“Trethuan is not much above fifty,” explained Tamsin in Dominic’s ear.
“And I particularly wanted to send some apricots down to Phil, while they’re at their best. She has such a good hand with bottling.”
“I tell you what,” said Simon promptly, “get Paddy to come and pick them for Phil to-morrow, and keep him out of our hair. He’s dying to get in on the act, it’ll be a good idea to find him something to keep him out of mischief.”
Miss Rachel halted at the low balustrade of the front terrace, spreading her Chinese silks in an expansive wave over the mock marble. Her shrewd old face had become suddenly as milkily still as a pond.
“Paddy?” she said, in a sweet, absent voice. “Absurd! Such a sensitive boy, I’m sure he wouldn’t join you in your grave-hunt for any consideration. Certainly I’ll get Phil to send him up for some apricots, but whatever makes you think he has any interest in your undertaking at St. Nectan’s?”
Simon laughed aloud. “Just the fact that he came and asked if he could be there. Asked very nicely, too, but it didn’t get him anywhere. It’s no horror project, but still it isn’t for growing boys.”
She had resumed her march, but slowly and thoughtfully. Without looking at him she asked innocently: “When did he ask you?”
“This morning, around noon. Why?”
“Oh, nothing! I just found it hard to believe he’d do such a thing, that’s all.” After I had expressly forbidden it, she thought, in a majestic rage, but she kept her own counsel and her old face bland and benign. Something drastic will have to be done about Master Paddy. This cannot be allowed to go on. The child is shockingly spoiled. If Phil and Tim can’t take him in hand, I shall have to.
“And this,” declared Miss Rachel triumphantly, while the grandmotherly corner of her mind planned a salutary shock for Paddy Rossall, “this is our library.”
She always brought her visitors to it by this way, through the great door from the terrace,, springing on them magnificently the surprise of its great length and loftiness of pale oak panelling and pale oak bookshelves, the array of narrow full-length mirrors between the cases on the inner walls, and the fronting array of windows that poured light upon them. By any standards it was a splendid room, beautifully proportioned and beautifully unfurnished. There was Tamsin’s desk at the far window of the range, and the big central table with its surrounding chairs, and two large and mutually contradictory globes, one at either end of the room. And all the rest was books.
On the nearer end of the long table a large, steaming coffee-tray had been deposited exactly ten seconds before they entered by the outer door; and the inner door was just closing smoothly after Miss Rachel’s one elderly resident maid. When there were visitors to be impressed, the time-table in Treverra Place worked to the split second.
“There he is,” said Simon, “the man himself.”
The painting was small and dark and clumsy, a full-face presentation in the country style; commissioned portraits among small county families of the eighteenth century were meant to be immediately recognisable, and paid for accordingly. There was a short, livid scar across the angle of a square rat-trap of a jaw, redeemed by the liveliest, most humorous and audacious mouth Dominic had ever seen. A plain, ordinary face at first sight, until you looked at every feature in this same individual way, and saw how singular it was. The jaw could have been a pirate’s, the large, uneven brow might have belonged to a justice of the peace, and in fact had, for several years, until the squire had felt it more tactful to withdraw from the bench. The eyes were the roving, adventurous eyes of a lawless poet, and that joyous mouth would have looked well on the young, the gallant, the irresistible Falstaff.
Simon stood back from the wall, and looked the most celebrated of the Treverras full in the eyes.
George thought: They really seem to be looking at each other, measuring each other, even communicating. And although they look so different, isn’t there something intensely alike about them? Both privateers, a little off the regular track, not quite manageable by ordinary rules, not quite containable by ordinary standards.
“He had one ship trading across the Atlantic, and three or four small craft fishing and coasting here. And smuggling, of course. They all did it. It wasn’t any crime to them, it was business and sport—”
“Could it be,” whispered Dominic in Tamsin’s ear, “that Simon has his tenses wrong?”
She turned her head so rapidly that the fine red hair fanned out and tickled his nose. She gave him a lightning look, and again evaded his eyes.
“I hope they got everything away safely last night,” he said even more softly. He couldn’t resist the innocent swagger, and it was hardly disobeying orders at all. This time she didn’t look at him, but he saw her lip quiver and her cheek dimple, and she said to him out of the corner of a motionless mouth, like an old lag at exercise:
“You certainly are a sharp young man, Dominic Felse, be careful you don’t cut yourself.”
“And here’s his wife. Morwenna, her name was.”
“She was lovely,” said Bunty, surveying the unexpected charcoal drawing on grey, rough paper, heightened with white chalk and red. Fragile but striking, like the creature it encompassed. Fine, fiery dark eyes, a delicately poised head balancing a sheaf of piled black hair.
Miss Rachel beamed satisfaction from the background.
“I used to be thought very like her when I was younger.”
“Actually,” murmured Tamsin in Dominic’s ear, “she’s the living image of Jan, if you cover up that jaw of his.”
“And these are the famous epitaphs?” George stepped close to the two framed photographs on the wall below Morwenna’s portrait.
‘O Mortal Man, whom Fate—’
“You’ll find it easier from these transcriptions. Those photographs were made last time the church was cleared of sand, fifteen years or so ago. Whoever took them did a nice job on the angle of the light, and the lettering isn’t much eroded, but it’s eccentric. Here’s the text.”
Simon read aloud, in the, full, rapt voice of self-forgetfulness, as though the reflected image of Treverra stirred within him; and it was not often, Tamsin told herself, watching, that Simon forgot himself.
‘O Mortal Man, whom Fate may send
To brood upon Treverra’s End,
Think not to find, beneath this Stone,
Mute Witness, bleached, ambiguous Bone.
Faith the intrepid Soul can raise
And pilot through the trackless Maze,
Pierce unappalled the Granite Gloom,
The Labyrinth beyond the Tomb,
And bring him forth to Regions bright,
Bathed in the Warmth of Love and Light,
Where year-long Summer sheds her Ease
On golden Sands and sapphire Seas.
There follow, O my Soul, and find
Thy Lord as ever true and kind,
And savour, where all Travellers meet,
The last Love as the first Love sweet.’
“That was for himself. And this one is hers. Some say Jan wrote it before he died, knowing they wouldn’t be parted long. Some say she wrote it herself in his style. Sometimes I think it’s more remarkable than the other.
‘Carve this upon Morwenna’s Grave:
NONE BUT THE BRAVE DESERVES THE BRAVE.
Shed here no Tears. No Saint could die
More Blessed and Comforted than I,
For I confide I shall but rest
A Moment in this stony Nest,
Then, raised by Love, go forth to find