The Sign of Love

by Barbara Cartland

“It’s not that, miss and – you can’t help me,” Rose answered. “No one can!”

  Bettina looked at the cabin door to see if it was closely shut.

  Then she said,

  “Listen, Rose, anything you tell me in confidence I would not betray to anyone else, but I cannot bear you to be unhappy. Tell me what has happened.”

  “It’s his Lordship – miss,” Rose sobbed.

  “His Lordship?” Bettina queried.

  “Lord Eustace.”

  “What has he done? How can he have upset you?”

  “He saw me and Jack, miss, and you wouldn’t believe – the things he said to us.”

  “Jack?” Bettina queried.

  “Oh, miss, I love him and he wants to marry me. He said so. We were goin’ to get engaged as soon as we got home and told our families, but now it’ll never happen.”

  “I don’t understand. Start from the beginning, Rose, and tell me everything.”

  Rose tried to pull herself together and wipe her eyes, but even so the tears continued to flow down her cheeks.

  “I’ve fancied Jack ever since I came on board, miss.”

  “Who is he?” Bettina asked.

  “He’s one of the sailors, miss, and he’s ever – so nice. He said he liked me from the first moment he saw me – as I liked him.”

  Tears choked Rose’s voice.

  After a moment Bettina urged her,

  “Go on. Tell me what happened.”

  “Well, we talks nearly every evenin’ and he never suggests anythin’ wrong and never even tries to kiss me. Behaved – like a gentleman, he did.”

  Rose paused and then continued with difficulty,

  “Until tonight – I was standin’ with him under the s-stars – and he says to me, ‘you’ll marry me, Rose, won’t you, as soon as we’ve saved enough?’ And I says, ‘Oh, Jack!’ It was what I’d longed for and what I’d prayed – he’d say to me.”

  Rose drew in her breath and then went on,

  “He puts his arms round me and kisses me and it was the first time he’d ever touched me, miss, I swears it!”

  “I believe you, Rose, and there was nothing wrong in his kissing you when you are engaged.”

  “That’s what I thinks, miss, but – Lord Eustace sees us and I can’t tell you what he says! He accuses Jack of horrible things and says he’ll speak to the Captain in the mornin’ and – get him dismissed when we gets back to England.”

  Rose burst into tears again and in between her sobs she murmured,

  “And he says he’ll tell the housekeeper at h-home about my behaviour and – I’ll be turned away without a reference.”

  Rose gave a little gasp before she added,

  “That means – I’ll never get another job and now J-Jack won’t be able – to marry me.”

  “I have never heard of anything so outrageous!” Bettina exclaimed. “Did you tell His Lordship that you were engaged to be married?”

  “He wouldn’t listen, miss. He just rants and raves at Jack and speaks to me as if I was a fallen woman and I’m not, I swear – I’m not, miss.”

  Rose put her hands over her eyes as her sobs shook her like a tempest.

  Bettina put her arms round her.

  “It’s all right. Rose. Don’t cry. I will make it all right, I promise you.”

  “It’ll be of no use talkin’ to – his Lordship, miss. When he makes up his mind to do somethin’, he does it!”

  “What do you mean by that?” Bettina asked.

  “He moved my old Granny from her home – on the Alveston estate in Kensal Green. She’d lived there all her life. Loved it, she did, all her friends were round her. But Lord Eustace said the house was insanitary – and ordered it to be pulled down.”

  “Surely he could not make her move?” Bettina asked.

  “He managed it, miss. Got some officials to chuck her out.”

  “Not into the street?” Bettina exclaimed in horror.

  “Oh, no, miss! Not as bad as that. He found her a new house somewhere on the estate. But she’s never been happy there. She misses her friends and the shops she knew. She’s just fadin’ away. I shouldn’t – be surprised if she’s dead when I gets home.”

  Rose paused for a moment.

  Then she said with another burst of tears,

  “And that’s what I’ll be. I’d rather be dead if I can’t be married to Jack! And, if I lose my job and he’s out of work too – what chance have we got? None! None!”

  “I promise you, Rose, that will not happen.”

  Bettina wanted to say that if all else failed she would get her father to employ Rose and find a job for Jack, but she knew that there would not be the money to pay her so she had to think of another idea.

  “I assure you I will do something,” she said. “This shall not happen to you. I refuse to let it!”

  “I don’t think as how you can help me, miss, but it’s ever so kind of you to want to and you knows as well as I do I should not be tellin’ my troubles to a lady like you.”

  “A lady like me should be helping you and that is what I certainly intend to do.”

  Rose helped her to undress and, when she was about to leave the cabin, Bettina said,

  “Promise me, Rose, that you will try to sleep. If you have the chance, send a message to Jack that I am going to try and put things right for you both. I expect he is pretty miserable too.”

  Rose was so overcome by the mention of Jack’s name that she could not reply.

  She closed the cabin door and Bettina lay in bed thinking about what she had just heard.

  She could hardly believe that Lord Eustace with all his talk of helping those less fortunate than himself could be so insensitive.

  Yet, because she had listened to his pamphlets and thought them dictatorial and often overbearing, she could understand that he would not listen to Rose’s and Jack’s points of view and they would doubtless be very badly expressed.

  It was a quite usual, in fact almost universal, rule that no maidservant should have ‘followers’.

  But considerate employers like her mother had always made exceptions for those who were genuinely engaged to be married or what the staff called ‘walking out’.

  ‘I suppose Lord Eustace thought it was just a shipboard romance,’ Bettina thought, trying to make excuses for him.

  But she was sure, because she liked and trusted Rose, that he had jumped to conclusions in thinking that she was behaving wantonly.

  Rose was a decent girl and her father was one of the foresters on the Alveston estate.

  She had been very proud, she told Bettina, to be chosen to be one of the maids to look after the Duke’s guests on this trip.

  But she had added honestly that the main reason that she had been allowed to come was because the other housemaids were too old or too frightened of the sea.

  ‘She need not have told me that,’ Bettina thought now and knew that it was another reason she was sure that Rose was being truthful.

  She was so perturbed by the story she had heard that she found it impossible to sleep.

  *

  In fact it was nearly dawn before she finally dozed off and awoke to find that it was later than she usually got out of bed and the yacht had left Port and had reached the Mediterranean.

  It was then she decided that the best thing she could do for Rose was to go straight to the Duke.

  ‘I will tell him exactly what has happened,’ she reasoned, ‘and I am sure that he will not let such an injustice be perpetrated amongst his loyal servants.’

  She dressed herself carefully putting on one of the summer dresses that had belonged to her mother.

  Of a pale green it made her look very young and spring-like and, because she thought it would give her courage, she took one of the orchids that she had worn last night and pinned it at the neck of her gown as she had her first morning on board.

  As she expected, none of the ladies had left their cabins, but she could hear the voices of the gent
lemen having breakfast in the dining room.

  She somehow guessed that the Duke would not be among them. She knew that early in the morning he took his exercise walking alone round the deck.

  She went to look for him and saw him at the stern of the yacht moving briskly round the superstructure.

  Lifting up her skirts with one hand she ran after him.

  She had expected him to carry on round the deck, but obviously he had changed his direction for, as she rounded the corner, she bumped into him.

  She gave a startled exclamation and he steadied her with both his hands as he asked,

  “You appear to be in a hurry. Miss Charlwood, or are you running away from someone?”

  “I was looking for you, Your Grace,” Bettina answered breathlessly.

  “Then you have found me,” the Duke smiled.

  “I wanted to speak to you,” Bettina said.

  She felt her heart beating tumultuously and supposed that it must be because she had run so quickly.

  The Duke looked at her for a moment and saw the anxiety in her grey eyes.

  “I am ready to listen,” he suggested.

  Bettina looked around. Just behind them, fitted into the superstructure, was a wooden seat where people could sit sheltered from the wind and watch the wake emerging from the propellers.

  “Shall we sit down?”

  “Why not ?” the Duke replied.

  They sat down and Bettina turned a little sideways clasping her hands together.

  “You may think it very – strange,” she began breathlessly, “that I should – trouble you with – something that may seem very – trivial.”

  “I would not think anything trivial if it concerned you personally, Miss Charlwood.”

  The Duke spoke kindly and Bettina thought that he was so grand and so overwhelming that he might laugh at the story of Rose and Jack and think her extremely presumptuous in bringing it to his notice.

  Her fingers tightened on each other and after a moment she began in a very small voice,

  “Last night – Rose, that is the – maid who looks after me, was – desperately unhappy.”

  She waited for the Duke to say that he was not interested in the feelings of a mere maidservant, but he did not speak and appeared to be listening and so Bettina went on,

  “She was in tears and I made her tell me what had upset her. She then told me that it was because of what – Lord Eustace had done.”

  ‘Eustace!”

  The Duke repeated the name with an incredulous note in his voice.

  Whatever he had expected to hear, it was not this.

  Then Bettina realised that the way she had phrased it might have given the Duke an entirely wrong impression.

  “No, no,” she said quickly. “It is not what Lord Eustace had done to Rose personally. It is – nothing like that.”

  “Then what has he done?”

  Hesitatingly telling the story, Bettina thought rather badly, she told him what Rose had told her.

  When she came to the end of the story, she did not dare to look at the Duke but instead said with a passionate sincerity in her voice,

  “I trust Rose. I know she is not like – that. She is a good girl and, while she has been dressing me, we have talked about many things. I should know if she was the – sort of girl that Lord Eustace – thought her to be.”

  The Duke still said nothing.

  There was a grim line to his lips and she realised that he was incensed.

  “I have made you angry,” she exclaimed. “Oh, please, I am sorry if I should not have come to you, but I did not like to talk to the Captain and Rose cannot wait and be miserable all the way back to England because she thinks she will be dismissed from your service.”

  “You did the right thing in telling me this,” the Duke replied, “and I am not angry with you or with Rose and her young man.”

  Bettina gave a deep sigh of relief.

  “You understand. I thought you – would.”

  “Why did you think I would understand?” the Duke asked.

  “Because you are not intolerant and dictatorial like – ”

  She stopped, feeling that it was rude to speak, as she intended to, about Lord Eustace.

  “The ‘do-gooders’ in the world,” the Duke pointed out after a moment, “are often an incredible nuisance.”

  “They mean well,” Bettina said quickly, feeling that she must somehow say a good word on Lord Eustace’s behalf.

  “That is ‘to damn with faint praise’,” the Duke quoted.

  Bettina gave a little sigh.

  “I think the truth is that some people often force their own ideas of what is right and wrong on others without taking their feelings and personal inclinations into consideration.”

  She was thinking of Rose’s grandmother as she spoke and the Duke answered,

  “That is exactly what I think, Miss Charlwood.”

  He paused before he added,

  “Will you leave this problem with me? I promise you I will solve it and that whatever else happens your protégés, Rose and Jack, shall have the chance of being united in matrimony if that is what they really wish.”

  Bettina looked up at him with her eyes shining.

  “Do you mean that? Oh, Your Grace, thank you! I felt you would understand – I was sure you would – and you will make two people so very happy.”

  The Duke looked at her and put one hand over hers.

  “Leave everything to me,” he insisted and rose to his feet.

  Bettina sped back to her own cabin as if she had wings on her feet.

  She entered to find Rose making her bed and she burst in to fling her arms round the girl.

  “It’s all right, Rose! Everything is going to be all right and you will be able to marry Jack as you want to!”

  “What are you sayin’, miss?”

  “I have spoken to the Duke and he said that he will see to everything personally. Oh, Rose, he was so kind andso wonderful about it all.”

  “Do you really – mean that, miss?”

  “It’s true. You don’t have to worry anymore.”

  “Oh, miss – ”

  Rose dissolved in tears again but this time they were tears of joy.

  *

  When the Duke left Bettina, he walked into the smoking room to look for his half-brother, but the only person there was Sir Charles looking unusually despondent.

  “What is it, Charles?” the Duke asked.

  “I had a damned silly wager with Downshire last night,” Sir Charles answered, “and I find this morning that I have lost.”

  “I told you not to challenge him. He is one of those tiresome people who eventually always come out on top.”

  “You are right, Varien. You always are,” Sir Charles said with a sigh.

  “Have you seen Eustace?”

  “I think he is having breakfast.”

  A Steward came into the room with some silver ashtrays.

  “Ask Lord Eustace to come here,” the Duke ordered him, “and do not return until I send for you.”

  “Very good, Your Grace.”

  “If you want to talk to Eustace alone, I will go,” Sir Charles volunteered.

  “No, Charles, stay,” the Duke answered. “I want you to hear what I have to say.”

  “I would really rather not,” Sir Charles said looking at the unmistakably grim expression on his host’s face.

  “I want an impartial referee, Charles,” the Duke replied.

  Sir Charles sat down again with a resigned expression on his face.

  A moment later Lord Eustace came into the smoking room.

  “You wanted me, Varien?”

  “Yes. Shut the door!”

  Lord Eustace obeyed and stood looking at his half-brother questioningly.

  “I understand,” the Duke started slowly, “that last night you accused two of my employees of misconduct.”

  ‘That is true,” Lord Eustace said, “I considered their behaviour extrem
ely reprehensible.”

  “You did not think that the correct way to proceed would be to report what you imagined they were doing to me?”

  “I have every intention of seeing the Captain this morning and telling him the man’s behaviour was disgraceful and he should be dismissed as soon as we reach England.”

  “How dare you!” the Duke retorted. “How dare you interfere with my staff and the running of my yacht? And what is more, how dare you presume to threaten my servants with punishments you are in no position to inflict.”

  “When the Captain hears what I have to say, he will hardly keep a man with such profligate morals on your staff,” Lord Eustace replied. “As to the woman, she was doubtless emulating the behaviour of some of your female guests, but that in itself is no excuse.”

  “If you speak like that,” the Duke stormed, “I will throw you overboard and hope you drown!”

  “I can quite believe that,” Lord Eustace sneered, “because you seldom hear the truth, Varien, and don’t like it when you do. The morals aboard this yacht are a disgrace to Society and to the family name. With such an example in front of them it’s not surprising that the servants are as licentious as their Master.”

  The Duke clenched his fist and without doubt would have struck his half-brother if Sir Charles had not intervened.

  He rose hastily to walk between them.

  “It’s a mistake to lose your temper, Varien,” he said, “and Eustace, you have no right to speak to your brother in such a manner.”

  “I have every right,” Lord Eustace countered. “Have you any idea what hell it is for me to stand by and watch him chucking his money away on women who are little better than prostitutes and on men whom he encourages to be unfaithful to their wives?”

  His voice rose as he battled on,

  “He is content to let the Alveston estates go to rack and ruin so long as he can pay for his Casanova-like activities.”

  Lord Eustace almost spat the words at Sir Charles and, as he was about to answer, the Duke interposed,

  “What you are saying is a lie, but even if I do behave as you say what business is it of yours? I am the Head of the Family and I shall do as I wish.”

  “But you forget,” Lord Eustace retorted, “that I am your heir and, when you are dead, I shall have to restore some sort of order and decency out of the mess you have made of everything.”