Menfreya in the Morning

3

Life at our finishing school was pleasant, lacking all the discipline of Cheltenham. Being Gwennan’s friend immediately gave me some standing and I made a few friends, but none of course were as close as Gwennan. She was delighted to see me. I shared a room with her, which was comfortable because as we had to speak French all day it seemed a great privilege to be able to chat away in English in our room.

Gwennan had grown taller and more voluptuous; she was a beauty. I was tall too, but thin, and hi any case there was the accursed limp. However, the mistresses were pleased with me, for they were certain I should be easier to handle (ban the gay and attractive girls who were in then- charge.

Very soon after Bevil reached South Africa he was wounded; not, however, before he had distinguished himself for bravery; and he came home hi time to take part in the General Election of that September, when he was returned for Lansella with a big majority, and since his party had retained power, the future looked bright for him.

Gwennan boasted of him frequently, and my opinion was demanded to endorse her claims for him. I gave this readily.

Gwennan was the most flamboyant pupil in the school and I was never more certain of the Menfrey charm. Previously I might have imagined that I had believed in it because I was a child who had lived in a particularly cold household. But now I saw Gwennan with girls from families similar to our own, and she stood out as distinctly as a name in a dark place.

I played a vicarious part in her adventures and was called on to help her out of many a difficult situation. She had admirers in the neighborhood and often slipped out when the school had retired to bed. This nocturnal adventuring was the spice of life, she told me. And I was the one who must see that the French windows which led to our balcony were open, ready for her return. I was the one who must watch and warn her when it was safe to clamber up the creeper and swing herself onto the balcony. I was the one who had to do the work which was set for her so that she could be off somewhere else. I loved Gwennan as I loved everything connected with Menfreya, and she was fond of me too. I knew that if I were in difficulty, I could rely on her.

She gave parties at midnight in our room, which was of course forbidden, but a practice which was often carried out, and I believe the authorities knew of this and turned a blind eye. As long as there were no guests from outside, these parties among ourselves were considered a tradition of our life—a semisecret one.

I enjoyed them. I liked to lie stretched out on my bed and watch Gwennan talking endlessly of herself or Menfreya, of her engagement to Harry Leveret and life in Cornwall. Once she told how I had run away and come to the island and .stayed there until I was discovered. That focused the interest temporarily on me, and I was called in by Gwennan to give my account of that affair. I did it in my dry way, which they called cynical, and I was delighted to have them all sitting on the beds and the floor listening to me, as I related the story in French, for there were only a few English girls in the party.

They were happy days, and I think that I was determined to enjoy them as they passed without thought of the future or the past There would never be another time like this in my life.

Occasionally I would be uneasy, wondering what was happening not only at Menfreya but in London. Jenny wrote, but she was no writer, and her letters were brief. She was staying on in the house, for she didn’t quite know what to do, and she hoped that when I came home I would be there.

There were several of these letters to me; she was such an unsubtle person that she could never cloak her feelings, and I soon began to discover a new note in her letters. I told myself she was getting over her loss, and I had an uneasy feeling that it might be something to do with Devil.

I mentioned this to Gwennan. I remember she was lying stretched out on her bed, as she so liked to do because from that angle she could see herself reflected in the wardrobe mirror.

“Bevil?” said Gwennan, raising her eyes and still watching her image. “I should hardly think so. Well, not more than a passing fancy on bis part. It’s Jess Trelarken for him.”

I turned my face a little, that she might not see the downward tilt of my mouth; I need not have worried; she was intent on Gwennan Menfrey’s vivacious face in the looking glass.

“Oh yes, Bevil has had countless love affairs. He always will, I suppose. He’s like Papa. But there’s always one they go back and back to, and for him it’s Jess.”

“And what about Jess herself? Is she going to be waiting patiently for him to come back?”

“Of course. You’ve seen Bevil, haven’t you? He has the Menfrey fascination.”

I laughed. “But not the Menfrey conceit, I hope.”

“Conceit! My dear Harriet, is it conceit to face the truth? Would you have me pretend that I was plain and insignificant? What good would that do?”

“None at all, for you could never be able to convince people that you thought so. Your arrogance is the most convincing thing about you.”

“Pah!” she said. “And I'll tell you something I’ve told you before, Harriet Delvaney: If you were less anxious to make it clear to people that you are unattractive, they might possibly remain unaware of it.”

“At least,” I said, “I do not put myself hi the indelicate position of being engaged to one man and dallying with others.”

“My dear Harriet, I shall shortly settle down at a very early age. Don’t you think I’m entitled to sow a few wild oats?”

“When one sows, one is often obliged to reap.”

“Oh, very clever and also very trite. I seem to have heard those sentiments expressed about three thousand times during a life-time, which you must admit could scarcely be called a long one.”

“Gwennan, are you in love with Harry Leveret?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said and changed the conversation.

Gwennan finished her year abroad before I finished mine.

When she went home I missed her very much. And three months later I myself returned.

My stepmother was pleased to see me. She told me that she felt lonely in the house without my father. “Perhaps,” she said wistfully, “I’m not the right mistress for a house like this. I’ve often thought I’d like a little place in the country,”

“Why don’t you give it up then?” I asked. “Why not find a little place in the country?”

She looked at me incredulously. “You wouldn’t mind, Harriet!”

I laughed at her. She was really rather engaging.

I went through the house. It seemed different now that my father was no longer there. I stood before his portrait in the library, contemplating it It was lifelike, but it was not the father whom I bad known. The eyes were almost benign. They had never looked like that for me. The smile was amused, the eyes alert A man who had charm for all except his daughter.

Upstairs I went; I leaned over the banisters, sniffing the smell of beeswax and turpentine and remembering what I had heard that night when I ran away. I had come a long way from that little girl who had believed herself to be ugly and unwanted because someone had carelessly said she was. Gwennan told me that I was always on the defensive, and she was right. Bevil only had to show me some attention and I bloomed into a new personality; I had only to wear a dress which had belonged to a Menfrey woman, and I became attractive.

The Menfreys were changing me—Gwennan with her often brutal frankness, Bevil with his admiration. I often wondered, though, whether Bevil’s tenderness to me was the kind he gave to every woman. He was very attractive to women; he showed how much he admired women, how important they were to him; and while he was in love with beautiful Jessica Trelarken, he could find time to be kind to plain Harriet Delvaney.

Once it had been thought that I should marry Bevil— but would that be changed now? For it seemed that my father had left his money to Jenny, and that I, although well provided for, was not the heiress it had once been thought I should be.

I received a letter from Gwennan.

“My dear Harriet, the wedding day is fixed. I’ve told them that I will have no one but you for my bridesmaid—at least, one of them; and you are to be the chief. Maid of honor, I believe, is the correct term. You are to come down here … at once … or as soon as you can arrange it. Don’t delay. There’s so much to do, and I’ve such lots to tell you. Mamma wanted to bring me to London for an orgy of spending, but that is quite out of the question. Money, my dear! It’s a sad convention that the bride’s family have to undertake all the expenses of the marriage. I’m not a rich man’s wife yet. After the honeymoon—it’s to be Italy, my love, and then Greece—you shall be our first guest at Chough Towers. I’ve told Harry, and he is ready to give way to me in all things. I intend that it shall remain so all our lives. Come as soon as you can, for there is the matter of your wedding garments, my dear. They will have to be made in Plymouth—but I am sure we can concoct something together quite spectacular.

“Menfrey stow is in a whirl of excitement about it, and, believe me, the main topic of conversation is The Wedding. It’s seven weeks away, but there is a great deal to do, and if you don’t come soon we shall never get you fitted for that magnificent wedding garment. Bevil is most enthusiastic about the wedding. He’s fearsomely busy these days now that he has become the Member for Lansella. I think he’s secretly pleased because when I marry my dear rich Harry, there’ll be less obligation for him to make a m.o.c. (marriage of convenience). I know him well. If Jess were only as rich as my Harry, there would be a double wedding at Menfreya.

“Now I am being indiscreet. But when was I not? You must bum this letter as soon as you have read it, just in case it should fall in the hands of (a) Bevil, (b) Jess Trelarken, (c) just anybody but yourself.

“Come soon. I miss you. Gwennan.”

I wanted to be there. I wanted to feel the sea breezes on my face; I wanted to sleep in Menfreya and wake up in the morning to look out over the sea to the island house, which was ours–or, rather, Jenny’s—for everything seemed to be hers now.

I was seated at my window, looking over the square, when I saw the carriage arrive and Jenny alight, looking disturbed.

She was coming up the stairs to my room. “Harriet,” she called. “Are you there, Harriet?”

“Come in,” I replied and went forward to greet her. She looked bewildered, rather like a child who has been expecting a gift that has been snatched away.

“The country house …” she said.

“Yes?” I knew she had been excitedly looking for one for the last few weeks.

“I can’t have it”

“Why?”

“The money isn’t mine, after all.”

“Do explain.”

“You were there when they read the will. You couldn’t have understood it either,”

“I wasn’t listening, I suppose. I was thinking about my father and the past and his marrying you and all that.”

“I wasn’t listening either. I don’t understand it now, although he went over and over … explaining, and I said I did. He kept saying, ‘It’s in trust for Miss Delvaney.’ That’s you, dear. It’s in trust for you, which seems to mean that Tm having the interest or something while I live, but when I die it will be yours. No one else is to have it but us, you see. You have your income now and the money set aside for your education and marriage portion, and the rest is mine, but only for the income, and I’m not allowed to touch the capital. I can’t buy a house, because the money is all for you. In a way, I’ve been lent it till I die—to have the income from it; and after that, it'll be for you and no one else.”

“I begin to understand.”

So he had remembered me then; he had cared for my future more than I had believed, and doubtless it had occurred to him that my flighty little stepmother would be an easy prey for fortune hunters; and any who did not take the trouble to find out the terms of the will before marrying her would have a somewhat unpleasant shock when they did discover.

I was still a considerable heiress—or at least I should be if Jenny died.

My father was the sort of man to tie up everything very securely.

“I’m sorry about the house, Jenny.”

She smiled. “Can’t be helped, can it? I don’t mind it so much now you’re home.”

I was planning to go to Menfreya for Gwennan’s wedding, but a few days before I was due to leave for Cornwall I received a letter from Aunt Clarissa, who asked me to call at her house in St. John’s Wood.

Fanny accompanied me, because when visiting Aunt Clarissa one must observe all the conventions, and she would consider it unseemly for me to travel alone. My stepmother should have accompanied me, but she had not been invited and in fact told me that Aunt Clarissa had, since the marriage, made it quite clear that she bad no intention of calling on her or inviting her to call.

Fanny would take tea with my cousins' maid while I was with my aunt and cousins.

I was ushered into the drawing room, where my aunt was seated with two of my cousins—Sylvia and Phyllis. Clarissa, the youngest girl, was still in the schoolroom. Phyllis was about my age, and Sylvia two years older.

As I went in I was conscious of my limp and my hair, which would not curl.

“Ah, Harriet.” My aunt languidly held up her face that I might kiss her cheek. She did not rise, and the greeting was cold—no true kiss, the touching of our skins, that was all.

“Pray sit down. On the sofa there with Sylvia. Phyllis, my dear, you may ring for tea.”

Phyllis tossed back her yellow curls and went to the bell-rope. I was aware of three pairs of eyes on me—supercilious, critical, complacent eyes. “Thank heaven, my girls are not like this one,” said Aunt Clarissa’s eyes.

“And how are you getting on … in that house?”

“Very well, thank you, Aunt.”

“I expect she has wondered why I don’t call.”

“She has not mentioned that she missed your company.”

Aunt Clarissa flushed and said hastily: “I do not think you should go back to your finishing school. Your father asked me before he died so suddenly to launch you with my own daughters, and that I promised to do. It is for this reason that I asked you to come here this afternoon.”

“It makes me feel like a battleship,” I said. “Is it necessary to launch me?”

“My dear girl, you could not be received in the right places if you had not had a proper introduction to society. It is my duty, now that you have no father and your stepmother is …” She shivered, “… quite unsuitable … it is my duty to take you under my wing. I propose to look after you at the same time as my own two girls. It will be much cheaper.”

Three for the price of one,” I said.

“My dear, you have developed a habit of making extraordinary and unbecoming comments. I am planning parties and balls for your cousins, and you shall join us.”

“I have no great desire for a London season.”

“It is not a matter of your desire, Harriet, but what is a necessity for a girl of your class and position.”

“I always think the ‘season' is rather like a marriage market. The prize cattle are paraded and inspected.”

“Oh!” said Aunt Clarissa, and my cousins looked horrified. “I do not know,” went on my aunt, “where you learned such strange ideas. Not at your school, I hope. It must be that stepmother of yours.”

Her butler arrived and ushered in the parlormaid, who set up the tea things on the table near my aunt While the servants were present, conversation was of the weather.

“Shall you pour, Madam?”

“Yes,” she answered, and there was dismissal in her tone.

We ate cucumber sandwiches and toast, and Sylvia carried the cups to us. I told her that I was shortly leaving for Menfreya to be bridesmaid at Gwennan Menfrey’s wedding.

“Gwennan to be married!Why, she is only just out of the schoolroom.”

“She did not need a season,” I said, looking maliciously at my cousins. “And she is marrying Harry Leveret, who is, I believe, almost a millionaire.”

“There is no background,” declared my aunt triumphantly, but she grudgingly added: “although the fortune is considerable. And married … right out of the schoolroom.”

“Quite an achievement,” I murmured, smiling at my cousins, “with which we could not hope to compete.”

“How old is she?”

“She must be two years younger than you, Cousin Sylvia.”

Sylvia flushed. “I suppose they were friends from childhood,” she muttered.

They thought me malicious. My cousins would tell each other later that, as I knew I should have difficulty in finding a husband myself, I hoped they would not find it easy either. “When you return I shall take charge,” said my aunt. “Lady Masterton, who is bringing her girl out, has given me a list of very charming young men whom she is inviting to her parties, so we shall not be short of them.”

I felt heartily sick at the prospect, and I wondered if it would be possible for me to evade it. I did not want to be paraded like some heifer. “She limps a little but there’s a fortune there … a small one now, but if her stepmother dies, a big one. Anyone ready to take a chance?”

“You will have to develop a little charm, my dear Harriet,” my aunt was saying. “You cannot hope to achieve anything without charm.”

“I am not overanxious about my state, for all I should be expected to achieve is a husband, with which I may well be fitted to do without. Have you forgotten, Aunt, that my father has left me well provided for?”

There was a deep silence, and then my aunt said firmly: “I am afraid, Harriet, that you have developed some very mercenary ideas. And let me tell you—your habit of expressing them in that most unsuitable way is not going to…”

“Buy me a husband?” I added.

“Really, Harriet. I wonder why I give myself the thankless task of bringing you out with my girls. It is a duty I anticipate with considerable misgivings.”

When tea was over, Aunt Clarissa told my cousins to take me to their schoolroom and show me some of the dresses they would wear for their coming out.

Young Clarissa joined us. She was very like her sisters, pretty in a superficial way, and empty-beaded, which was what one would expect of girls whose upbringing had been supervised by Aunt Clarissa. They were trained to believe that the ultimate goal was the successful marriage. I wondered, as I listened to their chatter, how they would fare even if they achieved that goal. It would be impossible to make them understand now that what happened in the years after the ceremony was more important than what took place during the few months before.

I was a stranger among them, a cuckoo in the nest. They were afraid of my tongue but not of my face and figure. There they had the advantage, and they were determined to exploit it I was glad when it was time to leave, and riding home in the carriage I could express my irritation to Fanny.

“I wish I need never go there again. My aunt is proposing to do her utmost to find a husband for me! She is going to parade me at her wretched balls, which I shall hate in any case. It will be almost like having a placard round my neck, ‘Excellent bargain. Slightly damaged but considerable compensations. Please apply Mrs. Clarissa Carew, Aunt to the object, for details.’”

“Oh, Miss Harriet, you are a one. I don’t know how you think of such things. I don’t think you’re the sort to be married against your will, anyway. Not if I know you.”

“You’re right, Fanny. But how I hate this marketing!”

I was thankful that before this unwelcome season began I should be at Menfreya.