door.
I still can't imagine what made me call out: "Come in." I suppose I said it automatically. I had just covered my face with soap, which
always makes one feel rather helpless, and when I rashly opened my
eyes, the soap got into them; I was blindly groping for the towel when I heard the door open. Heloise let forth a volley of barks and hurtled towards it--it was a miracle she didn't knock the clothes horses over.
The next few seconds were pandemonium with Hcl barking her hardest and two men trying to soothe her. I didn't call her off because I know she never bites anyone and I hated the idea of explaining I was in the
bath--particularly as I hadn't even a towel to wrap around me; I had
blinked my eyes open by then and realized I must have left it somewhere in the kitchen.
Mercifully, Heloise quietened down after a minute or so.
"Didn't you hear someone say "Come in" ?" said one of the men, and I realized that he was an American. It was a pleasant voice, like the
nice people in American films, not the gangsters.
He called out:
"Anyone home?" but the other man told him to be quiet, adding:
"I want to look at this place first. It's magnificent."
This voice puzzled me. It didn't sound English but it didn't sound
American either, yet it certainly had no foreign accent. It was a
most unusual voice, very quiet and very interesting.
"Do you realize that wall's part of an old castle?" it said.
This was not a happy moment as I thought he would come to look at the fireplace wall, but just then Thomas came out on the staircase.
The men explained that they had turned down our lane by accident and
their car was stuck in the mud. They wanted help to get it out.
"Or, if we have to leave it there all night, we felt we'd better warn you," said the American voice, "because it's blocking the lane."
Thomas said he would come and have a look and I heard him getting his boots from the wash-house.
"Wonderful old place you have here," said the unusual voice, and I feared they might ask to look round. But the other man began talking
about how stuck the car was and asking if we had horses to pull it out, and in a minute or so Thomas went off with them. I heard the door slam and heaved a sigh of relief.
But I did feel a little flat; it was dull to think I had never even
seen the men and never would. I tried to imagine faces to go with the voices--then suddenly realized that the water was cooling and I had
barely begun washing. I got to work at last, but scrub as I might, I
couldn't make any impression on my green-dyed arms. I am a thorough
washer and by the time I had finished, my mind was completely off the men. I hopped out and got another can hot water from the copper, which is close to the fire, and was just settling down to read when I heard the door open again.
Someone came into the kitchen and I was sure it wasn't any of the
family--they would have called out to me or at least made a lot more
noise. I could feel someone just standing and staring. After a
moment I couldn't bear it any longer so I yelled out:
"Whoever you are, I warn you I'm in the bath here."
"Good heavens, I do beg your pardon," said the man with the quiet voice.
"Were you there when we came in a few minutes ago?"
I told him I had been, and asked if the car was still stuck.
"They've gone for horses to pull it out," he said, "so I sneaked back to have a look round here. I've never seen anything like this
place."
"Just let me get dried and in my right mind and I'll show you round," I said. I had mopped my face and neck on the drying sheets and still
hadn't taken the cold walk to find the towel.
I asked him if he could see it anywhere but he didn't seem able to, so I knelt in the bath, parted the green sheets and put my head through.
He turned towards me. Seldom have I felt more astonished.
He had a black beard.
I have never known anyone with a beard except an old man in the
Scoatney almshouses who looks like Santa Claus. This beard wasn't like that; it was trim and pointed--rather Elizabethan. But it was very
surprising because his voice had sounded quite young.
"How do you do ?" he said, smiling- and I could tell by his tone that he had taken me for a child. He found my towel and started to bring it over; then stopped and said: "There's no need to look so scared. I'll put it down where you can reach it, and go right back to the yard."
"I'm not scared," I said, "but you don't look the way you sound."
He laughed, but it struck me that it had been rather a rude thing to
say, so I added hastily: "There's no need to go, of course. Won't you sit down his I'm sure I've no desire to appear inhospitable"--and that struck me as the most pompous speech of my life.
I began to put one arm through the sheets for the towel.
"There'll be a catastrophe if you do it that way," he said.
"I'll put it round the corner."
As I drew my head in I saw his hand coming round.
I grabbed the towel from it and was just going to ask him to bring my clothes, too, when the door opened again.
"I've been looking for you everywhere, Simon," said the American voice.
"This is the darnedest placeI've just seen a Spook" "Nonsense," said the bearded man.
"Honest, I have--while I was in the lane. I shone my flashlight up at that tower on the hill and a white figure flitted behind it."
"Probably a horse."
"Horse, nothing--it was walking upright. But gosh, maybe I am going crazy- it didn't seem to have any legs."
I guessed Topaz must have kept her black rubber boots on.
"Stop talking about it, anyway," the bearded man whispered.
"There's a child in a bath behind those sheets."
I called out for someone to bring my clothes, and put an arm round for them.
"My God--it's a green child!" said the American.
"What is this place- the House of Usher ?"
"I'm not green all over," I explained.
"It's just that we've all been dyeing."
"Then maybe it was one of your ghosts I saw," said the American.
The bearded man came over with my clothes.
"Don't worry about the ghost," he said.
"Of course he didn't see one."
I said: "Well, he easily might, up on the mound, but it was more likely my stepmother communing with nature." I was out of the bath by then, with the towel draped around me respectably, so I put my head round to speak to him. It came out much higher than when I had been kneeling in the bath and he looked most astonished.
"You're a larger child than I realized," he said.
As I took the clothes, I caught sight of the other man. He had just
the sort of face to go with his voice, a nice, fresh face. The odd
thing was that I felt I knew it. I have since decided this was because there are often young men like him in American pictures--not the hero, but the heroine's brother or men on petrol stations.
He caught my eye and said:
"Hello! Tell me some more about your legless stepmother-and the rest of your family. Have you a sister who plays the harp on horseback, or anything?"
Just then Topaz began to play her lute upstairs -she must have slipped in at the front door. The young man began to laugh.
"There she is," he said delightedly.
"That's not a harp, it's a lute," said the bearded man.
"Now that really is amazing. A castle, a lute- his And then Rose came out on to the staircase. She was wearing the dyed-green tea-gown,
which is mediaeval in shape with long flowing sleeves. She obviously
didn't know that there were strangers in the house for she called
out:
"Look, Cassandra'" Both men turned towards her and she stopped dead at the top of the stairs. For once Topaz had her lute in tune. And she
was, most appropriately, playing "Green Sleeves."
VLaiR. Up on the chaff in the barn again.
I had to leave Rose stranded at the top of the stairs because Topaz was ringing the lunch bell. She had been too busy to cook, so we had cold Brussels sprouts and cold boiled rice -hardly my favorite food but
splendidly filling. We ate in the drawing-room, which has been cleaned within an inch of its life. In spite of a log fire, it was icy in
there; I have noticed that rooms which are extra clean feel extra
cold.
Rose and Topaz are now out searching the hedges for something to put in the big Devon pitchers. Topaz says that if they don't find anything
she will get bare branches and tie something amusing to them- if so, I bet it doesn't amuse me;
one would think that a girl who appreciates nudity as Topaz does would let a bare branch stay bare.
None of us is admitting that we expect the Cottons to call very soon, but we are all hoping it like mad. For that is who the two men were,
of course: the Cottons of Scoatney, on their way there for the first
time. I can't think why I didn't guess it at once, for I did know that the estate had passed to an American.
Old Mr. Cotton's youngest son went to the States back in the early
nineteen hundreds- after some big family row, I believe- and later
became an American citizen. Of course, there didn't seem any
likelihood of his inheriting Scoatney then, but two elder brothers were killed in the war and the other, with his only son, died about twelve years ago, in a car smash. After that, the American son tried to make it up with his Father, but the old man wouldn't see him unless he
undertook to become English again, which he wouldn't. He died about a year ago; these two young men are his sons.