Виктория Холт: On the Night of the Seventh Moon

She clearly adored him while disapproving of him. I could understand that too, and I agreed that it would be wiser to tell my adventures from a slightly different angle.

So we reached the Damenstift. What a fuss there was! Schwester Maria had clearly spent the night weeping.

Schwester Gudrun was silently triumphant.

“I told you that it was no use expecting good behaviour from Helena Trant.” Hildegarde was warmly thanked and blessings showered upon her and I was seated for a long time in Mutter’s sanctum but I scarcely heard what she said. So many impressions crowded into my mind that there was no room for anything else. Myself in the blue robe; the way his eyes had glowed when we pulled the wishbone and the sound of his voice vibrating and passionate outside my bedroom door.

“Lenchen, little Lenchen.”

I continued to think of him. I would never forget him, I was sure. I thought: one day I shall go out and find him waiting there.

But nothing like that happened at all.

Three barren weeks followed, lightened only by the hope that I should see him and made wretched by the depressing fact that I did not, and then news came from home. My father was seriously ill. I must go home at once. And before I could leave came the information that he was dead.

I must leave the Damenstift altogether. I must go home at once. Mr. and Mrs. Greville who had brought me home on that other occasion had kindly offered to come and fetch me and take me back.

In Oxford Aunt Caroline and Aunt Matilda were waiting for me.

Back in England it was the beginning of December with Christmas almost upon us; in the butchers’ shops there were sprigs of holly round the trays of faggots, and oranges in the mouths of pigs who managed to look jaunty even though they were dead. At dusk the stall-holders in the market were showing their goods under the flare of naphtha lights and from the windows of some shops hung cotton wool threaded on string to look like falling snow. The hot-chestnut seller stood at the street corner with his glowing brazier and I remembered how my mother could never resist buying a bag or two and how they used to warm our hands as we carried them home. She liked best, though, to bake our own under the grate on Christmas night. She had made Christmas for us because she liked to celebrate it as it was celebrated in the home of her childhood. She used to tell us how there would be a tree for every member of the family lighted with candles and a big one in the centre of the Rittersaal with presents for everyone. Christmas had been celebrated for years and years in her home, she used to say. We in England had also decorated fir trees when the custom had been brought from Germany by the Queen’s mother and later strengthened by Her Majesty’s strong association with her husband’s land.

I had looked forward to Christmases but now this one held no charm for me. I missed my parents far more than I had thought possible. It was true I had been away from them for four years, but I had always been aware that they were there in the little house next to the bookshop which was my home.

Everything was changed now. That vague untidiness which had been homely was lacking. Aunt Caroline would have everything shining as she said ‘like a new pin’. In my unhappy mood I demanded to know why there should be such a desirability about a new pin, which was what Aunt Caroline called ‘being funny’. Mrs. Green, who had been our housekeeper for years, had packed her bags and left.

“Good riddance,” said Aunt Caroline. We only had young Ellen to do the rough work.

“Very well,” said Aunt Caroline, ‘we have three pairs of hands in the house. Why should we want more? “

Something had to be done about the shop, too. Obviously it could not be carried on in the same manner since my father’s death. The conclusion was reached that it would have to be sold and in due course a Mr. Clees came along with his middle-aged daughter Amelia and bought it. These negotiations went on for some time and it emerged that the shop and its stock would not yield so very much once my father’s debts had been paid.

“He had no head, your father,” said Aunt Caroline scorn fully.

“He had a head all right,” replied Aunt Matilda, ‘but it was always in the clouds. “

“And this is the result. Debts. I never saw such debts. And when you think of that wine cellar of his and the wine bills. What he did with it all, I can’t imagine.”

“He liked to entertain his friends from the university and they liked to come,” I explained.

“I don’t wonder at it, with all the wine he was fool enough to give them.”

Aunt Caroline saw everything in that way. People did things for what they got, never for any other reason. I think she had come to look after my father to make sure of her place in heaven. She suspected the motives of everyone.

“And what is he going to get out of that?” was a favourite comment. Or What good does she think that will do her? ” Aunt Matilda was of a softer nature. She was obsessed with her own state of health, and the more irregular it was, the better pleased she seemed to be. She could also be quite happy discussing other people’s ailments and brightened at the mention, of them; but nothing pleased her so much as her own. Her heart was often ‘playing her up’. It ‘jumped’; it ‘fluttered’; it rarely achieved the required number of beats per minute for which she was constantly testing it. She frequently had a touch of heartburn or there was a numb freezing feeling all round it. In a fit of exasperation I once said: ” You have a most accommodating heart. Aunt Matilda. ” And for a moment she thought that was a new kind of disease and was quite cheered.

So between the self-righteous virtue of Aunt Caroline and the hypochondriacal fancies of Aunt Matilda I was far from content.

I wanted the old security and love which I had taken for granted; but it was more than that. Since my adventure in the mist I would never be the same again. I thought constantly of that encounter, which seemed to be growing more and more unreal in my mind as time passed but was none the less vivid for that. I went over every detail that had happened: his face in the candle light, those gleaming eyes, that grip on my hand; the feel of his fingers on my hair. I thought of the door handle slowly turning and I wondered what would have happened if Hildegarde had not warned me to bolt it.

Sometimes when I awoke in my room I would imagine I was in the hunting lodge, and was bitterly disappointed when I looked round my room and saw the wallpaper with the blue roses, the white ewer and basin, the straight wooden chair and the text on the wall which said “Forget yourself and live for others’, and which had been put there by Aunt Caroline. The picture which had always been there still remained. A goldenhaired child in a flowing white dress was dancing along a narrow cliff path beside which was a long drop on to the rocks below. Beside the child was an angel. The title was The Guardian Angel. The girl’s flowing dress was not unlike the nightdress I had worn in the hunting lodge; and although I did not possess the pretty features of the child and my hair was not golden, and Hildegarde did not resemble the angel in the least, I associated the picture with us both. She had been my guardian angel, for I had been ready to plunge to disaster ably assisted by my wicked baron who had dressed himself up in the guise of Siegfried to deceive me. It was like one of the forest fairy tales. I would never forget him. I wanted to see him again. If I had a wishbone again, my wish-in spite of my guardian angel-would still be: Let me see him again.

That was the main cause of my discontent. There was a quality about him which no one else had. It fascinated me so much that I was ready to face any danger to experience it again.