Once when she had dressed me up, she put her hands on my shoulders and kissed me. “Do you know, Damaris, I am growing very fond of you,” she said. “I know Matt is too.”
I flushed a little. There was an implication in her words. I thought: Can she really mean what I think?
It seemed possible. I was indeed in love, and like all people in love I lived between ecstasy and apprehension.
I could not believe he could love me. He was so splendid, so worldly, so much older than I. I forgot Carlotta’s mockery. I was beginning to have a different opinion of myself and believe in myself. So when Elizabeth Pilkington said that I was so happy.
I knew my mother did not like Matt. She had a strange antipathy which I could not fathom. But my grandparents liked him—even my grandfather did, and he did not easily like people.
So we planned our charades.
My grandmother came over to Grasslands one day. She said all this talk about charades had revived memories. She remembered Harriet Main years ago acting in a chateau where they were all staying just before the Restoration. “You remember Harriet, Mistress Pilkington?” she asked.
“Not very well. I did a child’s part just at the time when she was thinking of leaving the stage. That was when she was going to be married.”
“Yes, she married into our family. Of course, you’re years younger than she is. It is wonderful how Harriet deceives us all into thinking she is still a young woman.”
“Is she still very beautiful?”
“Yes, she is,” said my grandmother. “She has that rare beauty which now and then appears. It is as though all the good fairies were at her christening. Your sister, Carlotta, has the same, Damaris.”
“Yes,” I agreed.
“We played Romeo and Juliet,” went on my grandmother, her eyes vague as she looked back into the past.
“We’ll content ourselves with charades,” said Elizabeth.
So we planned. And I was at Grasslands every day rehearsing under Elizabeth’s instructions. Matt was no good as a performer and I loved him all the more for that. It put him in the same category as myself.
One day I was a little upset. I was in Elizabeth’s sewing room and as it was a warm day the window was wide open. I was on the window seat and Elizabeth was examining a dress which she was holding up.
The sound of voices floated up from below. I recognised that of Mary Rook.
“Well, it struck us as really strange like. He were so mad. Now why should he want to keep everyone away so … if it weren’t for what was there and what he do know to be there.”
My heart had begun to beat faster. I knew that Elizabeth was listening, although she was stroking the silk of the dress as though completely absorbed by it.
“Mark my words, there’s something there.”
“What do you think it be, Mary?”
“Well, I don’t rightly know. Jacob he thought it might be some sort of treasure, he did.”
I was very still. The impulse to move away came to me but I felt I had to listen to what they were saying.
“You see, them that used to live there … they was took away suddenly. It were some plot. Well, Jacob says mayhap they hid something in that patch … some treasure like and he do know it and wants it for himself.”
“Treasure, Mary …!”
“Well, ’tis something there, ain’t it? Must be. Why should he get so raving mad just because Jacob sets a trap. They be setting traps all through the woods … they don’t matter there. Is just a trap.”
“But there be this ghost up at the house. …”
“You’re asking me. I tell you there’s something in that patch he don’t want people to know about …”
They had moved away from the window.
Elizabeth laughed.
“Servants’ gossip,” she said. “I think this dress would do for you, my dear. I wore it in one of my young girl roles.”
We were all excited about the charades. It was to be a sort of tableau to describe words. We should do it in a most elaborate fashion and there were to be two teams competing against each other.
Elizabeth would be in charge of the teams, and when she selected them she put Matt and me together. Our words were “cloak and dagger” and we were to illustrate these historically. The cloak was to be represented by the scene from Queen Elizabeth’s reign when Raleigh spread his cloak for Elizabeth to walk on and I was to be Elizabeth, Matt, Raleigh. I was to be dressed in a most elaborate Elizabethan costume and Matt’s would be equally authentic.
“I have to choose parts according to what I had in my trunk,” Elizabeth explained.
After the scene with the cloak I was to make a few changes to my costume and become Mary Queen of Scots. Matt was Rizzio and we would then enact the scene by mime of that supper in Holyrood House when Rizzio was murdered. That would represent the dagger.
The other team were to do theirs first. We should watch that and guess. But first there was to be a buffet supper.
It had been one of the lovely September days—golden days. I think all days were golden to me at that time for I was becoming more and more certain that Matt loved me. He could not have stayed here all this time, been with me so often and pretended to enjoy my company. Oh no, there was something in this. I had an idea that if I had not been so young he would have spoken of his intentions by now.
That Elizabeth liked me, I was sure. She had taken to treating me as a daughter, so surely that was significant.
When I had arisen that morning the first thing I thought of was the party and the dress I would wear, which was most becoming. Elizabeth’s sewing woman had altered it to fit me and I could scarcely wait to play the part.
My mother said: “You’ve changed lately, Damaris. You’re growing up.”
“Well, it’s time I did,” I said. “You sound as though you don’t want me to.”
“Most mothers want to keep their children babies as long as possible.”
“And that,” I said, “is quite impossible.”
“A sad fact we all have to realise.” She put her arms about me and said: “Oh, Damaris, I do want you to be happy.”
“I am,” I said ecstatically. “I am.”
“I know,” she answered.
Then I started to tell her about my dress, which I must have described to her twenty times before, and she listened as though she was hearing it for the first time. She seemed reconciled. I hoped she was getting over that first unreasonable dislike of Matt.
It was warm when the sun rose and chased away the morning mists. The summer was nearly over. “In the autumn I shall have to go,” Matt had said.
The only sadness at that time was the thought that it could not last.
But before he goes he will speak to me, I thought. He must.
I was not quite fifteen. It was young but obviously not too young to be in love.
In the afternoon I went to Grasslands. I was going to wear the Elizabethan costume for the whole evening.
“We can’t get you all dressed up like that in five minutes,” said Elizabeth. “Besides, all those in the charades will wear their costumes.”
“It makes it like a fancy dress ball,” I said.
“Well, let us call it that,” she said.
She took great pleasure in dressing me, and how we laughed as she helped me to get into what was called the under propper, the purpose of which was to make my skirt stand out all round me. Then I put on—with Elizabeth’s help—the dress, which was magnificent in a way, though perhaps it would seem a little tawdry by daylight.
“It has been lying in a trunk for a long time,” said Elizabeth, “but it will look really fine in the light of the candles. No one will see where the velvet is scuffed and the jewels bits of glass. How slender you are. That is good. It makes it easier to wear.”