The Marlows

by Rosalind Laker

  “Not at all!” she cried tormentedly. “Edward is solid and reliable — not like Papa in any way, thank God! And, as I pointed out, that’s more than I can say about Adam.” She snatched up her gloves. “I’m getting everything I want for once. I’m fulfilling my dearest ambition.” She turned on her heel and ran from the house to where a carriage from the Manor awaited her. Tansy rushed to the window and watched her go. Poor foolish, unhappy Nina, who was set on ruining her own life as well as those of the two men who loved her. Tansy dropped her face into her hands and wept in pity for the three of them.

  It was shortly before midday when the doorbell rang. Tansy, summoned by the maidservant who had answered it, found Adam on the doorstep in travelling clothes, his hat in his hand.

  “I’ve come to say goodbye,” he said stiffly, his face drawn.

  “Goodbye? Where are you going? Come in, do,” she cried anxiously.

  He stepped over the threshold but would not go farther into the house. “I’m sailing from the Port of London at dawn tomorrow morning on the American packet John Adams to the New World. I sold my business here in Cudlingham and I’m going to try my luck on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. They say there are fortunes to be made there and I want to turn my back on this place and go as far from it as possible.”

  “Nina has told me about you two. Does she know you’re leaving?” she asked gravely, filled with sorrow. “Why are you going so suddenly?”

  He nodded wearily. “A month ago I gave her an ultimatum. She had to tell Edward Taylor that she wasn’t going to marry him. This she hasn’t done. I cannot endure to be here — or anywhere else in England, for that matter — when she becomes another man’s wife.”

  “I know it’s you whom she loves!” she exclaimed, torn by his plight.

  “She doesn’t deny it, but will not change her mind.”

  “I tried to talk to her only this morning. Oh, please stay! I’ll try again —”

  “It’s useless. I love her — God knows why! — but I intend to do my damnedest to forget her. I should never be able to manage that in this country knowing that our paths might cross again at any time.” He held out a hand. “Goodbye, Tansy. I wish you every happiness in your marriage to Reade. He’s a fortunate man.”

  She put her hand in his, this man who had been her first love. “God keep you, Adam. I wish you a safe journey and a fine new life in America.”

  For the first and only time he kissed her, a light kiss on the cheek. Then he turned with a swirl of his coattails and went out of the house and out of her life. She knew she would never see him again.

  It was late when Nina came home. She burst into the house wearing one of the evening gowns she kept at the Manor, but without shawl or cape, and with one earring missing. Her eyes were wild and her face ashen. Tansy, waiting up for her, dropped her book and sprang up from her chair in alarm.

  “Nina! Whatever’s the matter?”

  Nina clutched at her with shaking hands. “Adam’s gone! A sudden, terrible sense of desolation came over me in the midst of that hateful eve-of-wedding gathering of Edward’s relations, and I felt such a longing for Adam that I nearly died. I left without saying good night to anyone, telling a servant to inform Edward that I had gone home to stop him fussing after me, and I ran all the way to Adam’s house. But somebody else had moved in there today. They said he had left Cudlingham — that he was going abroad.”

  Tansy put compassionate arms about her and hugged her tight. “I know. I know.” Her own throat was full.

  “You’ve seen him?” Nina could hardly speak, her teeth beginning to chatter with delayed shock.

  “He came this morning to say goodbye. Here — sit down.” Tansy drew her sister down onto the couch. “Didn’t you think he meant what he said?”

  Nina gave a long, despairing moan, rocking in her desperation. “No, I didn’t. I even believed he would find it impossible to go far from me, and I thought I should go on seeing him sometimes. It was that which made the thought of marriage to Edward bearable. Where is Adam now? Where is he staying?”

  “He’s on board ship. He sails for the New World before dawn.”

  Nina went as still as if life had died within her. Her dilated eyes were all pupils, and she gulped for breath. “What ship? From where?” After being told she gave a deep nod, rising unsteadily to her feet, and thrust Tansy’s supporting arms from her. “I’m going to my room.”

  “I’ll bring you a hot drink and sit with you.”

  Nina did not answer, but went up the stairs with her head high. Tansy rang at once for a pot of tea. When it was ready she took it from the maid and went upstairs with the tray to find Nina’s room deserted. The evening gown she had been wearing lay in a heap of shimmering, azure silk on the bed, the closet door stood open with some garments missing, and drawers in the chest had half their contents tumbled on the floor. The window to the kitchen roof was flung wide. Tansy dropped the tray and flew to look out. In the same instant the clatter of hooves resounded over the cobbled yard.

  “Nina!” she shrieked. She hurled herself back down the stairs and rushed out of the house. Nina had already vanished through the gates, riding to her lover on the horse that had once brought Oliver Marlow home for the last time.

  Tansy did not go back into the house, but broke into a run down the drive and out into the lane. She did not stop running until she reached Ainderly Hall. There, admitted by a servant, she almost fell into Dominic’s arms and in the privacy of his study she told him all that had occurred.

  The next day dawned gray and overcast. Shortly after nine o’clock Dominic drove his hooded phaeton through the gates of Rushmere, Nina a bowed figure beside him. Tansy, her hours of watching for them over at last, ran out to meet them. Nina’s eyes were tragic and sunken, but she straightened her back when she alighted as if defying pity.

  She spoke in a harsh whisper. “I was too late. Adam’s ship was no more than a sprinkle of lights in the distance when I reached the quayside.”

  “That’s what I feared,” Tansy said sadly. “That’s why Dominic came after you.”

  A bitter little smile showed briefly on the colourless mouth. “You also feared I might end my life in those same waters if there was no one there to prevent me. Perhaps it would have been better for me if you hadn’t interfered. Now I have to live with my longing for Adam for the rest of my days.”

  She went on into the house. Dominic, bringing from the phaeton the bundle she had packed with such haste only a few hours before, walked with Tansy indoors after her. “She’s going ahead with her marriage to Edward at noon,” he said gravely.

  “Surely not!”

  “You’d better talk to her. I found her adamant.”

  Nina, already getting out of her travel-dusty clothes in her room, spoke before Tansy had a chance. “Get one of the maids to heat some bath water for me. I have half an hour before the hairdresser comes.”

  “Don’t marry Edward!”

  Nina looked over her shoulder at Tansy, her face expressionless. “I no longer have any choice in the matter. I’m going to have Adam’s baby.”

  In the parish church of Cudlingham at noon Nina made a pale and ethereal bride in ivory moiré taffeta with a veil of Brussels lace, delicate as gossamer. Her voice did not falter when she made her responses and under a shower of rice her composed little smile remained neatly in place as she hurried with a laughing, happy Edward down the church path amid crowds of well-wishers to the beribboned waiting landau. Only when she was departing for her honeymoon, arrayed from head to foot in cinnamon velvet, did her composure break down and she clung to Tansy with a desperate, limpet-like embrace as though making a farewell not only to the past, but to all happiness itself.

  14

  In a private saloon with almond green walls and white Rococo woodwork in the Grand Stand at Epsom the champagne corks were popping. Tansy and Dominic were receiving congratulations and good wishes on all sides, their marriage having taken place that mor
ning with only Nina, Edward, and Roger present. A buffet luncheon table set with damask and silver and crystal, enhanced by a centrepiece of flowers in Dominic’s racing colours of blue, amber, and white, was loaded with Sussex lobsters on beds of lettuce, pyramids of prawns, game pies with glossy crusts, garnished capons, rosy hams, and every kind of delicacy, to which those invited guests in the saloon were doing more than justice. As a background to the laughter and the talk there came the outside roar and bustle of the racing crowd of more than sixty thousand people.

  Tansy, too excited and happy to eat, moved with Dominic among their guests, her gown a soft iris-blue, her hat a romantic leghorn, its wide brim edged with scalloped lace, its ribbons loosely tied under her chin. As soon as the opportunity presented itself she drew Dominic with her out through the glass doors onto the balcony that stretched the length of the Grand Stand, which itself rose three floors high above the course, its Doric columns giving it the look of a gigantic wedding cake.

  “Our wedding day and my first Derby Day!” she exclaimed joyfully, looking down at the sea of people and the famous course shaped like a horseshoe, the whole throbbing, noisy scene cradled on an unsurpassed stretch of the magnificent Epsom Downs, green as velvet under a sky of clearest English blue with a small fluff of white cloud here and there to emphasize its purity. Bands were playing, tin whistles screeching, fiddles jigging, drums beating outside the drinking booths and sideshows, and the tinkling tambourines of the gypsy dancers flashed like small, twinkling suns as they entertained groups in the crowd. Other temporary and private stands of canvas and wood, vivid with flags and bunting, their benches filled with people, faced the course, and the Judge’s chair by the winning post, shortly to be occupied by that distinguished gentleman, Sir Giles LeBoare, was a wooden erection painted red and white. Opposite was the Hill, so spread with people and striped booths and every kind of tent and caravan that it looked like a brilliant Persian carpet with a pattern forever on the move, and on the crest of it were innumerable coaches, which earlier in the day had swept up there into their positions with horns blowing and passengers waving, the strained horses steaming.

  Stretching for almost a mile along the rails on either side of the course, except where the lawn in front of the Grand Stand made an exclusive enclosure, were equipages of every kind lying five or six deep, from which the occupants would view the racing. In the elegant open carriages the ladies’ parasols made pastel-coloured mushroom clusters that bobbed and dipped, the fringes dancing, while liveried servants served picnics of exotic foods and poured champagne and hock and sherry. By the Betting Post there was a frenzy of activity, the bookmakers in waistcoats of garish hues, their belts studded with silver coins, and some with feathers in their hats, all taking wads of notes, piles of sovereigns, and fistfuls of shillings from eager punters as fast as the money could change hands. Young Oberon was joint favourite with The Flying Dutchman, the odds lying 2-1, and some lively competition was expected from a colt called Tadmor. All along the roads and lanes that led to the course people were still coming in a constant stream of carriages, donkey carts, and trade wagons turned to racing use for the day, others on foot and many on horseback, and left behind them all like debris in their wake were countless vehicles that bad collided, broken an axle, or ended in a ditch.

  Dominic was looking through his field glasses and Tansy touched his arm. “Any sign of Roger yet?”

  He lowered them, smiling at her. “It’s too soon yet. There’s the first race of the afternoon to be run before the Derby. We’ll see him after the weighing in when the saddling-up takes place. You can wish him good luck then.”

  “Take me down into the crowd now,” she implored eagerly. “I want to see everything at close hand.”

  He laughed, tucking her hand into the crook of his arm, and bore her with him back through the saloon, everybody parting with smiles and glasses raised in honour to let them through. She picked up her bridal posy on the way with a shining swirl of its satin ribbons and they went out to the huge staircase that took them down to the front of the Grand Stand.

  In the room they had left behind, Edward turned to Nina, putting his arm lightly about her waist. “Would you like to wander down there for a little while?”

  She twirled out of his embrace, fanning her face with her hand as if any sort of contact was unbearable in the heat of the afternoon, barely able to suppress her aversion to his touch. “Mercy, no! I can’t abide crowds!”

  He made no reply, but moodily drained his glass and had it refilled. He had not missed her withdrawal. She withheld herself from him in all ways at the least excuse. Shyness and timidity were one thing, but an excess of modesty to the point of fetishness was another. Had he not been brutal with her he would not yet have seen her naked. Their wedding night had almost unmanned him, so terrible had been her tears, so black the despair in her eyes, so absent the passion he had thought to awaken. And yet — and yet? A certain doubt continued to plague him and he could not dismiss it. His gaze followed her with a chill distrust as she moved out onto the balcony to the spot that her sister had recently vacated, her back to him, her fists clenched side by side on the flat-topped balustrade.

  Half-dazzled by the sun Nina stared with unseeing, unfocused eyes toward the distant, wooded slopes. Where was Adam now? That he yearned for her as she did for him she knew well enough. One day he would find he could bear it no longer and return for her. Then she would leave husband, child or children, home, and everything else to follow him anywhere, no matter if he had not a penny to his name. One day. One day. It was a dream that was to sustain her for several years to come until at last she was forced to accept the awful realization that he had gone forever and was never coming back.

  By a gypsy caravan Tansy was having her fortune told, her palm extended, and held by gnarled, brown fingers, the nails black-rimmed and broken. “You’ve known sorrow and heartache and pain,” the old crone crackled in a high, toneless chant. “There’s a woman, young, related to you, who will always have need of your comfort and strength, and her children will be dear to you and ever in your house where there is the love and laughter that is lacking in their place of abode.”

  “How many shall I have of my own?” Tansy asked.

  “I see you with three daughters and when they are almost grown there’ll be a son — a boy born out of your man’s love for you that will never wane.”

  “I couldn’t wish to be told better than that on my wedding day,” Tansy said softly.

  Dominic gave the gypsy woman a sovereign, well pleased that she had added to his bride’s happiness, whether there should be any truth in the predictions or not. Together they wandered on, Tansy excited and enthralled with all she saw. He bought her a toffee apple and she stood with feet together and eyes shut as she bit into it, remembering another purchased for her by her father long ago on another race day and in another place. They watched the tumblers and the trapeze artists and the strong man breaking chains, gave coins to some of the ragged, barefoot children who swarmed about, gazed at the woman walking the high wire, her red paper parasol jerking wildly, and went on to observe one of the many illegal games of chance going on, which ended abruptly with a snap of the portable table and a flutter of cards when a policeman suddenly appeared out of the throng. Laughing, they strolled on again. They paused to watch pugilists engaged in combat, passed the cockfights, avoided the booths exhibiting freaks, and stopped to shy for coconuts, Dominic removing his frockcoat to take better aim and giving it to her to hold for him. The sight of a toff in his shirt sleeves, his tall silk hat rammed down in a purposeful, forward angle over his brow, delighted the surrounding crowd, who pushed forward to get a better view. When he won a coconut they cheered, and when he tossed his trophy to a little flower girl they cheered once more. While shrugging on his frockcoat again he successfully thwarted a pickpocket, cutting a blow across the man’s wrist with the edge of his hand, and then he pushed aside a rabble of touts and tipsters that had gathered about
him and managed to whisk Tansy out of the crush without too much difficulty. In another part of the fair he took her on the swings, her hat ribbons flying as they went up and down, her petticoats a snapping flutter, her eyes closed to a fringe of lashes with laughter. When he helped her out of the swing boat the first race of the afternoon had been run.

  They joined other owners with their trainers and jockeys in the paddock where the horses were being saddled up and walked around. Young Oberon was being led by Matthew Kirby, whose father was giving last-minute instructions and advice to Roger, a short, restless figure in Dominic’s racing colours, his whip beating a light tattoo against his boot. They turned when Tansy and Dominic approached and there was much talk about the race and the conditions.

  “I’m afraid you’ll find the going somewhat heavy after all the rain of the last few days,” Dominic said to Roger. “The ground hasn’t yet dried out.”

  “I’m prepared for that, sir. I walked every inch of the course at dawn this morning to memorize every rise and fall of it as well as those sharpish left-hand corners and the right-hand curve.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “Nervous, sir. I can’t deny it. But I’ll be all right once I’m up.” With a brave show of confidence he tapped in a masterly manner Young Oberon’s saddle, Matthew having brought the colt up to them and busying himself tightening the girths. The colt stood as coolly and patiently as if in his paddock at home, having long since become accustomed to the noise and bustle of a racecourse after his initial curiosity about everything at his debut as a two year-old, although other horses were already sweating with nervousness and excitement.

  A voice boomed across the paddock in stentorian tones. “Jockeys! Get mounted, please!”

  Matthew gave Roger a leg up and at once he was more relaxed and at ease, completely at home in the saddle. He checked the stirrups and adjusted them. Then he grinned down at his sister in her blue wedding gown. “You look almost as grand in your finery as I do in your husband’s racing colours,” he joked with brotherly impudence, aware that he made a dazzling figure in his silk jacket and peaked cap, his kid boots polished to a shine that rivalled the gloss of Young Oberon’s perfectly groomed coat.