‘Would not—it’s not for myself, Mother, it’s for you—would not Lord Weyburn …?’
‘We would take nothing from Lord Weyburn; and nothing from Brunswick. We will fight for our rights, Nicholas; or resign from them altogether, taking nothing. We will not blackmail them into giving us an income for keeping our mouths shut.’ And she opens her blue eyes suddenly full upon him. ‘It is all or nothing. It is Starrbelow—or Hanover—or Italy. Lord Weyburn—or Prince Anton of Brunswick—or me.’
He stands staring down at the three lockets. He stammers: ‘But it’s a matter of rights, Mother. Starrbelow or Hanover—it can’t be both and yet you don’t tell me …’
The heavy lids fall again over the dazzling blue. ‘As to that—you must be content to trust me. One day I will explain; meanwhile, answer, because we must go or stay, I will not be caught here, dithering. What is it you wish to do?’
What is it he wishes to do? ‘What have I ever wished but to be in Italy, to be a great musician one day as my Aunt Christine always told you I should be. What have I ever wished—but to be in Italy, not idling here, a young lordling waiting for his father’s shoes, but studying and working, living my life among musicians, among the poets and painters and sculptors, among the thinkers.…’
‘There are “thinkers” in England, too, you know,’ says Sapphire, mildly. ‘And poets and painters and even musicians, too.’
‘Not at Starrbelow. If I could go up to London—’
‘I don’t think you’d care very much for London,’ she says, no longer smiling. ‘I myself, I know, have found little comfort there. At any rate it will be closed to us now; if you want a world outside Starrbelow, you must go to Italy.’ And she asks him sharply, as though, suddenly, she can no longer endure the anxiety of waiting for his answer: ‘Is this then your choice?’
He swings away from her for a moment, paces across the room a little, comes back to her. ‘You see—I don’t understand that it can be a matter of choice. It’s a matter of rights. A—a man may put aside lands or possessions or fortune that have come to him this way or that: but as his inheritance is a part of himself, so he is a part of his inheritance—isn’t he, Mother? If it lies within me—in here,’ he insists, striking his breast with a small, closed fist, ‘to be a prince of Hanover or baron of Starrbelow, then I can’t make myself less by saying, “I give up my rights.” I am what I am: I am my inheritance.’ He looks up at her anxiously. ‘My heart is in Italy; but—if I chose to stand by my rights because I—I thought it wrong to deny them: you wouldn’t desert me?’
She turns away her face from him to hide her despair, the weariness and despair at the thought that the long struggle against her own heart is not to be ended for her after all, by any childish grasping at the easy way out. ‘No, no—whatever happens, I shan’t desert you.’
‘But you, too, would have chosen Italy?’
‘As an escape,’ she says. ‘Not for happiness—only for peace.’
‘For me it would be happinesss. For me it would be the other way about, you see, it would be happiness—but not peace. I couldn’t feel at peace, I couldn’t give my heart to my music, knowing that I had been cheated of my birthright. And if I bow to the ruling of this court and renounce it, I shall still, in fact, have been cheated of it; and, if you can understand me, Mother, I shall feel it’s been cheated of me. I wish it weren’t mine: that’s the truth, I wish it weren’t mine; but since it is … I can’t. I can’t so dishonour my own birthright by appearing to admit that it has never been mine.’ He raises his eyes to her again, dark, candid eyes under the upward-sweeping brows. ‘Nor so dishonour you.’
She meets his eyes. She says steadily: ‘As to that, there is no dishonour. My marriage was legitimate: let who will doubt it, you and I may be satisfied of the truth.’
‘Of course I don’t doubt it, Mother. I have never doubted you. Only …’ He stares down at the two handsome faces, the dark face and the fair face. ‘Only, Mother—which?’
Once again, she does not answer directly. She says, ‘So we are to fight?’
‘For my rights. It’s no question of a choice. But which are my rights? Brunswick or Starrbelow—it can’t be both.’
She rises. She stands beside him for a moment looking down also at the two miniatures, then she puts an arm about him and turns him to face the great gilded mirror overhanging the high mantelshelf. She says: ‘Look in the glass, Nicholas—and decide for yourself.’
A pale dark face looking up from an oval miniature; and a face with a forward-falling lock of hair. And from the mirror, the same pale face looks back—from beneath a lock of forward-falling hair. Weyburn or Brunswick? Starrbelow or Hanover? ‘Choose, Nicholas: choose!’
And there are voices in the hall.
She stands very still, looking over the boy’s shoulder at the face reflected in the glass; and there are voices in the hall, the voice of a servant, and a voice that for many years has not been heard there—the voice of Lord Frome. While she lived he trusted his wife in all things; from the time of their only quarrel, he has laid no veto upon her friendship with Sapphire, but he himself has refused Lady Weyburn his countenance, has not seen nor acknowledged her son, has not entertained her at Frome, has never come to Starrbelow. Now, however, his voice, cold with anger, is heard in the hall. ‘I am but now returned from London. I am told that my daughter is here.’
And the voice of the servant stammers an admission and the voice of the nurse protests from the stairs. ‘She would come, my lord, we dared not check her, and she with her mother so lately dead: she has been here every day. And when I would have taken her home—’
‘Fetch her at once,’ he says.
‘My lord, she is ill, she is a-bed, she was taken faint—’
And the voice of the child, shrilling down also, from above. ‘I am not ill at all, but I would not leave: for is it not true, my lord, that the verdict is known and this is my house?’
‘What nonsense is this?’ he says, heavily and angrily. ‘It is your cousin Weyburn’s house.’
‘But when he dies? Is it not the verdict—?’
‘There is no “verdict” affecting you, Catherine; come down at once and come away with me.…’
‘Let them go,’ says Sapphire, whispering, to the boy. ‘Let them go, not knowing we are here.’ Through the mirror she watches the great door through which, so many agonies ago, she came to meet her destiny. ‘Let them go and then, quickly, we must make our decision: if we are to go, let us go and not wait to be ignominiously sent. If we are to stay …’ And she puts up her hand, trembling, watching his face in the glass, and smooths back his hair and thinks with pity for the child that it is wrong to leave so great a decision to him; and with pity for herself that her own will is too weak to make the choice that would cut her off for ever from tormented hope; and with terror for them both that on a boy’s whim all their future, peace or happiness, must depend. Catherine’s voice cries, coming closer towards her father down the stair, ‘But my Aunt Sophia is come and she does not deny—’
There is a moment’s blank silence. Lord Frome says, sharply: ‘Lady Weyburn is here? But she can’t be—we started at dawn.…’ And the servant’s voice mumbles out that her ladyship has driven all night; and a third voice cries out: ‘She is here?’ And the door opens; and Lord Weyburn comes in.
Just so had they stood long ago and looked at one another across the great length of the ballroom: not speaking. Behind him, Lord Frome also entered; in the hall, the child Catherine set up her shrill clamour and he closed the door behind him sharply, and the sound was muffled into obscurity, and faded. She turned from the mirror and so confronted them, her arm about the child’s shoulders, as they advanced, staring, down the length of the room. Lord Frome said at last: ‘Dear God! What boy is this?’
He stood very close to her, his dark head at her shoulder, his hand holding tight to hers. ‘I am—Nicholas, my lord.’
Silence. But very low, she said to him at last:
‘The moment has come: you must choose now. Yes: you are Nicholas. And—is that all?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I have chosen. I am Nicholas and nothing more. Those others wouldn’t want me: and he—he doesn’t want me, either, Mother. I’d rather be plain Nicholas.’
‘But you are not plain Nicholas,’ said Lord Weyburn. ‘You are Nicholas of Brunswick. It is written in every line of your face: you are Prince Anton’s son.’ He had known it always, but now he was sick with the shock of the proof of it. He said to Sapphire, almost sullenly: ‘No wonder you would not bring the boy to court.’
‘You are mad,’ said Lord Frome. ‘Anton’s son! Look in the mirror, man, hold the boy at your side and look into the glass. Can you not see—he’s the living image of yourself?’
‘He is Anton of Brunswick: the shape of the head, the shape of the face, the whole carriage, the air; and when, as he often did not, he wore no wig, his hair fell ever forward as this boy’s does.…’
‘You are mad, Charles. He is Weyburn all over—look at his eyes, his nose, the Weyburn nose; look at his mouth, the upward sweep of the brows.…’ A look of terror came into his face. ‘The—the sweep of the brows.…’
Charles Weyburn said impatiently, ‘The boy is the image of Anton; he cannot be both.’
‘He cannot be either,’ said Sapphire, quickly. She pulled the child roughly back to her, away from them, and put her hand up to his dark head, holding it close against her shoulder, the face turned inward to her breast as though she would have it no longer canvassed between them. ‘Let us go now, my lords, we have made our choice. We go back to Venice. We will trouble you no more.’ She moved past them to the door, holding the boy still close. ‘Let us begone.’
‘No,’ said Lord Frome. ‘Wait.’
But she pushed past him, urging the boy forward ahead of her. ‘My lord—let us go, let us begone: say nothing, I beg of you, I beseech you—say nothing, keep silent, and in one moment we shall be gone and never, I swear it, never shall you hear from either of us again. Only keep silent now,’ she implored him, ‘only say nothing and we shall have passed out of your lives for ever.…’ But he caught at her wrist and dragged her back. ‘Oh, God!’ she cried out, ‘don’t say it, don’t speak: when I have given so much, have lost so much.…’
But he dragged her to the little table, the boy following, lost in bewilderment, Lord Weyburn rushing forward to catch her as she fell forward, half fainting, into his arms: and took something from his breast and laid it down with the three miniatures upon the rose-coloured silk.…
Dazzlingly fair where her cousin Weyburn was dark: but with the Weyburn nose and the Weyburn mouth and the Weyburn carriage of the lovely head—resembling her cousin in all but her colouring and the lovely, upward, winged brown sweep of the brows.…
Christine.
‘If passionate gratitude can make a friend—you have one in me, madame, to the end of my life.…’
FIFTEEN
And time put back the hands of the Great Clock, over the hours and the days and the months and the years: and from this very room, a weeping girl fled out alone into the starlit gardens; and Prince Anton of Brunswick, having sold his soul to the devil, went out also into the night—where his Master awaited him.
Anton of Brunswick—and The Lily of Lillane.
They had seen a good deal of one another while, at the behest of his mistress, Prince Anton played watch-dog to Sophia in the days of her first coming into society—to Sophia and her new and inseparable friend, Christine Lillane. Now, both of them sick and ashamed of what they had lately done, they met in the gardens, while, within, all interest was concentrated on Lord Weyburn and Sapphire Devigne: and he for a moment forgot his shame and misery in consoling hers and she hoped to pique the errant Lord Frome by accepting attentions from this new source—which, however, she thought, innocently wise, he could never suspect her of seriously considering. (‘This is a comedy only too often played,’ Sapphire had said to her bitterly, later, in her room; and, ‘Yes,’ she had said—her mind far away, not thinking of her friend at all.)
But—Lord Frome was errant indeed, was gone, was lost to her; and her cousin Charles also was lost; and her friend was caught up in Lord Weyburn’s pursuit and their betrothal. And meanwhile Prince Anton’s ache remained with him; in all his world, there was only this one who knew nothing of his shoddy wager, who still accepted him as the man he would wish himself to be. And Sophia and Lady Corby went off to Venice and they had only one another, under the chaperonage of the blind, trusting, doddering old mother. And he was kind and easygoing and gay, and his attentions were balm to her wounded pride; and she was gentle and lovely—and, after the practised fires of his middle-aged mistress’s passions, her cool, white purity refreshed, enchanted, and at last inflamed him. By the time the travellers returned, he could think of nothing but that he must possess her. Only under the seal of matrimony could attainment be possible: nor could he hope for one moment for permission from home—he was promised in marriage to another and moreover by family arrangement and under the royal consent. But she was irresistible; and as it proved, hardly resisting. Innocent and ignorant, she was easily persuaded that she had by now too far compromised herself with him to be able to refuse him: that secrecy was imperative on account of the inevitable family opposition—which would all be resolved, however, in a happy reunion, when a fait accompli was made known. On March 25th, while she yet doubted, played for time, begged to be allowed to confide at least in her dear Sophia—he sprang the news on her that the day was come; and hustled her off to the chapel in Mayfair.
But what in pursuit had been exquisitely provocative evasion, in possession proved only chill, loveless and shaming; and for this he had jeopardized every hope of the solid Hanoverian happiness in which his real future lay. Within a month he was bitterly regretting the whole business, another month and she had fled from their secret embraces for ever; by May 27th his mind was made up. He followed her down to the Weyburn wedding and there, hangdog but triumphant, informed her that it was all over. Such marriages as theirs had been illegal ‘from and after March 25th, Ladyday’ according to the Act; that included the day itself, and in such circumstances they had not been married at all.
She was happy beyond words, no doubt, to find herself free. Lord Frome had returned at last for his friend’s wedding, and was treating her with all his old loving-kindness: her life-long devotion, never for a moment grown less, seemed fated to be rewarded after all. But that she was being deceived never for a moment entered a mind which itself was free from guile; nor any thought of deceiving. She had entered into her supposed marriage in perfect confidence, had given herself in what she truly believed to be the bonds of wedlock: she had done no wrong, had been only foolish and mistaken, and now found herself, to her exquisite relief, not bound by her mistake. That she should one day confide in Lord Frome, she may well have contemplated, and with some misgiving, too well knowing his rigid sense of propriety; but even this might not be necessary, the past was the past, was over and done with, both had their reasons for secrecy, nothing she did not choose to tell need ever be known. In her sky-blue dress, matching the radiance of suddenly care-free blue eyes, she danced at Sophia’s wedding with a light heart; and the future she had ever dreamed of held out welcoming arms.…
Two weeks more and she knew that the dream was over. She was going to have a child.
The mother, as a confidante worse than useless, readily allowed herself to be carried down to Starrbelow again—for was not the Earl of Frome in residence ‘next door’? Sophia dragged herself from her stupor of pain to hear the story.
‘Well, but Christine, you must inform Prince Anton—of course he will marry you now.’
The room in which they sat was panelled in daffodil-coloured brocade, the furniture painted French satinwood with exquisitely spindly legs, the ornaments of ormolu and the deep blue of Sèvres porcelain, richly glowing against the yellow silk; from the window, the drive curved away and
down to the wroughtiron, gilded gates. And beyond the gates, the woody hills rose up to where Frome Castle stood in its splendour of cool grey stone. Through those gates had passed out all that Sophia Weyburn loved in life; behind those grey walls lay Christine’s happiness, lost to her for ever, now. She said at last, ‘After what has passed, even if he were willing, Sophia—how could I marry him?’
‘You have married him once already,’ said Sapphire dryly.
‘When I thought Lord Frome had abandoned me. Oh, I know,’ she said, quickly, not raising her head, staring down bleakly at the clasped hands, ‘that that dream is over. But—the other. I never loved him, I married him for wrong reasons, in a moment of madness: all this I know. But now—now, I think, Sophia, that we hate one another.’
‘There is nothing to hate in poor Anton.’
‘Not when he has pretended to marry me?’
‘You can’t think, Christine, that he knew at the time it was illegal?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said drearily. ‘He says he did not.’
‘I don’t believe it of him. He is weak and has been ill-taught by Lady Corby; but surely he is not calculating and mean?’
‘In any event, Sophia, what does it all matter? He is repugnant to me now, I could not live as his wife; and for his part, he was undisguisedly happy to be rid of me. How can I now, by blackmailing him with this threat to my honour, impel him to marry me?’
‘There is no blackmail—it is his responsibility as much as yours: more, since he persuaded you into this “marriage”. He must be told, Christine, at any rate. You must see him.’
‘How can I see him? We have forsworn all communication, he’s day and night again in Lady Corby’s pocket.’
‘Write and tell him—’
‘I did write asking him to meet me; he ignored my letter.’
‘Did you tell him the reason?’
‘Of course not. Sophia—how could I commit such tidings to paper? If your Aunt Corby got hold of it …’
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