The Florian Signet

by John Burke

  I did not know what to do next.

  I did not know whether, after Caroline’s repudiation of the name and the story and the signet ring, it was my duty to do anything at all.

  Surreptitiously I took out the signet and, turning away from my father drowsing beside me, studied it under cover of my sleeve.

  It was real; and Count Florian was real, and his whole story was real. Of that I was sure.

  As the carriage rumbled and creaked its way back to Ely there was one other thing of which I was wretchedly sure. Mr Warrington’s suspicions were well founded. Caroline had not entered lovingly into his family. The resentful years in which she had felt herself cheated of earlier comforts and expectations had sharpened the bitter self-will I had known in her as a child. Nobody who thwarted her could expect any quarter. She had married Dominic neither for love nor, as Anton Florian forgivingly suggested, for mere security. She had married for vengeance.

  Chapter Six

  Father took up the threads of his canonical duties again and I went back to my work in the cathedral library. The afternoons shortened, darkness came earlier. Local organizations issued their winter programmes of lectures, readings and soirées. Mother, already President of the Ladies’ Discussion Group, was now elected also to the committee of the Mutual Improvement Society, while my father had to attend meetings of the Asylum Committee and put in regular appearances at the Church of England Working Men’s Institute. Many an evening I had the house to myself. I read, sewed, and practised the piano; and brooded.

  Neither Count Florian nor his political doctrine was any concern of mine. Yet I was haunted by him. I saw him in hiding, yearning, waiting for the word from Caroline which would not come. None of my business, I told myself over and over again. But I felt closer to that remote phantom in Bohemia than to my cousin Caroline.

  Caroline Warrington.

  Or the Countess Florian?

  Occasionally my fingers strayed into blundering discords on the piano, or I would prick my thumb and have to stop sewing, inflamed by an impossible urge to go and seek out Anton Florian, report his wife’s heartless rejection of him, and hand back the signet. I wanted the whole thing dealt with, not left in abeyance.

  Working every day on the deciphering and precise interpretation of old manuscripts, was I growing too fussily tidy in my outlook?

  Possession of the ring weighed heavily.

  Unlike those holiday places which fade in memory after one’s return home, Carlsbad and Fasanenburg and Bohemia’s woods and fields refused to fade. Familiar routine failed to banish them.

  Any chance of it succeeding was dashed by the arrival in Ely of a young man with a letter of introduction.

  Our first encounter was a collision.

  Late one afternoon, crossing Market Street, I saw Dominic and Caroline looking into a shop window on the corner of one of the lanes. My first impulse was to stop and speak to them. As I slowed my pace and thought of something inconsequential to say, Dominic’s voice was raised in sudden protest.

  ‘We cannot continue squandering money in this fashion. I must insist that you restrain your extravagances.’

  ‘We have a position to keep up.’

  ‘It has been kept up well enough in the past.’

  ‘I didn’t know you intended to maintain your wife as cheaply as you do your servants.’

  The rasp in her tone was positively gleeful. I was glad of the encroaching darkness and the poor lighting on this side of the lane. I dipped my head so that the shadow of my bonnet fell forward over it, and went quietly past them down the flagged passage. When I heard their footsteps moving away from the shop, and Dominic’s voice close behind me saying something which sounded weary rather than angry, I hurried to reach the far end and cross High Street towards the gateway of the Close.

  From the middle of the road I was able to see a pony and trap advancing under the arch, and also a brougham bearing down from my right. I hurried towards the kerb. A man looking up at the wall as if in search of a name or number appeared to make up his mind, and took a step towards the opening.

  I cried out, and sprang towards him.

  My arm went round him and, off balance, we fell against the wall just as the trap rattled out from the archway. There was the screech of a wooden brake shoe on a wheel as the brougham veered away and mounted the opposite pavement. The pony scrabbled to the right, jarred against the shaft of the brougham, and set up a distraught whinnying. Then the trap came to a halt.

  My left arm was trapped against the wall, held there by the stranger’s weight. I managed to get my right hand up and push against the wall. The two of us straightened up, and my left hand came free. The knuckles were stinging: they had been scraped several inches along the wall.

  ‘Please, miss, you are not hurt? You are safe, yes?’

  The tinge of a foreign accent added a very pleasing lilt to his voice. In spite of my confusion I noticed that his suit and cape, too, were of an indefinably un-English cut.

  I set my bonnet to rights. ‘I think there has been no harm done.’

  ‘I must thank you. Without you . . .’ He glanced at the tangle in the middle of the road. ‘But I think that man is an inattentive driver. To drive straight out, so.’

  This seemed to be also the opinion of the coachman of the brougham, who was leaning down to shout a choice selection of epithets at the cleric in the trap – not, I was glad to observe, my father, though he was equally capable of rushing out into the mainstream of traffic without due care.

  ‘Thank you,’ said the young man again. ‘I am new to your city, I do not know the perils. But perhaps I may take you to your door? I do not like you to faint.’

  ‘I have no intention of fainting,’ I said sharply. ‘And in any case my door is only a few steps away.’ I gestured towards the opening.

  ‘But I too must go there, I think. That is the Close?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘I am to present a letter to Canon Talbot and Mrs Talbot. You know them, perhaps?’

  ‘I’m their daughter.’

  He gasped, and laughed. ‘Oh, but this is not true?’

  ‘I assure you it is.’

  ‘But such a meeting!’

  The two vehicles were disentangling themselves. I caught a glimpse of Dominic and Caroline on the edge of a little group forming, as such groups invariably do, to gloat over the near-disaster. As the brougham edged some yards down the street to allow the trap to turn, and the gap widened, Dominic saw me. He tensed, and might have been about to step forward and bring Caroline to meet me.

  But the newcomer had taken my arm with unaffected gallantry, and was leading me through the archway. He was not tall, and his stride measured mine most agreeably. Until I realized that his left leg had a slight drag to it, so that although he did not exactly limp he had to turn his body fractionally at each step.

  I stopped. ‘But you’re hurt! Did you twist your ankle when –’

  ‘It is nothing. Not from England, no. Nothing but an inconvenient memento of battle.’

  ‘Oh. Oh, I’m sorry.’

  ‘There were others who suffered worse.’

  We resumed our progress, and he made a great performance of peering round the inner wall to make sure nothing further was likely to erupt.

  ‘What brings you in search of the Talbots?’ I asked as I put pressure on his arm to steer him towards our own gate.

  ‘I have with me a letter of introduction from the Countess Lomnica.’

  Instinctively I thought of the Countess’s son. Was this he, emerging from the mysterious distances and being sent on a visit to England?

  But he went on: ‘I am her nephew, from Vienna. Sieghart – Jan Sieghart.’

  ‘Herr Sieghart.’

  We formally shook hands; and that made both of us laugh.

  Indoors, I showed him into the garden room while I went to tell my mother and give her time to pat her hair into place, fuss with her lace fichu for a voluble minute or two, and then call
for my father to accompany her.

  Jan Sieghart explained that he was in this country to study architecture. He had learnt English in Vienna, and was interested in Italian and German influences on our buildings, and in English architecture in general. There was much ground to be made up. He had been an army officer, but had been invalided out after injuries received at Sadowa; and now must devote himself to peaceful pursuits and make a new career for himself.

  Father was delighted. He revelled in the prospect of showing such a courteous, attentive young stranger round Ely and Cambridge, familiarizing him with our treasures and preparing widely ranging itineraries for him. There were so many friends to whom he could recommend Mr Sieghart; so many things to see here, and in the West Country, and of course in Chester, and in Durham . . . and then there was so much in Warwickshire, and he couldn’t miss the yeomen’s houses of Kent . . .

  ‘Must put you in touch with Professor Wilkinson. Just the man. Oh, and did you spend any time in London on your way here?’

  ‘No, my aunt wished me to come first to you.’

  ‘Good. Splendid. I’ll draw up plans for there, as well. Make sure you don’t go hopelessly astray.’

  Mother was more anxious to talk about Countess Lomnica and to enquire after other friends old and new, but she stood little chance. In a lull in my father’s blithe suggestions she managed to assure our visitor of her eternal gratitude to the Countess for being so hospitable ‘and taking Leonora out of herself at a particularly distressing time’ and attempted to put forward some plans of her own. Mr Sieghart must stay with us for as long as he chose. He could use our home as his base. We would all welcome him.

  His limpid eyes became as sentimental as those of any Viennese tenor singing a romantic aria. There was such contrast in his face: a boyish smile in mouth and eyes which were yet those of an older man, tugged at by the wrinkles of experiences he might not wish to share; a swarthy complexion which could almost have been Italian, together with the fair hair of a Saxon. When he thanked my mother for her invitation he did so with a charm and a clasp of the right arm across his chest which would have seemed exaggerated in an Englishman, but came quite naturally and – well, yes, charmingly – from him.

  What it amounted to was that he had already installed himself in a room at The Lamb and would permit himself to intrude on us only for advice on his studies.

  In fact we saw a great deal of him, right from the start. He came to pore over maps and books which my father laid out for his delectation, took tea and coffee with us, and expressed his wish to be shown round the cathedral by no one but my father and myself.

  ‘Leonora knows as much of its history as I do,’ my father said generously. ‘And you’ll probably find she can express herself more succinctly.’

  The three of us made a slow, sustained tour. In such company the great building came to life for me again. Working in it every day, I had grown too accustomed to it. Often I did not so much as look up when crossing from the library door to the north door. Now I saw it afresh as my father and I took it in turns to extol its beauties: Bishop Ridel’s mighty tower, Bishop Northwold’s presbytery, and all the rich creations of that flower of craftsmen, Alan of Walsingham. And outside there were the Bishop’s Palace and the Ely Porta, Steeple Gate and Cromwell’s house. In this town alone there was plenty to occupy Jan Sieghart for as long as he could spare.

  I hoped he would not be in too great a fever to explore elsewhere. His presence added a new sparkle to the grey hues of approaching winter. The combination of lighthearted wonder at some aspects of the English scene together with an inner seriousness – which I detected only occasionally, but then with striking intensity – made him a provocative, never boring companion.

  Father said: ‘I think I’ll leave the longer perambulations to Leonora. She has more stamina than I.’

  ‘Father never achieved the longest walks above Carlsbad,’ I said, teasing him.

  I wondered if the two of them saw, as I so clearly did at that moment, the high ridges and tree-girt slopes of Bohemia.

  When Jan and I first set out together on a stroll, just the two of us, he was amiably silent for quite a time, seeming content to study the roofs and secretive courtyards and reach his own judgements. But when he glanced at me there was something quite new in his manner, blotting out whatever he had been looking at until now.

  ‘My aunt tells me you are charming, Leonora. But she does not say how beautiful.’

  ‘Mr Sieghart –’

  ‘Please, I am Jan.’

  He said it with commanding gravity, yet I felt there was mockery in it – a winning, flirtatious mockery. In my father’s presence he had listened to me as deferentially as to my father. Now there was an intimation that we had other things to talk about.

  It was somehow easy to call him Jan. It was easy, perhaps too easy, to capture his mood and talk lightly and flippantly and without reserve.

  But how would this help his studies?

  On Palace Green he appraised passers-by with the acuteness of a boulevardier rather than a prentice architect. His eyes followed two girls strolling side by side, their hands cosily in their muffs, their conversation broken by spurts of laughter.

  ‘These people, they have entertainment here? The dancing and the music?’

  ‘Not a lot,’ I had to confess.

  ‘In Vienna there are always fetes, and masquerades, and grand military balls. And in the provinces also. Always dancing.’

  ‘We have subscription concerts. And there’s music at home.’ It sounded dull when I put it that way. ‘But very little dancing.’

  ‘Such a shame! I am sure – I can tell, by the way you move your arms, Leonora, and the way you walk – oh, how superbly you would waltz!’

  When he escorted me home that day he took up the theme with my mother.

  ‘Mrs Talbot, Leonora tells me there is little dancing here. Do you not miss it? The dances of our country, I will wager you were tireless when you were Leonora’s age.’

  Mother went pink with pleasure. ‘Oh, that nonsense is so long ago. I was never good. Never.’ Her hands pushed the notion away, but she was preening herself. ‘Though there are times, I admit, when certain melodies . . . a rhythm, you understand . . .’

  ‘Oh, how I understand. But Leonora has no such temptations. No festivals, no assemblies? No family gatherings with an orchestra, and tunes and dances of the countryside?’

  ‘This countryside is not very fertile,’ said my mother.

  ‘And you have no near family?’

  ‘Oh, my husband has a sister-in-law. Some miles away. And Leonora’s married cousin.’ Mother shook her head, then started. ‘But I have done nothing about them! Leonora, you should have reminded me.’

  ‘Reminded you, Mama?’

  ‘We should have asked Dominic and Caroline to visit us before now. We really must return their invitation. I’ve had so much on my mind, I’ve been neglectful. Whatever will they think?’ My father came into the room and she at once turned on him. ‘We must have the young Warringtons to the house.’

  ‘Some time, I suppose.’ Father looked far from enthusiastic.

  ‘It would be so convenient if we could do it while Herr Sieghart is in the neighbourhood. And since we’ll have to ask Aurelia as well, you can ask Dr Meredith. A well-balanced table.’

  She beamed. I realized what was in her mind. She wanted to parade Jan before Dominic to show that I was not lacking appreciative male companionship.

  Secretly I was not too offended by the thought.

  *

  Mother decided that, with the nights growing chill and with the risk of frost and ice on the roads, it would be more sensible to have a small luncheon party and not a formal evening occasion. Travelling would be less arduous for our guests.

  It proved a wise decision. The night before, there was keen frost which took half the morning to thaw, leaving patches of damp cold in the shade.

  Mother got out our old silver, and glasses fr
om the corner cabinet. She was resolved to put on her best. She made so many sorties to the kitchen and was so busy picking things up and putting them down somewhere else that I had to follow, her at a discreet interval to ensure that nothing went astray.

  I would not have put it past her to take Jan in a corner and implore him to stage a few tender scenes with me for Dominic’s benefit.

  There was no need for such intrigue. As if sensing each nuance of the situation, Jan played up outrageously. When we took a brief turn on the lawns before lunch he touched my hair lightly with his fingertips as if he could not keep them to himself, and very audibly declared that I looked ravishing. Caroline snapped a sharp glance at him. But the lilt in his voice and the infectious smile robbed even the most flirtatious words of any offence.

  During luncheon he was charming and attentive, virtually waiting on me. I felt a lovely warm glow inside. It would have been out-and-out hypocrisy to pretend that I was not enjoying the flattery.

  Even when he addressed himself politely to Aunt Aurelia, he brought me into the conversation. ‘My eyes have been opened to the beauties of England by your delightful niece.’

  ‘Leonora’s very clever, I’m sure,’ said Aunt Aurelia.

  ‘A very small part of England so far,’ I said.

  ‘I think I do not find anything finer, anywhere else.’

  I began to hope he was not doing it simply for effect and that he might mean just some small fraction of it. Then I suppressed such ideas. I was in no mood to be so quickly faithless.

  Faithless . . . to Dominic? That was an even less seemly idea: an absurd one, in the circumstances.

  From the corner of my eye I had watched for his reactions as Jan spoke to me. He remained grave, even morose; but instead of adding to my pleasure, that saddened me. I ought to have been glad if he was hurt, but I could not be. How long would it take to free myself from Dominic – from the picture of him as he was, and as he would have been in the future I had misleadingly painted for myself?

  Mother had been enjoying Jan’s performance as much as I; perhaps more. But she recalled her duties as hostess and directed his attention towards Caroline.