"From ail blindness 01 heart; rrom pride, vain-glory, ana hypocrisy, rrom envy hatred, and malice, and Irom all uncharitahle-ness, Good Lord, deliver us."
The exterior of the house might be dull and rather ugly, Kate thought, but the morning room was quite lovely, done in silver-green bamboo wallpaper, with pale green velvet drapes at the windows and a carpet of deeper green. On one table was a blue bowl filled with lemons, on another a collection of framed photographs, one of which Kate recognized with a start as her father as a boy of sixteen or so, stiff and solemn in a frock coat and an absurdly elegant top hat. Somehow the sight of the photograph made her connection to Bishop's Keep seem very real, and she realized with a start that until that moment the place had seemed imaginary, make-believe, like the setting in one of Beryl Bardwell's stories.
She stared at the photograph for a moment, feeling a wave of loss and grief for the father she had never had a chance to love. What had he been like as a boy? As a young man? How different might her life have been if he had lived to bring his wife and daughter home to England?
Home-the word had an odd ring to it, and she lifted her head to look around. Her father had grown up here, had run and played and laughed and cried in" these rooms, on the
lawns, in the woods. This place had been her father's home. Was it now to be hers?
"My dear niece Kathryn!" a huskily melodic voice exclaimed behind her. Kate turned. "How good it is to see you-and a full day early!"
The handsome older woman who seized both Kate's hands had warm gray eyes under heavy brows. A gracious smile lighted a face marked by intelligence and individuality, with fine lines of age etched about the eyes and mouth. She was dressed in a loose, lace-trimmed mauve gown with fluid sleeves. The color highlighted the silvery streaks in the soft wings of hair on her forehead, the loose coils on top of her head. She wore no jewelry except for an intriguing golden pendant in the shape of an Egyptian scarab.
"Hello, Miss Ardleigh," Kate said, liking her at once. "I hope it is no bother that I have come early. The ship docked sooner than expected."
With a last squeeze, the woman dropped Kate's hands. "Of course it is no bother. And please, call me Aunt Sabrina." She turned to the woman standing behind her. "This is my sister and also your aunt, Mrs. Bernice Jaggers."
Bernice Jaggers stood stolidly fastened to the floor, a lady of late middle age, her plump white hands clasped over her full black skirt, a sour, pinched look on her round face. She acknowledged Kate's greeting with a brief inclination of the head and the chilly instruction to address her as "Aunt Jaggers."
Smiling, Aunt Sabrina led Kate to a green damask settee. "Bernice and I are delighted that you have come."
Hardly, Kate thought, seeing the twist of Aunt Jaggers's narrow, thinly compressed lips. From the look of it, the woman bitterly resented either Kate or her sister's inviting their niece to Bishop's Keep-or life in general. Apprehensively wondering which it was and how her attitude would color their relations, Kate sat down.
Aunt Sabrina seated herself in one of the damask armchairs and leaned back in a comfortably casual pose, one that would not have been possible, Kate knew, if the sitter were stiffly corseted. "Now, my dear, tell us about your journey. I hope
you found enough of interest to distract you from its tribulations."
After a brief sketch of her railway travel and sea voyage (omitting the fertile intrigue that had enlarged the notebooks of Beryl Bardwell), Kate concluded by relating her encounter of Miss Marsden and her trip from Colchester with the Mars-dens and Sir Charles Sheridan.
"So you have made the acquaintance of some of our neighborhood aristocracy," Aunt Sabrina remarked, smiling. "Well, you will meet the rest of the family this evening. Only this morning, we received an invitation from Lady Henrietta to dinner tonight. I am certain she will wish you to join us."
Aunt Jaggers moved to a straight chair and sat on its edge, arranging her voluminous black skirts. She cast a steely-eyed gaze at Kate, then turned her attention to Aunt Sabrina.
"Please recall, sister," she said stiffly, "that Miss Ardleigh has not come to Bishop's Keep to participate in society. She is here to serve as your secretary and assist you with your…" She gave a loud sniff, as if she were rejecting a piece of spoiled fish. "Writings."
"Be that as it may," Aunt Sabrina said firmly. "If she is not too tired, I am sure she will be welcome at tonight's dinner."
"Thank you," Kate said sincerely. "I enjoyed meeting Miss Marsden and her brother. I should like to come." She glanced from Aunt Jaggers to Aunt Sabrina. Sisters they might be, but they did not look it. Aunt Sabrina, who bore some resemblance to the faded photograph of Kate's father, was at this moment toying with an escaping tendril of feathery hair. Her graceful posture, her tilted head and loose hair, her mobile and generous expression-to Kate these were the attributes of a woman who enjoyed an enviable ease of movement and freedom of mind. Aunt Jaggers, on the other hand, was straitly corseted and as tart as the lemons piled in the Delft bowl. In the look she darted at Aunt Sabrina was enough malice to make Kate shift uneasily in her chair.
Kate cleared her throat. Other thoughts pressed into her mind, and she had to speak them, the sooner and the more frankly, the better. "I am very grateful to you for asking me
to come to Bishop's Keep," she said to Aunt Sabrina. "Your invitation was a great surprise, as was the fact-if you will pardon me-of your existence. I had not known that any members of my father's family survived him."
Aunt Sabrina's eyes went to Kate's father's photograph, then back to Kate. Her face was somber, as if the thought of him were a long sadness. ' 'When my brother went to America, he expressed the wish to permanently dissociate himself from the family. Your grandfather, George Ardleigh, was quite willing to concur in his son's decision. He imposed his concurrence upon the rest of the family, including your grandmother Madeline, who was deeply grieved by Thomas's absence. No doubt both father and son had good reasons for wishing a permanent separation. But they took those reasons to their graves. When I made belated inquiries last year about your mother and discovered that she had borne a daughter, I felt it was not fair to impute to you your father's perhaps impulsive estrangement from his family." She fell silent for a moment, and when she spoke again, Kate felt the melancholy weight of her sadness. "I am sorry for your loss of both your parents, Kathryn. And I have come to view our estrangement as a great loss. I hope to remedy it."
Aunt Jaggers straightened her shoulders, her mouth pinched and parsimonious. "I must speak frankly, Niece Kathryn," she said. "My sister's sentiments are in no way to be attributed to me. It was my sad duty to counsel her against inviting into this house a young Irishwoman whose character is not directly known to us, who has been brought up in America." Her tone sharpened. ' 'It has frequently fallen to me to counsel my sister against various ill-conceived schemes, to no avail. It was no different this time. My counsel was ignored." Her dark eyes glittered like bits of chipped glass. "But I insist upon making my position clear."
Aunt Jaggers's ill will was so extraordinarily plain that it momentarily robbed Kate of speech. But Aunt Sabrina spoke for her, in an odd tone that was at once a rebuke and a conciliation.
"You have indeed made yourself clear, sister. But I trust that your opinions are not entirely fixed, and that you will
allow our brother's daughter to demonstrate her own character and abilities." The words were reasonable enough, but beneath them there was an undertone of anger held back, as if Aunt Sabrina wished to say more, but was reluctant, perhaps even fearful. What lay between the two sisters? Whatever it was, it made one angry, the other apprehensive, and each nettled with the other.
Kate felt it was time to ask the other questions that pressed on her mind. "I would like to know about my duties," she said to Aunt Sabrina, ' 'and why it was I whom you chose to be your secretary. You no doubt could have hired someone nearby and saved yourself the considerable expense of my travel, not to speak of the uncertainty of hiring someone sight unseen."
With a quick glance at her sister, Aunt Sabrina began to speak carefully, as if she were picking her way along a thorny path through a subject that had been the cause of considerable disharmony between them. But beneath the restrained words, Kate heard a note of unrestrained excitement and guessed that Aunt Sabrina was talking about something in which she had a passionate interest.
"I have recently been appointed historian of a particular… society. My responsibilities involve the writing of a history of the society and the keeping of a detailed and confidential record of… certain activities peculiar to the association."
Kate could have wished for greater specificity, especially where the curious "confidential record" and the tantalizing "certain activities" were concerned. But she contented herself for the moment with Aunt Sabrina's answer.
Aunt Jaggers, however, was not content. "You should tell this young woman that it is your intention to drag her into that spiritualist taradiddle of yours," she said snappishly. "That Order of whatever-it-is."
"The Order of the Golden Dawn," Aunt Sabrina said distinctly. Her fingers went, unconsciously, Kate thought, to the scarab pendant at her throat.
"Yes." Aunt Jaggers sniffed. "I am sure that when Niece Ardleigh is informed of your real purpose for hiring her, no
doubt she will refuse to be associated with your deviltry. Egyptian magic-blasphemy!"
Kate shifted, her interest suddenly heightened by these unexplained hints. In what sort of spiritualist taradiddle was Aunt Sabrina engaged? How had she become interested in Egyptian magic?
Aunt Sabrina ignored the intrusion and continued calmly. "This work, which I will explain in detail at a later time, is not especially onerous, nor will it encompass all your hours. But it does require intelligence, attention to detail, and a clear facility in writing, as well as a mature, judicious discretion." She smiled gravely. "These are virtues, Kathryn, in which I am told you excel."
Kate felt that she could meet Aunt Sabrina's qualifications without difficulty. But she had been given only part of an answer.
"Thank you for your confidence," she said. "But surely you might have discovered these virtues in any number of young women close at hand."
"Perhaps." Aunt Sabrina returned her direct look. "But you can operate a typewriter, and you read and write German. This combination would have proved most difficult to find, even in Colchester. Furthermore, I have begun to feel that it is important to become acquainted with you, Kathryn. While the work you will do is certainly important to me, it is your person in which I have the greater interest."
"I see," Kate said, more softly. Aunt Sabrina's eyes had saddened and her gaze had gone to her brother's photograph. For a moment there was silence, as Kate reflected on the fact that the sins of the fathers could often be visited upon the daughters as well. Perhaps Aunt Sabrina hoped to make up to her niece and herself what George and Thomas Ardleigh had denied them both. Watching the older woman, something in her warmed and she was glad she had come-not for the sake of Beryl BardwelFs grand adventure, but because, in some way Kate did not quite understand, she felt that Aunt Sabrina had called her home.
Aunt Jaggers broke the silence. "Your emphasis, Sabrina, may be upon the…" She coughed. "Familial relationship.
As I am responsible for the household, mine must rest upon practical matters. The matter of employment, for instance." She turned to Kate. "You will talk with me soon about what is expected of you during your stay here, however short or long it may be. For the moment, I will simply say that we keep the Sabbath strictly, and that I expect daily attendance at prayers and weekly at chapel. At chapel," she repeated meaningfully. "And, not least, novel reading is not permitted of the servants."
Aunt Sabrina spoke quietly, but though her rebuke was muted, her anger was plain in her short reply. "I hardly think your belowstairs regimen should affect Kathryn's reading habits, Bernice. And her religious practices are a concern proper only to God and herself." She turned to Kate. "You and I can continue our discussion of your duties in the morning."
Kate nodded, glancing from one to the other. She could read in their faces the concealed truth of the relationship: that Aunt Jaggers hated her sister and that Aunt Sabrina both disliked and feared Aunt Jaggers. It was an obviously complex and painful situation in which the two women found themselves entangled, Kate thought, and then stopped herself, with an unexpected flash of consternation.
Whatever the source of Aunt Jaggers's malice, she was now entangled in it too, and blindly, for she did not understand it. She would have to be on her guard not to offend- something to which she was not temperamentally inclined! And she would have to take special care to safeguard the secret of Beryl Bardwell's existence. Kate could imagine the fracas should Aunt Jaggers learn that not only did she read novels, she wrote penny-dreadfuls-and the most luridly sensational kind!
Aunt Sabrina glanced up as a butler in a dark morning coat and formal trousers sailed into the room at the helm of a large, heavily laden tea cart, a gleaming silver urn like a figurehead at its prow. He was followed by the brown-haired, brown-eyed maid who had shown Kate in.
"Ah, our tea has arrived," Aunt Sabrina said with some
relief, as the cart was rolled into place at the end of the sideboard.
Mudd-rather younger than Kate would have expected of a butler, and more dandified, with carefully trimmed side-whiskers and a modish tie-filled a bone china cup and brought it to Kate. When tea had been served, Mudd and Amelia retired to a corner of the room, where they stood invisibly at attention, blank as pie, fixed as furniture.
They were not, however, invisible to Kate, and behind the curtain of their bland impassivity, she sensed a silent scrutiny, a furtive watching, tinged with-what? Kate was sure that some deep passion lay behind the hooded eyes of the brown-haired Amelia, when she handed the tea tray round again. And while Mudd's face was immobile, the working of his mouth betrayed an intense emotion; what it was Kate could not tell. She sat back, intrigued.
Such currents and crosscurrents of powerful feeling flowing between sister and sister! Such secret passions hidden behind the inscrutable faces of the servants! Beryl Bardwell would not have to leave this house for raw material-indeed, for the rawest, the deepest, the strongest of human emotions.
Then suddenly, Kate felt cold. The muted violence, the envy, hatred, and malice that she sensed in this room was not the stuff of novels. It was quite real. And because it was real, it had the power to wound, to maim, even to kill.
Kate shivered.