The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [395]
‘I think that must be your great-grandmother, Dottie.’
‘It has to be. Living with an artist.’
‘And my great-grandfather … I’m sorry.’
‘Well, we’ve found her,’ said Mrs Totton. ‘It was a long time ago. But welcome home, Dottie, anyway. At least we can say that.’ She looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. ‘My dears, it’s quite time for a drink.’
But Dottie excused herself. She needed the evening to work. She thanked them both and prepared to go.
‘Would you like a hand to put the papers back in the store room?’ she asked.
‘No. I think I may look at some of them myself this evening,’ said Mrs Totton. ‘Perhaps,’ she smiled, ‘we shall see you here in the Forest more in the future?’
‘Perhaps.’
Her evening’s work went well. The mass of material she had gathered was beginning to separate out, then fit itself together in new shapes. That was usually the prelude to getting her story.
It was strange about her great-grandmother and Minimus Furzey. She had little doubt that she had found Dorothy and, therefore, her own roots. Once or twice she nearly picked up the telephone to tell Peter Pride, but she forced herself not to. She could tell him on Sunday, if he turned up.
He was her cousin – a very distant one, of course.
Mrs Totton sat alone that evening in a state of contentment. It had been a good day. She liked the Pride girl. As for discovering her family, that had been a gift from above. To be connected with the Forest, in Mrs Totton’s eyes, was the greatest gift you could hope for.
She read a book for a little while, dozed for perhaps half an hour, and then, putting a chair beside the trunk on the floor, idly went through some more of old Colonel Albion’s letters. Many were routine matters connected with the estate; some concerned the disputes of the verderers with the Office of Woods. After the Furzey letters, none of them seemed very exciting. Perhaps she was not in the mood.
She was just about to put the bundles back and close the lid when a slim envelope detached itself from the rest. It seemed to be a single item with no accompanying correspondence. On it, in the Colonel’s hand, was written a single word: ‘Mother?’
Curious now, she picked up the envelope and opened it. There was only one sheet of paper inside, closely written on both sides, in a fine, rather academic hand, certainly not Colonel Albion’s.
‘My dearest wife,’ it began, ‘each of us has secrets and now there is something which I, too, have to confess.’
Yet if it was a confession, it was a strange one. It seemed that the writer’s wife, whom he clearly loved, had been having nightmares, calling out things in the night. And from this he had learned that she was guilty, or believed herself to be, of a great crime. Others, it seemed, had suffered transportation, even death. But she had got off free.
Because she had lied. Guilt, remorse, deep in the night, was visiting her in dreams. She was obviously in an agony which she could share with no one, not even her husband. Awake, no word was spoken. The nightmares, it would appear, came then departed for months at a time, then came again.
So what had her husband to confess? Firstly that he had, as it were, eavesdropped upon these confidences. He was still apparently undecided about whether to speak to her or not. Then came an urgent section. He knew her too well, he said, to have any doubt about her goodness. As a wife, a mother, mistress of their estates, there was not an evil thought or intention in her soul.
Had she really stolen that piece of lace, he asked, or was it possible that she herself had come to imagine it? He did not know. The crime itself, even if it were so, should never merit the punishments given; and she herself, by her goodness, had long ago earned forgiveness.
Perhaps, my dearest Fanny, I shall be able to persuade you of these things. Perhaps these terrible dreams will end. But I wish, in any case to leave you this letter to read, after I am gone.
For I, too, have an equal confession to make to you. When I came to