A Dream from the Night Page 7

  She thought in a panic that there was nowhere she could hide! Then she told herself that she must be sensible and keep her head.

  Yet instinctively she looked over her shoulder, as if she expected more notes to be lying just inside the door.

  ‘I am being absurd,’ she told herself beneath her breath. ‘One thing is certain, he will be conceited enough to assume that I will obey his instruction and meet him in the library. For the moment I am safe!’

  She had a sudden longing for fresh air and for exercise.

  She had been cooped up all the afternoon working in the Duchesse’s room and she had spent the morning going round the house with Mrs. Kingston.

  Always at home she had walked in the garden and over the fields surrounding The Manor.

  When her father was alive, they had ridden together every day. And when her mother could no longer afford to keep horses, the local farmers, if they were busy, would sometimes ask her to exercise their animals on which they followed the local hunt.

  ‘I must go for a walk,’ Olinda decided.

  She felt as if the rooms she had been allotted in the house were becoming a prison with Mr. Hanson lurking outside them.

  Cautiously she unlocked the door.

  The corridor outside was empty and she walked in the direction away from the green baize door that led to the State apartments.

  She found after a little while, as she had expected, the secondary staircase going down to the ground floor.

  She guessed from the layout of the house that the passage on the ground floor led to the kitchen quarters and, by taking her bearings intelligently, she soon found a door that opened into the garden.

  The key was in the lock and, letting herself out, she locked the door on the outside and put the key in the pocket of her gown.

  ‘Now I shall be able to get in,’ she thought, ‘without anyone being aware that I have left the house.’

  Outside it was that wonderful moment of dusk after the last glow of the sun has disappeared below the horizon. The sky was translucent and the stars were coming out one by one.

  The moon was new and, because she wanted good luck, Olinda, once she was away from the house and in the shelter of the bushes, bowed to it seven times.

  “Bring me luck,” she begged with her face turned up to the sky, “that I may earn enough money for Mama.”

  It was not only the money she wanted. She knew if she was honest that she wanted to stay in this fabulous house with its wonderful treasures and absorb some of its atmosphere and history.

  ‘There is so much it can teach me, so much I can learn,’ she mused.

  She thought of the library with its thousands of books.

  ‘He shall not turn me away!’ she added firmly. ‘I will not let him!’

  She knew that ultimately the decision did not rest with her but with the Dowager Countess. If her Ladyship even had a suspicion of what was happening –

  Olinda drew in her breath.

  Keeping out of sight of the windows, she wandered through yew hedges surmounted by topiary work, through a herb garden surrounded by Tudor walls of warm red bricks and into a lily garden.

  The fountains had been turned off and were no longer playing, but the goldfish were swimming lazily beneath the waxen blossoms and their flat leaves.

  A small wrought-iron gate showed Olinda a path leading through an orchard of fruit trees, which had shed their blossom, to where in the distance she could see the lake.

  She had realised from the house that the lake was very big and very long.

  As she drew nearer to it, she could see that the walled gardens and great clusters of trees made the house almost invisible from this part of the silver water.

  It was then she saw just in front of her a white building and for a moment wondered what it was.

  She discovered that it was a small Grecian Temple built on a small island in the centre of the lake and connected to the mainland by an exquisitely designed Chinese bridge.

  The bridge must have been erected, she thought, following the lead of George IV who, when he was Prince of Wales, had made Chinese architecture and Chinese furniture fashionable by building his Pavilion at Brighton.

  Its elegance and balance delighted her as she walked across it, feeling as if she was stepping into a fantasy that was accentuated by the perfect symmetry of the Greek Temple.

  She guessed that it must have been brought from Greece by one of the Earls of Kelvedon on a voyage abroad and re-erected here.

  Perhaps it was at a time when so many of the Nobility, like Lord Elgin and Sir William Hamilton, were collecting spoils from the Greeks who were too indifferent to their treasures to prevent their being acquired by Noblemen with a love of the antique.

  She walked round to the front of the Temple and found a small terrace.

  From here there was a perfect view of the lake stretching away into the distance where she could just see the Adam bridge.

  There was also a view of the house that made it from this angle seem even more like a Fairy Palace than it had when Olinda had driven down the drive.

  She looked at the Temple and saw inside it there was a statue of two cupids entwined. It was too dark to see clearly, but she thought that they must symbolise love.

  She glanced up at the sky.

  ‘I will wait until the moon rises higher,’ she told herself, ‘and then I will see it as it must have looked all those ages ago in Greece.’

  On the terrace there was a wooden seat and she sat down realising that it had been placed at exactly the right angle from which to view the lake and the house silhouetted against the starlit sky.

  It was all so lovely, so unbelievably beautiful, that Olinda forgot everything that had been frightening her and found herself swept away into one of her imaginative fantasies.

  She thought of Hortense de Mazarin arriving at Kelvedon House with Charles II beside her, both of them ecstatically in love and knowing that here in the country they could be closely together, free from the stiffness and protocol of the Court at Westminster.

  The Greek Temple would not have been here then, but perhaps they walked down to the lake hand in hand and saw themselves reflected in the still surface.

  Each would have looked not at their own image but at the face in the water of the one they loved.

  Then at night in the darkness of the great canopied bed they had been no longer King and a Duchesse, but a man and woman, whispering their love in a special Heaven of their own.

  Olinda thrilled with the vividness of her own imagination.

  Then quite suddenly she realised that she was no longer alone on the terrace.

  While she was lost in her fantasy, her eyes fixed on the great house in the distance, someone else had crossed the Chinese bridge.

  A man was now standing against the balustrade looking as she had done over the long stretch of water.

  She felt her heart give a frightened thump, then reassured that it was not the man she feared it might be but the Earl.

  There was no mistaking the darkness of his hair, the breadth of his shoulders and the shape of his head as she had seen it when he stood with his back to her looking out of the window in the Duchesse’s room.

  She did not move, she could only hold her breath, until, as if once again he was aware of her presence, he turned to look at her.

  Now the starlight and the first faint rays of the crescent moon touched the softness of her hair and revealed her wide eyes in her pointed face.

  For a moment he stared at her incredulously.

  Then he smiled.

  “Miss Selwyn!” he exclaimed. “You turn up in the most unexpected places.”

  “I am – sorry,” Olinda said nervously. “I did not – realise that this place was – private.”

  “It is not,” the Earl answered, “but I thought no one ever wished to come here except myself.”

  “I found it by accident,” Olinda explained. “I went for a walk, saw the bridge – and the Tem
ple looked so beautiful.”

  She paused and he added,

  “So you could not resist exploring.”

  “I have never seen anything so exquisite,” Olinda answered, “and I was imagining how it must have looked when it stood in Greece.”

  She realised that her voice vibrated a little with the feelings it evoked in her and she added quickly,

  “I will go now. I am – sorry to have – disturbed your Lordship.”

  “As you were here first,” the Earl replied, “the truth is that I have disturbed you.”

  He sat down on the seat beside her as he continued,

  “Surely for a moment we can share both the Temple and the view of the lake.”

  “That is wonderful too,” Olinda said. “I was thinking – ”

  She stopped herself, realising that it could not possibly interest him to know what she was thinking.

  But he said after a short pause,

  “I am waiting to hear the end of that sentence.”

  “I – was thinking,” Olinda answered, “of the Duchesse de Mazarin arriving at Kelvedon with Charles II and how happy they must have been.”

  “Happy?” the Earl questioned. “It depends, of course, on what you mean by happiness.”

  There was a sneer in his voice that was unmistakable.

  “From what I have read about them at that particular time they were happy because they were genuinely in love,” Olinda said quietly.

  “How can you know that?”

  “The Duchesse presented to your ancestor the curtains I am working on because she had been so happy – at Kelvedon.”

  “And in that bed!”

  Olinda blushed.

  “I want to believe,” she said hesitatingly, “that the Duchesse at least for a little while gave the King what he had always sought all through his life.”

  “And what was that?” the Earl asked, almost as if he challenged her.

  “Love,” Olinda said simply. “The real love which had always eluded him and which yet he had continued to look for.”

  “Do you really believe that?” the Earl enquired. “Charles II, a roué, a rake, a man who seduced every pretty woman at Court! I cannot believe, Miss Selwyn, that you call that love!”

  The Earl was speaking with a violence that told her that his own experience was involved in what he was saying.

  Then suddenly she had a very strong desire to explain to him what she felt – to make him understand what she had imagined about the Duchesse de Mazarin.

  She clasped her fingers together and looked up at the stars as if they might give her inspiration. She did not realise that the Earl was watching her profile etched against the white pillars of the Temple behind her.

  However, she knew he was waiting and after a moment she said a little hesitatingly,

  “I – have often – thought that true love is like the Holy Grail, which all men seek in their – souls.”

  “And none finds!” the Earl said harshly.

  “That is not true,” Olinda contradicted. “Many people have found it for a little while, but they have been unable to hold onto it. Perhaps that is what makes it so precious and which impels us to continue to search.”

  “What do you mean by that?” he asked.

  “My father said once,” Olinda answered dreamily, “that our ultimate ambitions should always be almost out of reach and that we must never quite attain them. If we did, then the whole drive and purpose of our life would come to an end.”

  She paused and, as the Earl did not speak, she continued,

  “There must always be more to achieve, to conquer. Another mountain to climb, another horizon to seek, another guiding star twinkling overhead.”

  “You think it is possible to remain so optimistic, having failed again and again?”

  “If we have brains and intelligence, we can never be satisfied since we seek perfection.”

  The Earl was silent.

  Then he said, the mocking note again in his voice,

  “You began by speaking of love. Surely you cannot expect such persistence of that illusory emotion!”

  “I think love is Divine,” Olinda replied, “and everything within ourselves, which is a part of that Divinity craves for love, searches for it and yearns for it.”

  “Always to be disillusioned,” the Earl remarked and there was the same expression on his face that she had seen in the bedroom.

  “Sometimes,” Olinda corrected, “but that need not prevent us from trying again. That is what is so wonderful about love – it never comes to a full stop! There is always tomorrow, there is always another chance, it is never really too late.”

  “Who taught you these things?” the Earl asked sharply.

  “My father died when I was fifteen,” Olinda replied, “but we talked together about life. He loved beauty as perhaps other men might love – a woman.”

  “That is what I was thinking – ” the Earl began and then stopped.

  For the first time Olinda turned to look at him, waiting for the end of his sentence.

  “How can I be talking to you like this?” he asked in a different tone. “We had not met until only a few hours ago.”

  Olinda felt as if he had suddenly struck a blow at her and the colour rose in her cheeks.

  “I – am – sorry,” she said humbly, “it was – very impertinent of me. I must go back to the house.”

  She would have risen to her feet, but the Earl put out his hand quickly and caught her wrist.

  “No please,” he said, “I did not mean it like that. It sounded rough and rude, but it was only because you surprised me.”

  Olinda still sat at the edge of the seat and his hand was still on her wrist.

  “Stay with me, please stay with me,” the Earl pleaded, “I need desperately to have someone to talk to and it is only because you frightened me that I spoke as I did just now.”

  “I – frightened you?” Olinda questioned in surprise.

  “Because you are here. Because you are different from anyone I have met before. Because when I first saw you I thought you were a nymph that had stepped down from the tapestry.”

  He gave a little sigh.

  “I still think that you are not real and that at any moment you may vanish into the lake and I will never see you again.”

  Olinda did not reply and his fingers tightened on her wrist.

  “Are you real?” he asked very softly.

  “I – am – not sure,” she murmured.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Earl gave a little laugh.

  Then he recited,

  “A dream from the darkness of the night,

  A dream from the stars and the gentle light

  Of a crescent moon. An illusion!

  A mirage false and a lie,

  There is nothing in life but a death to die.”

  His voice seemed to vibrate across the water.

  “I think it is being hurt that makes you feel like that,” Olinda said gently.

  “That is why I come here to delude myself,” he answered. “Until now I have always been alone.”

  “I am – sorry that I have – intruded in such a – private place,” Olinda stammered.

  “You know I don’t mean that,” he said quickly. “I feel it is right that you should be here – a dream I never expected.”

  She looked away across the lake and now the stars were reflected in the still water. The moon was growing a little stronger in the darkness of the sky and the twilight had vanished into the night.

  “You were telling me about love,” the Earl asked.

  “It was – presumptuous of me.”

  “I am waiting to hear more.”

  She felt that, from being someone almost disembodied to whom she could speak almost as if she was speaking to herself, he had suddenly come nearer and become a person.

  After a few moments silence, the Earl said insistently,

  “I want to hear what you think. You are in rather a unique
position. You are a stranger and yet in the possession of intimacies that no stranger would know.”

  “I should have come out from behind the bed as soon as you entered the room,” Olinda said unhappily.

  “I can well understand that would have been very embarrassing.”

  Again there was silence until the Earl suggested,

  “Perhaps as a stranger and someone who would therefore not take sides, you could give me an unbiased opinion.”

  Olinda turned her face to look at him in astonishment. She could hardly believe that he was asking such a thing of her.

  She could see his profile as he looked down the lake and she knew that his voice was undoubtedly serious and that he was asking her for the truth.

  “You might think anything I say was an – impertinence,” she faltered after a moment.

  “Shall we say, tonight at any rate, that whatever we say to each other here in this secret place, we may give ourselves the freedom of the Gods to say what we will and to expect no other response but gratitude.”

  “Which the Gods seldom receive,” Olinda smiled.

  “That is true,” the Earl agreed, “but, as far as I am concerned, I will listen to what you have to say believing that it is a voice from Olympus and for the moment indisputable.”

  Olinda raised her eyes from the lake to look at the house.

  Now many of the windows were gleaming gold and the moonlight just touched the cupolas making them shine in the darkness.

  “It is so beautiful,” she said softly. “You should find happiness here.”

  “I have tried,” the Earl answered. “But the happiness I knew as a child could not stand up against disillusionment and the destruction of everything I revered and believed in.”

  The change in his voice was unmistakable and she knew that he spoke of his mother.

  “I can understand how much it must have hurt you when you were young,” she said.

  “It crucified me,” the Earl said almost savagely. “As it crucifies me now. She is my mother and the wife of my father. How can she behave in such a manner?”

  Olinda thought that he would have said more. But he bit back the words as if he sought to control the violence of his feelings.

  After a moment she said,