Even when my father was home,
he was not home in the true sense of the word.
His feelings towards me were not so much governed by sentimentality, as they were by a sense of duty.
I only saw him during mealtimes and even then we seldom spoke of anything
but the foggy Irish weather. My father was a gentleman which meant of course that he had much leisure time.
This time was spent either in his study with book and pipe in hand or on long solitary walks.
He was quite often seen returning
from such a walk and looking
otherworldly, as if he did not recognize either his home or his kin.
Absentmindedly, he would deposit his cloak on the stand near the door and retired to his bed chambers with nary a word. In
short he had no interest in me, nor in my happiness. Indeed, many years later
I came to the conclusion that after he banished my mother and her three sisters from our home
he no longer took an interest in anything.
Meanwhile, I was raised by Tilda and the ferocious father
Mackenzie who preached fire and brimstone from his pulpit at the little stone church in the village.
One Sunday as I was gaily walking,
(Tilda says skipping) out of church after a long sermon about bad women and their place in hell,
Father Mackenzie grabbed me hard by the arm and gave a little twist. "Did you listen to the sermon?" he asked. "I did"
"Have you been to confession lately?"
He knew very well that I had not. He was the only priest in town. "You should come more often,"
he said. "You, especially, need confession given that your mother was a..." Here
he broke off and glared at me with two beady black eyes like that of a crow. "A
what?" I asked. Beside me, Tilda in her
matronly grey dress cleared her throat several times, before briefly locking eyes with the priest.
It was as if a flash of something electric passed between them. Whatever it was Father Mackenzie
immediately discontinued his discourse on my mother and changed topic.
"Of course, there's your uncle," he said a moment later.
"What about him?"
"Mercy child, hasn't anyone told you?" There was another staredown between Tilda
and father McKenzie, and it lasted a good minute or so with neither of them saying a word and me trying in vain to rest
my arm from the priest's strong grip. "They say he murdered a man," he said.
"And what of it?" Tilda's voice broke. "What of it? "It has nothing to do with the child."
Father McKenzie returned her stare before giving me a hard shove in the direction of my governess
"It has everything to do with the child.
She has bad blood. Don't you see? Murder on her father's side the family and everyone knows her mother was a...?"
He never finished the words because Tilda pulled me out of the church so fast, I couldn't hear a thing.
I never found out what he thought my mother was because that nigh my father passed away
and I left my home in the little village with the stone church behind me for good. I
was told-- as the carriage made its way from my father's estate to that of my uncle's in County Cork-- of the
suspicion that had fallen on the man.
"It is a disgraceful matter," Tilde said in the tone of one who did not want to have such a conversation. "I
stared out the window at the passing countryside all tied together in long patches of spreading heather and green wavy grasses.
Briefly the sun poked through the clouds,
and I remembered being six-years-old and being swung by my arms around and around by my mother, my feet not touching the ground.
In my heart. I heard: the skies are full of ravens
The night is full of wrong. The waters are full of fishes and the days are full of song.
It was the words my mother sang as she swung me. She was full of such verses, some she had learned, some she had invented.
Besides being a chanteuse, my mother was quite simply the most beautiful woman in all of Ireland. My father always said so.
Upon their marriage, he built a special walled garden for her where she grew mostly herbs
but also roses, delphinium and other showy cottage flowers that thrived on the rain. In the center of the garden,
underneath a huge oak tree, there was a swing my father had fashioned for her.
Occasionally, I would spy them hiding behind
the blooms of the ever spreading
beauty bush.
It was a monster of a thing, 15 feet high and equally long.
My father would push my mother on the swing and she would laugh with happiness.
Just as I had done when she had sang to me.
"You know, that song is so untrue," my mother had declared on that particular day,
glaring up at me from the most ignoble of chairs, an oak stump belonging to a long dead Rowan tree.
She looked at me with smiling eyes. "The best things happen at night. Power comes to our kind at night. Someday
you will understand the night is full of wrongs,
But we put were put on this earth to set them right.
And by 'we', I always understood her to mean she and I were put on this earth to make things right.
So now as the carriage went along the road, raising dust as the horses turned up the earth,
I thought that whatever it was that was wrong with my uncle, Perhaps I could remedy the problem.
"He was the one who cast a bad name on your family, not your mother, no matter how many say otherwise, "Tilda said matter-of-factly.
"Staring down at her bone thin hands, it took a while for the rest of the story to come forth from her pale lips.
But here's what I soon learned my uncle. He was accused of a murder,
but there had never been enough evidence to bring him to trial. It was said that he owed much money.
Especially to one man, a Walter Cumber who had been found dead in my uncle's house.
Tilda said my father had explained this to her when she first came to work at our estate,
lest she hear it from the gossips in the village.
"There were letters sent about the matter to your father,"
she told me. Although exactly what they said I do not know. Here Tilda stole a glance at her shoes,
a curious gesture on her part,
and one which led me to believe she knew more to the story than she was saying.
Tilda may have been many things, but I knew that for her telling even the smallest of half-truths would make her feel like a liar.
And Tilda was no liar. I did not press her further about the matter, at least not at that time.
After several days journey to the South, with the occasional stopover at an inn here or there, and
after crossing through thick woods of the type I had never known in Ireland, we reached my uncle's estate.
I found my uncle Reginald McMurray a gay and
extravagant sort. It was not hard to imagine that so flamboyant a man might be addicted to gaming.
From the state of his house
which looked as if it could use with a great deal of
renovation work, as plaster fell from ceilings and stone stairs melted away from the wear and tear of time,
it did seem that my uncle was in possession of a ruined fortune. Despite this,
he was extravagantly turned out in fine clothes, wearing smoking jackets in deep scarlet and riding boots that appeared brand-new.
I also learned that careful attention to his dress was due to his vain, pompous and overly self-assured nature.
"He can no longer afford the finer gambling establishments," Tilda whispered to me a fortnight after we arrived.
""That's why you always see so many unsavory characters about the place. He brings them here to play cards."
I thought this over as I slipped between the sheets of my shabby bed. The room
I had been allotted was a spacious affair with splashy peacock print wallpaper that had aged poorly. At
night in the dark, the circles on the tails of those peacocks appeared in the darkness like a million eyes--
watching my every move. "I
Have noticed. He is often in the company of Mr. Hugh Turlington,"
I replied to Tilda who was going about my room with the candle in a wood holder in one hand and picking up
my clothes with the other. I
did not know then, but I was about to suffer yet another misfortune. In
accordance with God's wishes, it was not enough that I'd lost my father and my home. I would soon lose again.
You see my hours with Tilda were sorely
limited. Only I was too young and too naive to have any idea that she would soon be taken from me --
just like my mother. "In
the village they say Mr. Turlington is a man of loose morals and low habits.
They say he has considerable wealth yes, but that he spends it on many vices,"
Tilda told me. "They also say he frequently traveled with your uncle on the continent."
With that rather ominous bit of news, Tilda bade me
goodnight, and left me alone to retire to her room in the servants' quarters.
Over the next few days my uncle and Mr.
Turlington proceeded to shut themselves away in a private room for most of the day and also a good part of the night. I
did not mind. I was happy spending my days with my cousin Ann. In
general we went for long walks around Frederick. Which was the name of my uncle's estate.
Despite its state of dilapidation. It was an imposing house at the end of a long avenue of venerable ancient trees.
For some reason on every walk, I would remember with a shiver that first ride up the avenue to Reddrick
Not knowing what to expect,
I remember glancing about me at the road which was overgrown with nettles and grass and
passing by what must have been at one time two fishing ponds
which were now nothing more than stagnant waters brimming with moss and rank weeds.
My first glimpse of the actual house had been immediately
unfavorable it stood at the summit of the avenue.
Made of a dark grey stone and pressed in on all sides by trees which badly needed trimming, it
was a rather long rectangular affair that seemed to jet up from its place on the summit with solemnity and
permanency, as if it had been here since antiquity. As our coach arrived closer,
I found the whole place worn down and ruinous, almost to the point of looking deserted. Yet
it was not. For here lived my uncle, his daughter and his son.
When Tilda saw Reddrick for the first time she did something most curious.
She drew the sign of a pentagram on the floor of our carriage with the toe of her pointy boot.
This was something I had seen her do on rare occasions. Had I been anyone else
she would have made the sign of the cross. But in front of me,
it was always this symbol of superstition. On
that night, when the moon had risen full and high, our carriage entered a courtyard via the castle's old stone gate.
Here, too, were signs of disrepair. The courtyard was overgrown with numerous weeds and the cobblestones were broken and rough.
Somewhere in the night some poor chain gave out a piteous wail of the bark and
alerted two dirty, slovenly men who seemed to fit in quite well with the ruinous estate of Reddrick. The men took charge of the
horses
and we were ushered into a gloomy chamber only to be received by no one.
This situation was soon remedied when a pink-cheeked, young girl dashed in the hall and kissed me on my cheek,
declaring herself to might be my cousin.
"Dear, dear Tellehandra, how happy we are that you have come.
Oh, but not to worry, my father is about the place somewhere. Indeed, as I learned later, he was off playing cards with Mr.
Turlington. "And my brother James is not often at home. He travels a lot, you know."
My cousin was so genuinely pleased with my arrival that she seemed to beam from head to toe and I found myself
immediately at ease with her,
although Tilda glared at her steadily with her one good eye.
"Come, you must be exhausted. I shall show you to your room," she announced with much frivolity.
We then mounted the decaying steps to the rooms with the peacock paper.
The only good thing about the apartment was that it had two doors: one which opened onto the hallway and one which opened on to
my cousin's room, so that she was never too far away.
It was not long after I first arrived that the three of us, my uncle Reginald, Ann and myself --
along with Tilda-- sat down to dinner.
Where my uncle's partner in gambling was that night, I do not know. Uncle Reginald strode into the room with much dignity and
initially appeared to me as a striking man.
He was tall and wore a shirt replete with creamy tatted lace ruffles down the middle. Other than the shirt
he wore dark colors that matched his sober appearance and like my father
he said very little to me. The second night, however, our dinner conversation was more in depth.
"So you have come to us, and you are most welcome, but tell me my dear. What is your understanding of your father's will?"
God's nightgown! Who asks such a question?
I was struck silent which Tilda will tell you is no trifle affair.
"Everything is left to me and my heirs," I replied. "Yes,"
my uncle replied and he dabbed at the corners of his mouth with a napkin
that was threadbare. "And if you should die without an heir?"
I can't tell you of the immediate distress this caused me. A tingle of dread ran down my spine.
It was not a question of polite society
Beside me, Ann cried: "Father must we talk about such things?"
It was Tilda
who responded as she helped serve the main course. "If she dies without an heir, everything goes to you Mr.
McMurray. Her words were clipped and curt and directed at my uncle like the blades of a dagger.
Tilda then proceeded to place a pile of lumpy brown mush that she swore had once been a quail onto my plate.
I had no appetite and spent the rest of the evening pushing the food around with my fork.
As if the dinner discourse had not been distressing enough, that night I was awoken by a most unnatural noise.
It sounded like a quarrel of some type was taking shape in the apartments below.
There was a parlor there and from that room the voices rose loud and louder until there was a strange sound. A loud
banging noise of something metallic reverberating after striking something hard, a wall perhaps. In my drowsy state
I imagined my uncle had struck at the wall of the castle was something like a shovel, but why would he do such a thing?
(Intense music playing)
For more infomation >> Casting company is looking for extras to star in Poldark series four - Duration: 2:15. 
For more infomation >> Americans in Puerto Rico beg for federal help six days post storm MSNBC - Duration: 3:52. 
For more infomation >> Jump Rope For Heart 2017-18 Event Kick-Off - Duration: 15:30. 
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét