“Tamarisk tells me that you are interested in an odd couple who have a cottage on the estate.”
“Do you mean Miss Lucy and Miss Flora Lane?”
“Is that their names? What is all that about a doll one of them carries around and thinks is a baby? “
“That is true.”
“Strange, isn’t it?”
“It’s been going on for a long time.”
“Thinks the doll is the lord of the manor?”
“When he was a baby, she was his nurse.”
“And he looks after these sisters with very special care?”
“They were both his nannies at one time. People feel like that about their nannies. It’s very kind of him to take such care of them.”
“Bountiful indeed. Tamarisk says you get along with the mad one well and that you have a very special interest in it all.”
“I am sorry for them.”
“You have a kind heart, I see, and you visit them often. Tamarisk tells me that you go there when the other sister not the crazy one is away, and you’re hoping to find out what made the poor old thing lose her reason.”
“Tamarisk told you that!”
“Is it not so?”
“Well …”
“Of course,” he said, ‘we all like to get to the bottom of these things. And it must have been something that turned her brain, don’t you think? “
“I don’t know.”
“Perhaps through your research you will discover.”
The dance had come to an end.
“We must dance again,” he said.
“This has been most enjoyable. I expect you are fully engaged.”
“There are one or two,” I said, and he conducted me back to my seat.
After that I danced with several young men and I wondered why Gaston Marchmont was so interested in the sisters. I supposed Tamarisk had talked about them in her usual dramatic way. She always exaggerated.
And, of course. Flora and her doll were unusual.
I soon forgot Gaston. I was waiting impatiently for the supper dance.
I was afraid that Crispin might have forgotten, but as soon as the dance was announced, he was there.
He took my arm and led me on to the floor where people were beginning to dance. We went round the room once, then he said: “We’ll go now and get the table we want. Otherwise we might have to share with others.”
He led me to the two chairs where we had sat before. A table had been set up beside them. It was laid with glasses and cutlery.
“This will do,” he said.
“Put your programme on the table to warn other people that it is already taken. Then come along with me and we’ll get some food.”
A long table had been set up on trestles in the dining room. There were candles set at intervals and an abundance of food cold chicken, salmon, various meats and salads. It looked deliciously tempting. We were the first to arrive.
Crispin led the way and we helped ourselves to what we wanted. When we returned to the table there was a bottle of champagne in an ice-bucket standing there.
The music had stopped and people were now leaving the ballroom for the dining-room.
“What foresight!” I said.
“To be the first.”
“Indeed. We have avoided the crowd and here is our table with everything waiting for us.”
He sat opposite me. One of the servants had come to us and was pouring the champagne.
Crispin looked searchingly at me and raised his glass.
“To Frederica,” he said.
“Her coming-out. Are you pleased to have left childhood behind?”
“I think so.”
“What do you propose to do now?”
“I haven’t thought much of that.”
“Most girls want to get married. That seems the ultimate goal. What of you?”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Oh, come. All girls think of it.”
“Perhaps you don’t know all girls. Only some.”
“And perhaps you are right. In any case, here you are on the threshold. Your first ball. How did you enjoy it?”
“Very much.”
“You sound surprised.”
“One really doesn’t know how it will go. Suppose no one asked you to dance?”
“That would put you in an awkward position. I’ll swear you don’t like to wait to be asked. You would like to be the one to do the asking.”
“Anybody surely would.”
“Then you could ask Gaston Marchmont to dance with you.”
“I wouldn’t do that.”
“Oh? I’d forgotten that you are not as impressionable as some. Very discerning, that is you.”
“I hope … a little.”
“And then I come along and demand you leave the supper dance for me.”
He was looking at me intently.
“You and I have had some unusual encounters, haven’t we? Do you remember when we went and bought the doll? And then there was that affair in Barrow Wood.”
I shuddered. Did I remember? It was something I should never forget. I could be transported there at a second’s notice. It was always ready to leap out and confront me.
He put his hand across the table and held mine briefly.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I replied.
“But it is not something I can forget.”
“It was a terrible experience. Thank God I happened to be passing!”
“He died … because of it,” I said.
“I can’t forget that.”
“It was the best thing that could have happened to him. He hadn’t the courage to face up to the fact that he had betrayed what he really was when all the time he was putting on that saintly mask to hide the man beneath.”
“He must have been very desperate when he went into the stable and hanged himself.”
“Don’t think of it in that way. Only be glad that I came along when I did. I can have no regrets.”
“Do you never feel that he died because he knew you despised him?
There in the wood I thought you had killed him. You left him there.
That did not worry you? “
“No. He was a coward … a hypocrite, setting himself up to be a saint when he could behave like the lowest animal. I can only rejoice that I came along when I did and in what happened after as a consequence. The best thing he did was to rid the world of his obnoxious presence -and, my dear Frederica, your well-being was far more important than his miserable life. Look at it that way and you’ll have no soft feelings for the miserable creature. The world is well rid of him. I would have been justified in killing him, but it was much more convenient that he did it himself.”
There was no sympathy in his face, but I could not help telling myself that through it all Mr. Dorian had wanted to be good.
Crispin went on: “Forgive me. I shouldn’t have brought this up. I wanted to be sure that you weren’t brooding on it. You must not, you know. Life can be ugly sometimes. You have to realize this. Remember what is pleasant and cut out of your mind what is not.”
He was smiling at me now very benignly and I remembered Tamarisk’s saying once that when people had rescued someone from something horrid they liked them because they reminded them of how good and noble they themselves were.
“Would you like more salmon?” he asked.
“No, thanks.”
“Well now, tell me what you think about Miss Flora. She talks to you, doesn’t she?”
“A little. But I’ve told you, it doesn’t make much sense.” “And you think she might realize sometimes that the doll has been changed?”
“It really wasn’t very much like the old one, was it? She had had the first one a long time and they make different styles now.”
“But she hasn’t actually said … ?”
“No. She just looks puzzled … but then she often has before.”
“As though she is trying to remember?”