“Oh,” said Meriel.
“My dear aunt,” murmured Hugo, taking more snuff.
“I never suspected you was a prude, cousin,” Meriel whispered in his ear.
“And I never suspected you was shameless,” Hugo returned.
“Oh, quite! But I am still puzzled, you know.”
The Marchioness, seeing that Berinthia was now looking out of the window with a very stern expression on her face, adjusted her veil and said lightly, “Now my love, you have said remarkably little. What is your opinion of Hugo’s falling in love with you? Do you not find the notion distasteful?”
Berinthia turned. “Vastly, ma’am, but do you know, I think less distasteful than — than your son’s vow.” She hesitated. “Do but consider! Would it be proper for such an intimate piece of knowledge about him to become the — the common gossip of the gaming-rooms, even if it is circulated in the form of a mere rumour? If we can possibly help it. There would be all manner of disagreeable talk, I am sure. Better always to maintain a dignified reserve.”
“My dear bride, what a very fine piece of Island-Palace good-sense! I need have no fear that you will not do me credit. Such propriety of taste will quite make up for any — very slight — deficiency of worldly knowledge. Reserve, dignity, discretion, pride, how I do reverence them all.”
“You will make the devil of a husband, sir!” said Berinthia; aware that she was showing Hugo, for the first time, the coarse and undisciplined side of herself which she had inadvertently shown to Meriel a week before. She glanced at Meriel, thought: I hate you, and turned to Hugo again.
The Marquis then perceived that Berinthia needed to be loved, and felt horribly guilty, the first such sensation she had known for weeks. “I wish you will —”
“Berinthia!” cried the Marchioness, interrupting her so loudly she made them all jump. “I beg of you, do not be — be jilting Hugo like this in a mere distempered freak! I cannot bear to leave this hateful affair unsettled one moment longer. Marry Hugo and I can die in peace, no matter how Meriel’s want of conduct has poisoned my declining years.”
Realising as she spoke that it would now be impossible for her to press Meriel into renouncing his vow and marrying Berinthia after all, Saccharissa ordered Hugo to ring for her sedan-chair. Out of respect for embarrassment and ill-temper, the others remained silent for a short while, and this indulgence of her foolish mind made Saccharissa rather tearful. She looked at Meriel, sitting on the bed, rubbing her knees and seeming mildly distressed.
Her son was so much improved in the last month, he was neither haughty nor rough; he was in fact an adult now, though a disobedient one, and she who disliked children ought to be able to love him at last. She did love the idea of her son the Marquis, born when she had given up all hope; but she had never been able to love Meriel, because the boy had been the darling of his father, and had been brought up at Longmaster Wood to think of her as meddlesome and frivolous.
Meriel looked at her mother across the room, and their eyes met in understanding. Meriel thought, I can never love her. She perceived that the new warm but rational interest she felt in the world could never be extended to Saccharissa. Her mother had frightened and displeased her as a child, and filled her with terror of discovery in her teens. She had never been able to endure the thought of what Saccharissa would have done to a girl.
Just before her chair arrived, the Marchioness said gently, “Do you know, I wish you had been a daughter, Meriel. So proud as I was of bearing a son! But a man can care nothing for his mother. If I had had a daughter, I would have had someone to bear me company and comfort me — and a girl would surely have been dutiful. Don’t you think so?”
“But if I had been a girl I would have been far less dutiful than I am now,” said Meriel, speaking just a little too late, but still concealing a surprise at Saccharissa’s words and tone which felt like cold water dribbling down her back. “I should have been one of those ready to tie my garter in public rather than submit to authority. You know that, Mamma.”
“I would to God you had been a girl,” repeated Saccharissa.
“No, ma’am, you don’t,” said Meriel, as the chairmen at last came in.
For a moment both contemplated irony in silence, and Berinthia and Hugo thought how remarkably alike they looked. Then the Marchioness’s servants coughed, and she was eased into her chair, and Meriel, helping, was particularly tender and grave. Her heart beat fast. She was still not wholly secure.
Meriel turned to Hugo when the Marchioness and her retinue had gone. She said, “Poor Mamma!” Her words did not sound natural.
“Indeed,” replied her cousin.
Meriel sat down in Berinthia’s place on the window-seat. “Tell me now what it was you were hinting at, Hugo. Not but what I have some ideas.”
“Ah. Shall I be entirely frank?”
“If you please,” said Meriel.
Hugo examined his snuffbox with care. “Westmarch, I do not know whether your friendship with Knight Auriol is really such as — precludes your taking pleasure in the company of females, but your own — shall we say womanishness, is beginning to cause remark.”
It took Meriel a few sickly seconds to understand that Hugo did not suspect her of being a woman, but of being a male homosexual.
“It — my friendship is not. You may rest assured on that head at least,” she managed to say.
He smiled. “No one could be so Gothic as to have the least objection to the fact if it were, coz — except perhaps Mistress Musidora. But I advise you to say nothing about this vow of yours, whatever the truth of the matter. It does sound so very unlikely, you see. You would be thought a hypocrite, Westmarch. You would be despised for trying to make excuses. Surely you would not wish to appear cowardly and ill-bred, or to confirm vulgar suspicion?”
Longmaster stood up and went to lounge by the door. As he toyed with his lorgnette and regarded Meriel, he could not resist adding, “And cousin — vastly grateful as I must be to you for not thinking it your duty to beget an heir — don’t you think you could marry and make some fortunate female your wife in name only? To preserve the proprieties.”
The new love-bloom had gone from Meriel’s face: she was stiff, cold and wary, her old self. “You go beyond the line, Hugo,” she said.
“My dear Westmarch!”
She jumped down from her seat, walked across the room and brought her hand down flat on a chair-back, trying to control herself. Longmaster thought that perhaps the trouble was Knight Auriol did not share Westmarch’s tastes.
“Is Wychwood indeed suspected of sodomy?” Meriel said. “Whatever my own case, what possible evidence could be brought against him? He’s had women in love with him since his wife died to my certain knowledge — all of them women of the first consideration — the Conybeares’ sister even, good God!”
“Exactly so! Though, as doubtless you know, he had the reputation of an imp — a virtuous man. But even you must know that a determined brewer of scandal-broth needs very little evidence indeed. The evidence of a man’s seeming chastity, for instance.”
Meriel faced him and said, “You are the most determined brewer of scandal-broth, Hugo. Get out! We’ll abide by your plan, very well, since Berinthia seems to prefer it, poor girl, but if one word about your lies reaches my ears I’ll — God damn you! I don’t know what tales you’ve been putting about, trying to damage Wychwood’s reputation, and I don’t care, but I’ll be damned if I’ll endure any more of your insolence, and your hatred, yes! What a waste you have made of your life. Go on, get out!” Wychwood was her darling, chaste till she seduced him, and she would not have his enchanting chastity held against him in Hugo’s crude worldly way.
“But I do not choose to get out,” said Hugo, the side of his mouth twitching violently at ‘what a waste you have made of your life’. He hated the sudden echo of the quarrel they had had in the winter and which Meriel had won, over his desire to be Warden of Westmarch Quarter. It had taken place in th
is same room, with dark snow outside, he remembered. “Nor do I see why I should. I have done what was in my power to serve you, by taking that chit off your hands, your lovely bride, cousin, and I sought merely to give you the benefit of my advice.”
“You’ve given me enough,” said Meriel, and reached for the bell pull.
Before she could ring, Esmond came into the room, and said, gazing placidly at the angry cousins, “My lord Marquis, Knight Auriol is in the Gilt Saloon.” He bowed out.
Hugo laughed, unpleasantly, then was a little ashamed of himself.
“You’re ridiculous, cousin,” Meriel said, and Hugo looked at her. To his astonishment she was smiling again, confident once more. “I consider your suspicion a fine jest, I promise you — you’ll never know why, but I do!”
“You have not yet offered your felicitations on my engagement,” said Hugo, curiously.
“Why, I do felicitate you. She’s a fine girl, and I hope you will make her a better husband than I should have done. She deserves one.”
“Oh, I imagine I shall do that, Westmarch!”
Good-humouredly enough, they parted. Meriel escorted Longmaster to the dining room and seeing one of the footmen there, said, with a glance at Hugo, “Pray tell Knight Auriol to join me in my closet directly. Goodbye, cousin!”
The Marquis walked quickly back to her closet, threw open the window, and waited impatiently for Auriol to arrive. When he came she hugged him tightly, and he buried his nose in her hair and drank in the smell of her while she felt him. They had not been alone together for four days, but though they could be sure of remaining undisturbed in the closet, it would not be safe to make use of her bed.
After a couple of kisses, Meriel told him to sit down, and then gave him the gist of the family conversation and of Longmaster’s remarks, which did not please him. She wondered slightly at his grim expression, for this being suspected of homosexuality was a great protection against real danger, and Auriol had never seemed to be especially prejudiced against homosexual men.
“I was pretty much diverted,” Meriel said, “but I see you are not.”
“Oh, how can I object?” Auriol snapped. “No, I am not diverted. Don’t tell me it is an excellent thing in the circumstances, because I know it, but I cannot like it. Oh, damn it. It’s not for myself I’m distressed, Meriel, but for you — I know it should not be so, but it is! I cannot endure people to think you something — other than what you are, to see you as something lesser — and yet it’s unavoidable.”
She was glad that he did not think she should be thought something lesser. “I was angry with him only because I disliked the thought of such untruths being spread about you.”
He pulled a face. “Well, if we neither of us mind for ourselves but only for the other — still, I hope that one day I shall have it in my power to make your cousin deuced uncomfortable, Meriel, and so I tell you.”
She patted him and went to look out of the window. “I have it in my power, I suppose. Pity I cannot cut him out of the succession. He was surprised, I know —” She thought for a moment, and then said in a low and ugly voice, “I daresay he secretly suspects me of being incurably impotent, thinks that the reason, thought he was paying me a vast compliment in talking in that foul style about the pair of us. Because it’s better to be sodomite than impotent, after all! No, only impotence could prevent my trying for an heir, sodomite or no.”
“Meriel,” said Auriol, getting up and putting an arm round her shoulders. “Don’t be distressed. My love.”
“Ah.”
“This is a vile place,” Auriol told her: even though he was now looking out over a most beloved spot, Meriel’s tiny private garden, which she insisted be left to itself to grow wild. A month ago they had enjoyed their first wholly successful session of lovemaking, the first unspoilt by clumsiness or pride or indecision, behind the elder bushes.
“I know. But we’ve been very happy, have we not? I could never have imagined being happy at Castle West.”
“Yes, it’s very odd. Only I wish very much we might be more in each other’s company. Meriel, if everyone supposes already there’s more between us than friendship, why do we not give them some reason for their suspicions? We may as well make the best of it we can.”
“What?” she said.
He explained. “Should we not go to Longmaster Wood? Only for a short while, to be sure. Meriel,” he said, seeing objections on her lips, “you might contrive it if you wished, I know, and if we have been happy here, surrounded by all we both dislike, how much happier should we be there, where you belong?” And I, too, he thought.
After a moment, Meriel smiled and squeezed his hand. “Little one. Very well. Directly after the Midsummer Ball. I can deny you nothing, after all. I’ll never deny you anything.”
“Oh, won’t you!”
Grinning shyly at each other in the happiness of conspiracy, and in the knowledge that they were the most unusual people in the world, they embraced under the portrait of Meriel’s father. For the first time since he learned to love Meriel, Auriol did not feel ill at ease in its presence. He looked at it, swaying the Marquis in his arms, and noticed that the daylight on the varnish quite obscured the face.
Meriel might still not like to think of herself as a female, but at least she no longer tortured herself with the idiot belief that her sex had been imposed as a punishment for treating Elphinstone with arrogance only just before his death. Meriel had forgiven herself, and so she should have done, long ago, said Auriol to himself. He did not like to think of the thoroughly charmless, thoughtless, domineering and conventional young man Elphinstone would have made of Meriel had she indeed been a boy, and had no accident killed him in time.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A Ball
Once a year, on the night of the Midsummer Ball, Meriel was publicly elected to the Marquisate of Westmarch by the Members of the Grand Closet, the senior officers of the Western Guard, and the chief place-holders of Castle West. In theory, her office was not hereditary, though the last man to have voted against the reigning Longmaster had been executed for high treason, two hundred and fifty years before. She was certain of holding her own.
Every year since her father’s death, Meriel’s fantasy had been that at least one of the electors who called out her name would look at her, and see she had no right to hold an honourable position. Every single person at Castle West, watching from a gallery, would know at the same moment that she was not Elphinstone’s heir. Until now, election day had been the most detested of all days in the year to Meriel; while to Juxon, it had always been the year’s high point.
As Steward of Castle West, it fell to Juxon to orchestrate the Marquis’s re-election. Juxon’s office was an ancient one, which had declined sharply in importance over the past century; but though he was little more than the overlord of the castle servants in everyday life, he still had a ceremonial part to play. He had the casting vote at the annual re-election, took precedence directly after the Colonel of the Guard, escorted Meriel on all state occasions, and enjoyed odd rights and privileges which were relics of the time when Castle West had been a rude fenland citadel, and the Steward its absolute ruler. Juxon loved his office, and declared he would not abandon it for any modern one.
Auriol now had a place at Castle West, for Meriel had appointed him Keeper of the Muniment Room at a stipend of seven hundred crowns a year, but it was not sufficiently important to give him the right to vote for her. On the night of the ceremony, he watched from a balcony with the other ball-guests, and though he was wedged in at the back between two young women who chattered, his height gave him a good view of the proceedings down below.
The Moon Gallery in which both election and ball were held occupied one whole side of Marquis’s Court, and was considered to be the most beautiful room at Castle West. It was a high unfurnished chamber, floored with pale marble, painted white, and lined on each side with seven long windows. The spectators’ balcony where Auriol now sat ran r
ound the whole hall, beneath a domed ceiling patterned with shining crescent moons. Illumination came only from chandeliers, hung so low that their candles were reflected in the windows’ naked glass: they were of silver, each wrought in the shape of eight branches of a rowan tree, with lights grouped to remind the admirer of flowers.
The greater number of the Marquis’s guests paid very little attention to the ceremony, which began with the assembling of the electors in a semi-circle opposite the main doors. They whispered and smiled and adjusted each other’s dresses, as in a loud high voice, Juxon read out a proclamation couched in archaic language. It contained many references to the Marquis’s duty of maintaining the glories of a revolutionary government under God which had passed away a long time ago, and had little of importance to say about the Marquises who had effectively abolished it. A few spectators, Auriol noticed, took a degree of pleasure in the spectacle down on the floor. No one mocked, but the occasion was not thought to be a grave one, like a Marquis’s funeral. Comparing Westmarch’s brief acknowledgement of its origins with the up-to-date formalities of the Island Palace, Auriol was impressed. He thought each elector bore himself with amiable dignity, Juxon in his daring pink hair excepted.
He knew that the officers of state intended to pay real homage to Meriel and all she was supposed to stand for in a few minutes’ time. Yet later in the evening they would be calling her ‘Westmarch’, and making ribald remarks when she sat down at the gaming-table or led Berinthia Winyard out to dance. This easy variety, which was her freedom, made her position tolerable to Meriel; but constantly treated at one moment as the liege-lord of all, and the next as something very little different from her fellows, she must, thought Auriol, have enough to confuse her in her life without a change of sex. He had not considered the matter in this way before, he had only been charmed by the effects of inconsistency on Castle West and on Meriel, effects which he saw for a moment as chaotic, threatening.
The Marquis of Westmarch Page 15
