Free Ashenden by Elizabeth Wilhide Page A

a hill, ormove earth around until it appeared to command its surroundings. That was all very well if you were in the business of selling engravings. To make a house come to life was a different matter altogether. Arrival was the beginning of that process. Arrival began the moment you first saw a house and ended when you crossed the threshold and entered the first apartments. It was a question of sequence.
    Up ahead he heard Maria exclaim. He turned to Hannah, who was perspiring and a little out of breath.
    “She has been looking forward to this visit so much,” she said.
    He nodded. Sometimes he worried that he made his preference for Maria’s company too obvious.
    *  *  *
    On the way up the stairs, Maria had the kind of anticipation she felt turning the pages of a book, without knowing exactly what she was expecting to happen next. As soon as she came out onto the loggia, it was as if someone had given her a pair of wings. The roof soared two full stories overhead on Ionic columns, the warm stone glowed in the late spring sunlight, and the landscape fell away in front of her, rising in the distance to a gentle hill.
    Footsteps and the swish of skirts announced the arrival of the others.
    “Are you trying to fly?” said Hannah, with a laugh.
    Maria dropped her arms to her sides and spun round. Her eyes were brilliant. “It is wonderful. Do you not think so?”
    “It is very fine.”
    Maria lived in a world of sensation, where other people’s feelings streamed through the pores of her skin and mingled with her own, which then streamed back in the other direction. At that moment, she was aware that her sister, who was all goodness and patience, was worried that she would pay for her excitement later and that her uncle, who had gone over to the balustrade to look at the view, was struggling not to show how much it moved him to see the house again, and that the housekeeper, standing on the other side of the door in the shadows, was waiting. She was aware of theheartbeats of every deer in the park and every breath of air rustling the leaves of the limes, chestnuts, and beeches that grew there.
    “It took seven years to move the earth for that hill,” said her uncle, clearing his throat. “When I was last here, none of the planting had been done.”
    They went indoors. There Maria had a new feeling, which overpowered her to the extent that she barely heard the housekeeper telling them where they could go and where they could not. She saw now that what she had experienced on the loggia was only a preparation.
    She stood in the center of the hall and the whole house made itself known to her. If she stretched out her fingertips, she felt she could touch every part of it. To left and right, rooms aligned with each other behind closed paneled doors. Directly ahead, through a series of unfolding spaces, she could see a window all the way across on the opposite side. Held within the poised symmetries, she felt tears come to her eyes.
    Hannah asked a question about the doors and was told they were Spanish mahogany. Then the housekeeper said to ring the handbell next door if they needed her. Her uncle made slight, unnecessary adjustments to his clothing, took out his pocketbook, and handed over a number of coins.
    “Thank you, sir. Most kind and generous of you.”
    “Not at all.” Her uncle said, “Many years ago, there was a Hastings who was steward here.”
    “Yes, sir,” said Mrs. Hastings. “He is still the steward here and he is my husband.” She pocketed the coins and bobbed her head.
    After Mrs. Hastings had gone, they stopped being a party of visitors and became three separate people. Her uncle weighed the room in his eyes, ran his fingers across the ribbed contours of a pilaster, and gave a bronze Indian deity writhing on a console table his full disapproval. Hannah strolled across the floor.
    “Happy, Muzz?” she said, slipping an arm through hers.
    “This house is perfect.”
    Hannah gazed up at the