The Song of the Siren

I flushed a little. There was an implication in her words. I thought: Can she really mean what I think?

It seemed possible. I was indeed in love, and like all people in love I lived between ecstasy and apprehension.

I could not believe he could love me. He was so splendid, so worldly, so much older than I. I forgot Carlotta’s mockery. I was beginning to have a different opinion of myself and believe in myself. So when Elizabeth Pilkington said that I was so happy.

I knew my mother did not like Matt. She had a strange antipathy which I could not fathom. But my grandparents liked him-even my grandfather did, and he did not easily like people.

So we planned our charades.

My grandmother came over to Grasslands one day. She said all this talk about charades had revived memories. She remembered Harriet Main years ago acting in a chateau where they were all staying just before the Restoration. “You remember Harriet, Mistress Pilkington?” she asked.

“Not very well. I did a child’s part just at the time when she was thinking of leaving the stage. That was when she was going to be married.”

“Yes, she married into our family. Of course, you’re years younger than she is. It is wonderful how Harriet deceives us all into thinking she is still a young woman.”

“Is she still very beautiful?”

“Yes, she is,” said my grandmother. “She has that rare beauty which now and then appears. It is as though all the good fairies were at her christening. Your sister, Carlotta, has the same, Damaris.”

“Yes,” I agreed.

“We played Romeo and Juliet,” went on my grandmother, her eyes vague as she looked back into the past.

“We’ll content ourselves with charades,” said Elizabeth.

So we planned. And I was at Grasslands every day rehearsing under Elizabeth’s instructions.

Matt was no good as a performer and I loved him all the more for that. It put him in the same category as myself.

One day I was a little upset. I was in Elizabeth’s sewing room and as it was a warm day the window was wide open. I was on the window seat and Elizabeth was examining a dress which she was holding up.

The sound of voices floated up from below. I recognised that of Mary Rook.

“Well, it struck us as really strange like. He were so mad Now why should he want to keep everyone away so ... if it weren’t for what was there and what he do know to be there.”

My heart had begun to beat faster. I knew that Elizabeth was listening, although she was stroking the silk of the dress as though completely absorbed by it.

“Mark my words, there’s something there.”

“What do you think it be, Mary?”

“Well, I don’t rightly know. Jacob he thought it might be some sort of treasure, he did.”

I was very still. The impulse to move away came to me but I felt I had to listen to what they were saying.

“You see, them that used to live there ... they was took away suddenly. It were some plot. Well, Jacob says mayhap they hid “ something in that patch ... some treasure like and he do know it and wants it for himself.”

“Treasure, Mary ... !”

“Well, ‘tis something there, ain’t it? Must be. Why should he get so raving mad just because Jacob sets a trap. They be setting traps all through the woods ... they don’t matter there. Is just a trap.”

“But there be this ghost up at the house. ...”

“You’re asking me. I tell you there’s something in that patch he don’t want people to know about. .. .”

They had moved away from the window.

Elizabeth laughed.

“Servants’ gossip,” she said. “I think this dress would do for you, my dear. I wore it in one of my young girl roles.”

We were all excited about the charades. It was to be a sort of tableau to describe words. We should do it in a most elaborate fashion and there were to be two teams competing against each other.

Elizabeth would be in charge of the teams, and when she selected them she put Matt and me together. Our words were “cloak and dagger” and we were to illustrate these historically. The cloak was to be represented by the scene from Queen Elizabeth’s reign when Raleigh spread his cloak for Elizabeth to walk on and I was to be Elizabeth, Matt, Raleigh. I was to be dressed in a most elaborate Elizabethan costume and Matt’s would be equally authentic.

“I have to choose parts according to what I had in my trunk,” Elizabeth explained.

After the scene with the cloak I was to make a few changes to my costume and become Mary Queen of Scots. Matt was Rizzio and we would then enact the scene by mime of that supper in Holyrood House when Rizzio was murdered. That would represent the dagger.

The other team were to do theirs first. We should watch that and guess. But first there was to be a buffet supper.

It had been one of the lovely September days-golden days. I think all days were golden to me at that time for I was becoming more and more certain that Matt loved me. He could not have stayed here all this time, been with me so often and pretended to enjoy my company. Oh no, there was something in this. I had an idea that if I had not been so young he would have spoken of his intentions by now.