Sylvia Or The Moral High Ground

by Catherine Bowness

  “I think he broke your heart,” Melissa said.

  “No,” Sylvia replied, “I did that all by myself.”

  Chapter 2

  Cassandra Minton peered at her face in a hand mirror, moving it from one section of her countenance to the other. From time to time she paused and applied the tip of her finger to a portion of skin, alternately smoothing and rubbing it.

  The door opened behind her. Raising her eyes to the much larger mirror in the dressing table before which she sat, she saw that her lover had entered the room.

  “You are as beautiful as ever, my dear,” he said, arriving directly behind, taking the mirror from her hand and bending to kiss the side of her neck.

  She felt his lips, soft against her skin, and bent her head with languorous grace to expose a larger portion of her skin to his caress.

  “Do you really think it is all about beauty – after all these years?” he asked, twining a golden curl around his finger.

  “I know it is,” she answered. “What else could it be?”

  “Your charm, your apparent devotion, your technique.”

  “I am certain it is fading,” she muttered.

  “Which?” he asked and she felt his lips smiling against her throat. “Which of those I’ve enumerated do you think is fading? Pray enlighten me so that I may reassure you.”

  “Only my beauty; the others: well, charm is probably the same, is it not, although perhaps I am growing lazy and should exert myself more; my devotion: increased; and technique? I am persuaded that must have improved with practice.” She was teasing; in truth it was only her beauty that was fading. For years it had grown, like a flower opening from promising bud to full glory, but then slowly, at first very slowly, its freshness vanished. To begin with, the change was almost imperceptible. Now, she did not need to peer to see the fine lines and the slight softening of the skin, the faintly crumpled dimpling of it. It was too soft, too fragile, its tight bloom lost. She knew it; he knew it; and she tried to make up for it with ever more artful technique.

  “Yes,” he said gently, not perhaps meaning to wound, “but the more sophisticated the technique the more exposed the want of feeling. I wish you will not strive so hard to please me. It makes me feel hunted. Sometimes it is almost as though you wish to pin me to your wall. I appreciate, even understand, that you must extract as much from me as possible to lay up against the future; nevertheless, sometimes I own I find it fatiguing.”

  She jumped up and away from his teasing hand. “Does your grace wish to wound me?”

  “Of course I do not, but pray do not suppose that I am entirely deficient in feelings. Your devotion is to what I can give you, is it not? I would be a fool to suppose that you loved me.”

  “I do!” she exclaimed, sudden tears starting to her eyes. “I always have and now more than ever, but you have never loved me, have you?”

  “Yes, I did: at the beginning, when I was young and green; so very young, was I not? You seemed to me to be the very epitome of womanhood. You were so beautiful and knew so well how to charm and seduce. I thought myself the most fortunate of boys to have found favour with you. I flattered myself that I made you happy; it was only much later that I understood that no man could make you happy, that I was only an instrument of revenge. My dear, was it always your intention to do to me what had been done to you?”

  “I could not. It is different for men.”

  “Not so very different. It is true that Society does not condemn me in the same way. The world is cruel to women and you suffered a grievous blow. However, I remain unconvinced that your method of dealing with it was well chosen, although I am aware that you were very young at the time and no doubt as innocent as a kitten. Nevertheless, you have, with perhaps less reluctance on my part and certainly less lasting damage in the eyes of the world, achieved something of what was forced upon you. I cannot but feel that you took advantage of me. You have used me for your own ends.”

  “And have I not been used by you?” she cried.

  “Yes, I do not deny that, but we came from different directions: you endeavoured to assuage the wound you had been dealt years before by taking up with a boy as innocent as you had once been. What you did to me was as instrumental in destroying my future as what was once done to you was in ruining yours. We have been well matched: both as bitter and disillusioned as each other. But love does not come into it.”

  “It is because I am growing old that you have tired of me,” she cried, ignoring his attempt to understand her motives and to explain his own. She could not bear to admit that she had behaved badly towards him; she could only ever accept that she had herself been ill-treated by men and, to that end, was prepared to settle for his pity if she could not command his love.

  “I have not grown tired of you; far from it. You are so terrified that I may have that you imagine the worst and almost force me to take the step that you most fear. Will you not be happy one day to retire to the country and give up trying to please me – or other men? You have amassed a not inconsiderable fortune, I should imagine. I do not think you will need to seek protection from another – unless of course you want to and cannot live without flattery and gifts.”

  “But what should I do in the country? No one would speak to me. I should be altogether alone. I cannot – do you expect me to grow vegetables?”

  He laughed. “I had not thought of that. I own I have not considered how you will occupy yourself when you retire; but how does anyone do so when they grow old?”

  “Ordinary people, people who have husbands and children and a family, have each other; they share the growing up of children, the birth of grandchildren; I suppose they sit on either side of the fire and reminisce; I do not know, but I cannot do that. I have no husband, no children, no family – and not many friends either.”

  She had worked herself up into a state which, he knew from the past, would almost inevitably lead to hysteria. He put his arms around her. “My darling, it is a long way off.”

  “It is not, because in my career … Men only like young women.”

  “You know that is not true. You were not particularly young when I first met you and I have been with you for the best part of fifteen years. If I only liked young women I would have left years ago. Are you determined to drive me away? I have no intention of sending you to the country for many years yet.

  “I came to ask if you would like to go to the Hanover Square Rooms tonight where Bisset is booked to play. I thought you might enjoy it.”

  She sniffed and wiped her eyes with a wisp of lace. She must not cry; it did not become older women and she knew, deep down, that she had driven herself to it, trying, as usual, to wring a declaration from him.

  “Yes, I should. How kind of you to suggest it. Will you come with me?” She did not wait for him to answer but rushed on, “I suppose, when I am fixed in the country, that is one of the things I shall be able to do when I become tired of growing vegetables. I shall practise playing the pianoforte, although of course I shall never be able to play so well as Bisset.”

  “You do play well,” he said gently. “I love to listen to you.” He rose and bent to kiss her. “No, I will not come with you. I am engaged to dine somewhere else but, when I saw that she was playing tonight, I thought that you would not wish to miss it. I have brought you two tickets so that you may take someone with you. I must go now but will send a carriage to convey you in plenty of time.”

  She forbore to ask where he was going and kissed him as lightly as she could, turning back to the mirror so that she should not see him leave. She heard the click of the door closing behind him and felt the chill wind of his absence envelop her.

  She stared into the mirror, hardly seeing her face, but looking behind her into the room in which she sat. By swivelling slightly on her chair she could see the door through which he had left and it became, suddenly, painfully, a door which shut her off from the life she had once expected. Now she was fixed in this room, a room in a house in a f
ashionable – but not the most fashionable, for she was a mistress not a wife – part of town paid for by the Duke. Everything she could see in the mirror was behind her, the perspective gradually diminishing.

  Her lips trembled and tears pricked once more behind her eyes. She could cry now: he was not here to see her grow ugly. She put the mirror down and, covering her face with her hands, began to weep in earnest, sobs wracking her chest. She felt exceedingly sorry for herself.

  She had been only seventeen when she had first come to London for her long-awaited presentation.

  Almost from the moment she arrived she was fêted, everyone telling her how beautiful she was. It went to her head. She thought every man who spoke to her, who allowed his eyes to dwell upon her countenance, was in love with her. Offers of marriage began to pour in within a remarkably short space of time.

  Now, more than twenty years later, she did not see how any of those men could have fancied themselves to have been in love with her: most of them had hardly spoken to her. But, so numerous were the offers, so multitudinous the compliments, that she had thought herself irresistible. Her papa had not, she suspected with hindsight, told her of all of them; she had been given an expurgated list, comprising only those gentlemen whom her parents considered acceptable. She had been offered a choice, albeit a limited one.

  Unfortunately the man who found favour in her eyes was a well-known rake, a man of whom her parents strongly disapproved and against whom they warned her. He had a great deal of address but he drank too much, gamed too much and was not to be trusted with young girls; all these things, together with Society’s uncompromising condemnation of him, only served to make him more attractive to a tender-hearted girl.

  He courted her, if not assiduously, at least enough to whet her appetite for more. He was not garrulous, which meant that everything he said seemed imbued with a meaning far beyond the actual words. She imputed feelings and thoughts to this dark, saturnine man which she wished him to hold but for which there was scant evidence. His compliments were less frequently given than many other men’s and were often delivered in such a sardonic manner that they might more readily have been interpreted as insults. She believed him when he told her that she was the most beautiful female he had ever beheld – for wasn’t that what everyone was saying? He was not a man who smiled readily and she grew to long for the slow, rather bitter smile to curve his lips when he looked at her.

  And then, after she had known him for a few weeks, he had taken her outside one evening at a ball and kissed her. She had thought that he would call upon her papa within a few days; she had believed that a kiss was tantamount to an offer of marriage.

  But none came. She supposed that he had been turned down by her papa. Her feelings for him abated not one whit; she felt keenly the injustice done to him. He, his crooked smile enhanced by a certain slyness which she read as an understanding reached between them, continued to seek her as a dancing partner and to pay homage to her at every event they both attended, but his attentions were perhaps a trifle diminished. She put this down to his disappointment, even despair, at her papa’s rejection of his suit.

  One night he snatched her from under the very eye of her chaperone in Vauxhall Gardens. She believed it to be an elopement for he had, once or twice, mentioned the possibility of resorting to such an improper undertaking. Although surprised and a little fearful, as she had not explicitly agreed to run away with him - and had not provided herself with any baggage on the night in question - she was excited by what she interpreted as his uncontrollable love.

  He was a little rough but she ascribed that to his strong feelings. He carried her, her cries stifled against his coat, to a waiting carriage which set off at speed as soon as the door was shut upon them.

  “Where are you taking me?” she asked, supposing it to be Scotland.

  “You will see when we arrive; until then it must remain a secret,” he told her between kisses.

  “Papa will follow! He may shoot you!”

  “I doubt it. He will not know where we have gone until it is too late.”

  He took her that night to a house a few miles south of London. It was not until halfway through the next day that she discovered that they were travelling altogether in the wrong direction for Scotland.

  They boarded a boat and a few hours later arrived on French soil. She supposed that under-age girls could be married as well there as in Scotland. Aware that he had seen no reason to respect her honour and that she had somehow failed to defend it, she nevertheless assumed that he was intending to tie the knot without delay.

  Now she wondered how she could have been so naïve. Even when they had arrived at a French country house, no word having been spoken of marriage, she had still believed that it was only a matter of time – and perhaps of obtaining a special licence – until she became his bride.

  As the days became weeks and the promises – which had never included wedlock – faded, she began at last to understand.

  “When are we to be married?” she enquired one morning as he prepared to go out riding, leaving her behind, as was increasingly his custom.

  “You thought I would marry you?” he asked, openly laughing at her.

  Her heart fell from its usual place so quickly that she thought for a moment that she would die. “Yes, of course I did. What else should I think?”

  “I cannot conceive what you may have thought or what you should have thought. I confess I did not judge you capable of such an intellectual feat. Did you really suppose that I would wish to spend the rest of my life tied to a pretty plaything?”

  The cruelty of his words and the scorn of his look completed her understanding. Her face flushed with rage and horror. “I am not a plaything! You know perfectly well that I am a respectable woman. I thought you loved me.”

  “You are no longer respectable, my dear, and I own that I have grown tired of playing with you. You have proved a severe disappointment and are turning into a dead bore.” He curled his lips in what she had once mistaken for a smile.

  “What do you mean?”

  She wondered now why she had asked for she knew, even then, perfectly well what he meant. She had, she supposed, hoped to dislodge his all-too-clear meaning in favour of another, less devastating, one. She had not been successful: she had only accomplished a reiteration of his insult.

  “I mean that what I thought would be an amusing interlude has grown exceedingly dull.” He turned on his heel and continued his leisurely progress towards the door.

  She followed and possessed herself of his hand. “Where are you going?”

  “Out.” He removed her hand as casually as though it had been a bramble into which he had inadvertently walked.

  She flung herself at him, attempting, at what she knew even then to be an ill-chosen moment, to persuade him by more subtle means to remain.

  “Pray let me go.” He strove to unwind her arms but she clung to him so tightly that he was obliged to tear her limbs from his and only succeeded in reaching the door unencumbered when he hit her across the face. She fell to the floor, screaming. For a moment he stood over her. She crawled towards him and he said coldly, “If you do not cease making that appalling noise immediately I shall hit you a great deal harder.”

  Even now she shuddered as she recalled, only too vividly, the awful scene.

  She had not stopped; she had screamed more loudly. Never in her life had anyone spoken to her in such a manner and she had still not altogether understood the nature of this man.

  He pulled her up from the floor by one arm and hit her again repeatedly until her screams were caused more by pain than outrage. Only when they turned to whimpers, did he drop his arm and, casting her a look of contempt, leave the room.

  That was not quite the end. He returned a few days later to send her away.

  “I have managed to cancel the lease on this absurdly expensive house from the end of the month. You have two weeks to take yourself off before the bailiffs arrive to throw yo
u out.”

  “Where am I supposed to go?”

  “Wherever you like – it is of no interest to me.” He withdrew his hand from his pocket and laid a bundle of notes on the table. “Since you seem to be a female with sawdust in your head and little idea of how to behave as a grown woman, I have decided, out of the kindness of my heart, to furnish you with the means to go somewhere – where, as I say, is immaterial.

  “I do not suppose that it will take you long to find another member of my sex prepared to take you on for a short time. You are a passably pretty girl but by no means unique. I will offer you a piece of advice before I go: you are no longer new and as a consequence your value has dropped significantly. If you wish to hold on to your next protector for any length of time, you will have to make a greater effort to please. I suggest a more agreeable manner, no mention of marriage – which is now in any event inconceivable – and a more adroit approach to seduction than you tried with me a few days ago. I daresay your ability in that direction will improve with practice.”

  She, more wounded by this speech than by his earlier blows, said nothing. She had by this time no wish to detain him and had besides a positive dread of his saying anything further to undermine her. Her pride made her reluctant to accept the bundle of notes, which she suspected he had deposited upon the table, not out of the kindness of his heart, but out of a desire to humiliate her. If he had flung them at her a few days before, she probably would have thrown them back at him or into the fire but, having had a few days to assess her situation, she had gained sufficient sense to let them lie. Not until she was certain that he had left the house did she pick them up and count them.

  Chapter 3

  The Sullingtons’ arrival in London was greeted with a gratifying number of invitations. It seemed that Miss Sullington would be accounted an ornament to myriad entertainments from supper parties to balls. A great many ladies made morning calls, leaving their cards with the footman, to indicate that they had marked the arrival of the family and were aware that Miss Sullington was about to be displayed to the ton.