Forever Amber

by Kathleen Winsor

"It was kind of you to invite me to dinner, Mrs. St. Clare."

  "I know it isn't proper," she said demurely, "but I sent such a barbarous reply to your note—pray forgive me, sir. It was the sickness made me churlish."

  Amber knew that her invitation was unconventional but hoped she could affect sufficient modesty to fool him. He smiled at her now much as he might have smiled at a pretty little kitten.

  They discussed her ague for a few moments, and then took their places at a table which Nan had set in the parlour next the fireplace. The footman had informed Nan that his master had a hearty appetite—though he was now under his physician's orders to eat sparingly—and the meal Amber had had sent down from the inn was an ample one. She thought it would be more to her interest to please Mr. Dangerfield than his doctor.

  Without much difficulty Amber had soon maneuvered the conversation around to Mr. Kifflin and Mr. Wigglesworth. Offhandedly, she told him how they had come to her house last night to ask her to change some money for them. She said that she had only brought fifteen or twenty guineas to Tunbridge, but that she had given them to the young men to pay their gambling debts with, and was now wondering how she would ever pack all those shillings into her trunk.

  Mr. Dangerfield, as she had hoped, seemed somewhat alarmed by this innocent tale. "Are you well acquainted with Mr. Kifflin and his friends?"

  "Heavens, no! I met them yesterday morning at the well. They introduced themselves. You know how little one goes upon ceremony in places like this."

  "You're very young, Mrs. St. Clare, and I don't imagine you understand the ways of the world so well as an old man. If I may I'd like to give you some advice—and that is not to accept too much money from those gentlemen. They may be honest as they pretend, but when you've lived as long as I you'll know it's best to be cautious with a new acquaintance— particularly if you happen upon him at a public resort."

  "Oh," said Amber, suddenly crestfallen. "But I thought that Tunbridge Wells was frequented by persons of the best quality! My physician who sent me here told me that her Majesty was here with all her ladies only last summer."

  "Yes, I believe she was. But where there's quality there are sure to be rooks. And it's unworldly young persons like yourself of whom they'll take the greatest advantage."

  While he talked Amber reached up to adjust the bow in her hair, as a signal for Nan who was waiting just outside and peeking in the window. "Oh!" she said, with a troubled frown, "how could I have been so foolish! I hope—"

  At that moment Nan came in, out of breath, and stood in the doorway taking off her chopins. "Heavens, mam!" she cried excitedly. "The landlord at the inn refused the money! He says it's a false coin!"

  "A false coin! Why, that was one Mr. Kifflin gave me last night!"

  Samuel Dangerfield turned in his chair. "May I see it?" He took it from Nan, rung it upon the table and felt of the edges while both women watched him. "It is a false one," he said seriously. "So the young coxcombs are counterfeiters. That's a sorry business—and a dangerous one. I wonder how many others they've got to change money with them?"

  "Everyone who looked simple enough, I suppose!" said Amber indignantly. "Well, I think we should call the constable and put 'em where they belong!"

  Mr. Dangerfield, however, was less inclined to be vindictive. "The laws are too harsh—they'd be hanged, drawn, and quartered." That would not have troubled Amber but she thought it best not to say so. "I believe we can manage them some other way. Do you think, Mrs. St. Clare, that you could get them to come here on some pretext or other?"

  "Why, they should be along any minute—they asked me to walk to the well with them."

  When they arrived, not much later, Nan opened the door. At sight of Mr. Dangerfield their mouths opened into broad grins—and then closed suddenly when he said: "Mrs. St. Clare and I have just been discussing the fact that there seem to be counterfeiters at Tunbridge."

  Kifflin raised his eyebrows. "Counterfeiters? Gad! It's unthinkable! I swear the wretches grow bolder every day!"

  While Wigglesworth exclaimed, as though he could not believe his own ears, "Counterfeiters at Tunbridge!"

  "Yes," said Amber. "I have a shilling that was just refused at the inn and Mr. Dangerfield says it's not a true coin. Perhaps they'd like to see it, sir."

  He gave it to Wigglesworth and both young men examined it closely, frowning, while Kifflin cleared his throat. Their faces were beginning to shine with sweat.

  "It looks good enough to me," said Kifflin at last. "But then I'm such a simple fellow someone has always got me on the hip."

  Wigglesworth laughed, not very enthusiastically. "That's exactly my case, to the letter." He returned the coin.

  "The constable," said Mr. Dangerfield gravely, "will be along soon to look at this coin. If he finds it to be false I suppose he'll examine every person in the village."

  At that moment a country girl went by outside carrying a basket over her arm and crying, "Fresh new eggs! Who'll buy my new fresh eggs?"

  Kifflin turned about quickly. "There she is, Will. I hope you'll excuse us, Mrs. St. Clare, but we came to ask if we might wait upon you later in the day. We overslept and came out in search of some eggs for our dinner. Good-day, madame. Good-day, sir."

  He and Wigglesworth bowed, backed their way out of the room, and once outside turned and started off in all haste. Their pace increased, they passed the girl without giving her so much as a glance, and when they had gone two hundred yards broke into an open run and at last cut off the main street and disappeared from sight. Amber and Mr. Dangerfield, who had gone out to watch, looked at each other and then burst into laughter.

  "Look at 'em go!" cried Amber. "I vow they won't stop for breath till they've reached Paris!"

  She shut the door again and gave a little sigh. "Well, I hope I've learnt my lesson. I vow I'll never put my trust in strangers again."

  He was smiling down at her. "A young lady as pretty as you are should be suspicious of all strangers." He said it with the air of a man who intends to be very gallant, without ever having had much practice. And when she answered the compliment with a quick upward slanting glance he cleared his throat and his ruddy face darkened. "Hem—I wonder, Mrs. St. Clare, if you'd care to put your trust in this stranger long enough to walk to the well with him?"

  Confidence was beginning to sweep through Amber, and the intoxication she always felt when she knew a man was attracted to her. "Of course I would, sir. I think I know an honest man when I see him—even if I can't always tell one who isn't."

  Amber had acted in numerous plays depicting the rigid austere hypocritical life of the City families, and, though all of them had been bitter and satirical and slanderously exaggerated, she had taken them for literal truth. Consequently, she thought she knew exactly what Samuel Dangerfield would admire in a woman; but she soon discovered that her own instinct was a surer guide.

  For as she became better acquainted with him she began to realize that even though he was a City merchant and a Presbyterian he was nevertheless a man. And she found to her surprise that he bore no resemblance at all to the sanctimonious severe dour old humbugs who had occasioned such derisive laughter at His Majesty's Theatre.

  If he was not frivolous, neither was he grimly sober; his disposition was a happy one and he laughed easily. He had worked hard all his life, for he had accumulated most of that vast fortune himself, but he was all the more susceptible to a young woman's gaiety now. His family life had been a close one, but that had given him perhaps a sense of loss, and of curiosity. Amber came into his life like a spring gale, fresh, invigorating, a challenge to whatever he had of dormant venturesomeness. She was everything he had never known before in a woman, and much he had scarcely suspected.

  It was not long before they were spending hours out of every day together, and though Samuel insisted that she must grow bored with the company of an old man and urged her to become acquainted with the few young people who were there, Amber insisted that she hated y
oung fellows who were always so silly and empty-headed and thought of nothing but dancing or gambling or going to the play. She kept in close and never went out when she could avoid it, for she was afraid that someone else might recognize her.

  And she thought that she could guess pretty well what he would think of an actress, by his opinion of the Court in general. For one day, after some mention of King Charles, he said: "His Majesty could be the greatest ruler our nation has ever had but, unfortunately, not only for him but for all of us, the years of exile were his ruin. He learned a set of habits and a way of living during that time from which he can never escape—partly, I'm afraid, because he doesn't want to."

  Amber, stitching on a piece of embroidery borrowed from Nan's work-basket, observed soberly that she had heard Whitehall had grown a most wicked place.

  "It is wicked. Wicked and corrupt. Honour is a sham, virtue a laughing-stock, marriage the butt for vulgar jests. There are still decent and honest men aplenty at Whitehall, as everywhere else in England—but knaves and fools elbow them aside."

  Most of their conversation, however, was less serious, and he seldom cared to discuss ethical or even political matters with her. Women were not interested in such things, and pretty ones least of all. Besides, she was his escape from them.

  But Amber did often ask him to advise her about financial matters; and listened wide-eyed and with her head nodding every so often to his talk of interest and principal, mortgages, title-deeds, and revenue. She talked of her goldsmith and when she mentioned Shadrac Newbold's name was glad to see how favourably impressed he seemed. She said that it was a great responsibility for her to handle her husband's money—she represented herself as a rich young widow—and that she worried a great deal for fear someone would cheat her out of it. That was another reason, she said, why she was always suspicious of young men who wished to strike up an acquaintance. She also talked frequently about her family and what terrible things they had suffered in the Wars—recounting, with elaboration, tales she had heard from Almsbury about his own or Lord Carlton's difficulties. By these devices she hoped to discourage him, had he been so inclined, from taking her for a fortune-hunter.

  They played dozens of games of wit-and-reason, and she always let him win. She made him laugh with her mimicry of the fat middle-aged women and gouty old men who were there taking the waters. She played for him on her guitar and sang songs—not ribald street-ballads, but gay country tunes or the old English folk-songs: "Chevy Chase," "Phillida Flouts Me," "Highland Mary." She pampered and flattered him and teased him, treated him at all times as though he was much younger than he was, and yet was solicitous for his comfort as if he had been much older. She guessed his age one day at forty-five and when he told her that his eldest son was thirty-five, insisted he could never make her believe that Banbury-story. She gave a lively imitation of a woman most thoroughly infatuated.

  But at the end of three weeks he had not tried to seduce her and she was growing worried.

  She stood at the window one evening just after he had gone and traced idle patterns on the frosted pane with her fingernail. Her lower lip stuck out and there was a scowl on her forehead.

  Nan, who was lifting hot embers out of the fireplace with a pair of tongs and putting them into a silver warming-pan, glanced sideways at her. "Something amiss, mam?"

  Amber swung around, giving a petulant switch to her skirt. "Yes, there is! Oh, Nan. I'm ready to run distracted! Three weeks I've been coursing this hare—and haven't caught 'im yet!"

  Nan closed the warming-pan and started into the bedroom with it. "But he's getting winded, mam. I know he is."

  Amber followed her in and began to undress, but her face was gloomy and from time to time she gave an impatient ill-tempered sigh. It seemed to her that she had been trying all her life to make Samuel Dangerfield propose to her. Nan came to help her undress and stood behind her, unlacing her busk.

  "Lord, mam!" she protested now. "You've got no cause for such vapourings! I know these formal old Puritans—I've worked in their houses. They think fornication's a serious matter, let me tell you! Why, I'd bet my virginity he hasn't laid with any woman save his wife these twenty years past! Heavens, give the gentleman leave to overcome his modesty! And what's more, don't forget you've gone to the greatest pains to make him take you for a woman of virtue. But I've watched him like a witch and I know he's mighty uneasy—there's fire in the flax and it'll be quenched," she added with a sage nod. "Only give 'im the right opportunity and you'll have 'im—secure as a woodcock in a noose." She made her two hands into a trap and put them about her own neck.

  While Amber stepped out of her smock Nan whisked the warming-pan over the sheets, held back the covers and Amber jumped in, pulling them up quickly about her chin. Then she lay there in luxurious warmth and considered her problem.

  This was, and she knew it, her last chance to take the world by its ears and climb on top. If she failed now—but she could not fail. She did not dare. She had seen too much at first hand of what happened to the women who, like her, made a livelihood by their wits and physical attractions but who had somehow let the years and the opportunities pass without achieving security.

  Somehow, somehow, she thought desperately. I've got to do it; I've got to make him marry me!

  And as she lay there thinking, it occurred to her all at once that perhaps she had been wrong, trying to make him marry her out of remorse and sense of guilt. Why, she thought, with a sudden feeling of discovery, that would never enter his head! Of course he's not going to seduce me! He thinks I'm innocent and virtuous and he respects me! He'll never marry me any way at all but from his own free will. That's what I've got to do —I've got to get him to make me an honest proposal of marriage! Why didn't I think of that long ago? But how can I do it —how can I do it—?

  Amber and Nan put their heads together over that problem, and at last they worked out a plan.

  About a week later Amber and Samuel Dangerfield set out for London in his coach. He had told her several days before that he must return and she had said that since she was leaving soon they might as well travel together; she would feel much safer riding with him. Her own coach, carrying Nan and Tansy, followed them. They had had a breakfast together at her cottage that morning—a substantial meal to prepare them for the journey—and though Amber had been gay and playful while they ate, now she had subsided into wistful and pensive quietness. From time to time she gave a little sigh.

  The day was gray and dark and the rain seeped steadily down through the leafless branches of the forest. The air had a wet and penetrating chill, but they had fortified themselves against it with fur-lined cloaks and a fur-lined robe spread across their laps. Beneath their feet each one of them had a little brazier, like the ones people took to church, full of burning coals. So it was warm and moist inside the great lurching and rocking coach, and the warmth with the steam on the windows gave it a strange intimacy, making it a private little island shut off from the world.

  Perhaps it was that seclusion and aloneness which made him bold enough to reach for her hand beneath the robe and say, "A penny for your thoughts, Mrs. St. Clare?"

  For a moment Amber said nothing, and then she looked at him with her tenderest and most appealing smile. She gave a faint shrug of her shoulders. "Oh," she said, "I was just thinking that I'm going to miss our card games and suppers and walking up to the well in the afternoons." She gave another soft little sigh. "It's going to seem mighty lonely now I've grown used to company." She had told him how retired she lived in London, where she had no relatives, only a few friends, and was wary of making new acquaintances.

  "Oh, but, Mrs. St. Clare, I hope you won't think our friendship is over. I—Well, to be honest, I've been hoping we might meet sometimes in London."

  "That's kind of you," said Amber sadly. "But I know how busy you'll be—and you have all your family about you." Most of the children, she knew, grown and small alike, still lived at the great family mansion in Blackfri
ars.

  "No, I assure you I won't. My physician wants me to do less work and as for the matter of that, I find, I've a taste for idleness—if it's spent in pleasant company." She smiled, and lowered her eyes at the compliment. "And I'd like to have you meet my family. We're all very happy together and I think you'd like them—I know they'd like you."

  "You're so kind, Mr. Dangerfield, to care about what—Oh! is something amiss?" she cried, as a sudden spasm of pain shot across his face.

  For a moment he was silent, obviously embarrassed to be caught with an ailment at a moment so delicately romantic. But at last he shook his head. "No—" he said. "No, it was nothing."

  But presently the look of agony came again and his face flushed dark. Amber, now greatly alarmed, seized hold of his arm.

  "Mr. Dangerfield! Please! You must tell me—What is it!"

  He now looked wretchedly uncomfortable and was finally forced to admit that something, he could not imagine what, was causing him great abdominal discomfort. "But don't trouble yourself for me, Mrs. St. Clare," he pleaded. "It will pass presently, it's only—Oh!" A sudden uncontrollable grunt escaped him.

  Amber's own face reflected sympathetic pain as she watched him. But instantly she was in practical charge of the situation. "There's a little inn not far up the road—I remember we passed it on the way down. We'll stop there. You must get into bed right away, and I'm sure I have some—Oh, now don't make any objections, sir!" she said as he began to protest, and though her tone would permit no argument it was tender as a mother's speaking to her sick child. "I know what's best for you. Here—I've got some hawkweed and camomile in this little bag, I always carry it with me. Wait till I get this waterflask open so you can wash it down—"

  It was not long before they reached the inn, at which Amber called out to order the coachman to stop, and Mr. Dangerfield's gigantic footman, Big John Waterman, helped him to make his way inside. Big John offered to carry him, and no doubt could easily have done so, but he flatly refused and resented such assistance as he was forced to receive. Amber was as busy as a hen with chicks. She rushed ahead to bid the hostess get a chamber ready, directed Tempest and Jeremiah which trunks to unload, ran back a half-dozen times to make sure Mr. Dangerfield was all right. At last they had him upstairs and, against his will, lying down in the great testered bed.