Starrbelow

by Christianna Brand

  ‘Members of the jury—I appear in this court of ours as a friend and champion of Lord Weyburn: not as the personal enemy of Lady Weyburn. It is no part of my case to smear her with calumny in which we need not believe. All Lord Weyburn requires is proof that the boy for whom she claims his inheritance is not his son and heir. Well, as to that—a child was born in Italy who, to be his son, must have been prematurely born. There is no dispute as to that. Lady Weyburn makes no claim that the marriage was consummated upon any date earlier than August 1st. A child of that consummation must, in the natural order of events, have been born in about the following April. Lady Weyburn—failing, perhaps, to anticipate in those early days the difficulties she was later to encounter—has, from the beginning, made no secret of the fact that her son was born in the middle of February. There can be no question therefore that to be Lord Weyburn’s son—and heir—that child must have been at least six weeks or more premature.

  ‘Members of the jury—as to these facts one person alone in all England was able to speak: one person alone, besides Lady Weyburn, was present at the time of the birth and could have told us whether or not the child was a normal, full-term child. That witness, under what circumstances I do not presume to say, is dead. But, members of the jury, I have said, and said advisedly, one person “in all England”. For the child was not born in England; and I bring before you now …’

  Sir Henry paused dramatically, and in the suddenly seething excitement a small, dark, jerky little old man darted forward from the doorway where he had but very recently appeared and, smiling expansively right and left, advanced to the table, bowed graciously to Lady Weyburn and stood looking expectantly into Sir Henry’s face. Sir Henry said, quietly: ‘My lord Duke, my lords, ladies and gentlemen, members of the jury—I present Signor Pietro Perraci, for many years the leading doctor in Florence and’—he paused dramatically once more—‘devoting himself principally to cases of women in childbirth.’

  Doctor Perraci bowed right and left again, devoting himself principally, as Sir Henry might have said, to Lady Weyburn. Sir Henry let the ripple of comment die down to what seemed a long silence; and into the silence said sharply: ‘Signor Perraci—why do you do that?’

  The little doctor looked startled: not for this had he come, arriving belated and weary, all the way from Italy in response to their importunings. He said in his halting English: ‘Eh? I not understanding?’

  ‘Why do you bow particularly, signor, to this lady?’

  ‘To this lady?’ He threw out protesting hands. ‘Is this not the lady?’

  ‘It is the lady, yes. But, signor—how did you know?’

  The old man bowed with his hand on his heart. ‘Once I have seen such a lady, can I forget her?’

  ‘Ah, that is the point, Signor Doctore, isn’t it? This is not the first time, then, that you’ve seen her?’

  He was old and weary, the point dawned upon him but slowly. ‘Si, si, I have seen her; many years ago, but I have seen her.’

  ‘In Florence?’

  He shrugged. ‘Where else but in Florence? I do not move very much out of Florence.’ And after this journey, his expression added, am not likely to do so again in any sort of hurry.

  ‘Is this then the lady you attended in Florence, in the year 1755—who gave birth to a boy there?’

  He shrugged and smiled. ‘Many ladies gave birth to boys in that year in Florence; many ladies have done so since—how can I remember? But in that year—there was only one English lady.’

  ‘And her name, sir?’

  He shrugged and smiled. ‘A Signora—Smith, sir.’

  The court tittered, fluttering a flower-bed of fans, bright and delicate as petals. ‘You have a record, then, of a Signora Smith, your only English patient at that time in Florence—who gave birth to a boy on February 15th, 1755?’ He paused dramatically. ‘Now! Can you tell us, Doctor?… This child? Premature? Or normal?’

  And the breeze that had fluttered the painted fans was still, the rustle of silks was hushed, the glitter of jewels muted to an unwinking glow upon hands held motionless, breasts that ceased to rise and fall with the suspension of their very breathing. Doctor Perraci looked into the beautiful face and saw the pain there and the dread in anticipation. But—what could one do? The truth was the truth and lovely ladies mustn’t be naughty. ‘The birth?’ he said. ‘Premature? Oh, no—a perfectly normal birth.’

  She had risen. She stood very still, very pale, and faced them; and Sir Henry Kidd also stood quietly, for once his dancing feet ceased their movement, his bright eye fixed steadily on her cold, pale face. ‘So, madame—this is the end; and I, who came here to accuse you, find myself, if I may say so to you, with a mind and heart much changed as must be, I think, the minds and hearts of all who have watched you for so long stand before the tribunal of this court.… For, madame, I submit to the court that you be judged Not Guilty of much that must have forfeited for you the respect of society: I submit to the court that you be judged Not Guilty of wantonness, of marital infidelity, of aught but a few trivial sins against the social code of good manners and propriety—and those sins committed deliberately for a special purpose. I absolve you of all but these—and of one far greater: that you have allowed yourself to live under Lord Weyburn’s name when you have never, in fact, been his wife: and that you falsely claim your son as his heir. And even this …’ He looked round at the avid, stony faces about him, he looked into the beautiful face gazing back now pitifully into his. ‘And even this—a mother protecting her child, fighting for her child, sacrificing her all, her good name, her peace of mind, her place in society, facing insults and scorn, placing her very life at last in jeopardy—for the sake of a child who, at the time this all started, was even yet unborn.…’ And he looked back at her, looked back into the blue eyes clouding over with his every word into a sort of blank despair; and said almost gently: ‘Has it never occurred to you, madame, that the boy may lose the Starrbelow inheritance and yet gain a greater inheritance by far? For, if the marriage with Prince Anton of Brunswick was legitimate, the son of that marriage is Prince Anton of Brunswick’s heir.’

  She stood stiff, motionless, as though paralysed into her own carefully ordered pose of grace, a creature of marble. Her white lips stammered out, ‘His heir?’

  ‘Had you never thought of it?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I never … We never …’ And she put her hand to her forehead, striking the hard knuckles with violence against the frontal bone as though to drive through to her reeling intelligece a w hole new conception too vast for her comprehension. ‘His heir! Oh God!—yes, it is true.… All this time, he’s been Anton’s heir.…’ And she gave a little moan and fell forward across the great table and lay there with her bright hair gleaming against the gentle glow of the mahogany; her face as pale as death.

  FOURTEEN

  Now the rattle of wheels is heard, the thunder of hooves in the winding lanes, the clang of the wrought-iron gates thrown open, the clatter of hoof and harness and wheel and screaming spring as the coach comes lumbering up the long approach to Starrbelow: once again the bright flowers are flecked with loam flicked up by the silver shoes. Two children fly to the open window, fly out to the terrace, come tumbling down the steps to the great front door—a girl, white-skinned, blue-eyed, golden of hair as her mother was; and a boy dark and slender, with a lock of forward-falling hair. ‘Is it known? Is the verdict known?…’

  Sophia steps out: terribly pale, terribly beautiful, with a dark velvet cloak thrown over the rich dress she wore yesterday like a proud queen for the final ordeal in court; for she has driven all night to come to Starrbelow before anyone else shall get here. She says nothing to the boy but she puts out her hand, with its glitter of rings, to take his. She says sharply to Catherine, ‘What are you doing here?’

  Seven years old: but old for her years in an age when children are but miniature grown-ups, her young mind warped with the gossip of servants made more than ever careless in the
fever-pitch of excitement in the past months since her mother died. She looks back at Sophia, half insolent, half afraid. ‘Have I not a right here, madame?’

  The boy looks up into the beautiful face, sees the curved lips straighten into a thin, cold line, need ask no longer, ‘Is the verdict known?’ But she says only, ‘Since your mother died, Catherine, your father has given orders: you are not to come to this house.’

  ‘But it is my house,’ says Catherine. She looks up again, slyly. ‘Is it not?’

  ‘It is Lord Weyburn’s house,’ says Sapphire, shortly; and she calls to the nurse who has hastened up and now stands, awed and irresolute, at the foot of the great, pillared portico of the house. ‘Take her back to Frome and keep her there.’

  ‘I shall not leave Starrbelow,’ says Catherine. ‘I am my cousin Weyburn’s heir, I can see it in your face, and I shall not leave Starrbelow.’ And she sets her small white teeth in her lower lip and grows suddenly deathly pale and falls down in a faint. Sophia starts forward and the nurse, terrified, flings herself on her knees beside the child and lifts the lolling head. But the boy shrugs coolly. ‘It is a trick, Mother, she can do it at will, she has done it a hundred times when I have opposed her. Leave her alone, seem indifferent, she’ll soon come-to.’ (He has practised it often in the privacy of his bedroom, finding it so advantageous an accomplishment, but succeeded only in achieving a few minor bruises: such guiles are for women!) He says to the nurse: ‘You know it’s all nonsense. Ignore her.’

  But the woman is alarmed and anxious. ‘I must carry her into the house, my lady, let me lay her down for a while on a bed and apply some restoratives.…’

  ‘Do what you like,’ says Sapphire, wearily. She takes the boy by the shoulder. ‘Come, Nicholas, come with me; we have no time to waste.’ They go together into the house, she seeming hardly to observe the servants, frigidly bowing—for it is true, the verdict is written on her face; through the great hall and, by some common consent, into the ballroom. She sits down upon a brocade-covered couch and puts out her hand to him again; and, still holding him, puts out her free hand to brush back the straight lock of hair falling over his eyes and smiles a little, as though reminiscently, but drops her hand at once and sits sad and musing. The silence lasts so long that he ventures at last, ‘The verdict has gone against us, Mother—hasn’t it?’ She looks downward again, sadly, not denying it. ‘Is there, then, nothing more we can do?’

  And she smiles again directly and pulls him down to kneel beside her, all the time keeping his hand in hers. ‘Why, as to that, Nicholas, yes, there is something still we can do. We are not two poor lost and helpless creatures, you and I. We have one another, which is much; and there are three things, three courses open to us to choose from.’ She pauses a moment; but she goes on resolutely. ‘I have come to you now, wasting no time for there is none to lose, to ask you to choose which of them it shall be.’

  ‘To ask me to choose, Mother?’

  ‘Yes, you. It’s for you to decide. And I—I shall abide by what you say. I shall not urge you nor argue with you, I shall not influence you. You shall choose.’ And she looks at him with pity and tenderness, and with terror, too, to think that on the whim of a child of nine, so much must depend. And yet—he is very wise: true and wise beyond his years as the other child is sharp and precocious beyond hers; and on his little wisdom and his honest heart her own strength must rely, for it is not enough to support her in making this resolution alone. She releases his hand at last and from the pocket of her muff, which has been laid aside, she takes out a folded silk and from the silk takes three lockets, ringed with jewels; and spreads out the silk upon a small inlaid table and upon the silk lays the three lockets—three small, oval crystals, set with jewels, each containing a miniature. ‘Between these three, Nicholas—you must choose.’

  Three lockets, lying on the little table against the rose-pink brocade. Three faces, looking up at him. Her face: his mother’s face as the Guardi portrait shows it, a miniature taken from that picture, the blue-green cloak and the golden ship, pearl-studded, riding the smooth gold waves of her hair. And Lord Weyburn’s face, cool, proud, defiant—so much like the face that looks back at him each day from the dressing-mirror in his own room. And a third face: handsome, smiling—with a lock of forward-falling hair.

  His mother: Lord Weyburn of Starrbelow: and Prince Anton of Brunswick. And between these three he must make—poor, bewildered, uncomprehending little boy—his choice: and hers.

  The day wears on. She goes to her room, refreshes herself but does not change her dress. She orders food and wine and they are brought to her by servants overtly doubtful of her continued right to command; whose demonstrations, however, she scorns even to recognize. The boy drinks some wine with her and they eat a little food; and all the time she talks to him, gently and quietly, trying to straighten out truth and untruth for him—and yet not tell all the truth; trying to teach without guiding, to inform with influencing him this way or that. ‘And now, Nicholas, which is it to be? It grows late; and if we are to throw in our hands, we must leave Starrbelow without delay for it means we have no right to be here.’

  ‘No right? To be at Starrbelow?’

  ‘If we give in, you see, we renounce such rights.’

  To leave Starrbelow! He has other longings, other dreams, born of the long, ecstatic days in the studios of Venice, Milan, Florence, Rome on their annual visits to Firenze, ever restlessly changing her abode, everywhere finding friends; but always in the background, Starrbelow has been familiarity, security: to his mother it has come to mean home. ‘Even if I am not the heir here, even if I renounce my rights, if Catherine is to succeed: while my—while Lord Weyburn lives, could we not remain here as we have always done?’

  ‘We can remain and fight. No legal court has rejected our claim.’

  ‘Or we can go elsewhere and fight—for that other claim?’

  Go elsewhere and fight—for a right to wealth, no doubt, to position, power, place, for a right to the estates Prince Anton of Brunswick would have inherited had he not died—leaving, however, a legitimate son. A right to fight for a new life—in another land. ‘But we should be foreigners there, Mother, unknown, not wanted; supplanters, for some other must long ago have succeeded, knowing nothing of this claim.…’ A ten-year-old claim, springing up without warning from out of a mist of secrecy and shame. ‘Who would want me, Mother—even were I proved his son?’ He glances up at her uncertainly from beneath dark, slanting brows, anxious, bewildered, afraid to directly question. ‘Even though—even though I were his son?’

  And still she will not, or she cannot, answer him directly. She gives a little shrug. ‘I am but putting it to you, Nicholas; it is for you to decide if you wish to make the claim.’ She thinks it over, musing. ‘And it would be a fight. The registry records are destroyed, the men who performed the marriage are long since deported and probably dead; the witnesses were strangers brought in from the street. We have nothing but—this.’ She picks up the miniature, holding it in the palm of her hand, looking down into the painted face, looking up from it into the grave young face above. “Forever—Anton”; and a lock of unruly hair! ‘It isn’t very much, my little one, to claim a royal title and a royal fortune on.’

  Was this then his father, after all?—this handsome stranger whose home would hold out so cold a welcome to him—who, also, would be a stranger. He lays the two miniatures side by side, the pale dark face and the fair, handsome face; and takes up the third. ‘And if I choose neither Starrbelow nor Brunswick, Mother—but only you?’

  It is what she has hoped: and dreaded—the decision to go, to sever all connections, to end once and for ever the wild, sick folly of hope deferred and yet never quite dead in her. She looks up at him, smiling. She has been very cool towards him always, very reserved, she is not a mother to kiss and fondle and call pet names: her magic for him has been in her very remotion, in her pride and her beauty, in the absolute integrity that even a child can sense o
f her love for him, of his own strength and safety in that love—in the smile that, of all the world, she reserves for him alone. She smiles that smile at him now: that smile with no trace of the mystery, the disdain, the cool mockery of the smile she has shown to the rest of the world. She says, ‘Do you love me, Nicholas?’

  He lowers his eyes because, for the first time in his life, he sees tears in hers. He mutters, ‘Yes.’

  ‘More than Starrbelow? More than Brunswick?’ She bows her golden head, a tear falls on the small brown hand she holds tight in her own. ‘Oh, Nicholas—I am weary, weary, I think that my heart is breaking.… Shall we go away together, you and I?—shall we go away from all this, shall we end it for ever, shall we go to Italy? We could live simply, we could work, you could study your music seriously as you have longed to do, and I could work, we could manage somehow. You are very young, but wise far beyond your years, life has made you so: and I am not old—twenty-eight isn’t very old. And Italy is lovely, free and lovely; we might not have rich clothes and jewels, which would mean nothing; we must leave this dear house and this lovely land, which would mean a great deal; but in Venice every stone is a jewel, Nicholas, the whole city is clothed in a beauty we needn’t be rich to see. And the skies are sunny there and—hearts are kind. But it would be a great step, a desperate step for us. If we fight, we fight for great stakes; if we give in—we have nothing. My mother will be happy beyond all dreams to have us with her, but she’s poor, too, there could be no help for us there. We should have nothing.’