Author: Anya Seton
Category: Literature
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“No, no,” said Dr. Foster, who had known the little Scottish nurse for years. “Go back, Mrs. Cameron. See if you can find Sir Richard.”
“The maister . . . The young maister—what’s he done?” Her voice trembled, the bright robin-eyes filmed with anxiety.
“He hasn’t done anything that I know of,” said Foster impatiently. “He simply isn’t here. Carry on,” he said to the driver, who threw in his clutch and set off the klaxon’s raucous hooting.
Nanny Cameron watched the ambulance careen down the drive and turn towards Easebourne. “Oh, dear-r, dear-r, dear-r,” she whispered, her little mouth working. She straightened her shoulders and drew a difficult breath. As she reentered the house the Duchess was descending the stairs.
Myra was already dressed in a smart town frock, carrying an alligator handbag. She recognized Nanny at once as more than a servant, though hitherto unseen, and said with kindly authority, “Is there anyone to bring my car round and fetch the luggage? The staff seem disorganized. I’m so sorry her ladyship is ill, and we’ll all leave at once. But would you know where Sir Richard is?”
“I wouldna, your grace.” Nanny had heard descriptions of the Duchess in the servants’ hall, and been secretly pleased that Medfield Place housed a highborn aristocrat as it often used to in the past, before the preceding Lady Marsdon died.
“I’ll be sairching for the maister.” She added with pleading, “He can’t be far, and he’d tak’ shame if ye left wi’out a fareweel. The gardener’s lad’ll look to the car and the luggage, your grace, but will ye no bide a wee while?”
Myra considered, then reluctantly acquiesced. She longed to be out of the confused, subtly menacing atmosphere, but she also felt an obligation to remain. In the absence of host, hostess and Mrs. Taylor, it seemed necessary for someone to take over, at least temporarily.
“I’ll wait here,” she said, indicating the drawing room.
Nanny sketched a curtsy and hurried away. The other guests gradually joined Myra, even Harry, who had come back from his walk and was thoroughly startled by the news.
“Extraordinary . . . extraordinary,” he kept saying. “Celia wasn’t ill last night. Ambulance, you say? What could have happened to her?”
Nobody knew, and Harry was aware of a surprising pang. Pity, almost tenderness. Celia’d behaved like a little strumpet last night, he thought, wondering why he used such an old-fashioned word. “Prickteaser” was more accurate—letting him fondle and kiss her in the garden, then pulling back and slapping his face like a barmaid. He had been very angry, but now he wasn’t. He felt a twinge of protective tenderness and a certainty that whatever her sudden illness was, Richard Marsdon was making the girl miserable. Damn his eyes, Harry thought. I wish I’d never come down for this bloody weekend.
All the guests shared Harry’s view in varying degrees, but George Simpson felt the most fervent regret, as he struggled to rouse his wife to a semblance of normalcy. Edna had finally been wakened from her stertorous, twitching sleep by the ambulance siren. Her head pounded and when she tried to raise it, she retched.
“Where’s me tonic?” she asked George thickly, when she saw him standing by the bed.
“It’s all gone.” He looked at the empty quart bottle in the trash basket. “Get up, Edna, get dressed. Lady Marsdon’s very ill, been taken to hospital.”
Between puffy lids her eyes focused slowly. “Lady Marsdon . . .? Very ill . . .?”
He nodded, and drew back as she smiled. There was malicious triumph in the upcurved lips, the puffy eyes. She mumbled something like “Hope she dies.”
George grabbed her thick shoulders, and yanked her upright.
“Before God, I don’t know how, but I think you’re drunk! Here, get to the bathroom, I’ll douse you in cold water!”
She shook off his hands and became the picture of offended dignity.
“How dare you, George! You know very well I’ve never touched a drop in me life. It’s joost the headache. It hurts something cruel.” She sagged back onto the pillow. Her mouth fell open, a trickle of saliva dribbled from the corner.
George gazed down at the bed. What’ll I do with her? Can’t let anyone see her like this. The servants’ll talk. And Sir Richard, what would he think . . . respectable firm . . . I can’t’ve seen that gloating look she had on her face. He shuddered and sank down on the desk chair, his head in his hands.
Nanny Cameron was searching for her young master. She went first to the library, where the Marsdon Chronicle was kept. The library was empty, and the great vellum book rested in its accustomed place on the top shelf. Nanny took it down and ran a tentative finger over the gold-embossed cockatrice on the front cover.
“Beware,” she said aloud, knowing well the motto. “I doot he’s listened sharp enough to the war-rning.” She shook her head, then she had a flash of “the sight,” which was as much a part of her Highland heritage as rugged common sense. Guided by the flash she lugged the heavy book over to the lectern in the alcove, opened it at random. She squinted at a page near the beginning. It was covered with faded close-set lines, long curly strokes, and tiny ripples above what must be letters. She could decipher but a few words.
“All Hallowes Eve . . . unshriven deeds bringe sorrowe to our house . . . terrible lust . . . I command my heires . . . fear of damnation . . . murdered girle . . . Medfeilde . . .”
There was a faint pencil line down the margin beside the entry.
“’Tis this he reads and moithers over when the mood’s on him,” she murmured. “Evil fra’ the lang, lang ago, yet her-re again amangst us. The Good Lord ha’ mercy.”
She sighed dolefully, shut the Marsdon Chronicle, replaced it on the shelf. She hurried from the library, and started on a systematic search through the great mansion. She had reached the foot of the attic stairs in the west wing when she thought of the music room. Aye, to be sure. Along dark passages, up and down steps, she trudged to the old schoolroom.
“Sir Richard . . .” she called softly. “Maister-r Richard.” There was no sound inside. Nanny tried the door. It was locked. She rapped and called again. “Maister-r . . . ’tis only Nanny. Open up!”
Her ears were sharp and they caught a faint rustling noise. Her heart thumped heavily in her chest. Twenty years ago she had stood like this rapping at this very door. The bad time when the lad was twelve; the weary care, the trouble and the horrifying memories. She rapped again, harder.
“Open up! Sir Richard!” she cried in the nursery tone of command. “’Tis Nanny!”
Still there was no answer, and no more sound. “I’ll get them to break the door-r in!” Her voice shrilled with fear.
After a moment she heard a hoarse response. “Leave me alone. Leave me alone!”
She slumped against the door, steadying herself on the knob.
“Maister, her ladyship is ta’en verra bad, gone to hospital. Your guests await ye. Come down to them!”
There was another long silence before she heard a thickened shout. “For Christ’s sake, let me be!”
Though she stayed a few minutes, pleading and exhorting, there was no further sound from inside the schoolroom.
Nanny plodded back along the passages. She descended the stairs and went to the drawing room. Everyone looked up expectantly.
“Any luck?” asked Myra. “Have you found Sir Richard?”
“Aye, your grace, may I speak private wi’ ye?”
Myra rose and followed her into Richard’s study. “Well, where is he?” she asked.
Nanny shook her head. “He’s locked himsel’ i’ the old schoolroom. He willna come oot. Doom hae laid its dreedful hand on the Marsdons.”
“Oh, come, Mrs.—what’s your name, by the way?”
“Jeannie Cameron, your grace. I was nurse to Sir Richard since he was a babby.”
Myra nodded. Her own nanny had been much like this. Sensible, fiercely loyal, but superstitious.
“Well, Nanny,” Myra resumed, smiling, “I’m sure there�
�s no need to fear doom just because Lady Marsdon is ill and Sir Richard wishes solitude. We’ll leave for London, and you must give our sympathy and farewells to Sir Richard when he appears. That’s all.”
Nanny’s black eyes looked sadly up at the beautiful, impatient face. “He will not appear-r, your grace.”
It was a flat statement, and unpleasantly convincing.
Myra exhaled, sat down on the cushioned Tudor armchair opposite Richard’s tidy desk, lit a cigarette, and said, “Just what do you mean by that? I don’t understand.”
“No,” said Nanny. Her rosy cheeks puckered like a withering apple. “Ye dinna understand.”
Oh, Lord, must I? Myra thought. All very sad that Celia was ill, and Richard apparently going round the bend—locking himself in that dreary schoolroom and sulking—distressing behavior but nothing to do with me. She glanced through the open casement window at her car, which was now waiting ready-loaded by the front steps. Take about two hours to get back in town, then give Gilbert a ring, arrange something for tonight, something exciting, forget this mess . . .
“Your grace,” said Jeannie Cameron quietly, “I’m sore afeared, and there’s nobody else her-re I weesh to tell why to.”
The quiet tone, the anxious, honest old face were moving.
Myra sighed and settled back in her chair. “Sit down then, and tell me.”
It took some time for Myra to comprehend what Nanny was trying to say—not that the old woman rambled, but she was earnest and slow as she tried to give the whole picture of Richard’s boyhood. It began with the death of his mother when he was two years old and should have been too small to miss her, and yet it seemed as though he did.
The other servants told her that the baby had used many words, even short sentences before his mother died, but when she came he didn’t talk at all, nor for months afterwards. He didn’t cry either, he didn’t smile, he drank his milk and ate his porridge mechanically like those “wee dollies that jair-rk when ye tug on a string.” The other servants thought him silly-witted; Sir Charles, who looked into the nursery once a day, “verra grim, he was, the auld maister,” said the boy must be subnormal and ought to be taken to a London doctor, which intent Nanny had always fiercely resisted. She loved her charge, and never doubted that he would come right in time.
“An’ he did, your grace. The whilst he was three ye never saw a brighter bairn for-r his years. Kenned a’ his letters, and made up tales to tell himsel’, he’d lairnt to smile too, though never-r romping and feckless like most bairns.”
Myra glanced at her wrist watch. This standard tale of a lonely motherless child, a cold withdrawn father, seemed hardly pertinent. Though, no doubt, a psychoanalyst could make much of it. But Nanny continued tenaciously. Myra half-listening received the impression of a little boy who both talked and walked in his sleep, who seemed convinced that he had lived another life before this one, who sometimes insisted that his name was “Stephen” and that Stephen had been very wicked in the past. He had always seemed both ashamed and afraid of “Stephen.” And only Nanny knew about this phase. Anyway, the nightmares and the fancies had stopped after she had sent to her shepherd brother in Argyll and got Richard a collie pup named Jock.
“’Twas the making o’ Maister Dick, that dog, your grace.”
“It was?” said Myra, suddenly realizing that dogs were unaccountably lacking in this English country house.
“Aye.” Nanny read her thought. “There’s nae dog here today. When Jock was shot, Maister Dick could never-r bear another-r near him. He’s like that. And he never mentioned Jock again, for he loved that dog wi’ all his hear-rt, an’ he felt that whatever he loved came to a bad end.”
“The dog was shot?” said Myra with some horror. “Whatever for?”
“Sir Charles thought it had r-rabies.” She twisted her plump hands on her gray poplin lap. “He didna wait to mak’ sure, nor told the lad why, at the time.”
Myra swallowed. “Well, I suppose one can’t take chances with rabies, but I can see how dreadful it was for Richard. How old was he?”
“Twelve, your grace, the year-r everything happened to him.”
“What else?”
“Sir Charles wed that brassy slut, and that woman tur-rned the old man altogether agin his son. He’d no been a tender-r faither before, though Maister Dick kept trying to please him, and times they’d fish together, ramble o’er the Doons. After she got hold o’ him, Sir Charles was brutal. He couldna bear the sight o’ Maister Dick, he’d sneer at him an’ call him crazy.”
“But surely Richard went to school? He must have got away from all this during term.”
Nanny shook her head. “Sir Charles didna bother-r wi’ schooling. Until afterwards . . . The vicar at Saint Andrew’s tutored the lad.”
Myra frowned. She clearly saw the pattern, a pathetically neglected childhood, the incomprehensible deaths of a mother and a dog, and their effects on a sensitive little boy. She even realized that Celia’s sudden illness might present so great a threat that Richard was driven to escape. But then, Richard must be really mental, which she found hard to believe.
“And after all,” she said aloud, “Richard’s not to blame for the blows he’s had.”
Nanny stood up, she looked squarely at Myra. “That’s the whole matter of it, your grace. He thinks he is. And so do I. ’Tis fra the past. When he lived before at Medfield. When he was Stephen. ’Tis i’ the Marsdon Chronicle.”
“Really, Mrs. Cameron,” said Myra, so astounded that she laughed. “Has Mrs. Taylor or Doctor Akananda been corrupting you? You’re too sensible to believe in reincarnation!”
Nanny stiffened and spoke with dignity. “I dinna ken the wor-rd. I’ve spoke to nobody o’ this, nor would now, save that Sir Richard is acting as he did near twenty year-rs agone.” Her voice dropped, she added in a whisper, “I fear for him so, come nightfall, that’s when it happened afore.”
“What did?” Myra forced herself to ask.
The old woman raised her head and gazed unseeing at the farm ledgers stacked on the study shelves. “We broke in just in time . . .” she said dully. “He was hanging ther-re fra the auld gas fixture.”
Myra’s green eyes widened; she blinked. She tamped out her cigarette. There was silence during which she dimly heard the ticking of the hall clock, the cooing of the birds from Medfield’s dovecote.
“How frightful . . .” she said, “but Mrs. Cameron, that was long ago. Sir Richard isn’t a miserable child any more, he’s grown up and married, and though his wife may be ill, that can’t be too serious, there’s no parallel at all, I’m afraid you’ve gone nervy, but you really mustn’t imagine . . .”
She stopped as Nanny sighed and let her hands fall open in a despairing little gesture. “’T was the curtain cords afore, your grace, they be still ther-re.” Again a flat convincing statement.
Myra shivered, then spoke sharply, “Well, what do you want me to do? If you’re so worried get Dodge and the gardener to break in the door.”
“I wouldna want them to guess—the sairvants—canna ye see that?”
Most reluctantly, Myra did see that. She did not believe that the situation was nearly as dramatic as the old nurse thought. She had the inborn British distaste for interference in anyone’s private life, nevertheless . . .
“You want me to speak to Sir Richard,” she said. “To see what’s up!”
Nanny surprised her. “No, your grace, ’twould do n’good. I want ye to telephone the hospital and summon the Heendu gentleman, he’s the pairson to help us. They’d no listen to me.”
Myra saw the truth of this. A duchess might cut through the barrage of hospital red tape, as a nanny certainly could not—yet the urgency, the explanations—how embarrassing if Nanny’s fears were imaginary, but the steady piteous gaze touched her.
“Very well,” she said, reaching for the telephone on Richard’s desk. “Where’s the number?”
In Celia’s hospital room a hushed and anxious group
stood around the flat white bed where the unconscious girl lay in her motionless trance. The blood-pressure cuff was on her arm; both doctors, Foster and Akananda, watched for the appearance of the throbbing mercury on the gauge, but it showed only a feeble flicker at the bottom. Foster, frowning heavily, pressed his stethoscope harder against the ribs below the small left breast.
“I fear she’s going . . .” he said to Akananda, removing the ear tubes. “You try again.”
Lily, at the foot of the bed, gave a sobbing gasp.
The matron and another nurse glanced at each other, then up at a glass jar of glucose which dripped into Celia’s left arm vein. There had been hope a few minutes earlier in the operating theatre. She had responded to the inhalation of oxygen, accompanied by slow, monotonous commands from the foreign doctor. “Relax, Celia. Relax. Let your arms go. Let them go limp. Shut your eyes. Relax. Go limp.”
After five minutes the patient had suddenly obeyed. She shivered once, then the clutching rigid hands had fallen forward, the eyelids shut. They had been able to lower the now flaccid arms, and both nurses, hardened as they were to unpleasant sights, had been greatly relieved at the disappearance of that ghastly popeyed stare. But, they shared Dr. Foster’s conviction that the patient was dying. The mercury on the blood-pressure gauge now stopped quivering altogether. It was evident that neither doctor was sure of any heartbeat.
“Get the mother out of here,” Dr. Foster barked, and to Akananda he added, “Cardiac arrest—we might massage. Damn it, there’s not a decent heart man short of London, and I’ve never tried it.”
The matron, silent except for a rustle of starched apron, gently shoved Lily through the door and shut it.
Akananda shook his head. “Heart massage means breaking ribs,” he said. “Great danger of puncture, and it won’t help. She will not die, at least, now. She’ll remain like this.”
“You blasted fool,” cried Foster. “What the hell do you know about it!”