once, so intense had been my expectation that the room would be filled with them. A log fire burned in the grate, a massive fire, whose heat reached into every corner of the little chamber.

On a low divan set against the wall facing the fireplace sat the most striking woman I had ever seen. I held my breath the moment I set eyes on her. She was slender and fair and very, very beautiful. I could not then guess her age very well, but I think now she must have been in her middle or late thirties. She was one of those women whose beauty is not mere prettiness, whose features have the strength to survive the disappearance of early youth. As her eyes fell on me I sensed at once a clutter of emotions: pleasure, curiosity, and, more deeply hidden, an inexplicable sadness.

She was dressed in a fine black gown of shot silk, the collar and sleeves edged with violet, as though she were in half mourning. The whole effect, whether intentional or not, was thoroughly Victorian, as though the woman in front of me still lived twenty or thirty years in the past.

I stood uneasily by the door, not knowing whether to curtsy, step forward, or retreat. She held me with those perfect, unblinking, all-seeing eyes, as though ingesting me by sight alone, in small, satisfactory bites.

“Come here, child.”

The softness of her voice surprised and, curiously, comforted me. Its musicality swiftly undermined all my reservations. There was not the least harshness or rebuke in it. At once I felt less afraid than I had been. “Don’t be afraid. I want to look at you.”

I stepped toward her tentatively, as though afraid my legs would snap and send me toppling on my face. I could not speak. All the time, I kept my eyes on the carpet.

"Let me see your face,” she whispered when I was only a few feet away.

I looked up. Her soft blue eyes were regarding me with an expression of mingled curiosity and pity. I felt like crying out.

“You say you are my cousin Charlotte. Is that so?”

“I . . .” The words froze on my lips.

“Don’t worry, child. There’s nothing to be afraid of. I won’t harm you. Even if there be no truth in your story, I should not send you away empty-handed. There is nothing to fear. Speak up.”

“Yes, ma’am. That is, my father was your cousin.”

“Your father? And what was his name?”

Her voice was so gentle, her manner so reassuring.

“His name was Douglas Metcalf. We lived in Kenton Lodge, in Gosforth. That is, until he died.”

“I see. You mean Gosforth in Newcastle, of course.” I nodded.

“When and how did your father come to die?”

I told her the date and circumstances. Her eyes widened, as though she were hearing of his death for the first time.

“Child, how do you come to know this?”

“I’ve told you,” I said. “He was my father.”

"But. . She hesitated. “But how do you come to be dressed like this? In rags. Surely—”

“We wrote to you. That is, my mother did. She told you how we had lost our money.”

Her mouth opened. She seemed alarmed, startled by my revelation.

“Wrote? Lost your money? When was this?” Her voice took on an urgency that had not been there before.

"Why, soon after Father died. You did not answer. No one answered. No one wanted to help us. We had to go into the workhouse.” I found it impossible to keep the bitterness out of my voice. While this beautiful woman had been living here in style, my poor mother had been forced to take my brother and me to that terrible place.

“But, my sweet child . . .”

She stood suddenly, looking down at me.

“Tell me this isn’t true,” she said. “That you’re making it up.”

I shook my head.

“It’s all true,” I said. I lifted my bag. “I have photographs. Of my father and myself. Of my mother. You can see them if you like. There are letters. It’s all true. Every word.”

“And your mother and brother? Where are they?”

“My mother’s dead. She died in the workhouse.”

Her hand flew to her mouth. She sank slowly back onto the divan.

“Dear God,” she whispered. “We received no letter. No letter, do you hear me?”

She looked at me in horror, in what I took for unfeigned horror.

“Oh, my sweet child. What have we done to you? What have we done?”

There were tears in her eyes. She reached out her hands, held her arms open. In so many years, no one had opened her arms to me like that. I felt a cry spring to my lips, a dreadful cry of misery and loneliness. And the next thing I knew, I had thrown myself on her and been taken into her embrace.

It was late that night. I had been handed almost ceremoniously to the tall woman—whose name, I learned, was Mrs. Johnson, and whose function was that of housekeeper—to be divested of my rags, bathed, powdered, perfumed, and dressed in proper clothes. These latter presented something of a problem, for no children or adolescents lived at Barras Hall, and it was hard to see how Mrs. Johnson could conjure up a wardrobe for me out of nothing. However, leaving me in the bath, she disappeared for about twenty minutes. When she returned, an entire outfit of clothes was cradled in her arms, all of my size. They were a little old-fashioned, dating from perhaps twenty or thirty years before, like the dress my cousin Antonia had been wearing, but very well preserved and of the highest quality.

Women wore so many items of clothing then, most of them underclothes. I started out with long woolen combinations, buttoned and frilled, and black woolen stockings; over these I slipped on a pair of cotton drawers, followed by a white petticoat bodice, exquisitely embroidered and fully equipped with its own array of buttons and frills; over that went a shorter, flannel petticoat and a flounced alpaca petticoat; and finally, a lovely blue silk dress, the most beautiful thing I had ever worn in my life.

Now, bathed and brushed, with my hair combed and teased into something resembling respectability, transformed, in short, from an urchin to a young lady, I was back once more in the little drawing room. This latter, I now realized, was an anteroom that communicated through a double door with a much larger room beyond. With me were my half-cousin, who had already insisted that I address her by the name Antonia, and her brother Anthony. Antonia and I were seated side by side and hand in hand on a little chaise longue while Anthony, a slim man in his early forties, stood by the mantelpiece, almost a parody of a Victorian gentleman. I thought him very handsome, but a little daunting.

I had been brought a light supper of lamb with peas and mashed potatoes, washed down with a little wine. There had been sweet pears for dessert. I was feeling satisfied and warm for the first time in years. I pressed Antonia’s hand and struggled to concentrate on what my cousin Anthony was saying.

“You say your brother left Newcastle to come here?”

He spoke in a gentle voice, but so little accustomed was I to male company that I found myself scarcely able to answer his questions. I nodded.

"And how long ago was that?”

I shook my head.

“I don’t know, sir. A few months ago, I think.”

“You think?”

Antonia leaned forward.

"Anthony, you must not be so hard on her. Only think what she has been through. I am sure she is doing her best to remember things.”

“Of course, my dear, of course.” He turned his face to me and smiled. “My dear Charlotte, you must not call me sir. I am your cousin and, I trust, your friend. You may call me Cousin Anthony, if you wish.”

I could say nothing. I was overwhelmed. In such a short space of time, to have ceased to be an outcast and to be—I held my breath very tightly whenever I thought of this—part of a family once again. My only anxiety at that moment was to know what had become of my brother Arthur.

“Thank you, sir. I mean, thank you, Cousin Anthony.”

He smiled broadly.

“Now, let us get back to the subject of your young brother. Are you sure he knew the name of this house? Or that he knew our name, the name Ayrton?”

“I . . . I think so. When I mentioned the names to Annie, she seemed to recognize them.”

"But Arthur is rather younger than yourself and may well have been confused. Northumberland is a big place, a young man could easily get lost.”

I nodded. My own experience had taught me how easy it was to go astray in this bleak countryside.

“I will have to find him,” I said. “He’s my responsibility. I should never forgive myself if anything happened to him.”

“Nor should we,” said Antonia, pressing my hand. “But I hardly think it is such a good idea for you to go in search of him. You would not know where to begin. Would she, Anthony?”

He leaned back against the mantel.

“Not at all. It is a job for a professional. I shall have a detective brought up from London. A trained man, someone with the resources to execute a proper search. If he uses assistants, they will track young Arthur down in no time at all.”

“But—” I began.

“Anthony is right, my dear,” Antonia broke in. “You would accomplish nothing on your own. It is very nearly the middle of winter. Let Anthony take care of the matter. Arthur shall be found. You have our word.”