She had actually seen him walking on the sands below the inn, and had wondered whether he would have the audacity to peer into darkened caves in which he had once pretended he was a smuggler, or venture into the silent woods that crept down with the creek to the murmuring seas’ edge. She was absolutely certain those woods had figured very largely in his activities when he was a boy, and as this was a nostalgic pilgrimage he was making
– apart from his intention of acquiring Tremarth – he would not overlook one tiny comer that could be revisited, especially once a cold round moon stole up out of the sea.
Charlotte was about to draw her curtains over her window when her eye was caught by something on the cliff top, and she went closer to the glass to concentrate her full attention upon whatever it was. In the end she decided that it was a stationary beam of a pair of dipped car lights, and the vehicle itself was quite indistinguishable in the gloom. She stood listening to the booming voice of the sea breaking on the rocks at the foot of the cliffs, and while she did so the car lights moved slowly forward until they disappeared like pale sword- thrusts into the night.
The last thing she was able to make out before the car finally disappeared was a twinkling rear light that reminded her of the twinkling eye of a ruby under the slow-moving pall of thick white cloud.
The mass of cloud moved out to sea, and the stars shone forth and the motionless surface of the sea became irradiated by a diffusion of moonlight that appeared to be made up of glittering diamond points and mellow primrose light. Impulsively she thrust open her window and leaned out, and the moonlight poured across her hair and gilded the coppery curls.
Below her the gardens were tranquil and sweet, with night. There was a smell of roses floating in the cool night air, and the short sweet turf almost immediately below her window exuded a kind of incense. She felt slightly bemused by the beauty of it all, and she leaned there far longer than might have been wise considering the slight nip from the sea and the feeling of prevailing moisture gathered beneath the centuries-old trees.
Tremarth, she thought…A lovely home that the members of the Tremarth family who had once had the pleasure of living in it must have cherished in the same way that some people – particularly women – cherish jewellery and lovely clothes. She herself had never possessed any valuable jewellery, and most of her clothes were fairly simple because she was unable to afford couture models. But if she had to choose between a Paris wardrobe and the opportunity to go on living in this graceful house that was now hers by right…
“I’d choose Tremarth,” she thought, running her hand lovingly over the sill of the window. “I wish somehow it would become possible for me to go on living here at Tremarth!”
CHAPTER III
THE next day the two girls acquired some pots of paint from the village store and started to touch up the woodwork in the kitchen and other neglected comers of the house. As if by mutual consent they said nothing about the reasons why they were thus attempting to disguise the various weaknesses of the house, behaving as if they had just moved in and were intending to settle down there indefinitely.
Charlotte removed all the cushion covers from the cushions in the drawing-room and washed and ironed and replaced them, attacked the carpets with carpet cleaner and polished the furniture. Mrs. Ricks, the daily woman from the village, put in a somewhat belated appearance, and began an assault on the bedrooms; and Hannah painted away steadily in the kitchen, covering herself and anyone who unwisely approached too near to her with paint, but satisfying herself and Charlotte that the job was worthwhile long before the second day of intensive operations was over.
Mrs. Ricks was a useful cook, and she prepared the girls’ meals; but after so much labour they felt the need of something slightly more tempting than a cold Cornish pasty when they desisted from their efforts and took a bath and changed into fresh un-paint-stained and undust-streaked clothes. They made do with the pasty on the first evening, but the second evening seemed to issue them with a challenge. Charlotte decided that as hostess she must do better for her guest who was already working her passage in a most ungrudging manner, and said they would go down to the Three Sailors and have dinner in a slightly more civilised setting than the kitchen at Tremarth.
Hannah was nothing loath, and put on a smart little black number for the occasion that was rather over-dressy for the Three Sailors, and would have become her even more if she had taken pains with her make-up and adopted a hair-style that was more in keeping with her youth and did not make her look like a severe governess in search of unfamiliar entertainment. Charlotte – following upon the intrusive thought that Richard Tremarth might still be staying at the inn – decided to wear her latest acquisition for a quiet evening away from home, and that was a lemon yellow silk dress over which she draped a black lace mantilla that she had bought on a trip to Spain the previous summer.
The two girls set off in Charlotte’s car, and the landlord of the Three Sailors welcomed them with effusive smiles and assured them he could fit them up with a table in the dining room. Luckily they had chosen one of the occasions when his menu, was quite exceptional, and that meant a bottle – or rather, a half bottle, since they were neither of them heavy drinkers – of wine to accompany the meal, and perhaps a liqueur apiece afterwards.
When they arrived at the liqueur stage, however, Charlotte said she would skip it, remembering that she had to drive them both back to Tremarth; but as the half-bottle of wine in the dining-room was still very nearly half full the landlord did not seem to think there would be much danger of her infringing the laws of driving. He had carried coffee to them in the lounge, and was beaming because of the flattering comments on the meal he had just served to them, when Charlotte asked him whether Mr. Tremarth was still a guest at the inn.
The landlord looked slightly intrigued when she asked the question, and then admitted that Richard Tremarth was still staying with him.
“But he’s a gentleman who likes to come and go when he pleases,” he explained. “He may be in to dinner to-night, and he may not. At the moment he’s out. I think he’s doing what he calls’ ‘rediscovering Cornwall’,” he added, lowering his voice as if to him that was a novel occupation.
Charlotte nodded, and then addressed a remark that had nothing whatsoever to do with Richard Tremarth to Hannah, just in case the landlord might have received the wrong impression. He no doubt remembered that she and Richard had sat at that same table on the night of her arrival in Tremarth, and although it must have struck him that their relationship was not particularly good one could never tell.
On the way back to Tremarth Hannah voiced the thought that Charlotte herself was thinking as she drove over the cliff top in a swirl of cold, white unfriendly mist that had encroached upon them from the sea.
“Your friend Tremarth must either have made up his mind that he’s not going to remove himself until you’ve changed your mind about selling him your house, or else the countryside has really gone to his head and he can’t have enough of it.”
She peered through the swirling white vapour ahead of them, and warned:
“Look out! You were very nearly off the road…”
“Sorry!” Charlotte jammed on her brakes, and then proceeded more cautiously. It was eerie driving through the mist, and she felt as if ghostly fingers were tapping at the windows on either side of her, and behind them the blackness they had left behind seemed intense. “We would pick upon a night like this to go out junketing, wouldn’t we? Not that a dinner commencing with grapefruit and taking in local lobster and apple flan before its grand climax of coffee and no liqueur could honestly be described as junketing! But I’m not really used to this part of the world, and – ”