She, who found it difficult to smile in pleasure, could readily smirk in contemptuous amusement.
” Yon’s what you wear over there, is it?” she said. Again there was that twitch of the lips.
I nodded coolly. ” Is my father at home?”
“Why, Cathy …” It was his voice and he was coming down the staircase to the hall. He looked pale and there were shadows under his eyes ; and I thought to myself, seeing him with the eyes of an adult for the first time: He looks bewildered as though he does not quite belong in this house, or to this time.
” Father!” We embraced but, although he endeavoured to show some warmth, I was aware that it did not come from the heart. I had a strange feeling then that he was not pleased that I had come home, that he had been happy to be rid of me, that he would have preferred me to stay in France.
And there in our gloomy hall, before I had been home five minutes, I was oppressed by the house and the longing to escape from it was with me.
If only Uncle Dick had been there to greet me, how different my homecoming would have been I
The house closed in on me. I went to my room, where the sun was shining through the slats of the blinds. I pulled them up and light flooded the room; then I opened the window. Because my room was at the top of the house I had a view of the moor, and as I looked I felt myself tingling with pleasure. It had not changed at all; it still delighted me; I remembered how I had exulted to ride out there on my pony even though I always had to be accompanied by someone from the stables. When Uncle Dick was at the house we would ride together; we would canter and gallop with the wind in our faces; I remembered that we often stopped at the blacksmith’s shop while one of the horses was shod—myself sitting there on a high stool, the smell of burning hoofs in my nostrils while I sipped a glass of Tom Entwhistle’s homemade wine. It had made me a little dizzy and that had seemed a great joke to Uncle Dick.
“Captain Corder, you’re a caution, that’s what you are!” So said Tom Entwhistle many a time to Uncle Dick.
I had discovered that Uncle Dick wanted me to grow up exactly like himself; and as that was exactly what I wanted to do we were in accord.
My mind was wandering back to the old days. Tomorrow, I thought, I’ll ride out on to the moors . this time alone.
How long the first day seemed! I went round the house into all the rooms—the dark rooms with the sun shut out. We had two middle-aged servants, Janet and Mary, who were like pale shadows of Fanny. That was natural perhaps because she had chosen them and trained them.
Jemmy Bell had two lads to help him in the stables and they managed our garden too. My father had no profession. He was what was known as a gentleman. He had come down from Oxford with honours, had taught for a while, had had a keen interest in archaeology, which had taken him to Greece and Egypt; when he had married, my mother had travelled with him, but when I was about to be born they had settled in Yorkshire, he intending to write works on archaeology and philosophy; he was also something of an artist. Uncle Dick used to say that the trouble with my father was that he was too talented; whereas he. Uncle Dick, having no talents at all, had become a mere sailor.
How often had I wished that Uncle Dick had been my father!
My uncle lived with us in between voyages; it was Uncle Dick who had come to see me at school. I pictured him as he had looked, standing in the cool white-walled reception room whither he had been conducted by Madame la Directrice, legs apart, hands in pockets, looking as though everything belonged to him. We were much alike and I was sure that beneath that luxuriant beard was a chin as sharp as my own.
He had lifted me in his arms as he used to when I was a child. I believed he would do the same when I was an old woman. It was his way of telling me that I was his special person . as he. was mine. ” Are they treating you well?” he said, his eyes fierce suddenly, ready to do battle with any who were not doing so.
He had taken me out; we had clip-clopped through the town in the carriage he had hired; we had visited the shops and bought new clothes for me, because he had seen some of the girls who were being educated with me and had imagined they were more elegantly clad than I. Dear Uncle Dick! He had seen that I had a very good allowance after that, and it was for this reason that I had come home with a trunk full of clothes all of a style which, the Dijon couturiers had assured me, came straight from Paris.
But as I stood looking out on the moor I knew that clothes could have little effect on the character. I was myself, even in fine clothes from Paris, and that was somebody quite different from the girls with whom I had lived intimately during my years in Dijon. Dilys Heston-Browne would have a London season; Marie de Freece would be introduced into Paris Society. These two had been my special friends; and before we parted we had sworn that our friendship would last as long as we lived. Already I doubted that I should ever see them again.
That was the influence of Glen House and the moors. Here one faced stark truth, however unromantic, however unpleasant.
That first day seemed as though it would never end. The journey had been so eventful, and here in the brooding quietness of the house it was as though nothing had changed since I had left. If there appeared to be any change, that could only be due to the fact that I was looking at life here through the eyes of an adult instead of those of a child.
I could not sleep that night. I lay in bed thinking of Uncle Dick, my father. Fanny, everyone in this house. I thought how strange it was that my father should have married and had a daughter, and Uncle Dick should have remained a bachelor. Then I remembered the quirk of Fanny’s mouth when she mentioned Uncle Dick, and I knew that meant that she disapproved of his way of life and that she was secretly satisfied that one day he would come to a bad end. I understood now. Uncle Dick had had no wife, but that did not mean he had not had a host of mistresses. I thought of the sly gleam I had seen in his eyes when they rested on Tom Entwhistle’s daughter who, I had heard, was ” no better than she should be.” I thought of many glances I had intercepted between Uncle Dick and women.
But he had no children, so it was characteristic of him, greedy for life as he was, to cast his predatory eyes on his brother’s daughter and treat her as his own.
I had studied my reflection at the dressing-table before I got into bed that night. The light from the candles had softened my face so that it seemed—though not beautiful nor even pretty—arresting. My eyes were green, my hair black and straight; it felt heavy above my shoulders when I loosened it. If I could wear it so, instead of in two plaits wound about my head, how much more attractive I should be. My face was pale, my cheek-bones high, my chin sharp and aggressive. I thought then that what happens to us leaves its mark upon our faces.
Mine was the face of a person who had had to do battle. I had been fighting all my life. I looked back over my childhood to those days when Uncle Dick was not at home; and the greater part of the time he was away from me. I saw a sturdy child with two thick black plaits and defiant eyes. I knew now that I had taken an aggressive stand in that quiet household; subconsciously I had felt myself to be missing something, and because I had been away at school, because I had heard accounts of other people’s homes, I had learned what it was that young child had sought and that she had been angry and defiant because she could not find it. I had wanted love.
It came to me in a certain form only when Uncle Dick was home. Then I was treated to his possessive exuberant affection; but the gentle love of a parent was lacking.
Perhaps I did not know this on that first night; perhaps it came later; perhaps it was the explanation I gave myself for plunging as recklessly as I did into my relationship with Gabriel.