“Oh!” she cried, turning faintly pink. “Well, I must say I’m sorry … I thought, you see, from the way she was … er … and she didn’t say she wasn’t when I called her ‘Mrs. Menfrey’ … which I’m sure I did.”
When I next saw Jessica I said to her, “I hear you were mistaken for me at the chambers.”
She raised those perfectly shaped eyebrows to signify surprise.
“Yes,” I went on, “one of the callers said she had seen the Member’s wife last time she had come. It was you.”
Jessica shrugged her shoulders. “They form then- conclusions.”
“She was so certain because she’d addressed you as ‘Mrs. Menfrey,’ and you hadn’t corrected her.”
“Oh, they imagine these things.”
I looked into her face and noticed the calm, smiling mouth, the beautiful eyes which betrayed nothing, the perfection of her smooth, fresh-colored skin. In that moment I thought: If she wanted my place she’d be ruthless enough to do anything to get it.
9
Bevil had returned and Christmas was upon us. I awoke early to the sounds of bustle, for the servants were all up at dawn to prepare pies, game and poultry. They were so excited that they couldn’t keep quiet, and on Christmas Day no one expected them to.
Bevil gave me a diamond bracelet, and Benedict came racing into our bedroom to show us what he had discovered in the stocking which Jessica had given him to hang on his bedpost.
“Look, Uncle Bevil. Look, Aunty Harriet.”
We looked and admired, and I thought then how pleased Gwennan would have been if she could have seen him; she would smile ruefully though because by doing what she had wished for her son I had brought Jessica into the house.
When I heard Jessica calling him I took him by the hand and led him away; she was in the corridor, wearing a blue twill dressing gown, only elegant because she was wearing it; and her hair hung hi a thick plait down her back. She looked more beautiful every day.
Later in the morning Bevil and Sir Endelion went hunting; the sound of the horns echoed through the house, and when they returned, according to custom, the log fires were blazing —elm and oak, between which the very sweet-smelling bog turf had been spread.
The carol singers visited us, their voices untrained but enthusiastic.
As I sat on a sunny bank,
A sunny bank, a sunny bank,
As I sat on a sunny bank
A Christmas Day in the morning.
The sunlight filled the house, and through the open window came the soft southwest wind. There would be rain very likely before evening. It was typical Cornish Christmas weather—no snow for us. We might see a few snowflakes during the New Year, but there was rarely enough to settle. Our Christmases were warm and damp.
We all gathered hi the hall—decorated with holly and ivy ; —fOT the wassailing, when the bowl of spiced ale was set on the table and Sir Endelion drank from it the health of all who lived in the house; and then passed it round so that we might all drink too.
Bevil held the bowl out to me, and his eyes were wide with affection.
“Happy Christmas, Harriet,” he whispered; and I wondered whether I had been passing through a phase of madness to doubt him.
I wore my topaz gown that evening; and since it was Christmas Day we dined in the great hall, as had been done every Christmas since Sir Endelion and Bevil could remember.
When the guise dancers arrived we danced with them; then we sat and watched while the villagers crowded into the hall to see the guisards perform their play. We of the house handed round the spiced ale and punch, the saffron cake, potato cake, pasties and gingerbread, as Menfreya had been doing for generations. That was a happy day.
There was consternation at Menfreya a few days later.
Fanny told me when she brought up my breakfast tray. Her face was working oddly, so I knew she was upset.
“What is it, Fanny?” I asked.
“That clock’s stopped,” she said tersely. “That tower dock.”
“It’s impossible.”
“No. It’s happened. Stopped at twenty minutes to three.
"There’s a regular row going on downstairs, I can tell you.
"Dawney’s just come up to the house to see Sir Endelion and Wm. They’re in a nice rage, I can tell you. It’s never happened in a hundred years or more … so they say.”
”A great deal of fuss about a clock!” I replied. She gave me an odd glance and set the tray down on the bed. I looked at it with distaste. A boiled egg, thin bread and butter, coffee and marmalade. It was what I usually had since after my cold I took breakfast in bed, but I had little appetite for it this morning.
She stood at the bottom of my bed. “You know what they’re saying. It means a death in the family.”
“Old wives’ tale,” I said. “Still,” she added, “they’re in a state.”
When she left me I tried to eat a little, because I did not want anyone to know how upset I was. How had the clock stopped? It was Dawney’s first duty to see that it never did. It was oiled at the right time, watched over, tended with care just to make sure it continued to work.
It may have seemed foolish to pander to the superstition; but this was Cornwall, and the Menfreys were a Cornish family.
I guessed that the news was already over the neighborhood. Hie clock has stopped! It means one of the Menfreys is threatened.
They would watch us now; they would see death shadowing us. It was obvious that some portentous event was about to take place. We had had the ghost on the island; and now the clock was stopped. In these they would see omens.
It was unnerving to know that people were watching you expectantly. When Bevil or I came riding into the courtyards the grooms would come out to see if we were actually home. I was sure they expected us to be brought home on a stretcher. I had a strange feeling that they had selected me for the victim. Then the uneasy feeling came to me that they knew something which I merely suspected. Did they know more of the relationship between Bevil and Jessica? Was it true that when a man preferred another woman to his wife, everyone knew of this before the wife?
It was all very well to laugh at superstitions, but at heart most of us are susceptible to them. I was becoming nervous. I remembered the two incidents of the barley water, known only to Fanny and myself. But perhaps to others? Those who had tried to poison us? But that was absurd. No one had. It was Fanny’s ridiculous suspicions. Which I shared. Or did I? I was not sure.
Fanny didn’t help. She watched over me with persistence, and if I were home later than she expected me to be I would find her in a state of terrible anxiety. Once I heard her praying … to Billy. In moments of crisis nowadays she always turned to Billy.
Sometimes I wanted to get away from the house and I liked to wander away from Menfreya along the cliff path to Menfrey stow. There I would sit, overlooking the sea, and think about the past—my past with Bevil, being discovered by him on the island when I had run away, the joy of meeting him at Lady Mellingfort’s ball. But chiefly I thought of that occasion when he had come to my Aunt Clarissa’s house to see me and I had stopped to change my dress. That was before Jenny’s death, ‘before I had inherited so much money. If only he had asked me to marry him then I I wanted so much to believe that was what he intended to say to me.
Suspicions colored all my thoughts, all my memories of the past.
And while I was sitting on the wooden bench, which had been set on the cliffs for the use of weary walkers, old A’Lee came along the path and saw me.
He greeted me and I saw his chin wagging involuntarily, which was a sign that he was amused.