'You cannot blame him,' Sue said, 'As he would seem to have problems enough. But Shirley ... there is the worst of colonial governors. He fears for his place, for his salary, should he antagonize the planters.'
'Yet did I have Loman's word.'
'Oh, indeed. But without the Governor's aid you can do nothing.' She sucked her lower hp beneath her teeth in a peculiarly thoughtful gesture, and glanced at Coke, almost apologetically. 'Sweetheart,' she said. 'If you will forgive me, do you not think that you have done all you can in this matter? That you have indeed all but given your life in this entirely futile cause? Do you not suppose that you might owe it to me, and to your sons, to make a life for yourself? Especially if Tom is right, and Parliament itself is taking an interest in our affairs. Can you not now rest on your laurels, and leave the burden to more powerful backs?'
Matt stared at her, and in despair she turned to Coke. 'Can you not persuade him, Tom? Even you must see that ours is a forlorn hope.'
Coke licked his lips. 'Well, I ... Sue, it is I must beg your forgiveness. But once you told me that you would not have Matt as otherwise than a man who did, rather than inherited.'
'Once,' she said. 'Perhaps I did not know then what I said.
And what can he do, now? Answer me that? Every man's hand is against him, against us, saving only an itinerant sea captain, who himself is beginning to doubt, and who in any event has managed to isolate himself. And who, you may be sure, will be away and forgetful of the entire West Indies the moment his term of duty is completed. Where will we be then?'
'Sue ...' Matt protested.
'He can keep on trying, and we can keep on supporting him,' Coke said, with unusual vehemence. 'All is not dark. The real reason for my visit is that I also have some news, from St. John's, of which perhaps your friend Horatio is unaware.'
Matt frowned at him. 'Good news?'
‘I think so. It is that Shirley has been recalled. His term of office has expired, certainly.'
'And his successor will be of a different stamp?' Sue demanded.
'I think there is a chance. His name is Hugh Elliott. You've heard it, I imagine. He is a brother of Lord Minto, and is thus scarce dependent on his salary, like Shirley. You'll be sure of a disinterested hearing, at the very least, Matt.'
'By heaven,' Matt shouted. 'You are right. I will to Nevis once again, and ...'
'You'll wait until you are fully restored to health, I hope,' Suzanne said. 'And in any event, where is the point until the new man actually takes up his office? And this time, I will accompany you. Robert can play the good uncle, for once in a while. Am I not right darling brother?' For they could hear the stamping feet and the barking terriers, and a moment later Robert was in the room.
'What? What? Here again?' he shouted at Coke. 'Are we to become a meeting place for revolutionaries?'
'Oh, take a glass of punch, Robert,' Sue suggested. 'Dr. Coke has merely brought letters, and risked the wind to do so.'
'Wind?' Robert demanded. 'It is not here, yet.'
'It will be here soon enough. Listen,' she said. 'There is the first of the rain. You'll spend the night, Tom. It will scarce be safe to return to Kingston.'
'Why, I... I doubt Mr. Hilton will second that idea.'
'Of course he will,' Sue said. 'Robert?'
'By God,' Robert declared. 'By God. You'll not credit this, Coke, but I doubt I am still master in my own house. Thanks to this... pair of scoundrels, I am quite cut off from polite conversation. Even the governor is afraid to have me to cards of a Saturday night, for fear there is a challenge. The presence of Matt under my roof suggests to all my erstwhile friends that I am a supporter of these ridiculous ideas. His living here in open immorality with my own sister is brought against me even in church, so that I never attend the thing any more ...'
Sue burst out laughing. 'Oh, really, Robert. When did you last attend church, save for a wedding or a funeral?'
'And my other sister,' he continued, as if she had not spoken, 'has disappeared into the arms of foreigners. A year now, she has been married, and not a letter. Not a line. Not a message, save her affection. And she is a mother.'
'Then how ...' Coke inquired.
'Louis writes,' Sue said. 'Constantly. Oh, he makes his excuses for Georgy, says she is far too busy. The fact is she was ever a poor correspondent. During her two years in England we never heard from her once.'
'At least she is in an honourable state,' Robert grumbled. 'But truth to say ... I think you should pay her a visit, Sue. She may need your support. Surrounded by foreigners. And that Corbeau ...'
'Oh, I agree,' Sue said. 'But there you have the very reason I will stay in Jamaica, if you do not mind. He looks at a woman as if he is stripping her naked with his eyes. I have no doubt that in the privacy of his own home he goes further than that. Georgy chose to marry him, not
'Jealous,' Robert bawled. 'That's what you are, jealous. She has married a man, not a puling preacher who cannot hold a pistol.'
'By Christ,' Matt said, attempting to get up.
'Oh, hush, sweetheart,' Sue said, both arms round his shoulders. 'He must babble, like a stream. He means no harm.'
'By God,' Robert shouted. 'By God.'
'Ahem,' Coke said. ‘I think I should endeavour to return to Kingston before the storm breaks. I doubt that my presence really is of use here.'
'You'll stay the night,' Sue said. 'Robert?'
'Oh, sit you down, Coke,' Robert shouted. 'Sit you down. What, man, would you know us if we did not fight amongst ourselves? Our name is Hilton, Dr. Coke. You'll not forget that.'
With the following spring, Matt found himself able to leave the house, although he could sit a horse for no more than a few minutes, and Sue invariably insisted that he be driven in the trap, either by her or by one of the footmen. She continued to profess herself satisfied with his progress, as was Dr. Mounter.
'What?' the surgeon would demand. 'A bullet through the chest? The odds on your survival at all were at least a hundred to one. Had you not possessed the constitution of an ox you would have died in a week.'
'And what of my constitution now, do you think?' Matt would ask.
'These things take time, Matt. Time. How long has it been? Scarce two years? But now it is all upwards, boy. You have but to take care, and you can count the months, rather than the years.'
To mend his shattered muscles, his cracked bones. Not to assuage his spirit, which caused them far more concern. As if time mattered, now. Once he had supposed that to wait four months, in Statia, for the arrival of Gislane in Nevis, was quite impossible. And so he had found a sweeter solace than he had had any right to expect. Now the solace was there, all the time, caring for him, keeping him company, mothering his children, with the utmost patience and good humour, while he could not but wonder what went on behind those steady blue eyes, as he had wondered from the very beginning, whether she understood that she might have made a dreadful mistake in leaving the solid comfort and support of Dirk Huys to follow a boy who seemed destined to flounder through a morass for all of his life, and who for some time now had scarce been able to pay her a man's attention.
The matter came to a head with the formal pronouncement of the ending of her marriage to Dirk, in the summer of 1788. The morning after the letter arrived they clung to each other with more than usual vehemence. 'You are still beautiful, Sue,' Matt said. ‘You must be the most beautiful thirty-year-old in all the world.'
She kissed him on the chin. 'Save that I am not yet thirty, sweetheart. You do me an injustice.'
'And will a few months change you?' Christ, how he loved to touch that velvet flesh, caress those swelling breasts, feel the power in those long legs.
'And do you then, love only my body?' she asked, biting his chin. 'And are therefore preparing to tire of me and discard me?'
'I could not love you more, sweetheart, were our positions reversed, and you lying here unable to do more than twitch. I love the very thought of you. I am ready
to weep when I consider your unending support of me. I shudder to consider the boredom you must experience, with no company other than Robert. As for desertion, I was considering requesting you to abandon so lost a cause in your own favour.'
'I am your wife,' she said. 'In intent, if not yet in law.' And then flushed.
'It is because I love you so much that I hesitate to face you to that irrevocable step,' he said. 'I am a wretched fellow, dependent upon my cousin's charity, bound to cause trouble wherever I go ...'
'You are a Hilton.'
'Yet you know as well as I our marriage should wait, until I have finished with this business.'
'Until you can forget Gislane, you mean,' she said quietly. 'Sue ...'
'Sweetheart, let us at the least always be honest with each other. You love me. I know that, in your gaze, in your touch. But you cannot be sure you would not love her more, should she reappear in your life.'
'You can say that, so calmly?'
'I can wait, too, until we neither of us have any more doubts. As for Robert, he is as glad to have us here as we are to be here, I am sure. He is a lonely man, and you must have seen enough of him these past years to know that he is only half the tyrant he pretends. Were you but to make the slightest effort, you and he could be the best of friends. You'll not have forgotten this is a matter which could be of some importance to Dick and Tony.'
‘It is a matter which has long been settled, and there's an end to it.' Matt got out of bed and began to dress, how slowly, how awkwardly, afraid to exert the slightest effort that might revive the breath-taking agony in his chest. 'In any event, for me to play the planter now would be hypocrisy.'
'Yet can you be his friend,' she insisted, drawing up her knees and resting her chin. Tour problem is one of boredom. You sit here, and brood, and imagine. So you'd not return to planting. I would not have you perjure your every ideal. It is not the only occupation a gentleman may follow.'
'In Jamaica?'
'Well ... you could write.'
'You jest.'
'I see no reason why not. If Billy Beckford's son could compose a novel, surely Ned Hilton's son could so as well. Have you read Vathek?’
'Now really ,sweetheart, when have I had the time to read?'
'I am just pointing out that your problem is too much time. And you might enjoy it. It is an utter fable, and quite indecent. But I actually did not think of novel writing. You claim to be a leader in the field of abolition, and Tom says it is the coming thing in England, and you know with what undisciplined zeal the English literati throw themselves upon any new ideas, any new person they might suitably devour. At the least devouring you will be difficult at a distance of four thousand miles. But you can scarce do less than help your cause.'
She was right, as always. He knew that, and followed her suggestion. He wrote long letters to Mr. Wilberforce and Tom Clarkson, to Mr. Fox and Lady Montagu, and was encouraged by their answers. He outlined the situation in the West Indies, and pointed to the increasing moral degeneracy of the plantocracy, as sons born to wealth and unlimited power too often gave in to that power. As he grew stronger, he took to riding, into town, to assist Coke and Manton with their services, at which growing numbers of Negroes attended every week, as the word got around that there would be no more midnight visitations to the Wesleyan Chapel. For indeed the Jamaica plantocracy, following the strange events of the Corbeau wedding, seemed determined to kill the Methodists by ignoring them, rather than by directly opposing them. Or more likely, Matt thought, now that Robert had been forced, however unwillingly, into taking the side of his sister and her lover, they just lacked a capable leader. He could not help but wonder what might be achieved could Robert, by some means, be forced into lending them his active rather than his passive support. But Robert forbade the discussion of slavery or religion inside Hilltop, and would stamp from the room should anyone defy him.
And for all his endless activity, his surge of growing strength, his delight in his sons as they left babyhood behind, and his even greater delight in the unchanging splendour of Suzanne's love, he continued to fret. The pending case against Hodge was more even than a crusade of vengeance for the supposed fate of Gislane Nicholson; it was all that had kept him alive after his wound. But now the months became years, and indeed it was already several years since the date of Manton's deposition and Fanny Nisbet's supporting testimony. She would have to be called Fanny Nelson, now. It had been decided that in view of his health and his unpopularity amongst the whites, it would be unwise for him to visit Nevis for the wedding; but apparently the occasion had been splendid enough as the planters, on learning that Prince William would himself give the bride away, had decided to let bygones be bygones, at least as regards Nelson. Soon enough the entire business would fall under the statute of limitations, and the campaign would have to begin again.
Supposing it ever could. His hopes rose and fell, as they had bounded when Coke had told him of Shirley's imminent departure, and fallen as the word imminent, when applied to a governor, had seemed to be a matter of two years, and rose again when Shirley did indeed retire, and fell again as Hugh Elliott's arrival was delayed, and rose again when the new lieutenant governor was finally installed. Then he would have gone to Nevis on the instant, but Suzanne and Tom persuaded him at least to write first, to discover if the new governor was of a more definite stamp than Shirley. This he did, as usual obeying her suggestion, and once again was delighted to receive an early reply. But the envelope contained nothing more than an acknowledgement of his letter, and a promise that the matter would be investigated. Then there was silence, as the months stretched into another year, until Matt almost determined to have done with it, and being obviously unable to obtain the slightest justice in the West Indies, to return to England, where the Anti-Slavery Movement was gaining adherents every day.
To his surprise, this was opposed by Sue. 'I am selfish, I know,' she said. 'But I belong here, on Jamaica, in the heat and the peace of Hilltop. Everything Georgy ever told me about London is a criticism.'
'Yet will Tony at the least soon be going,' he pointed out.
'What rubbish.'
'All the Hiltons attend Eton,' Matt said. 'Robert has already spoken to me on the matter. It would seem that he is well on the way to becoming reconciled, at least with his bastard nephews. You are in favour of that, judging by your ideas for myself.'
'It cannot possibly take place for another five years, at the earliest,' she insisted. 'Why, Robert? Whatever is the matter?'
Her brother stamped into the room, as usual. In the past three years he had strangely aged, Matt thought, his hair becoming increasingly grey at the temples, and his limp more pronounced. No doubt all his erring family had a share in that responsibility, but Georgy had ever been his favourite.
'There are letters,' he shouted. 'Letters. One from Rio Blanco. From Georgy, if you please. Oh, Corbeau penned it, but she appended her signature. Quite the grand lady she is become.'
'And what does she say?' Sue inquired.
'Why, very little. Francis is doing well, and Oriole is as pretty as a picture. Mother talk. She is going to visit Paris as soon as the present troubles are over, to see about the boy's education. It would be a good idea for you to take Tony over as well, Sue. Then the two boys can get to know each other; there is hardly more than a year between them. And you can tell me something more of Georgy.'
'When the present troubles are over,' Sue reiterated. 'The nation is bankrupt. How do you cure that especial trouble?'
'Aye,' Robert said, sitting down with a sigh. ‘I cannot say Corbeau's letter - he has written as well - is any more cheerful. He says that by all accounts since the fall of the Bastille the nation is quite undisciplined. And worse, he says that the irresponsible pronunciamentos of this National Assembly they have got themselves is causing unrest amongst the mulattoes in St. Domingue. Damned French. They'd better not export any of their wild ideas to Jamaica.'
'And are there no other lette
rs?' Sue inquired.
'Eh? Oh, from Barton, of course. Prices are falling. There is no news like bad news, what? Oh, and there is one for you, Matt, from that madman Elliott.'
'Antigua?' Matt snatched at the envelope, broke the seal, his heart pounding.
'Well?' Sue cried. 'What does he say?'
'Listen,' Matt shouted. 'Listen. He begs my indulgence for the length of time it has taken him to reply to my letter. But then he writes, "as soon as I was permitted time from my official functions, you may be sure I had a search made of the archives here, and indeed found not only your deposition, but the man Manton's statement and Mrs. Nisbet's confirmation of much of his evidence. However, I am sure you will understand, Mr. Hilton, that this being a matter of such gravity, and likely to cause such a disturbance in West Indian opinion, as well as to create a precedent of incalculable effect were the case ever to come to court, that I deemed it my duty to refer the testimonies and the whole matter to their Lords of Trade and Plantations, who are all of our masters. My Lords, again with some reason, considered it necessary to refer the whole business to the Chancellor, and these matters, you will appreciate, Mr. Hilton, take time." '
HF - 03 - Mistress of Darkness Page 47
