‘I suppose it is.’
‘Then why are we waiting? I shall announce our betrothal tonight.’
And that was how it happened; and, in truth, it was what I wanted. It was what I had wanted for a long time.
Both my father and mother were delighted, and that went for the Tourvilles too. It was a happy solution to the situation. All the settlements which had been arranged for Sophie would be turned over to me. My mother said: ‘I am delighted. I was a little worried really because the French are so formal … and your birth being a little irregular … I know your father was concerned about that. He was considering having you legitimized. It can be done, you know. Now that you are marrying it won’t be necessary. I am so happy for you, my darling. I know you love him and he is such an attractive man. You are happy, I can see.’
‘Yes,’ I said in a rather surprised voice, ‘I believe I am.’
My mother began making arrangements immediately.
‘It is fortunate that the Tourvilles are here now,’ she said. ‘We can get everything settled. Though perhaps the wedding should not take place just yet. There ought to be a year, say, after that dreadful accident. I thought perhaps May. That is a lovely month for a wedding. And there is something else. I thought about having it in Paris … but somehow I don’t think so. It would be difficult at the château because …’
‘Because of Sophie up there in the turret.’
She nodded.
‘Well, the Tourvilles have come up with a suggestion and I think it is a good one. Why shouldn’t you be married from their place? I know it is a bit unorthodox and it should be the bride’s home … but in the circumstances … ’
I could see they were planning it for me and I was content to let them do so. I was very excited at the prospect of being married to Charles, not to have to fight against my instincts any longer.
I was not sure whether I loved him. I certainly was in love with him if being in love meant that everything seemed dull when he was not there.
I wanted change. I wanted excitement. I did not want to go back to Aubigné where Sophie lived like a grim ghost in her turret … haunting me. Though why I should feel a hint of blame at what happened I did not know. It was true that during that fearsome débâcle Charles had turned to me, had rescued me. But if he had left me to go to Sophie he could not have saved her.
Yet I could never stop feeling that niggling little sense of guilt when I was shut up in Aubigné with Sophie there reminding me for ever.
I had to escape and Charles offered that escape. I was going to adventure—erotic adventure which I knew in a way would appeal to my senses; unknown yes, certainly unknown. But the future would solve that for me.
We came back to Aubigné, and all through the winter weeks I thought of my wedding.
I missed Lisette more than ever. I promised myself that when I was a married woman I would have more freedom than I possessed now and I would go and see Lisette at her farmhouse wherever it was. Tante Berthe had come back and settled into her old post as though nothing had happened, but she had never been very communicative and I could not get an address from which would have enabled me to write to Lisette.
She was still travelling with her husband, Tante Berthe insisted. She would be moving into her new house with the coming of Spring. Finally I wrote a letter in which I explained that I was going to marry Charles de Tourville and I thought she and her husband ought to come to the wedding. I took the letter to Tante Berthe who said that as soon as she knew Lisette’s address she would send it to her.
I heard nothing and after a while began to think less of Lisette because I was so occupied with my own affairs.
We went to Paris to get my trousseau and my attention was taken up entirely with the gowns which were being prepared for me. There was my wedding-dress of white brocade which was delicately trimmed with pearls; and there was a white veil which would flow down from a pearl coronet placed high on my head. All hairstyles now were high so that one’s hair had to be padded out to get the desired effect. This fashion had been introduced by the Court hairdressers because Marie Antoinette’s high forehead made it a becoming style for her. And it certainly was becoming except when carried to extreme, which often happens with fashions sooner or later.
However, I had a pleasant time in Paris and for the first time since the accident could ride down the Champs-Elysees without feeling unbearably sad.
All the clothes would be delivered to Aubigné so that we could make sure they were what I wanted and then they would be sent on to Tourville. Aubigné would no longer be my home after the wedding as I should be with my husband’s people. I think at one time that would have saddened me. It no longer did. What I wanted more than anything was to escape. I wanted to get away from my childhood, to understand the emotions which Dickon had first aroused in me before I realized what they meant. I had grown up since then and I knew that Charles would be my tutor.
Often I tried on my dresses. I revelled in them. Silks and velvets, charmingly simple day dresses and an elegant riding habit in pearl grey. Excitement did something for me, such as love had for Sophie.
‘You can see she’s in love,’ said one of the maids, for several of them peeped in while I was trying on my dresses.
Was I? I didn’t know. But whatever it was, I was pleased to be in it.
The wedding was to be in May, exactly a year since Sophie’s tragedy, and we should have a quiet wedding because people might remember that Charles had been going to marry Sophie.
I was longing for the day of our departure for Tourville and yet in a way I was savouring these days of preparation. How often since have I thought that anticipation is sometimes more delightful than the realization. I revelled in looking forward to the future in delicious uncertainty of what it held for me.
And so the days passed. It was the night before we were to leave. One of the maids would pack my wedding-dress after we had left and it would come along after us with my other clothes. The dress was now hung in a cupboard and I was constantly peeping at it.
I went to bed early, for we should be up as soon as it was light in order to begin the long journey which lay before us, and as I was tired I was soon asleep.
I awoke startled, wondering for a moment where I was as I came out of a dream, the memory of which vanished as I opened my eyes.
There was a moon that night and its light shone into my room so that it was almost as light as day.
Then suddenly I felt myself go cold. I could almost feel the hair rising on my scalp for someone was in my room. It was like an apparition. I lay still, unable to move … staring at that figure. A girl … myself … for she was wearing my wedding-dress. I could see the veil flowing down her back.
Then she turned and I saw her face.
I gasped in horror. The moonlight clearly showed up the hideous disfigurement, the blue smudges and wrinkled skin at the side of her face, the scorched patch where the hair should have been.
I raised myself and whispered in a hoarse voice: ‘Sophie.’
She was standing at the foot of my bed looking at me and I could see the cold hatred in her eyes.
‘This should be my wedding-dress,’ she said.
‘Oh, Sophie,’ I cried. ‘It could have been had you wished. You yourself refused … ’
Then she laughed and the bitterness of her laugh was like a knife in my heart. ‘You wanted him from the first. You thought I didn’t know. You lured him from me. You … what are you? A bastard! Begotten in sin! I shall never forgive you.’
‘It was not my fault, Sophie,’ I said.
‘Not your fault!’ She laughed and there was such pain in her laughter that I winced. ‘You are beautiful. You know that well enough, and I was never anything much, was I? Men like you … men like Charles … even when he was betrothed to me. You lured him from me. You determined to get him. I knew you were his mistress even before … before … ’
‘Sophie, that is not true. I have never been anyone’s mistr
ess.’
‘You lie easily. I have proof.’
‘What proof?’
‘I found your flower in his apartment. It was lying there on the floor … in his bedchamber.’
‘What are you talking about, Sophie? I have never been in his bedchamber.’
‘It was the day when … ’ She turned away. Then she went on: ‘He bought you the red one, didn’t he? I had the lavender. The red flower of passion, wasn’t it? I knew by the way he put it in your hair. I knew before I found out. But I tried not to believe it. I called at their hôtel to see his mother. It was something about the wedding arrangements. She said, “He is in his room. Come up with me.” So I went and there it was lying on the floor … where you had dropped it.’
‘I remember the flower … though I never wore it. I had forgotten it until this moment. It couldn’t have been my flower. I dare say I still have it … somewhere.’
She clenched her hands together. ‘Please don’t lie to me. I knew … and that confirmed it.’
‘It is all imagination, Sophie. Oh, do believe me.’
‘You wanted this to happen.’ She threw back her head and turned the scarred part of her face towards me. ‘A pretty sight, isn’t it? On that night he was with you. You left me there. He was intent on saving you. You both hoped that I would die.’
‘It’s not true. You know it isn’t true. He wanted to marry you … afterwards. He asked you again and again.’
‘He never wanted to marry me. It was arranged. He wanted you as soon as he saw you. You think I am foolish and blind. I may be … but not quite so blind as not to see what is right under my eyes. I will never forgive you … never … and I hope you never forget what you have done to me.’
‘Oh, Sophie,’ I cried. ‘Sophie …’
I attempted to go to her but she held up her hand.
‘Don’t come near me,’ she said.
I covered my face with my hands because I could no longer bear to look at her. I knew it was no use pleading with her, trying to make her understand. She was determined to blame me.
When I opened my eyes she had taken off the veil and was placing it reverently on its stand. The dress she hung up in the cupboard before she stepped into her own long robe.
‘Sophie,’ I said gently.
But she waved me away and, silent as a ghost, glided to the door.
There she paused. ‘Remember me,’ she said, looking straight at me. ‘All the time he is with you, remember me. I shall be thinking of you. I shall never forget what you did to me.’
The door closed on her. I stared at the veil on its stand and I thought: I shall never be able to forget either. She will always be there to haunt me.
When I wore that dress, when I wore that veil, I should be thinking of her standing there at the foot of my bed, accusing me, blaming me.
It was unfair. She could have married him had she wished. When she had convinced herself that he did not really want her, I could guess how deeply wounded she had been, and the wounds to her heart went as deeply as those which had disfigured her face.
She had spoken bitterly of the flower. I remembered vividly the day Charles had bought it. I had forgotten it and never worn it. It must be somewhere among my things. Whose peony was it that Sophie had seen? Someone who had visited Charles? The flowers were not exactly rare. They had been sold all over Paris at that time and Charles might well have had a woman visiting him in his rooms.
I couldn’t have told Sophie that. She would never understand the type of man Charles was. Poor Sophie!
She would not forget me, she had said. I could indeed tell her the same. I would always be haunted by the sight of that pathetic figure in my white wedding-dress and veil.
The Return of Lisette
IT WAS THE SPRING of the year 1775 and four years since my marriage to Charles. I was a very different person from that girl who had travelled to Tourville for her wedding. I had grown up quickly under Charles’s tuition; he taught me how to come to terms with life and I was, on the whole, grateful for that.
I would say that our marriage had been satisfactory. There was a definite physical attraction between us and I had discovered that I, no less than he, could find great satisfaction in such a relationship.
During the first months of our marriage neither of us had thought of much else than the passion that we could arouse in each other. He had recognized in me what, in his cynical way, he called ‘a suitable companion of the boudoir’, which meant a woman who was not ashamed of her own desires and who could rise to those heights of passion which he liked to scale—so that as one they could revel in the delights of physical intercourse between the two sexes.
In the beginning I had thought a great deal about Sophie and consoled myself with the certain knowledge that she would never have been able to accompany Charles in those flights of ecstasy.
He was a connoisseur of love—perhaps I should say lust; and also of women. He told me once that he could tell at a glance when a woman had—his term again—love potentialities.
‘As soon as I saw you bending over that crystal ball I recognized those qualities to a large degree,’ he told me.
Was I in love with him? What was love? I asked myself that many times. In love as my mother and father were? No, not like that. That was some ideal state to which people came perhaps when they were old and wise and no longer bedevilled by the urgings of desire. What a contented relationship that must be! No, certainly Charles and I were not like that.
During those first months when we seemed to mean everything to each other, my heart would leap with joy when he appeared and I was always uneasy when he was away from me; I longed during the evenings when we were with his family in the long salon at the Tourville château for the moment when we should retire and be alone.
It never occurred to me to wonder then whether this excessive excitement would last. I supposed my parents had once felt like that in those long-ago days when I was conceived. Then they had parted for years and had only come together when they were middle-aged with much experience behind them, and with the raging desire no longer there to cloud their judgement. And so they reached that deeply contented, perfect relationship.
Charles was certainly the perfect lover. I could be sure he did not feign his need for me. I could not for a moment doubt it. Yet somewhere in my mind I knew that it could not last … not at that breathtaking level at any rate; and would what was left to us be strong enough to build on it that sort of love I had seen and envied a little in my parents?
The Tourville family itself was not very exciting. Charles’s father was an invalid; his mother a mild woman who adored her family. There was a sister Amélie for whom a marriage was being arranged.
They were a wealthy family, although not nearly so rich as my father; and clearly they had been delighted with the alliance between our families. They would have preferred Sophie, of course; but it showed how much they wanted an alliance to have accepted a daughter of illegitimate birth. However, the dowry had been the same as that which would have gone with Sophie.
I should have found life at Tourville very dull but for Charles.
So I went on in that excited state until I became pregnant, which was about eight months after my marriage.
Everyone at Tourville was delighted and when messages were sent to Aubigné there was great rejoicing there.
During the first three months I felt wretchedly sick and after that when I began to grow bulky I was in no state for night frolics with Charles. I guessed then that he found a mistress, for he was not the sort of man to deny himself, and he would think, from what he had always been brought up to believe, that it was the natural course of events.
Strangely enough, coming into motherhood had changed me too. I was absorbed now in the baby and that was enough for me.
Charles was the devoted husband, delighted that I had shown so soon evidence of my fruitfulness and he did not show any rancour because I could no longer endure him in my bed.
My mother came over from Aubigné to be with me at the birth and the delight of everyone was great when I produced a healthy boy.
We called him Charles, which soon became Charlot, and from the moment I heard his first lusty scream he was of the utmost importance to me.
Those were some of the happiest months of my life. I remember so well sitting up in bed with my baby in my arms and people coming in to admire him and congratulate me.
Charles walked round the room with the baby in his arms.
‘Clever, clever Lottie,’ he said, and kissed me.
My father came to see his grandson. He held the child aloft and looked at him with such pride that I laughed.
‘I see you are pleased with him,’ I said.
Reverently he laid the child in his cradle and came to sit beside my bed.
‘Dear Lottie,’ he said, ‘what a happy day it was when you came to me and now it is you who have given me my first grandchild.’ He took my hand and kissed it. ‘Your mother is so proud of you … and so am I.’
I said: ‘You overrate me. It is no great achievement. Women are doing it all over the world at this moment.’
‘Some seem incapable of it.’ He sighed.
I knew he was thinking of Armand and Marie Louise. It was a great disappointment to him that there was no child of that marriage.
After the birth of my son my relationship with my husband changed. He was no longer the delighted teacher, I no longer the pupil avid to learn. I had become mature somehow.
We were lovers, but love-making seemed to have become a routine instead of the indescribable thrill it had once been.
I suppose marriage was like that. However, I had my son and that was contentment enough.
Spring had come and I was going to Aubigné to visit my parents. I rarely went to Aubigné and usually found some reason for not going, suggesting that my parents come to Tourville instead. They were frequent visitors for they wanted to see their grandson growing up. My father would have liked us to live at the Château d’Aubigné but that of course was out of the question. Tourville was Charles’s home and responsibility and I was his wife.
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