shelidonJanuary 6, 2025Leave a Comment

This is another story by the vastly underrated author known as H.D. Everett, born Henrietta Dorothy Huskisson, which I discovered while collecting stories for the Advent Calendar.. It’s included in The Death-Mask and Other Ghosts, and it’s perfect for a merfolk Monday. The story comes in parts.

We were disappointed when Robert married. We had for long wanted him to marry, as he is our only brother and head of the family since my father died, as well as of the business firm; but we should have liked his wife to be a different sort of person. We, his sisters, could have chosen much better for him than he did for himself. Indeed we had our eye on just the right girl—bright-tempered and sensibly brought up, who would not have said No: of that I am assured, had Robert on his side shown signs of liking. But he took a holiday abroad the spring of 1912, and the next thing we heard was that he had made up his mind to marry Frederica. Frederica, indeed! We Larcombs have been plain Susans and Annes and Marys and Elizabeths for generations (I am Mary), and the fantastic name was an annoyance. The wedding took place at Mentone in a great hurry, because the stepmother was marrying again, and Frederica was unhappy. Was not that weak of Robert?—he did not give himself time to think. We may perhaps take that as some excuse for a departure from Larcomb traditions: on consideration, the match would very likely have been broken off.

Frederica had some money of her own, though not much: all the Larcomb brides have had money up to now. And her dead father was a General and a K.C.B., which did not look amiss in the announcement; but there our satisfaction ended. He brought her to make our acquaintance three weeks after the marriage, a delicate little shrinking thing well matched to her fanciful name, and desperately afraid of mother and of us girls, so the introductory visit was hardly a success. Then Robert took her off to London, and when the baby was born—a son, but too weakly to live beyond a day or two—she had a severe illness, and was slow in recovering strength. And there is little doubt that by this time he was conscious of having made a mistake.

I used to be his favourite sister, being next to him in age, and when he found himself in a difficulty at Roscawen he appealed to me. Roscawen was a moor Robert had lately rented on the Scotch side of the Border, and we were given to understand that a bracing air, and the complete change of scene, were expected to benefit Frederica, who was pleased by the arrangement. So his letter took me by surprise.

“Dear Mary,” he wrote, and, characteristically, he did not beat about the bush. “Pack up your things as soon as you get this, and come off here the day after to-morrow. You will have to travel via York, and I will meet you at Draycott Halt, where the afternoon train stops by signal. Freda is a bit nervous, and doesn’t like staying alone here, so I am in a fix. I want you to keep her company the weeks I am at Shepstow. I know you’ll do as much as this for—Your affectionate brother, Robert Larcomb.”

This abrupt call upon me, making sure of response and help, recalled bygone times when we were much to each other, and Frederica still in the unknown. A bit nervous, was she, and Robert in a fix because of it: here again was evidence of the mistake. It was not very easy then to break off from work, and for an indefinite time; but I resolved to satisfy the family curiosity, to say nothing of my own, by doing as I was bid.

When I got out of the train at Draycott Halt, Robert was waiting for me with his car. My luggage was put in at the back, and I mounted to the seat beside him; and again it reminded me of old times, for he seemed genuinely pleased to see me.

“Good girl,” he said, “to make no fuss, and come at once.”

“We Larcombs are not apt to fuss, are we?”—and as I said this, it occurred to me that probably he was in these days well acquainted with fuss—Frederica’s fuss. Then I asked: “What is the matter?”

I only had a sideways glimpse of him as he answered, for he was busy with the driving-gear.

“Why, I told you, didn’t I, that it was arranged for me to be here and at Shepstow week and week about, Falkner and I together, for it is better than taking either moor with a single gun. And I can’t take Freda there, for the Shepstow cottage has no accommodation for a lady—only the one room that Falkner and I share. Freda is nervous, poor girl, since her illness, and somehow she has taken a dislike to Roscawen. It is nothing but a fancy, of course, but something had to be done.”

“Why, you wrote to mother that you had both fallen in love with the place, and thought it quite ideal.”

“Oh, the place is right enough, it is just my poor girl’s fancy. She’ll tell you I daresay, but don’t let her dwell on it more than you can help. You will have Falkner’s room, and the week he is over here I’ve arranged for Vickers to put him up, though I daresay he will come in to meals. Vickers?—oh, he’s a neighbour on the opposite side of the water, Roscawen Water, the stream that overflows from the lake in the hills. He’s a doctor of science as well as medicine, and has written some awfully clever books. I understand he’s at work on another, and comes here for the sake of quiet. But he’s a very good sort though not a sportsman, does not mind taking in Falkner, and he is by way of being a friend of Freda’s—they read Italian together. No, he isn’t married, neither is the parson, worse luck; and there isn’t another woman of her own sort within miles. It’s desperately lonely for her, I allow, when I’m not here. So there was no help for it. I was bound to send for you or for the mater, and I thought you would be best!”

We were passing through wild scenery of barren broken hills, following the course of the river up-stream. It came racing down a rocky course, full and turbulent from recent rains. Presently the road divided, crossing a narrow bridge; and there we came in sight of the leap the water makes over a shelf of rock, plunging into a deep pool below with a swirl of foam and spray. I would have liked to linger and look, but the car carried us forward quickly, allowing only a glimpse in passing. And, directly after, Robert called my attention to a stone-built small house high up on the hill-side—a bare place it looked, flanked by a clump of firs, but with no surrounding garden-ground; the wild moor and the heather came close under the windows.

“That’s Roscawen,” he said. “Just a shooting-box, you see. A new-built place, raw, with no history behind it later than yesterday. I was in treaty for Corby seventeenth century that was, with a ghost in the gallery, but the arrangement fell through. And I’m jolly glad it did”—and here he laughed; an uncomfortable laugh, not of the Larcomb sort, or like himself. And in another minute we were at the door.

Freda welcomed me, and I thought her improved; she was indeed pretty—as pretty as such a frail little thing could be, who looked as if a puff of wind would blow her away. She was very well dressed—of course Robert would take care of that—and her one thought appeared to be of him. She was constantly turning to him with appeal of one sort or another, and seemed nervous and ill at ease when he was out of her sight. “Must you really go to-morrow?” I caught her whisper later, and heard his answer: “Needs must, but you will not mind now you have Mary.” I could plainly see that she did mind, and that my companionship was no fair exchange for the loss of his. But was not all this exaction the very way to tire out love?

The ground-floor of the house was divided into a sitting-hall, upon which the front door opened without division, and to the right you entered a fair-sized dining-room. Each of these apartments had the offshoot of a smaller room, one being Freda’s snuggery, and the other the gun-room where the gentlemen smoked. Above there were two good bedrooms, a dressing-room and a bathroom, but no higher floor: the gable-space was not utilised, and the servants slept over the kitchen at the back. The room allotted to me, from which Captain Falkner had been ejected, had a wide window and a pleasant aspect. As I was hurriedly dressing for dinner, I could hear the murmur of the river close at hand, but the actual water was not visible, as it flowed too far below the overhanging bank.

I could not see the flowing water, but as I glanced from the window, a wreath of white mist or spray floated up from it, stretched itself out before the wind, and disappeared after the fashion of a puff of steam. Probably there was at that point another fall (so I thought) churning the river into foam. But I had no time to waste in speculation, for we Larcombs adhere to the good ways of punctuality. I fastened a final hook and eye, and ran downstairs.

Captain Falkner came to dinner and made a fourth at table, but the fifth place which had been laid remained vacant. The two men were full of plans for the morrow, and there was to be an early setting out: Shepstow, the other moor, was some thirty miles away.

“I am afraid you will be dull, Mary,” Robert said to me in a sort of apology. “I am forced to keep the car at Shepstow, as I am my own chauffeur. But you and Freda will have her cart to jog about in, so you will be able to look round the nearer country while I am away. You will have to put up with the old mare. I know you like spirit in a horse, but this quiet gee suits Freda, as she can drive her going alone. Then Vickers will look in on you most days. I do not know what is keeping him away to-night.”

Freda was in low spirits next morning, and she hung about Robert up to the time of his departure, in a way that I should have found supremely irritating had I been her husband. And I will not be sure that she did not beg him again not to leave her—to my tender mercies I supposed—though I did not hear the request. When the two men had set out with their guns and baggage, the cart was ordered round, and my sister-in-law took me for a drive.

Robert had done well to prepare me for the “quiet gee”: a meek old creature named Grey Madam, that had whitened in the snows of many winters, and expected to progress at a walk whenever the road inclined uphill. And all the roads inclined uphill or down about Roscawen; I do not remember anywhere a level quarter of a mile. It was truly a dull progress, and Freda did not find much to say; perhaps she still was fretting after Robert. But the moors and the swelling hills were beautiful to look at in their crimson flush of heather. “I think Roscawen is lovely,” I was prompted to exclaim; and when she agreed in my admiration I added: “You liked it when you first came here, did you not?”

“Yes, I liked it when first I came,” she assented, repeating my words, but did not go on to say why she disliked Roscawen now.

She had an errand to discharge at one of the upland farms which supplied them with milk and butter. She drew rein at the gate, and was about to alight, but the woman of the house came forward, and so I heard what passed. Freda gave her order, and then made an inquiry.

“I hope you have found your young cow, Mrs. Elliott? I was sorry to hear it had strayed.”

“We’ve found her, ma’am, but she was dead in the river, and a sad loss it has been to us. A fine young beast as ever we reared, and coming on with her second calf. My husband has been rarely put about, and I’ll own I was fit to cry over her myself. This is the fifth loss we have had within the year—a sheep and two lambs in March, and the cart-foal in July.”

Freda expressed sympathy.

“You need better fences, is that it, to keep your cattle from the river?”

Mrs. Elliott pursed up her lips and shook her head.

“I won’t say, ma’am, but that our fences might be bettered if the landlord would give us material; as it is, we do our best. But when the creatures take that madness for the water, nought but deer-palings would keep them in. I’ve seen enough in my time here to the river. If you ask Dr. Vickers he will tell you. He makes a study of folk-lore and local superstitions, and—and that sort of thing. Robert thinks it is all nonsense, and no doubt you will think it nonsense too.”

What her own opinion was, Freda did not say. She had a transparent complexion, and a trifling matter made her change colour; a blush rose unaccountably as she answered me, and for a full minute her cheek burned. Why should she blush about Roscawen superstitions and a drowned cow? Then the attention of both of us was suddenly diverted, because Grey Madam took it into her head to shy.

She had mended her pace appreciably since Freda turned her head towards home, trotting now without needing to be urged. We were close upon a cross-roads where three ways met, a triangular green centred by a finger post. There was in our direction a bank and hedge (hedges here and there replaced the stone walls of the district) and the right wheel went up that bank, giving the cart a dangerous tilt; it recovered balance, however, and went on. Freda, a timid driver, was holding on desperately to the reins.

“Does she often do this sort of thing?” I asked. “I thought Robert said she was quiet.”

“So she is—so we thought her. I never knew her do it before,” gasped my sister-in-law, still out of breath with her fright.

“And I cannot think what made her shy. There was nothing—absolutely nothing; not even a heap of stones.”

Freda did not answer, but I was to hear more about that cross-roads in the course of the day.

…end of part 1.