Gossamer Cord

While we were going round the shops I had an opportunity to ask Dorabella if she had told my mother yet about Dermot’s first marriage.

“Yes,” she said. “I told her this morning while we were waiting for you to come down.”

“What did she say?”

“She was surprised. Not shocked really. She just said, ‘Why didn’t he tell you?’ I said he didn’t really want to talk about it, and that we never mention it now. Dermot said he had been afraid to tell me in case it made some difference. He thought it might change my feelings for him, and I might not want to marry him. That’s what I told her.”

“She doesn’t think very much of it then?”

“Not all that much. She understands why he didn’t want to tell.”

“That’s all right, then.”

“I don’t think about it now. When I wrote to you it was fresh in my mind and then it seemed…important. Matilda has referred to it once or twice and she said she’s glad to see Dermot’s happy now.”

Later that day my mother came to my room, and I knew at once that she wanted to talk about Dermot’s first marriage.

“I was astounded when she told me,” she said. “You knew, of course. She said she had told you and bound you to secrecy. Well, it’s over, isn’t it…odd, he didn’t say he was a widower.”

“Perhaps he thought that sounded too mature. I think when they met in Germany he was very attracted to her and he wanted to be young and carefree, as she was, certainly not like a man who had been married.”

“People get these notions. He’s absolutely devoted to her. I was a little anxious because it was so rushed, but being here and seeing them together makes me feel better about it. I wish they weren’t so far away. Matilda is very efficient, and I think she is quite fond of Dorabella. She’s relieved that there is no interference with the running of the house which she might have got from some. So that side of it is all very amicable. I am not worried, really. We’ll keep an eye on Dorabella and, if I can get Nanny Crabtree in residence, that will be fine. Thank goodness we have a little time to get all this worked out.”

I was naturally hoping to see Jowan Jermyn again. I could remember every detail of that meeting with him from the time I was cautiously getting up from my fall to the moment we parted at the boundary of the two estates.

Starlight was still available and I had ridden her once or twice. I usually rode alone. It was early days yet, but Dermot was anxious that Dorabella should not ride. My mother was often in Matilda’s company, discussing nursery preparations; Dorabella would now and then feel tired and want to rest. So I found that it was not difficult for me to slip away on my own.

I went to the stables. The groom, whose name I had discovered was Tom Smart, said: “Good morning, Miss. I reckon you be looking for Starlight.”

He remembered that I had ridden the mare when she cast a shoe and I had had to take her to the blacksmith.

“She be in right good order this day, Miss,” he told me. “None of they there shoes coming off this time.”

“I hope not.”

“She remembers you well. That’s for certain sure. Her be pricking up her ears. Let her have a bit of a nuzzle and you’ll see.”

I followed his advice and it was clear that Starlight did remember me.

“I’ll have her saddled in a tick,” said Tom.

“Thank you.”

“ ’Tis a nice day for a ride,” he said as he waved me off.

It was a nice day for a ride. April, I had discovered, was a beautiful month in Cornwall. Spring comes a little earlier there than to the rest of the country; there were wild flowers in the hedgerows; the trees did not thrive near the coast but inland they were magnificent; the heavy rainfall made for luscious growth. Some trees, however, were battered by the force of gales which had twisted them into odd shapes, which a few quirks of the imagination could transform into something from Dante’s Inferno. A strange country, I thought. Sometimes it was warm and cosy, at others forbidding.

The screeching of the ever-present gulls sounded almost malignant, a warning mingling with the murmur of the sea.

I suppose I was being fanciful again. It was because I could not feel perfectly at ease at Tregarland’s.

I turned toward the Jermyn land. I would have no excuse for trespassing this time, yet I had an urge to retrace my footsteps and recall that incident in every detail.

It was foolish of me, but there was no one around so I took the turning which I had taken before and found my way to the field.

There was the spot where the tree had fallen. I rode up to it and inspected the gap where it had been. I looked at it for some moments, thinking of that fall and how I had extricated my foot from the stirrup as Jowan Jermyn had arrived.

I rode across the field, trying to remember which way we had walked to the blacksmith’s place. Once there, my trespassing would be at an end, because that would not be Jermyn land.