Saraband for Two Sisters

I said I would and tried to dismiss the matter. But it had me uneasy. I wondered why he should have been so insistent about a rather trivial matter. Then the thought flashed into my head. Listening at doors! Prying! It almost seemed as though he were afraid Mab might discover something. Could it be that there was something to hide at Far Flamstead?

Poor Mab was indeed heartbroken. She sobbed bitterly when I told her she was to go back. At first she stared at me in astonishment.

“But Mistress Angelet, I’ve always been with you. You couldn’t send me away now.” I said, “You’ll have to go back to what you were doing before I left. My mother will allow you to do that.”

“But what have I done, mistress?”

I tried to whip myself to an anger which matched that of Richard.

“You were caught listening at the keyhole. It was a foolish, wicked thing to do.»

“I didn’t mean no harm. I just wanted to know that it was all right for you. He seems so... so...”

I shook her a little. “So, so what?” I demanded.

“He seemed so cold like ... not like a husband. I was just worried about you and wanted to be sure... .”

 “Don’t make excuses, Mab,” I told her. “You were caught and now you must pay for your folly.”

I wanted so much to forgive her. To tell her not to be silly and not listen at doors again. That was what my mother would have done.

I even tried to speak to Richard again about it, but I saw his face harden when I mentioned her name, and I dared go no farther.

When the next batch of letters arrived I read them avidly and poor Mab left for Cornwall when the messengers returned there.

The Folly

SO, on the tenth of May of the year sixteen hundred and forty, I was married to Richard Tolworthy. As he had wished-and so had I-it was a quiet wedding. Sir Gervaise gave me away, Carlotta attended, and it took place in the small church at Pondersby. Several of the servants sat at the back of the church and after the ceremony we went back to the Hall for a meal.

It was not elaborate, for Richard had insisted on this, and when it was over in the early afternoon he wanted us to set out for Far Flamstead. It did occur to me that it was rather unusual that I should never have seen my new home, which was not after all so very far distant from Pondersby Hall. I had suggested that I should visit it and Richard had been in agreement, but looking back I now realized that something always had happened to prevent the visit. At first he had said he was having a certain amount of renovation done for me and he did not wish me to see it in an unfinished state; and on the other occasion when I had been going, he had been called away and there was a postponement. “Never mind,” he had said, “if there is something you don’t like you can alter it afterward.”

I was beginning to see that my husband had a gift for making the unusual seem normal. It was something to do with the manner in which he dealt with it. I had learned through Mab that he did not like emotional scenes, and I was doing my best to be the sort of wife he wished me to be, which I suppose was a very good resolution to have made at the beginning of one’s married life.

It was early afternoon when we left Pondersby. We took with us two grooms with saddle horses containing certain things I should need. The test of my baggage, the wardrobe I had been gathering together and which formed my trousseau, would arrive within the next few days.

Richard did not speak very much as we rode along, but I sensed in him a certain contentment as though something which had caused him apprehension was now settled satisfactorily. I felt very tender toward him and I was happy because I knew that whatever awaited me in my new home, of one thing I was certain and that was that I loved my husband. As the afternoon wore on and we had left the familiar countryside behind us the scenery seemed to change-but perhaps that was my mood. I noticed wild roses in the hedgerows, and the purple loosestrife growing by a stream reminded me of the days when Bersaba and I used to go out and pick armfuls of it.

We walked our horses, for the road was rough and stony and my husband said to me, “How quiet you are, Angelet. It is not like you.”

“It is a solemn occasion,” I reminded him.

“A happy one, I trust, for you.”

“I have never been happier.”

“Is there nothing more you would ask for?”

“Oh, yes. I should have liked to see my mother and my sister and for you to know them.”

“As I shall in time, I trust.”

We had come to the village of Hampton and we stopped there at an inn where Richard said we would refresh ourselves. We were immediately offered a private room and served with ale and partridge pie, which looked delicious, but I was not hungry and I don’t think Richard was either.

‘We are not far off now,” he told me and I wondered why if that were so we had stopped and it suddenly occurred to me that he was in no hurry for us to reach our home. It was evening when Far Flamstead came into sight.

“There,” said Richard. “Your home, my dear.”