The Marquis of Westmarch

by Frances Vernon

  Auriol jumped at her slight and bitter change of tone. How very protected, he thought, Meriel had been — he tried to arrange his thoughts as he looked at her in silence. Marquis Elphinstone must have been an odd kind of man: as possessive and protective as Juxon in his own way, though he had, it was true, given her one young companion.

  Meriel smiled down at Auriol with cynical concentration, and made a move as though to touch him, then drew back and said, “Wychwood, you were a boy. If you had suspected there were something ever so slightly wrong with your virile parts — having read a little, heard odd remarks, as I did — would you not rather have died than consulted anyone, out of shame?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I would. But many boys, you know, fancy that —”

  Meriel interrupted. “So you see — I guessed there was something not as it ought to be, by the time I was ten or so — but never did I guess the full horror of what had befallen me, till Juxon examined me when I lay ill — I was in a drugged sleep, I’d have never let him touch me awake. Oh no, no one but a devil could imagine the full horror, no.”

  “Marquis, Westmarch — tell me if you wish,” Auriol said, not wishing to hear more yet, but not knowing what else to say. She did not hear his invitation. Oblivious, she talked of her own accord.

  Meriel started to prowl along the beach, rubbing and waving her hands, pulling at her hair, shouting at the top of her voice and looking anywhere but at him.

  “I’ve lived ten years with the terror of discovery, ten years, and now, I discover myself! I tell you I can no longer endure it. So now I’m ruined. D’you know, can you picture to yourself what it has been, to know myself to be filthy, essentially unfit for the position to which I was born, realising it not a sennight after my father died, and through Juxon, do you? Women are vile, vile, vile, breeding-sewers, idiots, stinking, and I know myself to be one of them — oh my God, could there be any worse punishment in all the world. Yes, yes, someone will discover, one day, and then it will be petticoats, and breeding, and propriety, and obedience, and impotence! I’d liefer be dead, would not you? Would you not?”

  The declining light set her hair on fire, but made her face invisible to Auriol. Far in the west behind her the sunset was a gold patch of water and sky, beneath a stream of tiny purple clouds. The sea was still flat as a piece of silk, and the waves broke heavily over Meriel’s legs as she strode, and stamped, and shouted.

  Auriol moved. “Westmarch! Meriel! Be silent, can’t you!”

  “Oh, be damned to you! Love, love, love, who was it said there’s no love does not take a man straight to the devil? Juxon expects me to love him, do you know that, love him and be grateful to him, for his help in maintaining this charade — my life, in short. Thinks he can ruin me at any moment, but I can ruin him too, by God, and he knows it. I’ll ruin myself if it pleases me. I have no friends, to be sure, friends are dangerous, too dangerous — like you, of course, oh, I wish I were dead.” At last, choking, she fell silent.

  “You have me,” called Auriol, walking forward, “and I will not ruin you, and you are not vile, you are Westmarch though you may be a woman.”

  His bass voice swamped the echo of hers, and she heard it. He had grasped, despite her crushing eloquence, the essences of her misery. But having spoken, he collapsed, and could only stand there, looking at her.

  “Wychwood,” she said, coming towards him, water squelching in her boots. “I have distressed you, I’m sorry. I’ve distressed you.” She put one arm round his waist and hugged it tightly. He did not respond, though he wanted to do so. “The tide is coming in,” she said, gesturing, “come, there are the boulders, let’s sit there.” The upper half of the cove was full of smooth and oval granite boulders. “My — my little love.”

  Auriol stopped. “What did you call me?”

  “My little love. Oh! Yes, very true, sir!”

  Enormous smiles opened on both their faces, and they shyly held each other, chortling, for nearly a minute.

  “Little!” said Auriol.

  “I’ve the devil of a headache,” said the Marquis.

  “That don’t amaze me. Such an outburst as yours was bound to take its toll.”

  His mention of her rampage made Meriel want to lose all self-control again, but she was in too much pain and had not the energy.

  “It is an irony, is it not,” she said, “I have had to show by far more reserve in my life than any female living.”

  “Yes,” said Auriol, thinking of Juxon, “in many ways yours must have been quite as much restricted — and sheltered as a girl’s.”

  “Just so, sir.” Meriel looked around her, and was astonished to see a brilliant low sky. “But it’s late … we must have wasted hours in talking. Oh, my God.”

  “Yes, now — now what shall you do about Maid Rosalba?”

  Meriel narrowed her eyes, and saw that he was anxious, not mocking. The relief was very great, and they began a calm, blunt, refreshing and real discussion, quite unlike their first on the subject.

  *

  Maid Rosalba had time to waste between her visit to the town and an hour’s tea-drinking with her aunt and Mr Marling. She chose to spend it in thinking sophisticated thoughts about marriage. To do so, she sat beneath the tangled vines of an arbour in Green Court, though she ought not to be sitting there, unchaperoned; but it was an obscure place, and the last threatening lecture from her Aunt Philoclea had made her feebly rebellious as well as tearful. There was also her love to sustain her.

  Since her chance meeting with the Marquis and her sight of his unguarded face, Rosalba had made up her mind to the fact that he was not kind or good, but that he wanted her as men want women, and he should have her when she was married. To be torn to pieces by him would be a perfection of love. Last night, a fellow Maid of Honour had told Rosalba the facts of sex, and at first she had been horrified. She still could not bear to think of the act in connection with Mr Marling, she still panicked like a baby when she thought of it. But it seemed to her that to be used in that way by Meriel would be a terrible, but draining, wonderful martyrdom, like being beaten by him. She did not want kindness, she was no longer a little girl. Rosalba blushed and wriggled when she remembered that a month ago she had had daydreams about becoming Marchioness of Westmarch, or in wicked moments, about becoming the mistress whom Meriel kissed and adored.

  She had been told by other young ladies at Castle West that no man in the world really liked innocent country girls, but only those who were up to snuff. Very soon she, Rosalba, would be fully up to snuff, and she thought she would use every discreet, smiling, long-approved art to seduce Meriel Longmaster. If he was charmed by her now, he would be far more so then: but she had changed and aged so much already, in two months, that she was afraid of losing her looks as well as her gaucheness before the end of the summer. If Mr Marling had his way, she would be in the country by then, and she would never come back to Castle West, except, perhaps, if one of her daughters were to spend a season as a Maid of Honour to Marchioness Berinthia.

  He meant her to grow into a plump and dowdy squire’s wife, given to gossip but never to fantasy. She would have turned dowdy to please Meriel with all her heart had he wished it: she believed she had no wishes of her own.

  Moving her lips in an imaginary conversation with Meriel, Rosalba picked off some of the fat buds which sprouted on the old growth of the vine. Then she heard the chapel clock three courts away striking half past four. “Oh, no!” she cried, her thoughts reduced to nothing. She would be late for her aunt, who had wanted to see her in Usher’s Court some time before Mr Marling was due to arrive.

  As she ran through the gardens to her aunt’s lodging, and climbed up the narrow stair, she thought how terrible it was to be young, and trapped, and female, and unable to speak one’s love, and her last thought as she opened the door of the frowsty pink drawing-room was: If only I were a man! She had never had that wish before, even as a child, and she found it shocking, for she was a normal girl.
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br />   “Rosalba, my love!” said Mistress Philoclea.

  At the ‘my love’ Rosalba, feeling a catch in her throat, looked round for Mr Marling — but he had not yet arrived. Instead, a large, blonde woman was sitting on the window seat, talking with her aunt.

  “I believe, Mistress Dianeme, that you are acquainted with my niece.”

  “To be sure I am, ma’am! Why, the Marquis himself presented her to me not a week ago.” She bowed to Rosalba, who dropped a slight curtsey.

  Mistress Dianeme Sandeman Grindal was Philander Grindal’s wife and Meriel’s only woman friend. Because of this friendship, which all agreed was nothing more, she was generally accepted at Castle West in spite of her being a tradesman’s daughter who people said had trapped her husband into marriage. She had round and staring, bright blue eyes, a well-corseted figure, and an incipient double chin. Her nose was aquiline and her mouth was narrow, and she would have been a distinguished-looking woman as well as a pretty one, if she had not been both overweight and pregnant.

  Mistress Dianeme gave Rosalba a swift, searching look. “His lordship tells me you’re to marry Mr Valerian Marling, my dear. When is it to be?”

  Mistress Philoclea closed her eyes at this vulgarity, and Rosalba said, “I don’t know, ma’am.”

  “The notice of my niece’s engagement has not yet appeared,” said her aunt.

  “Then I expect I did ought to pretend to know nothing about it, for all that everyone’s aware,” said Dianeme, smiling. “But however that may be, a very good marriage it is, I’m sure, and I felicitate you, Maid Rosalba! Mr Marling’s a very amiable gentleman, I should say, not to mention full of juice.”

  Knowing from a younger friend that Rosalba was to spend this afternoon with her aunt, Dianeme had found an excuse to call on Philoclea in order to observe the girl. Meriel had told her only that he felt sorry for Rosalba and thought her pretty, yet she guessed, not that he was in love with her, but that he wished to fall in love with some girl or other. Dianeme was secure in her position as his friend, as the woman who uttered ill-bred truths he would like to utter himself and in general dared not, and she did not object to his having a mistress.

  She pitied Rosalba because she thought her unlikely to hold his attention for long if she were made happy; in fact, she believed that even now Meriel had no real interest in her, that his true emotions were directed otherwhere. Dianeme meant to be extremely kind to Rosalba and, in order to save her pain, to reconcile her somehow to her country squire. To understand others, and to make them contented with their own fates and dispositions as she perceived them, was Dianeme’s greatest pleasure in life.

  “I do not think he is full of juice, ma’am,” said Rosalba quietly. “I think he has no more than an easy competence.”

  “Rosalba!” said Philoclea.

  Rosalba presumed that Mistress Dianeme was secretly in love with the Marquis, who could give her nothing more than friendship; and she pitied her, for Dianeme’s love must be more hopeless than her own.

  At this moment, the two young women felt attracted to each other, and repelled by Philoclea, but both realised that this was no time to talk and to compare themselves, for heavy footsteps could be heard mounting the stairs outside.

  “I daresay your aunt means that you ought not to use such expressions as I’m in the habit of using, Maid Rosalba,” said Dianeme, standing up, her eyes crinkled in amusement. “Well, I never could learn to act the fine lady, as it won’t surprise you to hear. Now, if Mr Marling’s coming to call on you, Mistress Philoclea, I’ll take my leave. I only came to speak with your aunt about the Respectable Orphans, my dear, for she’s on the committee with me, as I’m sure you must know, and so I can’t be staying in any case, but I hope and trust as you’ll be so good as to call in on me should you feel so inclined. Staircase Number Six, it is, in Chapel Court.”

  “You are very good, ma’am! I —”

  “I do not allow my niece to pay morning-calls without a chaperone, Mistress Dianeme,” said Philoclea.

  “Well, to be sure not! I didn’t mean that she should come without. I’d be very well pleased to receive you, ma’am, and Maid Rosalba may come if she chooses.”

  The footman who served the staircase came in, and announced Mr Valerian Marling.

  “Ah, Mistress Philoclea! Your servant, ma’am. Devilish good in you it is to — Upon my word, the weather has taken a turn for the worse, I was within a moment of being caught in a shower.”

  Rosalba had got up at his entrance and walked across the room. Seeing her, Mistress Dianeme wished she had not said she would go, for the girl looked so spiritless that any protector would surely be better than none, and even she could prevent personal talk by staying. But for her part, she could see nothing wrong in Mr Marling: he seemed to her an upstanding man, tolerably good-looking and the blustering sort who would be easy to manage.

  “May I present you, Mistress Dianeme, to Mr Marling?” said Philoclea.

  “We’ve met before, I fancy, sir,” said Dianeme, giving his hand a vigorous shake and looking into his eyes.

  “Delighted, ma’am!”

  “Well, I must be off, as I was telling Mistress Philoclea, pray don’t be thinking me uncivil. Maid Rosalba — goodbye.”

  “Goodbye, ma’am.” Rosalba raised her head and threw her plait, with which she had been fiddling, behind her shoulder before she let Mr Marling kiss her hand.

  When Dianeme had gone, the three remaining sat down in a semi-circle on Mistress Philoclea’s hard little chairs, and Philoclea’s maid poured out glasses of wine. Rosalba, sitting between her aunt and her betrothed, listening to their conversation (Mr Marling was pretending to agree with Philoclea about the laxity of modern manners) and thinking of Meriel, had a stifling desire to scream and to throw something. The thought of what would happen if she were to do this made her knees shake under her dress.

  Mr Marling was thirty-five, and to Rosalba he seemed to be in late middle-age. He was a stocky, big-shouldered, big-featured man, with an inflexible mouth, a sandy complexion, and light grey eyes set under protruding brows. His clothes were plain, well-made, and provincial in cut; for his coat was too narrow for modishness, his boots were too high, and his shirt was trimmed with lace as a concession to the town fashion prevailing fifteen years before. He wore his undyed tawny hair tied back with a ribbon, and Rosalba wished he favoured any other style but that, for it seemed to her an insulting irony that Mr Marling should be almost the only other man at Castle West to dress his hair in Meriel’s unaffected, old-fashioned way. In spite of this she sometimes thought he would have been tolerable if only he had not had a little wart above his left eyebrow.

  Mr Marling never took his eyes from Rosalba, except when politeness required him to face Philoclea. He had been married once before, to a woman of fifty, and he never grew tired of comparing Rosalba with his first wife. He wondered whether she appreciated the sacrifice he had made in leaving his estate and following her to Castle West, which he had visited only once in his life, in order to look after her and to court her properly.

  There came a pause in Mistress Philoclea’s conversation. Mr Marling opened his snuff box, and said, without seeming to speak more to one than to the other, “Do you know ma’am, I should very much like to discuss the arrangements for our wedding.”

  Rosalba, who had been studying his figure with a kind of weary dispassion, jumped in her chair in a way he thought maidenly, and dropped her eyes to her lap in a way her aunt thought proper. Philoclea gave Marling an amiable smile, spread out her fan, and prepared to speak.

  “I trust Maid Rosalba’s modesty will not be affronted if I ask her to name the day,” Marling continued. His voice was hoarse and jocular, but he tried to make it tender, for Rosalba touched his heart just as she touched Meriel’s, and Mistress Dianeme’s.

  “For my part, sir,” said Mistress Philoclea slowly, “I should like to see you married at the end of the season. You must know that my niece owes a certain duty to th
e Marchioness, which will scarcely allow her to be married within these next few weeks. But the wedding might take place with perfect propriety after the Harvest-quarter Ball.”

  “What ma’am?” he said, pretending to be shocked. “Five months, no less! Why, if I were not seeking to become your nephew, I know I should beg of you not to talk such fustian nonsense, upon my word I should!” He laughed, got up, and planted his hands in his breeches pockets. “Upon my soul, I can’t be waiting that long. Eh, Maid Rosalba? What do you say?”

  “I shall be very happy, sir, to oblige anyone — to oblige my aunt!”

  “Now, Rosalba, such die-away airs will very likely give Mr Marling a disgust of you, my love,” said Philoclea, smiling as she looked hard at her niece and toyed with her fan. “You lack decision of character! If I have said so once, I have said so a thousand times. Do you wish to oblige me — or to oblige Mr Marling?”

  “To my mind, ma’am, your niece’s reserve does her a deal of credit,” said Mr Marling, and it made Rosalba raise her face to him, as she wondered for the first time whether her aunt and her future husband really liked each other as she had supposed they did.

  There was silence for a while; then Mistress Philoclea made a difficult decision and said, taking out her watch: “Pray excuse me one moment, Mr Marling. Several persons are to dine with me this evening and if dinner is not to be quite spoilt, I must consult with the cook directly — Mistress Melusina was so good as to recommend a cook to me, for I find that in general, the kitchens which serve this court are quite the worst at Castle West. No chafing-dishes, and the food always perfectly cold. Rosalba my love, I am persuaded you will wish to talk a little with Mr Marling. Don’t get up, child. I do not require you, and shall be back upon the instant.”