The Mask of the Enchantress (26 page)

hall I help you unpack?

h, I shall just drag something out of the bag and change now. Do you think the malevolent black woman could bring me some hot water?

l have it sent up.

ell her not to put a spell on it. She looks as though she brews them.

he quite benevolent really. It only if you offend them that you have to take care. Il have the hot water sent up and shall I come to you when dinner is ready?

hat would be lovely, little sister.

I went out of her room and it was some time later when I remembered that mail had come with the boat and that there was a letter from Laura waiting for me.

Even as I slit the envelope my thoughts were full of Susannah.

My dear Suewellyn [I read],

It has happened at last. The wedding is to be in September. This will fit in just right for the boat. You can arrive a week before and help with the preparations. It is so exciting. My mother wants a grand wedding. The boys pretend they don and it a lot of nonsense. But I think they are thrilled really.

I having a white gown made. The bridesmaidsdresses are going to be pale blue. You are to be a bridesmaid. I shall have the dresses made up to a point and all they will need is a quick fitting when you come. I am writing to Philip too. You can travel together. Oh, Suewellyn, I so happy. I beat you to the post, didn I?

I put the letter away. On the boat next call I should be ready to leave with it. Philip could come with me. It might be that Laura wedding would make him think that I was almost as grown up as his sister and that it was time I married too.

I was smiling to myself. It was all falling so naturally into placer had been.

I had a feeling that things might change now that Susannah had come.

They did. Her very presence changed the place. There was a great deal of excitement on the island because of her. The girls and women chattered together about her and giggled as we passed by. The men followed her with their eyes.

Susannah enjoyed their interest. She was clearly delighted to be on the island.

She was charming, affable and affectionate; and yet her presence had an effect on us which was the reverse of comforting I knew that she reminded Anabel of Jessamy and that disturbed her peace of mind. She was as conscious now of the wrong she had done Jessamy as she had been in the beginning.

y poor Mama,Susannah said, he was always so sad. Janetdo you remember Janet? Janet said she had no will to live. Janet was impatient. What done done,she used to say. o use crying over spilled milk.As if losing your husband and your best friend could be compared with knocking over the milk jug!Susannah laugh rang out as she recalled Janet and gave what I believe was a fair imitation of her. But, amusing as it might be, it brought back bitter memories to Anabel.

And my father? new doctor came to Mateland. People went on talking about you for years It was a nine dayswonder, wasn it? Poor Grandfather Egmont. He used to go about saying, Ie lost both my sons at a stroke.He made a great fuss of Esmond after a while and he invited Malcolm to stay more often. We wondered whether Malcolm would be the next in line of succession. We weren sure because Grandfather Egmont had always borne a grudge against Malcolm grandfather. He was always rather fond of me and some people thought I be the next if Esmond didn have children. He was always rather fond of girls liked them a lot better than he liked boys.She laughed. t a family trait in the males which has persisted through the centuries. He seemed to realize that girls might have other attributes than good looks and charm. He used to go round the estate with me and show me things and talk to me about it. He used to say there was nothing like having two strings to your bow. Garth used to call Esmond, Malcolm and me the Three Strings.

Somehow in her seemingly lighthearted conversation she found the spot where best to thrust the barb, and when it came there would be an expression of such innocence on her face that no one could believe that she was aware of what she was doing.

She showed a great interest in the hospital but somehow managed to belittle it. It was wonderful to have such a place on a desert island, she said. It could have been part of a real hospital, couldn it? They would have to train those black people to be nurses, she supposed. How very intriguing!

She made it all seem like a bit of play acting; and I noticed that there was a change in Philip now. He no longer had that exalted expression on his face when he talked about the work they were going to do.

I wondered whether even my father had begun to think of this project as a wild dream.

Anabel and I sat together in our favorite spot under the palm trees in the shadow of the Grumbling Giant, and as we looked over the pearly blue-green translucent sea and listened to the gentle breaking of the waves on the shore, Anabel said: wish Susannah hadn come.

I was silent. I could not really agree because Susannah excited me. Things had changed since she came and, although I knew they had not done so in the most comfortable manner, I was completely fascinated by my half sister.

suppose really,said Anabel, being unfair. It natural that she should bring back memories of things we would rather forget. One should not blame her. It just that she makes us blame ourselves.

I said: t so strange to me exciting in a way. Sometimes I feel I am looking at myself.

he resemblance is not all that marked. Your features are alike. I remember her as a little girl. She was mischievous. One doesn take much notice of that in children. Oh, as I say, I being unfair.

he is very pleasant to us all,I said. think she does want us to like her.

ome people are like that. They supposedly mean no harm and in fact do nothing one can point a finger to, but they act as a disturbance to others while seeming innocent of this. We have all changed subtly since she came.

I thought a good deal about that. It was true in a way. My mother had lost her exuberant good spirits; she was thinking a great deal about Jessamy, I knew. My father was living in the past too. It had been a terrible burden to carry, the death of his own brother. He would never need to be reminded of what he had done but he had begun to work out his salvation and he had dedicated himself to saving lives. And now his guilt sat heavily upon him. Moreover somehow the hospital had been belittled. It seemed like a childish game instead of a great endeavor.

Philip had changed too. I did not want to think about Philip. I had believed that he was beginning to love me. When I first went to the property as his sister friend I had been just a schoolgirl to him. We had enjoyed being together, had talked together and liked the same things. I had been entranced by everything I saw and he had enjoyed introducing me to the great outback. But he had had to get used to the idea that I was growing up. I thought he had when he came to the island. I had, perhaps conceitedly, thought that I was one of the reasons for his coming. My parents had thought so too. We had all been so happy and cozy. The nightmare of that fearful experience that my parents had undergone had receded, although it could never disappear altogether. Now of course it was right over them, brought by Susannah. She could hardly be blamed for that, except that she made it seem as though it had happened yesterday. But Philip? How had she changed him? The fact was that she had bemused him.

Cougabel said to me one day when she met me on the stairs, ake care of her, she spell maker and she make big spell for Phildo.

Phildo was Philip. He had been amused when he first heard it. It meant Philip the doctor.

Cougabel laid her hand on my arm and gave me an expressive glance from those limpid eyes of hers. ougabel watch for you,she said.

Ah, I thought, we are blood sisters again.

I was pleased, of course, to be on better terms with her, but disturbed by what she was hintinghe more so because I knew it was true.

It was natural that Philip should be attracted by Susannah. He had been attracted by me and Susannah was like me but in a more glittering package. The clothes she wore, the manner in which she spoke and walked they were alluring. I could imitate her very easily but I scorned to do this. All the same it was rather saddening to stand by and see Philip interest in me wane while it waxed for Susannah more sophisticated charms.

My mother was cool to him; so was my father. They must have discussed the change together and it was beginning to occur to them that Susannahithout doing anything but be perfectly charming to us allas spoiling our plans for the future.

She loved to be with me, and I was fascinated but a little repelled by her.

I felt I had been transported to that magic day when I had seen the castle and there had had my three wishes. There was no doubt that she was obsessed by the castle too. She described it to me in detail the inside, that is. The outside was imprinted on my memory forever.

t wonderful,she said, o belong to such a family. I used to like to sit in the great main hall and look up at that high vaulted roof and the lovely carvings of the minstrelsgallery and imagine my ancestors dancing. The Queen came once Queen Elizabeth, you know. It all in the records. The Tudor Matelands were ruined by her coming and had to sell some of the oaks in the park to meet the bills for entertaining her. Another ancestor planted more when he was rewarded after the Restoration for being loyal to Charles. You can see them all in the gallery. Oh yes, it is exciting to belong to such a family even though we have robbers, traitors and murderers among us. Oh, sorry. But you mustn really be so sensitive about Uncle David. He was not a very good man. Il bet you anything my father had a very good reason for fighting that duel. Besides, a duel is not a real murder. They both agree to fight and one wins, that all. Oh, I do wish you wouldn all look so glum when I mention Uncle David.

t been on our father conscience for years. How would you feel if you had killed your brother?

aving none, it difficult to say. But if I killed my half sister I should be very cross with myself, for to tell you the truth I like her more and more every day.

She could say charming things like that and then one believed she never meant to wound.

ncle David was a typical Mateland,she went on. n the old days he would have waylaid travelers and brought them to the castle and made sport with them. There was one who did that long ago in the dark, dark ages. Uncle David would have gone for the women fate worse than death and all that. Oh yes, he was very fond of the women. He had his mistresses right under Aunt Emerald nose. Mind you, she was an invalid, poor soul. And a very trying old lady she is too. As for Elizabeth but she dead now.

hat about Esmond?I asked.

Her expression changed. l tell you a secret, shall I, Suewellyn? I going to marry Esmond.

h, that wonderful.

ow do you know?

ell, if you love him and youe been brought up together

uite good reasons, but there is another. Shall I tell you what it is? You ought to guess. Can you? No, of course you can. Youe too good. Youe been brought up by sweet Anabel who was not too sweet to get a child by the husband of her best friend.

lease don talk about my mother like that.

sorry, sweet sister. But it was my mother who was her best friend and I was there when she found out. But youe right.

It not fair to speak of it now. It not really fair to judge anybody, is it? Only priggish people do that, for how can they know what drives people to act as they do, and how do we know what we should do in similar circumstances?

agree,I said.

hen you won judge me too harshly when I tell you I going to marry Esmond because he owns the castle.

nd you wouldn marry him if he didn?

o. It is purely because he owns the castle and I marry anyone who owned the castle. I should get it if Esmond died but as Esmond comes first I have to marry Esmond or kill himand marriage is much easier. There, now youe shocked. You think, She is selling herself for a pile of stones and talking about murder as though it is a natural way of life.

I was silent. I was thinking: If she is going to marry Esmond, she will go away and it will be as it was before. Philip and I will be together again.

But it wouldn be the same, of course.

ver since I was a child I was fascinated by the castle,she went on, for once not seeing that my attention had strayed from her affairs to my own. used to force myself to go down to the dungeons. I had the children over from the nearby manor house to play with me and I used to make them enter the undercroftand the crypt leads from there. You go down a few steps and it is dark and cold so cold, Suewellyn. It hard to imagine that cold here. And there are the vaults long-dead Matelands all lying in state in those magnificent tombs. One day I shall be there. I shan change my name when I marry. I shall never be anything but a Mateland. It very convenient Esmond being my cousin.

oes he know of your obsession with the castle?

o a certain extent. But, like all men, he is vain. He thinks he must be included in the obsession and that is something I have to let him believe.

ou sound very cynical, Susannah.

have to be realistic. Everybody does if they are going to get what they want.

hen are you going to marry Esmond?

hen I go back probably.

hen is that?

hen I have seen the world. I was in a finishing school in Paris for a year and when that was over I wanted to complete my education by seeing the world. I was going to do something like the Grand Tour. Then I discovered where my father was, so naturally I changed plans and came out here.

t was a breach of confidence for this man to tell you.

had to be very charming to him. I can if I want to.

ou seem to be quite effortlessly.

t seems so. That the art of it to let it appear effortless. But a lot of work goes into it, you know.

ometimes I think youe laughing at me laughing at us all.

t good to laugh, Suewellyn.

ut not at other people expense.

wouldn hurt you any of you. Why, I love you all. Youe my long-lost family.

Her eyes were mocking. I wished that I understood Susannah.