“You’re too cynical, Harriet You always are. Just because you don’t attempt anything, there’s no need to sneer at people who do.”
“Why . .. you’re stany-eyed!”
“I appreciate .effort, that’s all.”
I was silent I was beginning to feel really disturbed.
I thought the play was never coming to an end. I kept glancing at Gwennan; she was unaware of me; her eyes were intent on the stage. This was quite unexpected; but then it was the unexpected that one must expect with Gwennan.
Eagerly she took me backstage after the performance. I had never been behind the scenes of a theater before and I found it exciting, though somewhat squalid. It was pleasant to see Jane again; and she welcomed me warmly. We sat on a packing box and talked. She loved the life, she told me; she wouldn’t exchange it for the richest husband in the world. I guessed she was referring to Gwennan’s coming marriage. Her people had been averse to her going on the stage, so she had simply run away. She reckoned she was very possibly cut out of her father’s will. Who cared? The smell of greasepaint was worth all the fortunes in the world when you were eighteen and in love with your chosen profession.
Gwennan was talking to Romeo. He was still in costume and his face was shining with greasepaint; but I could see that he was very good-looking.
“I want to introduce you to Benedict Bellairs,” she told me.
He took my hand and bowed over it.
“Welcome backstage,” he said.
I felt a shiver of apprehension in my spine, I did not like Gwennan was secretive, which was strange, for she rarely kept anything to herself and had always said the first thing that came into her head without consideration. That was why the change was alarming.
I could not talk to her on the journey back because of the presence of Dinah; but I gathered that the visits to Plymouth, which had been very frequent, invariably included a visit to the theater.
Why had she suddenly become so interested?
After we had retired for the night I went to her room, determined to find out how seriously she was involved. As I knocked I heard her speaking, but she called, “Come in,” and I found her standing in the center of the room, in her dressing gown; she had obviously been declaiming in front of the mirror. I saw a book open on a table, and I knew it for the Shakespeare we had used at school.
“Juliet, I presume,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
I glanced at the open book. “The balcony scene. Let me hear you. ‘Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo …?' Start from there. I’ll be Mr. Benedict Bellairs.”
She had flushed. “Trust you!” she said angrily, and slammed the book shut.
“You certainly look stage-struck. Gwennan, what are you planning?”
“Nothing.”
“I always knew when you were scheming. Remember how I used to guess.”
“I was inspired by the performance this afternoon, that’s all”
“It’s more than I was.”
“Could you ever be inspired by anything?” , “Perhaps not Unless it’s your performance. Do let me see your Juliet.”
“Stop it.”
“I will when you tell me how far this has gone,”
“And stop that You sound like the mistress of the house who finds the master kissing the parlormaid.”
“Well, have you been kissing anyone?”
“Really, Harriet!”
“What about this Benedict person? You aren’t what you used to describe as ‘sowing your wild oats’ with him, an your”
“I find him interesting, that’s all”
“And does Harry know how interesting you find him?”
“Stop it! I wish you hadn’t come.”
“Perhaps I’d better go back.”
“Don’t be a fool. How could you now?”
“But, Gwennan, I am seriously concerned. You’re not a schoolgirl now; you’re a young woman on the verge of marriage. Have you thought of Harry?”
“I shall be thinking of Harry for the rest of my life. I want a chance to think of someone else … for the last time.”
“Spoken like a bride!” I said. “Gwennan, it’s time you grew up.”
“You tell me that. You … baby! What do you know of life? Only what you read.”
“It’s possible that one might discover more of life through books than backstage with a third-rate theatrical company.”
“Stop if.
“You’re becoming repetitive.”
“And you’re insolent.”
I rose to go, but she caught my hand. “Listen, Harriet The company is going away the week before the wedding. Then that will be the end.”
“I don’t like it”
“You wouldn’t, Madam Purity.”
“I only hope . ..”
“Liar. Your only hope is that Bevil falls in love with you and marries you.”
I turned away, but she would not let me go. “We know too much about each other, Harriet. And there’s something else we know. We’d always stand together—no matter what sort of trouble one of us was in.”
It was true.
The next day Gwennan and I rowed over to the island. There was the house with its four walls, each looking out on the sea. It had been freshened up a little, and I guessed that my father had had that done before he died, but old Menfreya furniture was still in the place.
“What does this remind you of?” asked Gwennan.
There was no need to ask. I should never see the island after a length of time without recalling the night I had spent mere, and most of all that moment of fear when I had heard Devil’s voice below and he had come in with the girl from the village. I had been too innocent then to realize for what purpose he had brought her there; but of course I knew now that that would have been one incident in a long chain of similar ones in Devil’s life.
I felt vaguely depressed, thinking of Harry, who loved Gwennan; and Gwennan, who on the eve of marriage to him was letting her fancy stray to Benedict Bellairs; and Bevil, who like his father and most of the male Menfreys, seemed to believe it was the natural order of things to fly from female to female like a bee whose duty in life was pollination.
The boat had run aground and we scrambled out.
“Fancy,” she said. “It’s yours now. This little bit of land is lost to the Menfreys forever. It’s like the sea slowly encroaching on the land. And here it is rising from the ocean. A reproach to us every time we look out to sea. In years to come future Menfreys will shake their heads and say: ‘Sir Endelion lost the island. That was a dark hour for Menfreya.’ Unless, of course, it comes back to the family through marriage.”
“Perhaps,” I suggested, “the marriage of a daughter to a rich man might make it possible to buy back the island.”
“It’s not easy to wrest Menfrey soil from those who acquire it Money is not always enough.”
“Let’s have a look at the house.”
I unlocked the door.
“Typical,” said Gwennan. “In our day the doors were never locked. Change and decay in all around I see …”
“It looks less decayed than when it was yours.”
“It looks almost prim. I wonder what the ghosts think now.”
“Are there more than one?”
“I think so. This is a much-haunted house. But perhaps the ghosts won’t appear for foreigners. They’re very particular, Cornish ghosts are.”
She was unnaturally flippant I wondered whether she was a little ashamed.
We went through the house, passing among the dust-shrouded furniture. I broke away from her and went alone to the bedroom where Bevil had discovered me. I could picture him now pulling off the dust sheet and myself looking up at him. Bevil, for whom I felt a special need … now!
“I should never want to live here,” I said. “The best thing about it is the view.”