The Lady in Yellow: A Victorian Gothic Romance (14 page)

*

Twenty-Three

O
ctober came in quietly. Veronica ended her days with long solitary walks over the grounds. The autumn colors burned more brightly at twilight. Stunned by their beauty, she often stopped to pick up downed chestnuts, overblown rose petals, or the reddest of fallen leaves. Her heart was on fire, and she could do nothing to control it except to avoid chance encounters with Rafe de Grimston. When she saw him watching her from a downstairs window, her face flushed hotter still. If he disliked her so, then why did he look at her like that? His gaze was intense, yet soft, his mouth slightly smiling as if he admired her. She sensed he wanted to draw close, but if she moved to approach him, he instantly walked away, crushing her one more time.

It was hard to believe that his caring for her during her illness meant nothing to him, that her vulnerability, his presence in her room, the intimacy of their exchanges had meant nothing. She was nothing.

It was so obvious now. She had to laugh at herself. The grieving widower, Rafe, missing his beautiful wife, had temporarily transferred his affections to Veronica. Once she was better, he'd pulled away, blaming her yellow dress. Now, because she was young and inexperienced and subordinate to him, he was enjoying a game of cat and mouse at her expense.

Dashing her tears away, she picked up a fallen birch branch and, as she walked along, switched it over the ground so hard it whistled.

"Never, never, never, never," she muttered.

She would never make a fool of herself again, never give Rafe the chance to rebuff her again, and dash her feelings like cinders from the hearth.

And he was
so
inconsistent! Riding into the forecourt on his black charger, trotting right up to her, drinking her in with his soulful blue eyes, then coldly passing by, reminding her, dreadfully, that she was nothing more than a paid nobody in his employ. A staffer!

Of course, despite all evidence to the contrary, that horseman on the moor could not have been he.
No. Rafe had been in France.
So the story went.

It was truly horrible that he was becoming the center around which her consciousness revolved. When she wasn't in the classroom with the twins, she looked for him. Standing on her balcony, she caught herself scanning the grounds for him. Planning her classes, she'd lapse into listening for his voice. What should she do? This emotional fixation was the last thing she wanted. Her duty was to the twins.

She looked up at the moon and knew in her bones that Rafe was on the roof of the tower with his telescope aimed at the sky. It was the same feeling she had when she'd sensed he was in his study under the stairs with the door closed. Passing that way, she'd see the splinter of light along the threshold that told her it was true. What was he doing in there, locked away? Grieving for his wife? Lady Sovay, the beautiful and wealthy? Mad as she seemed,
Sovay
was special.

Going by the dates on her tomb, Veronica realized it was two and a half years since Sovay's passing. Not that long ago, yet it was surely long enough for a strong man like Rafe de Grimston to be over the worst stages of grief. Sadly, it seemed as if Sovay utterly possessed his heart, and had taken it with her to the grave.

Veronica threw the stick into the woods. Birds flew up from the bushes. Her eyes caught a flash of yellow in the trees above the wishing well, the brief impression of a face looking at her through the leaves.

It could have been a trick of the light, but Veronica's scalp bristled.
She walked firmly toward the house without looking back, and locked the French doors behind her.



For the next few days, Veronica taught classes in a kind of grey depression, reading aloud from her main textbook, directing the twins to repeat their Latin declensions like automatons. The sadness in their eyes betrayed how her dilemma, her fraught self-absorption, was weighing on their spirits. What was she doing to them? She must snap out of it.

“Jack, let’s go on an outing again. It was so much fun the last time. We should have an adventure before winter comes. I can only imagine how the winds must sweep a
cross the open moors come late November.”

“Oh, yes, terrible, horrible winds that howl like wolves and fill the eaves with glass daggers,” said Jacques.

Veronica smiled. She was getting used to the twins' frightful analogies, their gallows humor. "Where shall we go?”

“Saint Lupine’s?” Jacqueline asked.

Veronica shook her head. "No. Where else?”

“The village,” said Jacques. “You haven’t been to the shops, have you?”

“Now that’s a splendid idea,” Veronica said. “Let’s go to the village and distract ourselves with buying presents.”

“It’s almost All Hallows-een,” Jacqueline said. “We must make food for the dead.”

“All Hallows Eve? Do you celebrate that?” Veronica wasn’t sure she wanted to encourage pagan holidays.

“All Saints’ Day,” Jacques went on. “We light candles for the souls of our ancestors to guide them to Heaven, and give them food so they’ll think well of us and pray for us when they get there.” He cast a pointed look at Jacqueline who nodded in agreement.

“Well, I suppose there’s no harm in that,” Veronica said. “Let’s go tomorrow morning. I would like some fabric for a new dress. Perhaps some cakes to bring home. And something for Mrs. Twig and Janet.”

“And Papa!”

“Of course, though I have no idea what he would want.”  The very idea of buying Rafe a gift took Veronica's breath away. Better the children took charge of that.



The sun came up burning through a thick white fog, infusing the atmosphere with golden luminescence.

“How shall we see where we’re going, Miss Everly?” Jacques asked as Veronica helped him on with his coat. “You can’t even see the trees in this fog.”

“It will burn off, and the day will be quite fine,” Veronica said, pulling on her gloves.

“But it can be awfully misty out on the moors,” said Jacqueline, giving Veronica a meaningful look. “And darkness will fall very soon.”

“It won’t take us that long to go to and from the village, will it?”

“It depends,” said Jacqueline.

“She won’t get lost again,” said Jacques. “She’s with us now.”

Veronica laughed. “All the more reason to hurry.” She adjusted Jacqueline’s bonnet. “Now all we need are three large baskets to carry our bounty home, and we’ll be on our way.”

Twenty-Four

T
he fog was so heavy Veronica could hardly see the boundary wall. The tall, black wrought iron gate looked like it had been etched on a cloud. The railings were cold and wet to the touch. The hinges screeched as she pushed the gate open to a mist-filled lane. The children ran out mimicking the screeches of the gate then, giggling, vanished into the mist.

“Jack! Come back here. I can’t see you,” Veronica shouted. The worry that gripped her was awful. Was this what parents went through all the time? “Come here!”

Returning, the twins were so white they took shape in the fog like bright ghosts with strangely lit, green topaz eyes.

“Don’t do that again,” Veronica said, gripping their hands. “I couldn’t see you at all.”

“We’re very sorry, Miss Everly,” they said.

"Well, you'd better be." Veronica squeezed their hands playfully, though she meant every word.

The trees along the road to village looked like brown smudges, their bare branches floating overhead seemed to have been etched in sepia ink. As they went along, the mist cleared, but the air remained damp and chill. The last of the songbirds sang from the green shadows of the hedgerows. Passing the two standing stones that flanked the path to Saint Lupine’s, Veronica and the twins slowed, then stopped to look at them.

Jacqueline tugged Veronica’s hand. “Shall we go and light candles for Mamma? For All Souls’ een?”

Veronica wasn’t sure. In a way she wanted to go there again, if only to make sure that the chapel was real and not something out of a nightmare. Part of her would not have been surprised to go up that path and find an empty clearing.

She squeezed Jacqueline’s hand. “Let’s go to the village instead. Its still rather a long way.”

“Three miles,” said Jacques. “It's three and a quarter miles from our house to the village.”

“Well, we’d better get on then.”

As they headed down the slope into the now rag-bare trees, the fog gave way to cool, dappled sunlight. After about 90 minutes, they arrived at two stone pillars crowned with lichen-cover balls that marked the entrance to the village.

The cobbled High Street curved down between shops unchanged since medieval times, the jutting second story flats above them seeming ready to fall over into the road.

“There’s the baker’s.” Jacqueline pointed at a black-trimmed window in a timber-framed cottage where cakes and rolls were displayed on paper doilies. Veronica could smell the fragrance of warm buns and delicious cakes on the crisp air.

“We must go there and get something for Mrs. Twig,” she said. “But first, let’s explore.”

The sidewalks were so narrow and buckled they were forced to walk single file to stay on course. Veronica marked the haberdasher’s, the dress shop, a milliner’s, and a book shop before they came out into the square and the market cross. From there, cobbled streets rayed out in three directions, the forth being occupied by a soaring Gothic cathedral.

“It’s Church of England,” said Jacques. “Would you go there?”

“I’m not sure,” Veronica said. Still, she could not take her eyes off the lofty lines of the building, the sculpture of Christ at the Last Judgment on the tympanum, the pillars of angels and saints. The cathedral had been standing there for centuries, had been Catholic long before Henry VIII came along with his heresies.

“How about the antiques shop?” Jacqueline tugged Veronica's cloak, pointing the way.

“Yes, let's try that.” Veronica said.

Jacques was already running toward an oddly shaped building on the triangular corner occupying a Y in the road. Jacqueline followed him, laughing with delight.

Veronica stood in a ray of sunshine and closed her eyes. The fog had burned off, leaving the day warm and lovely. She allowed the heat to sink into her limbs and heal her heart. If only things would go back the way they were before her drunken escapade. Perhaps this day would mark a fresh start, and the shock of Rafe’s unexplained coldness toward her would dissolve like the fog.

A bell tinkled over the door as she entered the antiques shop, alerting a wizened old man who was shooing the twins away from the piles of books he had stacked on the floor. He looked up and crinkled his already wrinkled eyelids.

“Are these your children?”

“They’re in my charge. I’m very sorry if they’ve been upsetting you. They can be a bit excitable, but they are careful with things.”

“Look! Miss Everly!”

Jacques was pointing to a stuffed badger with fangs the size of straight razors.

“Miss Everly!” It was Jacqueline this time. “Come see the dolls.”

Indeed, there was miniature mansion filled with china dolls and bisque dolls and wooden dolls wearing clothes from the reign of Charles II, if they wore any clothes at all. Their myriad wide eyes and frozen limbs reminded Veronica of the girls at Saint Mary’s. Lack of love did that to people. Froze them like dolls.

The piercing shriek of a tin whistle sent the old man scurrying toward Jacques. “No, no, no, no, no!” he cried, putting his hands over his ears as if the noise would kill him.

“Miss Everly, may I have this penny whistle?” Jacques held up a narrow tube of silvery metal with a flat mouthpiece.

“I don’t know,” Veronica said. She went close to the old man who glared at her from under his bushy eyebrows. “I’m sorry, sir. I promise he’ll be careful.”

The old man rubbed his hands together and stared at Veronica like a hedgehog pleading with a fox.

“It’s bad luck to play that in here,” he said, pointing a gnarled finger at the tin whistle. “Take the boy out and that sheaf of music with him." A folio of sheet music lay at the Jacques's feet. "Full of fairy ballads it is, songs about meetings with the Good People, the Gentry.”

“What do you mean?” Veronica asked the man. “Jacques?”

The tin whistle screeched a melody vaguely recognizable as
Thomas the Rhymer
.

“Stop it! Stop it!” The old man raced at Jacques as fast as he could, with his hands in the air. “Stop it!”

"I'm so sorry..."

Cool as a china plate, Jacques held up the infernal instrument for Veronica to see.  “Can I have this, Miss Everly?”

Veronica was sure Mrs. Twig would not appreciate it.

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Jacques. You don’t know how to play.”

“I can learn,” he said.

“Why not let him have it, Miss? He’ll be playing tunes on it in no time, he will,” the old man begged. “It’s an easy instrument to learn.”

Veronica arched an eyebrow at him. “If you don’t want it, what makes you think we should?”

“You’re gentry yourselves, Miss. Already got an in with them.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. How much is it?”

“He can have it for a farthing and that sheaf of music too as long as he takes them out of here.” The old man held out his hand for the coin. Veronica opened her purse and fished out a farthing.

“Thank you, Miss Everly! Miss Everly, thank you!” Jacques whined an appreciative high note through penny whistle.

The old man shuffled closer to him. “Take it out of here right now, lad. Take it outside and I wouldn’t play it out there on the street either lest the neighbors complain.”

“May I have something as well?” Jacqueline called from behind a cabinet.

“All right,” Veronica said. “I’m coming over.”

Jacques stepped out onto the curb. Veronica smiled at the old man who looked about to pass out.

“We’ll be finished shortly,” she said, and slipped between pieces of old furniture to find Jacqueline.

The child was sitting in the midst of a pile of books, clutching a doll in her hands.

“See? She looks like Mamma.” Jacqueline held up a figure of painted wood with a pale blonde wig and a voluminous gown of yellow silk trimmed with metallic embroidery. The doll's face was serene, the eyes set with green glass.

The old man was edging toward them through the odds and ends of furniture. Soon his face appeared through a fan of peacock feathers at the top of a bureau. Veronica held up a finger to him.

"We'll only be a moment."

“I like this book as well,” Jacqueline said. “It’s got photos of children.”

As Jacqueline flipped through a thick, black leather album, Veronica leaned in for a look. They were portraits o
f children, in their Sunday best, posed in chairs and on sofas, one in its bed, another under the etched glass lid of a coffin.

“Jacqueline, there is something about you two that I shall never understand. The children in these tintypes are dead. Why are you drawn to such things?”

Jacqueline fell silent, gazing at Veronica with her green topaz eyes. There were great depths in those eyes; they contained knowledge of mysteries too harrowing for one so young.

“How much for the doll?” Veronica asked the old man.

“Tuppence,” he said. “That’s got a lot of history, that one. Some say it belonged to Lady Anne. Some say to Empress Josephine.”

“How would it get here, then?” Veronica asked.

“The highways and byways of old things. You never know where you’ll end up, do you?”

“No. I suppose not. Here are your two pennies. Are you happy with that, Jacqueline?”

“I love it. Thank you, Miss Everly. We need a present for Papa now.”

Veronica couldn’t imagine what Rafe would want. He seemed to have everything. She didn’t want to do the choosing. She looked around at all the musty old things, feeling a sneeze coming on.

“Would he like a book or something?” she asked Jacqueline.

“I have a lovely book,” said the old man. “Poetry by Browning and Burns and Tennyson, et al. With engravings by Rossetti. With children such as these, a man might like to lose himself in such a book.”

Veronica winced at the phrase
children such as these
as she watched the old man toddle over to a shelf and pull out a green volume with gilding on the spine.

“Morris and Company exclusive. All I ask is a mere 3 shillings. I know that’s quite a lot for a book, but I’ve given you bargains for the other bits.”

“All right.” Veronica paid the man. She could spare it. She hadn’t bought a thing since she’d received her first installment of wages. And it was a beautiful book. The engravings were mysterious, strange, and filled with a kind of numinous romance. She would love to be given such a book herself.

“Mr. Rossetti must be a remarkable man,” she whispered.

“Papa will adore it,” said Jacqueline. “You shall write your name in it.
To Mr. Rafe, All my regards, Miss Everly.

“Oh, you’re so silly, Jacqueline. That would be utterly inappropriate.”

The old man angled a knowing gaze at her. “De Grimstons, are you?”

Blushing, she knew not why, Veronica pressed three coins into the old man’s waiting hand. “Thank you, sir.”

“Thanks to you, Miss.” The shopkeeper held his hands over his heart as if Veronica had relieved him of a curse. “Its not every day one such as yourself comes in and makes a man feel alive again.”

Veronica paused on the doorstep. What was that all about?

They left the shop to find Jacques up on the High Street.  Sitting on the curb with a sheet of music on his lap, he was practicing his penny whistle. A few children were gathered around. When they saw Veronica coming, they ran away. Jacques stopped playing, and watching them go, blew a loud blast at their backs.

Jacqueline giggled. “Coward'y custards! Coward'y custards!” she shouted. “They’re frightened of the fairies, Jacques.”

Jacques stood up and bowed deeply with a sweep of his free hand. Jacqueline applauded.

Veronica had no idea what they were on about. “Now to the fabric shop, and then tea,” she said.

Jacques turned to Veronica and put the penny whistle to his lips. A low, mournful howl came through the pipe, as if breathed from his very soul.

“Stop! Stop!” Grimacing like the old man, Jacqueline put her hands over her ears and buried her face in Veronica’s skirt.

Veronica shot the grinning Jacques a stern look, and then bent over to comfort Jacqueline, who was crying.

“What on earth is the matter, Jacqueline?” she asked.

“Don’t tell her,” Jacques said to his sister, narrowing his eyes at her.

Jacqueline stopped crying. Glaring at her other half, she gripped Veronica’s hand and led her down the High Street toward the shops.

Whatever that drama was about, Veronica was not in the mood to inquire. The twins had their own bewildering means of communicating with one another, an unspoken code between them to shut others out on a whim. Veronica was sure the truth would emerge when they wanted it to. Most likely during lessons.



They left the village with baskets full of deep copper colored silk, blue poplin, and garnet worsted for Veronica’s new dresses,
no yellow
, the folio of sheet music, the poetry book, carefully wrapped in paper and tied with a silk ribbon, a bottle of cologne for Janet in pretty box, and some cakes and tarts for Mrs. Twig. Not realizing how heavy the baskets would become, Veronica had also spent extravagantly on beeswax candles, tinder, foodstuffs and staples they didn’t have at home or had run out of. As they labored up the incline toward home, Jacques played a quickly mastered Irish tune on the tin whistle, while Jacqueline danced with her new doll held up like a diminutive yellow parasol.