‘She may have got hold of the letter—and suppressed it. Or he may suspect the reason; and it would be typical of him to evade the issue, to let things slide, to put off decision. But you must discuss it with him, Christine; it’s only right, and only fair to him to do so. I’ll ask him here.’
‘He won’t come. She has always been jealous of you—little knowing it was I he was attached to, Sophia!—and she wouldn’t let him.’
‘I’ll ask her too, then; where she goes, he will go.’
And she wrote off privily to Anton: it was necessary that he should come to Starrbelow, an excuse had been made to invite Lady Corby, she was to bring ‘a party’: he must insist upon being included in it. She sent the letter by a private messenger, riding post-haste, and twenty-four hours later received his answer. ‘He is coming,’ she said to Christine, entering the room with the letter in her hand.
It was the room Christine had always used at Starrbelow: the small room with the naked cupids playing on the painted ceiling, all tangled up with their pink-and-blue ribbon bows; with the tall windows over the wooded park, looking out, as so many of the Starrbelow windows looked out, towards Frome. She had dismissed her maid and was in her long white muslin night-robe, ready for bed, the fair hair falling in its soft curls on her white shoulders. She said dully, ‘Very well.’
‘But—he refuses to come while you are here. He says he will discuss what is to be discussed with me.’
Christine raised her head. ‘Then surely we need not trouble him to come at all? He cannot marry me, if he will not see me.’
‘Of course he must see you. But I am obliged to send an undertaking that you have left the house. Very well, then, you must stay near at hand and I’ll arrange a meeting when he gets here.’
‘How can I “stay near at hand”, Sapphire? Are my mother and I to leave Starrbelow the moment Prince Anton of Brunswick chooses to come there: and move to some inn? What reason could we give?’
‘You must say … You must give out that you disapprove his coming, Christine, in your cousin’s absence. My aunt’s jealousy was no secret, it was widely believed that I, in the past, was Prince Anton’s object: even I didn’t know,’ she said, half rueful, half laughing, ‘that all the time it was you!’
‘Oh, Sophia, as if I could lay you open to such gossip; should seem to criticize you!’
‘I am used to gossip,’ said Sapphire wearily, ‘and past caring; such things seem merely pinpricks to me now. But if you prefer, you can say it’s my aunt you object to. Lord Weyburn never approved of her, you can declare that you will not condone her presence here with her riff-raff of friends.’
‘But in that case I would return to Town; I should not go to an inn.’
‘Who asks you to go to an inn?’ said Sapphire, losing patience. ‘Go over to Frome: let your mother put your complaint to the Earl, seek refuge there from the goings-on at Starrbelow.’ She shrugged. ‘He will be only too ready to take up your cudgels; for, love him as you may, you cannot deny, my dear, that your Lord Frome is something of a prude.’ People came to you with their burdens, she thought, and from that moment made you their enemy, fighting your efforts to help them as though you yourself were in some way to blame. ‘We will talk about this again tomorrow, Christine,’ she said, and went away.
But sitting in her own room once again, staring out unseeingly and down towards the gilded gates as, she knew, Christine would be sitting staring out towards Frome, her heart smote her for unkindness to her friend. Why should her love be less passionate that mine, she thought, because it is not mine? Why should her pain be less keen? We have both lost our loves, but I, at least, need not now demand marriage with a man I hate and who does not conceal his dislike for me: need not be dragged off, unwilling and unwanted, to a strange land where I shall be rejected and resented for the rest of my days.… It was a pity in the end, she reflected, that this had not happened to herself rather than to Christine: Christine had a world of hope still before her but for this; but she—she knew now that for herself hope was past, that he had not loved her after all, he would never come back.… I could have gone to Italy, she thought, to my mother; I could have had my child there and who would have known? or, all the world knowing, who would have cared? One more black mark against poor Sapphire Devigne who had been gossiped and scandalized over for a brief season and would soon be forgotten as anything but the object of a notorious wager. But it had not happened to her—could never have happened to her; it had happened to Christine, to Christine the stainless one, The Lily, the irreproachable, whose fall would therefore be infinitely more great: Christine the gentle, the loving, the steadfast, the guileless of heart. And in all the world nobody could offer her help and comfort but herself; and she had been impatient and unkind. She got up and went through again to Christine’s room.
Christine was sitting in the window no longer, but she stood there still; and still stared out—for the last time—towards Frome: the triple phial of laudanum in her hand.
She rose from a night of sleepless watching, the plan all formed in her mind. She told once again a single lie—one lie to persuade Christine into agreement, which later must be retracted—but not until it was too late for them to change their minds. Lord Weyburn, she said, had in fact come back to Starrbelow after the wedding, for a single night, secretly, seeking some solution to their unhappy marriage; and, arriving at none, had quarrelled with her irrevocably and gone again. He could not deny it, however, if she declared herself with child by him; she would insist upon going to her mother in Italy for the birth, would insist upon her friend going with her; they would wait there till Christine’s child was born and she would then claim it as her own. No need for any marriage with Anton, no need for the alternative gossip, obloquy and shame. Christine had but to be patient a few uneasy months, and then come back to England and her happiness there.
Christine, of course, protested, argued, pleaded, disclaimed: stumbled at last upon the objection affecting inheritance. ‘You could not claim the child, Sophia, as Lord Weyburn’s, for that would make it his heir.’
‘And so it would be his heir,’ said Sapphire. ‘You are his present heir, and your child would be, after you.’
It would never arise, for Lord Weyburn, of course, had not set eyes on her since the wedding two weeks ago; would know the child not his; but for the moment it silenced the last argument. ‘We will see what Prince Anton says, Christine, and let it rest upon that. Only promise me—no more laudanum!’
But the bottle of laudanum, anyway, was safe in her own keeping; she carried it with her thenceforward, a reminder lest ever her resolution fail in the path of self-sacrifice mapped out for herself: that same phial which ten years later was to fall again into Christine’s hands.
So the plan went forward; and within the plan her own, her secret plan. Christine retired to Frome, permitted it at least to be believed that she disapproved her friend’s behaviour in Lord Weyburn’s absence; Sapphire began the systematic collection of names that might be associated with hers when the time came to question the fatherhood of the child—names so numerous that, as Sir Henry Kidd long after was so shrewdly to deduce, none could be singled out for responsibility; began the course of conduct that would give credence to the mystery of a child born in secrecy abroad, of whom any of half a dozen men might be the father. That the birth might be kept in fact a secret remained, of course, her first hope; but she dared not count upon success and alternative plans must be layed in advance.
Red Reddington, Pardo Ryan, Lord Franks—they were easy prey; and meanwhile Prince Anton came down, and the watchful mistress was disposed of and the consultations began, long talks during the solitary rides in the woods above Starrbelow, secret meetings there with Christine, ridden over from Frome: secret meetings now and again interrupted, obliging Christine to admit to the Earl that she had ‘accidentally’ met with her friend and the Prince.… Long discussions, cold as death but for the most part without acrimony; ending always in the
same decision—he and Christine must part. If she made the thing public and so forced his hand, of course marry her he must. ‘But you vould not be happy in Hanover, Christine, vith me.…’
‘She would not be happy in Paradise with you,’ said Sophia; and she looked him up and down, slowly, while he went first white and then red beneath her look; and smiled the smile. ‘You need not have struggled so hard, Prince: I would not, now that I know you a little, have let her marry you if you had come crawling to her on your knees. A prince you may be, but, by God,’ she said, in the new language she was learning so readily at the hands of Pardo and Red, ‘by God and Mary, you are no gentleman!’
Less, even, than they knew or dreamed of. And his concern now was to have all record wiped out of that marriage, which he alone of the three knew to have been a true marriage after all. ‘Well, that too we can accomplish,’ said Sapphire. ‘I have thought of it already and laid a plot.’ She said to the silent, white, shuddering Christine: ‘Go back to Frome, dearest; we will meet no more. But when the time comes that I summon you, be ready to come away with me; and see that you quarrel with his lordship about it (where I am concerned, that will be easy enough!), or we’ll have him dog-trotting out to Italy after you and finding you the size of a house, with this fine gentleman’s child.’ She did not say again that Lord Frome was a prude; but the thought that had he been otherwise all this might be resolved without her self-sacrifice, roused her whenever his name was mentioned to irritable scorn.
And so the Treasure Seekers’ Circle was born and ran its brief course, and at last came—had the other members but known it—to the last ‘escapade’; and in the distress and anxiety of that unlovely evening she forgot to hand over to Anton the love-token Christine had given her to return to him.
It lay still hidden in her bodice when her true love took her at last into his arms—and found it there: this miniature, this pale face framed by the fair, forward-falling hair that now looked up at her from the rose-coloured silk, laid out upon the little rosewood table in the ballroom at Starrbelow. ‘Forever—Anton.’
But now he held her in his arms again, and would never let her go. Lord Frome sat heavily on the brocaded couch, his head in his hands, raising it only once to stammer out, ‘But—the doctor from Florence …’
‘Of course he recognized me. He had seen me often enough at Christine’s bedside. I was anxious; but he was old and weary; he had forgotten; he recollected only that he had seen me before.’
The boy stood staring at her with troubled eyes. ‘Do you tell me, then, that I am not your son? That you’re not my mother at all?’
‘Oh, Nicholas, I am more than your mother, you are more than my son. What have we not been to one another, all these long years?’ She left her lover for a moment and went to the child. ‘I could have left you in Italy, my mother would have cared for you; she loved Christine too. But …’ She said to Lord Weyburn: ‘I had to come back to Starrbelow; hope would not die in me. I wanted to be at least in England where you must some time come. But I could not leave you, Nicholas, I loved you too much; you had been all mine since Christine had come home and left you with me.’ But she saw again a darkening of the eyes, a lowering of the winged brown brows. She said swiftly, ‘And she loved you too, always, your true mother, your “other mother”; she broke her heart at leaving you in Italy, she begged me to come home, to bring you with me to Starrbelow so that at least, living close by at Frome, she could see you often, be always near you. And so she was, dearest, and loved you and cared for you: gave you her own divine gift of music and taught you to love it and use it.…’
‘I see,’ he said, gravely. He thought it over. ‘And that man—that Prince who was no gentleman—that was my father?’
‘He is dead,’ she said gently; ‘and in his death, perhaps, showed himself a gentleman after all. For he accepted the challenge—the challenge to the death. He thought, of course, that it was on account of her—of your mother, Nicholas. Lord Weyburn, in his challenge, referred to “a matter concerning the honour of my family”—a lady’s name would not be mentioned, naturally. It was I, we know, whom Lord Weyburn intended—having found the locket in my keeping and believing me with child by Prince Anton. But Anton was guiltless towards me, how should he think it was I—he knew nothing of the finding of the locket, knew nothing of my having seen Lord Weyburn. No, he thought, of course, that it was Lord Weyburn’s own family he referred to: that he had discovered the wrong done to his cousin Christine. And he accepted that, Nicholas: he said it was just, though he must have known that it well might mean his death.’
Lord Frome spoke for the first time; his heart was too full to trouble about the boy. He said grimly, ‘He made no effort, however, to put matters right for her—for Christine—before he died: to tell her that she had been truly married and her child would be legitimate.’ No doubt, he said, heavily ironic, he preferred not to trouble his precious principality with a posthumous heir.
‘No, no,’ protested Sapphire, her eyes on the boy’s face, ‘it was not that. I think, indeed, he never considered the matter of inheritance; he was young, he was at that time without money or estates. How should he be looking forward to the future of an unborn child?—none of us thought of it; Christine and I, of course, believed the marriage illegal, but even when we knew otherwise, the thought did not come into our heads. And I think he did, in fact, try to protect Christine. He could not ask to see her before he fought—believing as he did that she was the reason for the duel; but he tried to see me, and that surely must have been so that he might tell me the facts? It was refused, of course, and then they all left for Belgium hastily and there was no chance.’
‘He might have written.’
‘To write would be to commit her secret to paper.’
‘And to embarrass himself,’ said Lord Frome, doggedly, ‘in the event of his surviving the duel.’
‘Well—perhaps; in the event of his surviving, it might have embarrassed them both, for to his mind everything was now satisfactorily settled: it had been arranged that I was to claim the child. But—she was in his thoughts, for he wore on his finger the wedding ring she had returned to him, with the date inscribed; and this, as he died, he sent me with messages, and murmured over and over again, “Ladyday … Ladyday …” hoping, no doubt, that I would see the significance of the date at last. Even then, you see, Nicholas, he was scrupulous not to mention her name: only a message to me and that muttering over and over again of his anxious conscience, “Ladyday … Ladyday …”.’ She said to him carefully, hesitantly, ‘If you would like it, Nicholas, I still have the ring.’
‘No, no,’ he said quickly, ‘I don’t want the ring.’
‘It was your mother’s wedding ring, dearest: given by your father on their true marriage day.’ And she thought: Such a little boy, to be burdened with so much knowledge: and yet for his years so right-thinking and so wise!
He said, breaking into her thoughts: ‘I won’t call him my father. He disowned me, he left my mother to bear me in secrecy and shame: and I now disown him.’
‘He was to have great possessions, Nicholas, when he came to his inheritance; which now would be rightly yours. You would be a prince.’
They stood watching him, such a very small, slender little boy among the tall grown-ups, so preternaturally resolute and grave. He said: ‘I will not be a prince. I do not call his inheritance an inheritance; I will not call him my father—I repudiate him as he repudiated my mother and me.’
‘You have his blood in your veins, royal blood, Nicholas; you cannot make yourself less than you are. May you not have a duty, dearest, may you not one day believe it your duty to the inheritance of your father—’
But he interrupted her. ‘Haven’t you heard me say it? He is not my father. I have no inheritance; I refuse to call him my father.’ He said: ‘There will be no “one day”: no power can make me ever think of it or speak of it again. I will be a gentleman if I may; I will not be a prince.’
&n
bsp; ‘A man may be both a gentleman and a prince.’
‘He could not,’ he said, ‘and I would rather be neither, Mother, than call myself his son.’ He corrected himself quickly, however, painfully flushing. ‘But you are not my mother after all, are you? What shall I call you now?’
She had always been very cool towards him, remote and reserved; but now she kneeled down beside him and put her arms about him. ‘Oh, my little son,’ she said, ‘my brave, my true and honest one, my perfect gentleman—if you will not call me mother still, I think it will break my heart.’
Lord Frome forced himself up for a moment from his abstraction. He said kindly, ‘It is what your own mother in heaven would have wished.’
‘Whom you say she murdered,’ said the boy sharply, spitting it out at him suddenly, holding her close to him with his reedy arms, as though to champion her against the world; and she rose, her heart at ease for him at last, and faced them with his hard little hand clasped tight in hers. Lord Frome said heavily: ‘I do not say so, I never said so; she would not answer to the charge, she would not explain.…’
To answer would have been to bow his own proud, prudish, obstinate head in the dust, to tarnish the stainless family escutcheon Christine had died to defend. How could she have answered, when to answer would be to reveal Christine’s secret? How clear her own name at the expense of Christine’s, now that Christine was dead?…
For Sapphire, on that last day of Christine’s life, had come at long last to the end of her patience. Driving home from the park after the encounter with the Duchess of Witham, when a dozen words had made clear to her the real truth of their position … ‘On March the twenty-fifth,’ she had said, ‘on Ladyday, 1754, the Fleet marriages had become illegal …’ and ‘From March the twenty-fifth,’ the Duchess had screeched out. ‘They were still legal on Ladyday.…’ ‘Do you not see, Christine, what all this means? If Anton were wrong, or was deceiving you (but it is too clear; he deliberately deceived you, and we have been mad all these years to take it all for granted, not to make sure) if indeed the Marriage Act took force, not from the day he married you but from the day after: why, then, you were legitimately married after all, you were truly his wife.’
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