“I’m glad to hear it. I enjoy his.”
“And that friend of yours, the doctor … ?”
“Lawrence Emmerson?”
“The one with the clever sister. Lucian wondered about them. I’m not sure whether he likes them or not. The doctor is a bachelor, isn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“Attractive, presentable … dominated by his sister. Is that so?”
“Well, not really dominated. They are very fond of each other, and she looks after him. She gives herself entirely to the task. She is a very strong-minded person. She would tell you what she thought ought to be done, and you’d find that she was right most of the time. She is very practical and really is a wonderful person.”
“And they are obviously great friends of yours.”
“Yes, very good friends.”
“As friendly as Lucian and myself, I suppose?”
“Yes, I suppose so. It’s difficult to make comparisons.”
“Lucian is a good man, you know. That marriage was so wrong. That sort of thing has an effect on people. Nothing would please me more than to see him happy. He ought to be. He has a great capacity for happiness.
But that wretched affair hangs over him. I’d like to see a complete break from the past. It is difficult, because there are always . consequences. “
“Do you mean Bridget?”
“Not so much Bridget. That woman in the nursery.”
“Jemima Cray.”
She nodded.
“While she’s here, we shall never be able to put the past behind us. She’s a constant reminder.”
“I understand that, but this is your house. I suppose if you told her to go, she would have to do so.”
“I would send her straight away and tell her to go, but Lucian won’t hear of it.”
“Why not?”
“Some promise she gave to Laura to stay. She holds that over us, though it isn’t mentioned often. I have said to Lucian, ” Laura is dead. We care for the child. Why do we have to keep that woman here?”
But he says it was Laura’s wish, so the creature stays. I don’t like her at all, but I suppose, because of this deathbed promise . “
“She is very fond of the child, and the child of her.”
“I don’t doubt that. All the same …” She put her hand over mine.
“I think, my dear, that between us, you and I might do something about all this. “
I was astonished, but she smiled at me serenely.
I knew then that, if Lucian asked me to marry him, I should have the whole-hearted approval of Lady Crompton.
I spent the next morning in her company, but she made no further reference to Lucian’s marriage. Instead she showed me some of the tapestry work which she did before it became such a strain on her eyes.
In the afternoon her rheumatism was very painful and, apologizing profusely, she told me she would have to retire to bed and rest. Could I amuse myself ?
I said I could quite happily, and decided to take a walk.
It was inevitable that my footsteps should turn towards Commonwood House. It was the first time since my visits to the Grange that I had been out alone. Had I been, I should probably have found the impulse to take another look at the house irresistible. Now was my chance.
There it was sad and derelict, yet so familiar. Mingling emotions rose in me at the sight of it.
Walk past it, I advised myself. What good will be achieved by going closer? It only saddened me. But when I approached, I found myself turning in at the gate. Just a quick look, I promised myself, and then I would hurry away.
I walked up the drive. I could scarcely see the house for the overgrown shrubs. It had that eerie look of old ruined houses. I could imagine that eyes watched me from the cracked windows. Eyes of those who had once lived there in the past-Mrs. Marline, Miss Carson, the poor, sad doctor.
Go back, I told myself. What point is there? But I went on.
I approached the door. I saw the broken hinge. I stopped myself from pushing the door open and instead walked round the house. I noticed the damp on the walls, the smudges of dust on the windows. I wondered to whom it belonged now? Henry? Why did he leave it like this? Where was Henry now? Lucian did not know. They had lost touch when Henry had gone to Aunt Florence with his sisters.
I was in the garden where Tom Yardley had found me under the azalea bush. It was withered now, smothered by the weeds. There was the spot where Tom Yardley used to wheel the chair. I looked back to the french windows of the room in which she had died.
It was too depressing. It was foolish of me to have come. What was I achieving by this?
I looked towards the woods and saw a column of smoke rising to the sky.
The gipsies, I thought. They must be there now.
My spirits lifted at the thought. I had to see if it was the same clan who had come before. I wanted to escape from this feeling of desolation which the house had cast upon me. I wanted to see the children playing round the caravans.
A hedge separated the garden from the edge of the wood. I remembered there had been a spot where I had scrambled through as a child. I found it. I did the same and walked through the trees until I came to the clearing.
There were the caravans. The children were playing on the grass: women were squatting around, chipping wood for their clothes pegs. Nothing had changed.
Could it really be that they were the same band? I had heard that gipsies returned to the same spots all over the country. If this were so, and I could see Rosie Perrin and Jake, it would be most interesting.
As I approached, I saw the caravan on the wheels of which sat a woman.
She looked remarkably like Rosie Perrin, but then there was a similarity among these gipsy women.
The children had noticed me. I knew that because of the silence which had fallen on them. They were watching me. The women looked up from their chipping.
Then a voice I remembered well cried out: “Well, if it isn’t Carmel come back to see us!”
I ran forward. The woman sitting on the steps was indeed Rosie Perrin.
She came down the steps and we stood smiling at each other.
“Where have you been, Carmel?” she said.
“To Australia,” I answered.
She gave that hearty laugh which I remembered so well.
“Come up. Come up, and tell me all about it.”
I followed her up the steps and into the caravan. It was just as I remembered it. She bade me sit down, her eyes gleaming with pleasure and excitement.
“You went away when the trouble started. I heard all about it. It was big trouble. Commonwood is a house haunted by tragedy.”
I told her about Toby who was my father and how we had gone to Australia.
She nodded.
“He did not want you mixed up in that. You, a child. And the other children went away too.”
I told her everything that had happened to me, that I knew that Zingara was my mother, and how I had come to visit the Grange.
“And you have been coming here ever since?” I asked.
She nodded.
“We have seen the house falling into decay. What good is it now? It is a ruin. Nobody will live there. It will fall right away into nothing.”
“Why? Why?”
“Because houses have lives of their own. Something happened there and the memory lives on. I feel it when I go near. Sometimes I look that way and a sighing comes to me.”
“Sighing?”
“It is in the wind … in the air. It is an unhappy house.”
“It is only bricks and mortar, Rosie.”