Starrbelow

by Christianna Brand

  ‘To the Fleet?’

  ‘You have heard of our Circle of Treasure Seekers, sure?’

  ‘I have heard some rumour.…’

  ‘The Circle has been down to the Fleet, today: the object, a page from a registry book—I acting the part of the bride.’

  ‘In the wedding-dress in which you were married to me?’

  ‘The wedding-dress? Why, as to that, my lord, I thought as little of the dress, I fear, as you did when I wore it last. The prize is the thing: and we have attained the prize.’

  He bowed stiffly. ‘I felicitate you, madame. An admirable object and an admirable way, I am sure, for Lady Weyburn to be spending an evening. Do I understand further that your “circle” is assembled here, in my house?’

  ‘Which I understood was to be also my house, my lord.’

  ‘While I was absent. Did you not understand from my lawyers that we were not to be here together?’

  ‘But it is your coming,’ said Sapphire, coolly, ‘that has brought us here together.’ And she gave him a little impudent bow and turned away and began to remount the stairs. ‘Well, will you join us, or not?’

  ‘I thank you, no,’ he said.

  She paused again, looking down at him now from a greater height, with a look of mock regret. ‘I am sorry. There are friends of yours among us: Mr. Reddington is here, and Sir Pardo, and Lord Franks …’

  ‘Lord Franks! Here? You admit that man to your acquaintance?’

  ‘Why, yes: we had a little difference, a while ago; but he apologized and—made amends; and we have remained good friends. You heard of that affair in Gloucestershire?’

  ‘I heard nothing of a particular affair. Lord Franks is not a man for any decent woman to recognize.’

  ‘Oh, dear.’ She shrugged. ‘Well, it is too late now. But it is difficult, you see, to choose one’s friends discreetly. I was, till a year ago, a stranger in England and have had, of course, no hand to guide me; moreover, the choice has not been great—the respectable fight shy of a wife whom not even her husband will condescend to know. At any rate, sir, you will not meet Lord Franks?’

  ‘I will neither meet him nor permit him to remain here in this house; whether it be yours or mine. I must ask you, please, to request your friends to leave.’

  ‘Oh, certainly. It will not be the first time, I dare say,’ said Sapphire, laughing, ‘that some at least of them have been asked to remove from a gentleman’s house.’ She added, ‘Am I also “requested to leave”?’

  ‘As you are here, you had better remain. I myself, will go elsewhere tomorrow.’

  ‘You are all consideration,’ said Sapphire, and she bowed to him, still laughing, looking down at him from the curving balustrade above his head, holding the glass in her hand, a white wraith in the shadows now, only the diamonds glittering like ice in the rays of the great hanging, central chandelier—a white wraith, a radiance of cold white ice and snow: with only a blot of red wine like a bloodstain where the human heart should have been.…

  He washed himself, changed his travelling clothes, toyed with some food and wine. He heard the unmuted chatter and clatter of the departing guests, and a voice he recognized. Napkin in hand, he started up from his chair. ‘Ask her ladyship to come to me immediately—no, take a message: ask her ladyship if she will receive me as soon as is convenient.’ He waved his hand at the table. ‘Have all this cleared away. After that, let the servants retire.’

  ‘I will wait up for you, my lord.’

  ‘No, no; go to bed, you have been travelling all day. I need no attention.’ And I need no listening ears, he thought to himself, and no gossiping tongues: she and I must speak now, once for all. ‘Ask her ladyship to dismiss her maid: I have matters to discuss with her.’

  The servant departed, winking to himself. Lady Weyburn returned with him immediately. ‘You sent for me, my lord?’

  ‘I asked you to receive me, madame.’

  ‘Well, well—I’m not particular about the minor courtesies.’ As the servants retired, closing the door behind them, she came up and stood before him boldly on the hearthrug, looking up questioningly into his face.

  He said, ‘Your guests have gone?’

  ‘At last.’ She shrugged. ‘They were a little hard to persuade.’

  ‘None more so, no doubt,’ he said, smoothly, ‘than Prince Anton of Brunswick?’

  She looked somewhat startled. ‘You yourself have entertained the Prince, at Starrbelow.’

  ‘Not, however, as your professed admirer, madame.’

  ‘Nor is he that now. Why, pooh!—he’s my Aunt Corby’s lover,’ said Sapphire, recovering her spirit a little. ‘All the world knows that.’

  ‘All the world knows also that he has grown less assiduous of late.’

  ‘Not upon my account, sir.’ She looked at him boldly again from beneath painted eyelids. ‘Do not wish poor mistress-ridden Anton on me—I have other fish to fry.’ And she thrust out her foot in its white slipper with the great ruby buckle and looked down at it, as though reminiscently, and laughed again.

  He followed her glance. He said sharply, ‘What is this?’

  ‘A foot, my lord. In a white shoe—which foot and even which shoe you have seen before.’

  ‘But not with such a buckle. These were not among the Weyburn jewels.’

  ‘Were not; are now, however.’ She looked down at them complacently. ‘I have several pairs.’

  ‘Such things are of considerable value. Where did you get them?’

  ‘From a jeweller’s.’

  ‘Who paid for them?’ She hesitated, almost imperceptibly, and he insisted, ‘Who paid?’

  She put on a pained expression. ‘Why, my lord, I did.’

  ‘Let me see the bills for them.’

  ‘I never keep bills. I’ve destroyed them. You do not suggest, sir, that I did not pay for the buckles? For that,’ said Sapphire, ‘would suggest in its turn that I was paid—with them.’

  He turned away his face from the bold, painted stare; his own handsome face, sick with offended pride and feeling, hid itself in the shadows of the bent head. He said at last, quietly: ‘The time has come for us to arrive at an understanding. Will you tell me with simplicity—what is your purpose in all this?’

  ‘In what, my lord?’

  ‘In this determination—for that is what it is—to disgrace my name: which is now the name you, also, bear.’

  She shrugged. ‘It is not a great encouragement to uphold one’s name, if one bears nothing else but the name.’

  He shook his head impatiently. ‘Don’t fence with me in this matter. I ask you again—what is your purpose?’

  ‘May it not be simply that I enjoy it?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I knew you, a little at least, in former days; and I do you the honour to believe that this is not truly your idea of happiness.’

  ‘Oh—happiness,’ she said bitterly. ‘I spoke of “enjoyment”; let us not mention between us such a word as happiness.’

  ‘Then what is your purpose?’

  ‘May it not be—revenge?’

  ‘Revenge?’ he said, astonished. ‘For what? Because, having been tricked into marriage, I did not remain, the devoted husband, to be tricked again?’

  She stood very quiet, her hands folded on her fan, and only the glitter of her rings in the candlelight gave away the secret of their trembling. ‘As to that,’ she said, ‘I say now and never will again—for if you do not believe it now you never will, and for my part never need—that I knew nothing of the wager nor lent myself to any trick.’ She waited. He said nothing. She said, ‘This you won’t believe?’

  ‘This I—can’t believe.’ He burst out: ‘All of your conduct.… You coquetted with me: would not dance with me, but danced; would not ride with me, but rode; returned my kiss that day we raced to the gate in the woods, and then were “insulted” and rode off home and would stay at Starrbelow no more; and yet stayed. Why did you marry me, if you knew nothing of the wager?’

/>   She broke in on him. ‘Very well, my lord, very well; you don’t believe me, let that be enough. Now, as to the rest, you object to my conduct, I “disgrace your name”. What do you say to my—returning home?’

  ‘To Starrbelow?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Starrbelow is no home to me.’ She looked him in the face. ‘I want to go home, my lord—to Italy.’

  He caught his breath. ‘To Italy!’

  ‘I will go away, out of your life, home to Venice. I will go back to my mother; and that will be the end.’

  He did not reply; he walked across the room and stood with one hand on the rose-brocade curtain, looking down, unseeing, into the quiet street, where only the flaring torch of a passing link-boy illumined the midnight dark. He said at last, ‘When do you wish to go?’

  ‘At once,’ she said quickly.

  ‘And never return?’

  ‘What should I return for? No, I will not return.’

  ‘So this is it?’ he said at last, slowly. ‘This is the reason? You foul my name so that I shall be glad to be rid of you—to send you back to Venice where your heart has always been. This has been your purpose?’

  She looked up sharply. ‘No. No. You did not want me; you’d be glad to get rid of me on any terms—why should I have gone to the trouble of—?’ But she broke off. She said with a deliberate shrug: ‘But why do I protest? Perhaps this was the reason after all.’

  Sir Henry Kidd might have said that once again she extemporized; but if Charles Weyburn noted it then—and later he was to use it against her—he pushed the flicker of recognition from his mind. ‘For this! You married me for wealth and position in England; and when you found that you had wealth, indeed, but no position here—you decided upon wealth alone, in Italy. And for this, to gain your ends in this, you have smeared my name with the filth that smears your own; half the profligates in Town defile my house; you have debauched yourself with men no decent man, let alone any woman, will know: even Starrbelow, even Starrbelow itself has been made unclean by your need to disgrace yourself so that I may be glad to get rid of you; even there you have taken your dissolute lovers and made the place hateful to me.…’ He flung back from the window, he confronted her, still standing with bent head by the empty fireplace, and raised his hand as though he would strike her down. But he lowered his hand. ‘Yes, go,’ he said. ‘You are right—you could have gone without this.’

  ‘I will go,’ she said. ‘But—in one thing you are wrong. I have had no lovers at Starrbelow.’

  ‘What do I care, madame, where you have had your lovers?’

  ‘You care that I may have made Starrbelow unlovely in your sight. In this, therefore, believe me—I have not disgraced Starrbelow.’

  ‘Do you think I have not heard of your conduct there?…’

  ‘Not at Starrbelow,’ she said quickly. ‘My friends came there, it is true; my aunt brought two ladies whom you would not have liked—and neither did I. But no one else came to the house to whom you could object.’

  ‘Prince Anton of Brunswick came.’

  ‘Prince Anton of Brunswick is nothing to me, my lord.’

  ‘Is he not your lover, madame?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No.’

  ‘From the moment you came to London this man has been openly your admirer.…’

  ‘I was ignorant and frightened: he was kind.’

  ‘He followed you to Gloucestershire, hung about you during Christmas week at Starrbelow—was your partner, deny it though you may, in the matter of the wager. From the time of your betrothal to me until our marriage he was with you constantly.’

  She did not reply that for much of that time she had been in Italy; she said, instead, ‘And where were you then, my lord?’

  ‘Not hanging round the skirts, to be sure, of the woman who had tricked me into marriage. But he was there—is it not true?’

  ‘I was with my aunt; where my aunt is, Prince Anton is.’ Now she did say, ‘Besides, I was abroad.’

  ‘In January you were not abroad; in March, April, May you were not abroad—you were in London and so was Prince Anton of Brunswick. Is this not true? Is it not true that he came to your wedding wearing a look as of a man about to be hanged? Is it not true that within two weeks he was down with you again at Starrbelow? Is it not true that you rode with him secretly in the woods—that you were seen there, were intercepted there?…’

  She closed her eyes, swaying a little, putting out one hand to the mantelshelf to steady herself. She said, however, with a light laugh: ‘Dear me! Christine has been—indiscreet—in her letters, I perceive.’

  ‘Christine? It was Lord Frome who wrote to me. I have had no letters from Christine. Why should I correspond with Christine?’

  ‘I know that you correspond with her; she has told me so.’

  ‘In the past, yes. Why not? She is my cousin.’

  ‘But I—I don’t complain,’ she said, almost timidly, a little bewildered perhaps by his insistence. ‘You mistake me. How should I complain? I have known always, there has been no deception about it, that Christine is your true love.’

  Her hand with its glitter of diamonds lay close to his on the cool marble, though he did not touch her nor indeed was aware that she stood so close. He said, as though to himself—surely not to her?—‘Ah, yes, Christine! I loved her always. I loved her from my childhood—it had become a habit. But she is too cold, she is too cold and pure and untouchable to hold all a heart’s love. A man may worship at Christine’s feet, yet never know the passion to take her in his arms.…’

  The colour flamed in her face, the patches of rouge were lost in it, ebbed away and left them round and red on ashen cheeks. She stammered: ‘You are not …? Are not …? All this time—you have not been in love with Christine?’

  Her hair was a deep gold glow in the candlelight, her great eyes looked up at him in their blaze of blue, her painted lips were parted; she swayed towards him, the white dress half off the ivory shoulders, hands outflung to him. ‘All this time—I have been free to love you after all?…’

  He caught her, held her, thrust up his hands into the heavy gold of her hair as he had held her for that first kiss by the golden gates; and so, with her head supported against his palm, looked down into the two twin pools of blue—and was lost in them.

  ‘I have always loved you—always, always.…’

  ‘And I, from the moment you walked into that room.…’

  ‘I knew nothing of the wager, you believe that now!’

  ‘It killed me to think I should love you and you should—marry me through a trick.…’

  ‘I thought you mocked me; I thought you loved Christine.’

  ‘That was a boy’s love,’ he said. ‘When I saw you—a man’s love was born.’ He looked down into the lovely, upturned face. ‘That night by the lake,’ he said. ‘What was I to do? I thought, if I ask her and she refuses—I have lost her; and if I ask and she accepts, then I have lost her indeed, for it means she is a party to the trick that was played on me. But—I had to ask you, or you would go back to Venice.…’

  ‘To Venice!’ she said, and started away from him, gazing up at him in a sudden panic terror. ‘To Venice! I must go back to Venice.’

  He caught her to him again, holding her to him, looking down at her. ‘Not now; not now—there is no need now to go.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I must go; I must go.’

  ‘What, leave me now? Now that we understand—’

  ‘You must let me go,’ she said, beginning to weep, struggling against the grip of his arms. ‘Just for—a little while only; but let me go.’

  ‘Is it your mother you wish to see? We can both go to Venice.’

  ‘Oh no,’ she said, desperately. ‘No—I must go alone. Just for a little while—let me go alone, let me stay there a little while and then I will come back to you.…’

  ‘Well, well,’ he said soothingly. ‘Yes, of course, if you long to go you must go; of course you shall go. Onl
y, now that I’ve found you, don’t let me lose you again. How long must you go for?’

  She evaded the question, turning away her head, crying now like a child. A little while; only a little while.… She would come back to him. ‘Just for a little while.…’

  He was puzzled, he grew serious, faint as gossamer a shadow of the old, cold doubt fell across his happiness. ‘For how long? What do you mean by “a little while”?’

  She shuddered, staring up at him, the back of her hand across her mouth. ‘I … Yes.… I can—can come back to you; if only …’ She implored him, ‘If you will trust me, leave me alone—I will come back to you.’

  ‘Alone?’ he said. ‘Leave you alone? And for how long?’ She did not answer. ‘And why? What is wrong? Is there some trouble in your family? Is someone ill?’

  She caught at it eagerly; yes, there was trouble—her mother—yes, her mother was ill.

  ‘If you go because your mother is ill, then I can come with you.’ He said slowly, ‘If you go because your mother is ill, you can’t know how long you must stay—and what is there to make a mystery about?’ And he caught her wrist in a ring of strong fingers. ‘You’re lying to me again. Why do you want to go?’

  ‘I want to go home,’ she said flatly, almost sullenly. ‘For a little while.’

  ‘For how long? For a week? A month?’ He said patiently: ‘It is August now. You will come back, when? Next month? In October, November?’ She did not reply. ‘By Christmas then?’ he insisted, incredulous, and he shook her wrist in his fierce grip and cried: ‘Answer! When?’

  ‘In the spring,’ she said faintly. ‘Let me go now. I will come back in the spring.’

  His hands fell away from her, he stood uncertain, incredulous, lost in astonishment. ‘In the spring? You want to leave me now, to stay away six months—more, seven, eight, nine months, till the spring?…’ But he shook off his bewilderment; he put his arms about her again, holding her to his heart. ‘Dearest love, think no more of it now, you’re overwrought; we can talk about it again, we can talk later on.…’ And he lifted her head and kissed her again; and she lay in his arms with her poor masquerade of a doxy face painted over the face of a young girl deep in love, and he pulled down the white dress from her warm shoulders as it had been pulled awry when she came down the stairs to him, and put his hand to her breast and murmured that she must refuse him nothing now, for now she was all his own: his to desire, his to lay claim to, his to possess—his wife.… The heavy white lids closed over the brilliant eyes; under his lips her red lips parted, unresistant she lay, half swooning, against his heart, and he lifted her lightly and carried her through the tall doorway into the darkened bedroom with its glimmering of candles in the wall-sconces; and laid her like a white flower, all a-glitter with its dewfall of diamonds, on the dark coverlet of the great four-poster bed. ‘Oh, Sapphire!—to see you lying there where all these long weeks of aching desire you should have been: here on my bed, here in my arms at last.…’ And he fell across her, kissing her lips and her throat, her arms, her shoulders, the lovely curve of her breasts thrust out of the torn satin dress: and raised himself to unfasten the diamonds round her neck and arms. ‘Take off these things, my love, and lie with me in your own true loveliness alone. What need have you of satin and jewels?—your skin is satin under my hands, as smooth as satin and as ivory-white.…’ And he put his lips against hers and whispered that she was all ivory and gold and coral for all the world to see; but that her sapphires were for him alone; and these twin rubies for him alone.… And his hand tossed aside the diamond necklace, his mouth dropped kisses in the bare hollow of her throat, wandered, adventuring, down the satin and ivory of her naked breast.…