“Oh, I shall. I shall.”
“Goodbye, my dear.”
For the second time she kissed me, and then she hurried from the room.
I lay wondering, as I had so many times before, what life was going to be like.
There was a knock on my door and Betty, the maid I had seen on the previous evening, came in with hot water.
“Miss Tressidor said not to disturb you if you be sleeping, but the lady what brought you be gone and I reckoned her’d come and say goodbye, wouldn’t her?”
“She did, and I am awake and glad to have the hot water.”
“I’ll take away last night’s,” she said. “And Miss Tressidor says that if you’re up you can have breakfast with her at half-past eight.”
“What’s the time now?”
“Eight o’clock, Miss.”
“I’ll be ready then. Where will she be?”
“I’m to be here to take you down to her. You can get lost in this house till you know it.”
“I’m sure you can.”
“Anything you want, Miss. Just ring the bell.”
“Thank you.”
She went on. My homesickness was being replaced by a desire for discovery.
Precisely at eight-thirty Betty appeared.
“This be the bedrooms up here, Miss,” she told me, “and there’s another floor above, too. We’ve got plenty of bedrooms. Then above them is the attics … servants’ quarters as they say. Then there’s the long gallery and the solarium … then there’s the rooms on the ground floor.”
“I can see I have a lot to learn if I am to find my way about.”
We came down the staircase.
“This be the dining room.” She paused, then she knocked.
“Miss Caroline, Miss Tressidor.”
Cousin Mary was seated at the table. Before her was a plate of bacon, eggs and devilled kidneys. “Oh, there you are,” she said. “The governess left half an hour or more ago. Did you have a good night? Yes, I see you did, and now you’re ready to take stock of your surroundings, eh? Of course you are. You’ll want to eat a good breakfast. Best meal of the day, I always say. Stock yourself up. Help yourself.”
She showed a certain amount of concern for my well-being, which was comforting, but her habit of asking a question and answering it herself made for a certain one-sided conversation.
I went to the sideboard and helped myself from the chafing dishes.
Cousin Mary took her eyes from the plate and I felt them on me.
“Feel a bit strange at first,” she said. “Bound to. You should have come before. I should have liked to have visits from you and your sister … and your father and mother … if he’d been different. Families ought to keep together, but sometimes they’re better apart. It was my inheriting this place they didn’t like. There was no doubt about that. I was the rightful heir, but a woman, they said. There’s a prejudice against our sex, Caroline. I don’t suppose you’ve noticed it much yet.”
“Oh yes, I have.”
“Your father thought he should step over me and take this place because I was a woman. Only over my dead body, I said; and that’s what it amounts to. If I died, I suppose he’d be the next. That’s a consummation devoutly to be wished—for him, I don’t doubt. But I feel very differently about the matter, as you can imagine.” She gave a little laugh which was rather like a dog’s bark.
I laughed with her and she looked at me with some approval.
“Cousin Robert is a very able man but he still lacks the power to get rid of his Cousin Mary.” Again that bark. “Well, we’ve done without each other all these years. You can imagine how taken aback I was when I got the letter from Cousin Imogen telling me that they’d be glad if I invited you for a month or so.”
“They clearly wanted to be rid of me. I wonder why.”
She looked at me with her head on one side and, as I already realized was unusual with her, hesitated. “Let’s not bother about the whys and wherefores. You’re here. You’re going to be the means of healing the rift in the family … perhaps. I’m pleased you came. I’ve a notion that you and I are going to get on.”
“Oh, have you? I’m so glad.”
She nodded. “Well, you’ll settle in. You’ll be left to yourself quite a bit. It’s a big estate and I keep myself rather busy on it. I’ve managers but I hold the reins. Always have done. Even when my father was alive and I was younger than you … or as young … I’d work with my father. He used to say, ‘You’ll make a good squire, Mary, my girl.’ And when there was all that raising of eyebrows and tittering about my being a woman, I was determined to show them I could do as well—and better—than any man.”
“I am sure you did show them, Cousin Mary.”
“Yes, I did, but even now, if anything goes wrong they’re ready to say ‘Oh well, she’s a woman.’ I won’t have it, Caroline. That’s why I’m determined to make Tressidors the most prosperous estate hereabouts.” She looked at me almost slyly and went on: “You must have come past Landower Hall.”
I told her we had done so.
“What did you think of it?”
“I thought it was magnificent.”
She snorted. “Outside, yes. Bit of a ruin inside … so we hear.”
When I told her we had met Mr. Paul and Mr. Jago Landower, she was very interested.
“They made themselves known,” I said, “when they noticed the name on my luggage. They seemed to know I was coming here.”
“Servants,” she said.
“Yes, that’s what the younger one said. Their servants . . your servants …”
“It’s like having detectives in the house. Well, it’s natural, and as long as there are some things we can keep back we have to put up with it. The Landowers keep a sharp look-out on what’s going on here … just as we do on them.” She laughed again. “There’s rivalry. We’re both squires, as it were. What possessed our ancestors to build so close, I can’t imagine. And the Tressidors are the culprits. Landowers were here first. They’re proud of that. Look on us as upstarts. We’ve only been here three hundred years. Newcomers, you see! We’re on speaking terms, but only just. We’re the rival houses—Montague and Capulet. We don’t go about biting our thumbs or thrusting rapiers into each other’s gullets in the streets of the town, but we’re rivals all the same. Friendly enemies, perhaps you could call us. We haven’t had our Romeo and Juliet … not yet. I’m hardly made for Juliet and Jonas Landower is no Romeo. Certainly not now. Couldn’t really have fitted the part in his young days any more than I could. However, that’s how it is with us and the Landowers. You say you met them on the train. Coming from Plymouth, I don’t doubt. Been to see the lawyers … or the bank more likely. Things are not going well at Landower, that much I know. Cost of keeping up the place is astronomical. It’s creaking. It’s about two hundred years older than Tressidor … and one thing I’ve always made sure of is to keep the place in order. The first little sign of decay … and it’s dealt with. Costs less that way. You understand? Of course you do. Over the years the Landowers have thrown up some feckless characters like old Jonas. Drink, women, gambling … The Landower pattern. Tressidors have had their old reprobates, but on the whole we’re a sober lot … compared with the Landowers, that is.”
“They helped us with our luggage,” I told her. “Miss Bell was grateful.”
“Oh yes, very mannerly. Interested, too, in what goes on here. Opportunists, that’s what they are. Always have been. Old Jonas thought he could retrieve the family fortunes at the gaming tables. Fools’ game that. Did you know anyone who was ever successful that way? Of course not. Always ready to take the main chance. Turncoats. Even in the Civil War they were for the King in the beginning as most of us were in these parts, and when the King lost, the Landowers were for the Parliament. We suffered a bit at Tressidor then and they prospered.” She gave the bark which punctuated her speech and which I was beginning to wait for. “Then the new King came back and they discovered that they were royalist after all. But that put us forward. However, they secured their pardon and managed to hang on to their estates. Opportunists. Now, of course, there are rumours. Well, we shall see.”