The Loving Cup by Winston Graham Read Free Book Online Page A

entrance hall. He strode through it and opened the right hand door which led to the great hall. This room, with its minstrel gallery and its enormous table, was illuminated by the one window in which it was said there were 576 separate panes of glass. The time to see the room at its best was when the sun was slanting in, but even now the effect was highly impressive. Geoffrey Charles hoped she did not hear the rustling and scampering at the end of the room as she threw herself into his arms with delight.
    Hand in hand they explored their home. Geoffrey de Trenwith, who had designed it, or at least superintended its building, had directed his money and his craftsmen towards the several splendid reception rooms; of the fifteen bedrooms most were dark-panelled and poky, and even the four best were not large by modern standards. The living Geoffrey showed his new wife the little turret room up the stairs which had been his when he was a boy, and was delighted to find a number of his own childish sketches still on the walls. The bed was covered with a dust-sheet which was drawn up and wrinkled as if someone had quite recently left an impression on the bed; there were blankets on the floor, one of them badly gnawed; the light slanted through half drawn curtains.
    They went to Aunt Agatha's old room and found it in even poorer shape than the rest of the house. Two pictures on the walls had their glass smashed, and one frame sagged. A part of the dressing-table was broken and the thing stood bent-legged, like a soldier on a crutch. The wardrobe door swung open on one hinge. An empty bird cage hung by the window, its bars glinting in the sun, and inside a tiny frail-boned skeleton lay aslant gathering dust.
    There was a tomb-like smell to the whole house.
    'Let us go on,' said Geoffrey Charles sharply, his arm about Amadora. 'I do not think this is a happy room.'
    Nor was his mother's, for again part o fthe curtain and carpet was gnawed away, and mice droppings were everywhere; moths had holed the pretty pink bedspread; beside the bed were an hourglass, a bottle containing furry liquid, a spoon ...
    His step-father's room was cleaner, looked better cared for, but Geoffrey Charles would not stop there. He led the way to the room which most recently had been used by his grandparents, Jonathan and Joan Chynoweth, for it was perhaps the sunniest, with blue damask curtains over lace, a flowery wallpaper above the half panels, pink and yellow silk curtains decorating the fourposter bed. That the bed needed drying out, that the moths here again were in the curtains, that there were sinister rustlings in the wainscot, v were matters to be taken in one's stride.
    'Let's go down,' he said, after he had thumped open two windows. 'We'll sleep here. I'll light a fire here after I've lit the one in the kitchen. Then I shall go and find those two knaves who pretend to look after this property. They can come and stable our horses and rub them down, but I don't want them putting their ugly faces in this house - our house - tonight. If they saw unexplained lights it might disturb their drunken stupor, and cause them to come stumbling up here at the wrong time.'
    'Wrong time?' said Amadora.
    'Wrong time.' They went down the dark stairs arm in arm, jogging slightly to keep in step. He led the way through to the kitchen.
    Three steps led down to a flagged floor become une ven with time and now silk-threaded with snail-trails. The fireplace was black and cold and rusty. A great kettle was still suspended above it on a hook. By the back door was a wooden pump with a bucket under it. The bucket had split. Cobwebs festooned the shelves and there was a smell of decayed food. The place was dark from its single dirty window, and Geoffrey Charles went across and flung open the half door. Light flooded in.
    'That's better. We cannot hope to clear much tonight, but a fire will make a big difference. And some fresh air ...'
    Amadora glanced at him sidelong. 'Do you