Winterwood (4 page)

“Great-aunt Tameson lives in one of them,” Flora said. “She’s a contessa.” The information was flung out before she added, her face sparkling, “That sounds like a wonderful morning, Miss Hurst. Much much better than Eliza would have given me. I wish you could be with me always.”

“That’s nonsense. You didn’t set eyes on me until yesterday and then you despised me for being a servant.”

“No, no, I didn’t despise you. I only thought it a pity. So did Papa.”

Lavinia’s voice was careful. “Did he say so?”

“He said you looked much more suitable to be sitting listening to the opera than looking after a detestable cousin.”

Cousin Marion was right again. She must subdue her looks and her high spirits.

“Then perhaps I’m not suitable to be pushing one young woman about Venice in a wheelchair.”

“Oh, you are, Miss Hurst, you silly. Look, I have some money to buy grain for the pigeons.”

Flora was too observant. She noticed Lavinia’s silences, and the way her eyes dwelt lovingly on the dazzling scene. Later, as they walked slowly down the narrow winding street that led to the Rialto, she kept pausing to look at unexpected views, the little humped bridges over sluggish backwaters, the flowers—morning glory and geraniums and nasturtiums—cascading from window boxes, lacy iron balconies, dark windows from which who knew what face peered, patches of sunlight as yellow as mimosa.

“Why are you sad, Miss Hurst?” she asked.

“Do I seem sad?”

“You look as if you’re seeing all this for the last time—as if you might be going to die.”

In a strange way the beauty here was mixed with death. There was a chilly smell of decay in the old walls and the dark green water of the canals. Flora was too perceptive.

“Well, one can’t stay here forever,” she said cheerfully. England, without Robin, without a reputation, without money, would be a kind of death—how did Flora know?

Flora, indeed, had divined something else. She was gazing at Lavinia with her intense tawny eyes.

“Your cousin found out about the earrings!”

“Yes, I’m afraid she did. I wasn’t going to tell you.”

“Did she scold you dreadfully?”

“She wasn’t pleased. As a matter of fact, we have decided to part. I am going back to England, perhaps tomorrow.”

“Miss Hurst, you
can’t!”

Lavinia laughed a little at Flora’s dismay.

“Why not?”

“Because I’m enjoying your friendship. You can’t leave until we do, and that won’t be for at least another week. Miss Hurst, do stay.”

“I don’t think that’s possible, you silly child.”

“Aren’t you enjoying being with me?”

“A certain amount, yes.”

“You don’t want to go, do you? It’s not as though you have Winterwood to go back to. What do you have to go back to?”

“Frankly, not very much. But that isn’t your business. Now let us find a
trattoria
where we can have an ice before we go any further.”

“The doctors say I’m to be humored,” Flora burst out.

“And as far as I can see, you make sure that you are. What am I doing at this moment but humoring you? I didn’t plan to spend my last day in Venice pushing you about. But here I am.”

“Papa will be upset.”

Lavinia’s heart jumped. “What can it possibly mean to him?”

“He likes me to be kept happy and amused.”

Lavinia stopped dead. “Really, Flora, you are the most presumptuous child. Why should I, a stranger, be ordered to keep you happy and amused? You’re behaving like a duchess, and a very spoiled one, at that.”

Flora gave only the ghost of her usual uninhibited giggle. She had become very pale. Lavinia was a little alarmed.

“I think all you need is some refreshment. We’ll have our ice at that little place ahead, see? We can sit at the edge of the canal and watch the gondolas going by. The next time you come to Venice you’ll no doubt be old enough to be serenaded in a gondola.”

Flora shrugged her narrow shoulders. She had sunk into a gloomy silence, and when it came, merely toyed with her ice. She remained entirely silent during the somewhat nerve-racking business of lifting her chair into a gondola, and only spoke once all the way down the Grand Canal. That was to point out a small elegant
palazzo
in terra cotta stone, with a very handsome wrought-iron gate at the top of its water steps.

“That’s where Great-aunt Tameson lives,” she said. “They carried the coffin down those steps. It’s a good thing they didn’t slip and let it fall in the water.”

“You’re very morbid about that funeral,” Lavinia said.

“I found it interesting,” Flora said with dignity. “But Great-aunt Tameson doesn’t want a funeral like that. She wants to be buried with her little boy Tom. His grave is in our churchyard at home. Great-aunt Tameson used to live at Croft House, not far from Winterwood. That’s when she was married to her first husband. He died on the field of Waterloo. Then little Tom died of diphtheria, so her heart was broken and she came to Italy and married an Italian count. He died, too, and left her all his money. Isn’t life sad?”

“The poor Contessa seems to have had her share of misfortune. What a curious name, Tameson.”

“It’s only the female for Thomas. I expect her parents wanted her to be a boy.”

Lavinia laughed.

“You’re determined to be gloomy, darling.”

Flora’s head shot up. Her tragic eyes besought Lavinia. “I hadn’t made a friend for simply ages, until I met you.”

Lavinia made her voice flippant, touched against her will by Flora’s melancholy.

“As you say—life is sad.”

Flora shrugged away the arm Lavinia had laid on her small bony shoulder. “And don’t call me ‘darling’ if you’re going to desert me. That is simply the height of treachery.”

When they got back to the hotel she refused to say goodbye. Although Lavinia looked about, and lingered longer than necessary, there was no sign of Daniel Meryon. Only Eliza was there to receive the child, and take her away.

Flora sat with her chin sunk, her shoulders hunched, and ignored both Lavinia’s farewells and Eliza’s scolding about her bad manners. Finally Eliza made a resigned gesture to Lavinia, and wheeled Flora away.

So that was the end of that strange, diverting and really quite enjoyable encounter. Now one must get down to facing reality.

Cousin Marion was grimly pleased. She had already found some people who would undertake to see Lavinia safely home in return for some small services from her on the way. They were a Mr. and Mrs. Monk, who had formerly traveled without a maid, but Mrs. Monk had been ill in Italy, and felt she could not set out on such a long arduous journey without some female assistance.

“Naturally I’ve not told them the truth about you,” Cousin Marion said virtuously. “I’ve merely said family reasons are taking you home.”

“Family!” Lavinia said bitterly. Could Cousin Marion be so stupid as not to realize that her only family, darling Robin, was in prison for seven years?

“You will have to invent an elderly aunt,” Cousin Marion said briskly. “The Monks are leaving first thing in the morning. Mrs. Monk will be sending for you sometime this afternoon, when she feels able to interview you.”

Another one of those enjoyed imaginary illness, Lavinia thought drearily. She supposed she must do her best. And to give Cousin Marion her due, she seemed a little sorry that she was going.

“Why did you have to be so foolish?” she asked. “Perhaps you didn’t mean to be dishonest, but you will ruin your life if you go on doing these impetuous things. I suppose it’s your nature. Frankly, I believe you attract trouble.”

Lavinia nodded, too dispirited to reply or defend herself. And anyway, what Cousin Marion said was true. Trouble did pursue her.

Soon after lunch the summons came. The small page, who could speak only a few English words, managed to indicate that the
Signorina
was wanted in the suite on the ground floor.

“Now look modest,” Cousin Marion called after her. “Mrs. Monk particularly wanted to know if you were a quiet modest person. I told a lie. I felt that under the special circumstances the Almighty would forgive me.”

She supposed she could keep her eyes downcast, but she couldn’t keep the distressed color out of her cheeks. Lavinia followed the agile page boy down the stairs and along a corridor until he stopped and tapped at one of the handsome carved doors. The Monks were obviously affluent people. This looked like the entrance to a palatial suite.

A woman’s voice called faintly but imperiously, “Come in,” and the boy stood aside to allow Lavinia to enter.

The first person she saw was Flora in her wheelchair, her little old woman face wearing a triumphant expression. A boy with a mop of black curls was trailing a kite about the room, intent on his game and ignoring everyone else. Behind Flora stood Eliza, the elderly maid, her mouth tucked in disapprovingly. Almost reluctantly Lavinia looked for the other occupants of the room. The woman with the imperious voice lay on a couch, her head with its mass of night-black hair resting on a fragile white hand, a tea gown with frothing lace ruffles draped becomingly about her. Flora’s father stood at one of the windows with its opaque circled Venetian glass. He was framed by the deep embrasure, looking, in that setting, with his faint melancholy, like a portrait of a Venetian nobleman.

“Miss Hurst—” Flora began, and was instantly silenced by her mother in that weary but supremely arrogant voice.

“You look surprised, Miss Hurst. Didn’t the boy explain that my husband and I wanted to see you?”

“No, he didn’t. That is—” Lavinia was vividly aware of Daniel Meryon’s eyes on her. He thought she was occupied only in looking at his wife, and was giving her an amused yet curiously tender and disarming look.

“He couldn’t speak English, Mamma,” Flora pointed out “No wonder Miss Hurst is confused.”

“Silence, miss. The first thing Miss Hurst will have to do—that is, if I decide to engage her—is to teach you manners.”

The little boy with the kite raced around the room again, then stopped in front of Lavinia and regarded her critically.

“You’re to be Flora’s companion, but you won’t like it. She’s a tyrant. Isn’t she, Eliza?”

“Now, Master Edward—”

“Teddy, come here, and be quiet!” said his mother, in her dying-away voice. “You know my poor head can’t stand noise, darling.”

“I think it’s time Miss Hurst was told what we want of her before we scare her away completely,” Daniel put in. He had seemed so detached from the scene that his sudden voice startled even Edward into momentary stillness. “My daughter, Miss Hurst, as you have probably guessed, has set her heart on having you with her when we go back to Winterwood. I gather that you are contemplating leaving Venice almost immediately, so that’s why we sent for you at once. Naturally my wife would like to ask you some questions about your background and so on.”

“I shall want to know a great deal,” said Charlotte Meryon with only slightly concealed suspicion and hostility.

“Then ask her, Mamma, and she’ll tell you,” Flora said. She was very pert and confident now. Those desolate airs this morning had been merely an act. “I couldn’t eat any luncheon, Miss Hurst, and I cried for two hours. Then I had a fainting turn, so Mamma agreed to send for you. Didn’t you, Mamma? I explained how awful your cousin had been to you,” she added. “And it isn’t true that I’m a tyrant. Edward is speaking lies.”

“Flora! As you can see, Miss Hurst, this child is completely out of hand. The doctors said she was not to be thwarted, so this is what happens.” Charlotte was pretending, not successfully, to be tolerant toward her crippled daughter. Lavinia could feel the dislike. For the first time she felt a little sympathy toward Flora’s extravagances about not being loved. They seemed to have a basis of truth.

All the same, interest in the Meryon family couldn’t quell her indignation about the high-handed manner in which they seemed to be arranging her own future. It wasn’t only indignation she felt. Apprehension, too. Good sense told her to turn and walk out of this room immediately. She knew by the pull of her eyes to that watchful face by the window that if she allowed herself to be cajoled or bribed into working for these people she would spend too much time listening for his voice or his footsteps. She knew the impetuousness of her nature all too well. Indulging in a strong attraction for a married man was no way to start a new life. She must travel back to England with the elderly Monks and forget this brief madness.

In any case, why should Charlotte Meryon assume, as she was doing, that everyone was so willing to obey her commands?

“I will be frank with you, Miss Hurst, and tell you that only dire circumstances would bring me to engage a complete stranger like yourself even if you can produce all the necessary references. But we have had one calamity after another. Haven’t we, Daniel?” Her large eyes, curiously pale, like lakes of shining colorless water, sought her husband’s. “I have an invalid aunt to be got to England. There is my daughter, a helpless cripple, and I myself am far from strong.” Her hand fluttered over the table beside the couch on which there was an array of bottles. “I am subject, on the least exertion, to prostrating headaches. So we are a melancholy lot of invalids and in urgent need of help. It seems that Flora—”

Lavinia could listen to no more.

“I think you are under a misapprehension, Mrs. Meryon. I don’t accept employment with this impulsiveness any more than you offer it. Besides, I am not at all the kind of person you require. I agree with you that your daughter is a little overexcitable, and even though she is an invalid I hardly think it necessary to humor her to this extent. She has merely had a passing whim. She will forget it”

“Miss Hurst!” Flora exclaimed, her eyes wide with outrage. “How can you be such a traitor?”

“We said goodbye this morning, Flora. Don’t you remember?”

“But I’m saving you from your horrid cousin.”

“You’re thinking entirely of yourself,” Lavinia said. “You haven’t deceived me in the least” She faced Charlotte Meryon again, noticing that the pale perfect face wore a look of displeasure, and also some surprise. She obviously had not been told that Lavinia had none of the humility or meekness to be expected from someone in her situation.