“You understand her. I think she likes you. I heard through one of the servants that she was delighted with Mr. Jago’s Lady.”
“I’m with her a good deal. I can’t avoid it, being in the house.”
“Does she confide in you?”
“Not about herself. Only about others … what she discovered … what she hopes to discover. Poor Gwennie, I’m sorry for her in a way. She’s not a bad sort. She’s just blind and won’t see. I shall invite her to London, too. But what we want most is for you to come and be with us. Think about it. I am sure it is what you need.”
“It’s wonderful to have you here, Rosie. I shall miss you so much when you have gone.”
How right I was. I felt very lonely after she and Jago left.
THE SECRET OF THE MINE
After Rosie had gone there seemed to be an anticlimax until one day when I met Paul in the lane leading to Tressidor just as I was going to one of the farms.
I noticed the change in him.
I said: “Something has happened.”
“She’s gone away,” he told me.
“Your wife?”
He nodded and a smile spread across his face. “You can’t imagine … the relief.”
“I think I can. Where has she gone? For how long?”
“She’s gone to Yorkshire … visiting an aunt.”
“I didn’t know she had an aunt.”
“Oh yes. They’ve corresponded apparently … spasmodically. She suddenly took it into her head to go and see her.”
“For how long?”
He lifted his shoulders. “Who knows? Not a brief visit … I hope.”
“She must have decided suddenly.”
“Yes. It was after Jago and Rosie left. She didn’t waste much time once she’d decided. I drove her to the station myself. She had to go to London first and take the train to Yorkshire from there.”
“She has never been away before.”
“All those years …” he said wearily. “At least this is a respite. I have wanted to talk with you so often … to be with you.”
I was silent and he went on: “What are we going to do, Caroline?”
“Much the same as we have been doing, I suppose,” I answered. “We seem to go on in the same way. What else can we do?”
“We must see each other sometimes … alone. We have to face up to facts. Here we are … in this impasse. We can’t go forward and we can’t go back. Are we going to deny ourselves forever? Are we going to live here like this, frustrated all our lives?”
“I had thought of going away for a while … going to London. Rosie suggested I should visit them.”
“Oh no,” he said.
“I thought it was a good idea. I need to get away … to think about everything.”
“You can’t leave Tressidor any more than I can leave Landower.”
I said: “I have Livia now. It makes me think very seriously about what I can do. Before I had a sort of freedom. There was a time when I had almost decided …”
“Decided what?”
“That I would risk everything to be with you.”
“Caroline?”
“Oh, yes I did. I almost did. I saw it all clearly … this liaison between us … secret meetings … living in fear of discovery … asking myself what discovery would mean. And there were times when I told myself that I did not care what the consequences would be, I would risk everything. Then I had my responsibilities … just as you have.”
He said: “We could go right away. God knows I’ve thought of it often enough. We could live abroad. France … do you remember France? What a long time ago that seems. I was so afraid for you then. I learned what you meant to me in those few days … and I learned it forever. I came to look at you when you were sleeping. I stood at the glass doors leading to the balcony.”
I said: “I was not sleeping.”
“I … almost came in. I often wondered if things would have been different if I had.”
“Yes, I wondered that too.”
“You would have taken me in then.”
“I did not know that you were married … married to save Landower. I thought you had worked some miracle. I believed you were capable of miracles.”
“What a sordid miracle! A miracle that brought with it a lifetime’s bitterness.”
“Do you hate her so much?”
“I hated her for all sorts of reasons. I hated her for a hundred irritating habits. I hated her because she was herself and I hated her most of all because she stood between us.”
I said: “You are talking of her as though she were no longer there.”
“Let us think of her as gone.”
“She will be back soon.”
“Not yet … Let’s hope not yet.”
“It’s only a visit.”
“Let’s hope she stays away.”
“But when she comes back …”
“Let us not think of her.”
“How can we do anything else? She’s there and, as you said, she is between us.”
“Not at this moment. Forget her. Talk of us.”
“There is nothing more to say.”
“We are not going on like this.”
“But what is the alternative?”
“You know. And perhaps … one day … everything will come right for us.”
He leaned towards me and laid his hand over mine. Then he took it and held it to his lips.
“Caroline, the future is ours to make. Let us forget all this. Let us go away … somewhere we are not known …”
I shook my head and turned away.
I left him then but all that day I kept thinking of him and I wanted to be with him, to explore those avenues which he was begging me to travel with him.
Yet still I hesitated.
I was not quite sure when the rumours started.
Someone said he saw a black dog at the mine; then someone else immediately saw—or thought she saw—a white hare.
These were the harbingers of death. In the old days they had been said to foretell a disaster in the mine; now it was just the warning of death … but in the mine.
Old rumours were recalled. At the time when a man had murdered his wife and put her in the mine, people had seen a black dog; at the time when the man himself had gone down the shaft the dog had appeared again—and with it the white hare.
Now the sightings had begun again.
Something was due to happen at the mine.
I rode out there on one occasion and was surprised to see several people. Some were sitting about on the grass … others walking, and there was a rider or two.
I saw one of the grooms from the stable and greeted him.
“Don’t ‘ee go too near the mine, Miss Tressidor. They do say the black dog have been seen again.”
“I thought that was last week.”
“And again this, Miss Tressidor. There be something going to happen at the mine, sure as God made little apples. Aye, you can be sure of that.”
“I expect everyone is taking special care.”
” ‘Tis a bad thing to see the black dog.”
“I should have thought it would have been good to be warned.”
” ‘Tain’t like that, Miss Tressidor. If the black dog ‘ave come for you, ‘tis no use trying to escape from ‘un.”
“Well, there are quite a few people here. Aren’t they tempting fate?”
“Oh, I don’t know about that, Miss Tressidor. You’m not been in these parts long enough to pay proper attention like. But things happen here in the Duchy as perhaps don’t happen in other places.”
“I’m sure they do,” I said.
I rode home thinking about Paul and wondering what he was doing at this moment.