Penmarric Read online

  I felt appeased. After we had parted I walked down the path to the lane before I looked back over my shoulder, but she had already gone back into the house and the front door was closed. When I reached the lane I glanced back a second time as if unable to believe that she was no longer watching me, and strangely enough my instinct was correct. The curtain on one side of the parlor window moved slightly; she had been watching me all the time.

  3

  I was so disturbed by the meeting and so restless that I was quite unable to sleep that night and arose the next morning feeling that the last thing I desired was to accompany my father to church at Zillan and lunch afterward with Mr., Mrs. and Miss Barnwell at the rectory. But I could hardly explain to my father that I would have preferred to ease my intolerable restlessness by walking to Penzance and buying a discreet list of female names and addresses from the head porter of the Metropole Hotel. Controlling myself with an effort, I accompanied him meekly in the ponytrap to church and spent the entire service, I regret to say, imagining what might happen if Mrs. Roslyn and I were alone together behind the locked door of a darkened room. It was not that I was irreligious; on the contrary, I was then much more religious than I am now, for my father had instilled churchgoing habits into both Nigel and myself at an early age, and this religious background was so closely interwoven with my father’s standards which I admired so deeply that my acceptance of it was complete. Despite the post-Darwin tides of atheism I had encountered at Oxford and the independence of thought fostered by the academic climate, it had never occurred to me not to believe in God and worship Him dutifully every Sunday, and even later in life when I moved toward agnosticism I still derived a sense of security from regular attendance at church. Hypocritical perhaps, but when I was twenty I was not aware of any hypocrisy. My father believed, and if he believed, then I believed too.

  During the first hymn I glanced over my shoulder and nearly dropped my hymnbook when I saw Mrs. Roslyn in one of the back pews. I had not seen her enter the church and had assumed she was not attending matins that week. When I managed to look at her a second time I noticed the ugly hunched old crone who was standing next to her and realized with a shock that this must be the mysterious Griselda who had accompanied Mrs. Roslyn to Zillan on her marriage. The old crone looked little better than a fishwife. I wondered what her connection was with Mrs. Roslyn, and not for the first time I began to speculate about Mrs. Roslyn’s early life in St. Ives.

  The service ended at last, but there was no chance for a word with Mrs. Roslyn, for she and the crone left immediately and I was detained in the aisle to be introduced to the rector’s wife and daughter before we all retreated to the rectory for luncheon. As I had suspected; the meal turned out to be dinner served early to spare the servants undue labor on the Sabbath, and I ate hungrily as I observed my host and his family. Mrs. Barnwell was a gossipy woman with a long nose that clearly enjoyed poking its way into other people’s business; I was surprised that the rector, who was an interesting man, should have selected such an uninteresting woman to be his life-long companion. Their daughter Miriam at first appeared to be as dreary as her mother, although where Mrs. Barnwell was garrulous Miriam was quiet and where Miriam was sedate Mrs. Barnwell was effusive, but after lunch when Mrs. Barnwell suggested coyly that her daughter might take me on a “grand tour of the garden,” I found that Miss Miriam Barnwell was not nearly so negative as I had supposed. I had felt sorry for her, knowing how hard it was for daughters of clergymen to meet suitable young men, and reflecting how isolated her existence must be at Zillan rectory, but I soon realized that not only was she uninterested in my sympathy but she was also uninterested in me as a possible suitor. At first I felt affronted since as far as she was concerned I was eligible enough and could expect to be treated as such, but presently my sense of humor enabled me to see the funny side of the situation and I began to wonder idly where her interests lay. Looking at her more closely, I saw to my surprise that she was not unattractive. She had her father’s fine dark eyes, a quantity of soft brown hair and one of those small delicate figures that some men with a penchant for porcelain find irresistible.

  “I am very well acquainted with your cousins,” she said casually as we toured the hydrangea bushes at the far edge of the lawn. “Did Papa tell you? I used to do my lessons with them at Penmarric.”

  “No, he didn’t mention it.”

  “I haven’t seen much of them recently. Poor Raymond had been abroad for some time before he died in Cairo, and Clarissa was too busy with her London debut last year to be much at Penmarric. I was invited to her ball, but did not go.” Dislike, polite but deadly, tinged her voice and was gone. “Harry I still see occasionally, but he is often in London nowadays… Will you be calling regularly now at Penmarric, Mr. Castallack? After all, now that Mr. Penmar has made you his heir …” She stopped abruptly and gazed for one long angry moment at the nearest hydrangea bush as she bit her lip.

  “How you intrigue me, Miss Barnwell! I said dryly after my initial surprise had worn off. “How could you possibly know I’m Giles Penmar’s heir? It’s no secret, I grant you, but it’s hardly common knowledge either at present! Are you a mind reader by any chance?”

  She laughed and blushed very prettily. I was already feeling much less sorry for her. It occurred to me that she was a young woman who could be most adept at fending for herself, and I decided that if she were a governess she would have the unattached master of the house proposing to her in less time than it took Mr. Rochester to say good morning to Jane Eyre.

  “Miss Barnwell,” I persisted, amused, “before I expire with curiosity, do, I entreat you, enlighten me. How did you hear the news so fast?”

  “Well, you see …” She began to explain. She had recently become acquainted with a Mr. Michael Vincent, a young man from Launceston whose family was known to her father. He had come to Penzance earlier that year to join the firm of Holmes, Holmes, Trebarvah and Holmes—

  “The Penmar solicitors,” I said. “I think I’m beginning to understand.” It occurred to me that a young lawyer would be a very seemly match for her, and I thought I could now understand her lack of interest in me as a possible suitor.

  “Mr. Vincent dined with us yesterday—he dines with us quite often—and he happened to mention—in a most oblique way, of course, I’m sure he did nothing improper—”

  “Of course,” I murmured soothingly.

  “Mr. Vincent is often at Penmarric. On business.” But her voice implied that his business provided him with a convenient excuse for calling there.

  “Oh?” I said. “Is he a friend of Harry’s?”

  “No,” said Miriam, spiteful as a cat with unsheathed claws, “but he is infatuated with Clarissa. She considers it a great joke.”

  So that, I thought, was how the land lay. Miriam was in love with the young solicitor, who was infatuated with my unusually striking cousin-by-adoption. No wonder I had heard the dislike in Miriam’s voice when she had spoken of Clarissa earlier! And I thought of the one time I had seen Clarissa, those brief minutes four years before at Penmarric, and remembered her brilliant dark eyes and wide passionate mouth. I had not been in London the previous summer when Clarissa had made her debut in society, but word of her success had still managed to reach me. One of my friends at Oxford had met her and sent her a sonnet a day until his inspiration was exhausted; she was reported to be on the verge of marrying either a duke or an earl or a rich American; her own sex, particularly her fellow-debutantes, were reported to be stupefied by such undeserved success—undeserved because Clarissa did not conform to the conventional standards of feminine beauty—and were delighted when for some unaccountable reason she married none of her ardent suitors and merely returned to Cornwall when the Season had reached its end. The scandal began soon afterward. After all, there had to be some reason why her suitors’ ardor had cooled; it was said she returned to Cornwall in disgrace. How true all this gossip was I had no idea, but it was true that Clarissa n
ow had a “reputation” and that this young solicitor Michael Vincent was only one of a long line of men who had found her unconventional looks irresistible.

  In the ponytrap on the way home from Zillan that afternoon I said to my father, “I fancy Miss Barnwell has an unrequited passion for that young man Michael Vincent whom Mr. Barnwell mentioned just before we left.”

  “Really?” said my father, who was exhausted by his weekly concession to social intercourse but not so exhausted that he could not look astonished by my remark. “I think you must be mistaken. I dislike gossip, but I had heard that little Miss Barnwell had set her cap a good deal higher than a mere country solicitor. I had heard that Raymond Penmar was interested in her and that she in fact was the reason he was sent abroad to Rome, Athens and Cairo. Giles Penmar not unnaturally wanted his son to marry well and not to become involved with a clergyman’s daughter.”

  I gaped at him. “Did Mr. Barnwell tell you that?”

  “No, it was Mrs. Barnwell who dropped the hints, but Barnwell was present and did not deny the implications of his wife’s remarks. He later said he deeply regretted allowing his daughter to associate with the Penmars. Young Harry has a bad reputation and as for Clarissa—but that’s gossip I have no intention of repeating. Let it suffice to say that I hope you won’t become acquainted with either Harry or Clarissa while you’re staying with me at Morvah.”

  “There’s little likelihood of that happening,” I said frankly. “If I even tried to bid Harry good day I think he’d try and knock me down.”

  He was silent, evidently satisfied by my assurance. His housekeeper’s husband, Walter Mannack, drove us out of Zillan parish and across the hills to Morvah, and presently I forgot the Penmars and the rector’s daughter and began to think once more of Mrs. Janna Roslyn.

  4

  I called at Roslyn Farm on Monday morning, but the old crone Griselda told me Mrs. Roslyn was “tired” and “resting” and could not receive visitors. On Tuesday I was informed she had gone to Penzance to spend an extra day marketing produce; the market was held three times a week in Penzance, and although the largest market was held on Thursdays, I was told that since her husband’s death Mrs. Roslyn had often been obliged to go to market on Tuesdays and Saturdays as well—presumably on account of trying financial circumstances. On Wednesday I again tried to see her, but she was away visiting a neighboring farm, and on Thursday, of course, she went to Penzance again. By Friday I had received the distinct impression that she wanted to administer a rebuff, but so anxious was I to see her that a rebuff was a mere inconvenience which I was prepared to tolerate. What I could not endure was another day without the prospect of exchanging a few words with her, so on Friday morning I saddled my father’s horse again and rode over the hills past Chûn Castle to the farm.

  She was at home. She consented to see me. We drank another glass of wine together in her front parlor and I spoke of London and a dozen other matters, but she said little and I was forced to carry the burden of the conversation. She did not appear to be bored. She did not appear to be especially interested, but she was always faultlessly polite. I think it was then, on that second meeting, that I began to realize I was wasting my time, but by then it was already too late. It was useless to try to tell myself I had best forget her attraction for me and move to fresher woods and greener pastures. I could not turn my back on her, could not continue through life as if she had never crossed my path. I had to go on seeing her. My obsession was utterly irrational but I could not rid myself of it. I knew I was making a fool of myself, and I knew that every visit I paid to the farm was yet another step down a blind alley, but I simply could not stop calling on her. Visits to other women, a useful panacea in the past to ease the raw ache of frustration, now made little difference to my peace of mind. I remained obsessed.

  In love, I called it, but it was not love. An infatuation others might have judged it, but it was not merely an infatuation. It was a painful combination of lust, greed, admiration and longing, and above all the desire to possess. My favorite daydream was concerned solely with images of completed possession. I dreamt of her surrendering—but not willingly. That somehow would be less satisfactory. But I dreamt of an unwilling surrender which I had forced upon her yet was not a form of rape. I dreamt of her taking off her clothes, one by one, each article torn from her body by those long sinuous fingers and folded neatly before being placed upon a chair. She would be cool, stony-faced, contemptuous. Since she was a respectable woman she would not undress to the point of complete nudity but would keep on her petticoat, and when she sat down on the bed with her back to me and lifted her white arms to her head to undo her hair I would lean forward and unfasten the hooks of her bodice and slip my hands around her body to her breasts… Her hair would fall silently down her back and I would bury my face in it and pull her down on the pillows and then …

  Nothing else mattered. All I wanted was to possess.

  And I went on daydreaming, wiling away hour after hour, and so young was I, so ingenuous in my desires, that it never once occurred to me as I cherished my fantasies that in possessing her I would become myself possessed.

  5

  Meanwhile I had quickly adjusted myself to my new surroundings. Walter Mannack, the housekeeper’s husband who acted as gardener and handyman at Deveral Farm, had collected the luggage I had left at the Metropole Hotel in Penzance, and presently in response to a request sent to the housekeeper remaining in charge of Gweekellis Manor I received some more clothes as well as the box in which I kept my writing materials and my notes for the thesis on King John. However, having no desire to resume my historical labors at that point and being anxious to discover some way of passing the time in between my visits to Roslyn Farm, I rode into Penzance and explored the town thoroughly—an excursion which I had never before had time to make during previous fleeting visits with my mother. I found it a curious mixture of a place, the new gentility of the seaside town mellowing the ancient coarseness of the fishing port. The Metropole Hotel was part of the new gentility, a modern building that faced the sea and catered to visitors anxious to breathe the sea air in refined surroundings, but the town’s high street was far older than the esplanade and stood farther inland to remind the stranger that a sea view had not always been considered desirable by the inhabitants. The mixture of old and new was again emphasized, however, by the new market house at the top of the historic Market Jew Street and by the new public gardens with their semitropical vegetation a stone’s throw from the narrow streets and cobbled alleys around the harbor. And beyond the harbor, reducing both the old and the new to insignificance, rose the fairy-tale castle of St. Michael’s Mount, which as a child I had once wished could be included in my Penmar inheritance.

  I did not know the St. Aubyns who lived at the Mount but I did meet the heir of Carnforth Hall, a large, wealthy estate which stood a mile or two from the sea east of Penzance. Justin Carnforth was three years my senior and a dreadful bore who could talk of nothing but horses, but he was friendly and hospitable and I did not consider myself above joining the card parties he gave from time to time whenever his parents were away from home. He had a sister, Judith Carnforth, but she was a plain, priggish girl and I was unable to find her congenial company; however, since her fortune was as large as her sense of humor was small, I supposed she would have no trouble finding a husband eventually.

  It was through the card parties that I met several other contemporaries of mine, including, my kinsman Roger Waymark, whose family owned Gurnards Grange at Zennor, the parish adjoining Morvah to the east; my father’s mother had been a Waymark of Zennor and it had been through her that my father had inherited Deveral Farm. Waymark was a pleasant fellow, but unfortunately he shared Carnforth’s obsession with horses, and since I have always regarded these animals merely as a convenient form of transport I soon found I had little to say to him. Harry Penmar had formerly been a member of the card-party set but had found it difficult to honor his debts; while he remai
ned welcome at Carnforth Hall he was no longer invited there to play cards. I heard he had his eye on Judith Carnforth, but I did not believe that even Harry Penmar, who was notorious for his debts, could be desperate enough to consider Miss Carnforth as a matrimonial prospect.

  I was first introduced to Justin Carnforth—and thus to the card parties at Carnforth Hall—by the young man whose name I had first heard mentioned at Zillan rectory, the solicitor Michael Vincent of Holmes, Holmes, Trebarvah and Holmes. I met him on my second visit to the rectory for lunch, and although he too had little in common with me, I soon decided that he was the only one of my new acquaintances whom I could truly consider a friend.

  Being the youngest of four sons, he had been obliged to earn his living, but his education and background made him acceptable at Carnforth Hall even if his lack of money and abundance of moral scruples excluded him from the gambling circle there. When I first met him the disparity in our ages was then at its widest; I was still not yet twenty-one, while he was less than three years on the right side of thirty, a qualified lawyer making his own way in the world. Yet he was not sophisticated. When he was not working at his office he liked simple pleasures such as fishing or playing cricket, and although he enjoyed reading he had no taste for historical biography but preferred historical novels. But I found it easy to talk to him of casual matters, of the walks along the cliffs from Penzance to Lamorna, of expeditions to Logan’s Rock, of summer sailing in Mount’s Bay, and easier still to appreciate his good-naturedness and enjoy his company. I needed a friend and I sensed he needed one too; he had not been long in Penzance, and although he was well acquainted with the young men in the Carnforth Hall set I suspected they bored him as frequently as they bored me. Roger Waymark was too immature for him, Justin Carnforth too limited, and although Vincent never said so I was sure he disliked Harry Penmar as much as he worshiped Harry’s sister Clarissa.