The Marquis of Westmarch

by Frances Vernon

  “No Meriel, surely not! You are known for clemency in such cases, it would cause a deal of remark — and you are not cruel, are you?” he said, without thinking. It was as good a response as any other he could have made.

  “I care nothing for that,” she said. “Oh, my God.”

  “You were exceedingly brave, Meriel.”

  “We never undress again, d’you hear?”

  He did not reply to this, but touched her shoulder and said:

  “It is a thousand pities this should have happened here, where you are generally known, I know. Forgive me, I am no very adequate comforter — but, but I love you so very much! And it’s all well again, now.”

  “Generally known, ay, very true, sir!”

  She had spent the first twelve years of her life almost exclusively at Longmaster Wood, and was still known to many ordinary people in the district as ‘Mr Meriel’. Her hair alone would be enough to reveal her identity anywhere within twenty miles of the hunting-lodge, whereas in the country round Castle West she was merely a name, the Marquis, and only those who had some connection with the castle knew what she looked like. It crossed Auriol’s mind that they would all be surprised to know that though she was red-headed the fine well-placed hair on her body was nearly as dark as her eyebrows.

  Very calmly she said, “I am very sure one of those men was the under-keeper Glasbrook was obliged to turn off for pilfering last winter. I recognised his voice.”

  “I’m sorry for that. Don’t distress yourself overmuch, Meriel!”

  She turned to him. “You expect me to be wonderfully relieved — happy — even to find this diverting, now it’s over. Don’t you? Or at the very least to throw myself into your arms. Can you not see how extraordinarily horrifying it is, for me? I shall never recover, sir.”

  He dropped his eyes. “Yes, I see. I understand.”

  “It is very extraordinary, but never, never once, has anything of this nature happened to me since Juxon discovered. I have never had real cause to be frightened till now.”

  A sudden, terrible sense of loneliness and shame possessed Auriol. When she saw the expression on his face, Meriel laid down the gun which she had been reloading with a deep frown between her brows, touched him tenderly though she was still looking grim, and led him away by the sleeve.

  *

  Auriol had always found Longmaster Wood a faintly sinister place. Set in a valley, between a brown-watered artificial lake and a meandering river, the house was surrounded by oaks, beeches and chestnuts of great size and strange growth. Long untrimmed branches dangled to the ground and creaked in any wind, and everywhere but under the grey beeches’ shade the undergrowth was rank. Fogs rose up from the river and the lake, delicate in summer, but often so blighting in winter that the valley was dark by early afternoon. Only the wide hawthorn-edged fields and gentle hills that made this good hunting country gave Auriol real pleasure, and he could not hunt in summer.

  Meriel had been so badly disturbed by their adventure in the oak plantation that she avoided Auriol for three days after, finding estate business to occupy her and knowing very well that she was wasting precious time. With each passing day Auriol felt less able to foist himself upon her and, needing to exhaust himself with exercise, though tiredness only caused thoughts to chase each other round in his brain, he rode over the fields alone. He did not go into the woods with his gun as Meriel once suggested he do. Auriol thought he never again wanted to smell the stuffy odours of a midsummer wood which had choked him in the glade when Meriel was on top of him, or see the tangled rushes and briars and ranks of nettles which flourished in that perpetual damp.

  The weather continued hot. The third day of their nervous estrangement was particularly fine, beginning with a primrose mist, and ending with last shafts of sun that turned half the windows of the hunting-lodge to pale brass, and made its brick seem warm as a ripe tomato. Though they knew it to be foolish, Meriel and Auriol were affected by so much wasted sensual beauty which had nothing to do with them. It made them rebellious as well as sentimental.

  They met that evening at table when the sun had gone down. Dinner was served late in summer at Longmaster Wood, because Meriel did not like to waste daylight on eating.

  For two nights past Meriel and Auriol had made dull and friendly conversation at meals. Tonight, wanting to revert to the early days of their courtship and talk at length about themselves and each other, they were completely silent. Auriol watched Meriel eating too little and drinking too much, and longed to feed her himself. He wanted her to take pleasure in the excellent dishes provided by a cook who had tried to tempt her appetite for years. He understood that she could not afford to put on flesh and perhaps develop a bosom, but thought she ought to taste her food instead of swallowing it whole.

  Meriel saw him look up with annoyance at the footman who was helping him to peas, and guessed he wished her to tell both servants to go. It occurred to her that perhaps Auriol did not like her habit of employing remarkably good-looking men to wait on her. She must tell him that they were no threat to him; but of course, he must know that they never could be. He must know that if she tried to realise her fantasies of sleeping with all of them turn and turn about, she would be killing herself. No, she thought rather desperately, do not exaggerate.

  Eventually, Meriel did tell the footmen to bring in more candles and leave. When they were gone, she looked at Auriol, and said, “Wychwood, I am sorry for having neglected you these past few days. It was an absurd fear, nothing more, fear that after what happened someone or other would guess, merely seeing us together in the regular way.”

  The words were obviously rehearsed. Auriol, trying to keep his hands steady as he peeled an apple, wondered what exactly had gone through her mind; and wondered why he was so much moved, when he had known all along that before they left Longmaster Wood Meriel, being Meriel, would say something of the kind out of the warmth of her heart.

  “Why sir, you’re crying again! Oh, my love!” her voice went on as his hands continued shaking.

  “What have you done to me?” said Auriol.

  Just as instantly, Meriel replied, “I’m not a witch, sir. It is only that I have faults.” He cannot think me a witch, she thought, how should I think he could?

  He was choking. He had cried only once in the past three days, and never so violently since he was a child.

  “I can’t endure this, Meriel, this being entirely dependent upon you. I never was like this before. Give me something. If it is your wish — to make me happy, as you’ve said I know not how many times, come away with me, give this up, I beg you to trust me. Marry me and we’ll live at Wychwood.” He stopped as soon as he had said this.

  When she thought she had understood him correctly, Meriel withdrew her hand from his knee. Then, deciding to be gentle with him, because it was her fault he was so much upset, she said, “You are beside yourself, my love. You know full well I can’t do that. There.” She raised her eyes to his face, and saw that he was now looking more thoughtful than wretched. In her brisk normal voice she added: “Let us go into the library. I don’t know why we are sitting over the remains of our dinner in this way.”

  “Yes,” said Auriol.

  Taking the candles with them, they left the dining room. The library, just across a narrow passage, was a small room with green-painted panels and a view of the lake, furnished with shabby chairs and birchwood bookcases. Meriel had done her lessons here when she was a child, when Marquis Elphinstone had insisted that until she reached puberty she should lead the quiet life of any country squire’s son.

  “I think I have been meaning to say what I said just now for a long time,” said Auriol, sitting down heavily in a chair that creaked, “without fully knowing it myself.”

  Meriel blinked, composed her lips, and set her candlestick down on the mantelpiece. A secret marriage, I suppose, she thought, knowing it could not be anything so painless and pointless as that.

  “Well sir, it is a very pr
etty notion, but nonsensical. Especially if you happened to mean I should come as near as makes no odds to eloping with you, like some bread-and-butter miss.” Looking across at the bookshelves, secretly she acknowledged that that same idea had occurred to her, then repressed the memory.

  “Don’t talk gammon!” he said, startling her. “It is the most sensible notion I have ever had. Pray don’t try to humour me as though I were an idiot, Meriel.”

  “Sensible!”

  She went to stand in front of the grate with her legs apart and her hands clasped behind her back.

  “Yes, I think I see what you are thinking,” said Auriol, with his eyes on the space between her legs. The candles were too ill-placed for her to see his face. “Let me explain!”

  “Yes sir, pray do explain.” Meriel concentrated on remaining calm and dealing swiftly with this subject. “Now, you wish me to marry you, and take you back to Wychwood — take me there? Are you suggesting we should remain there forever?”

  “Meriel, do but consider! Consider what happened three days ago. If we go on as we are, don’t you see what we shall have to endure, the intrigue and concealment and above all the danger? That was but the beginning. It’ll drive you out of your senses, in the end.”

  “I think I am the best judge of that.”

  “Own to me at least we must think of the future.” Auriol pulled out his little silver spectacles and bent the arms back and forth, as she watched him, and swallowed. He looked up. “How long do you expect to live — another thirty, forty years? Do you never think that you cannot, even if you wish, maintain this charade over such a period. Yes, you are a consummate actor, you are half a man, do not be thinking I am denying it. I know what a point it is with you, and very understandably. But any number of accidents may occur. Pray listen to me! Suppose that one day you were to take a rasper out hunting and come to grief, as you must have done already scores of times, God knows, but were to be picked up unconscious, Meriel, and examined by those with you?” Meriel made a movement, and he went on regardless. “Did you not tell me that once you had the devil of a time with a broken collarbone, insisting you would let no one but Juxon set it, and having to send to Castle West for him?”

  “I contrived the business very tolerably. It would have been very well had he not chosen to enact me a tragedy.”

  “I know it was thought very eccentric in you. But supposing you had sustained a blow to the head? Don’t you see what I am saying? I wonder Juxon ever let you ride at all, upon my word I do!”

  “He let me ride, and hunt, and drive my curricle,” said Meriel through stiff lips, “because I told him that sooner than be entirely confined to sedentary pursuits, like a sickly girl, I would tell the whole world I was not a man. I rode to escape from him, what do you think! It was a choice between his utter domination and — I know the risk, sir, be sure!”

  “Are you hating me for talking in this style, Meriel?”

  “No,” she said.

  Suddenly he asked her, “How old are you? I cannot precisely remember.”

  “Three-and-twenty!”

  “Yes, quite old, and you have no beard for all you try to shave. I want —”

  “I rub my chin sometimes with powdered cinnamon,” said the Marquis, taking her clay pipe from the mantelpiece.

  Auriol turned in his chair. “Meriel, it serves very well now, when you’re little more than a stripling, but when everyone knows you to be thirty, forty, how can you suppose it will? You can pass as a boy, but when you are a middle-aged woman you will never be able to pass as a man!” He paused, and saw her chest heave. “I must say these things to you. I ought to have done so weeks ago, but the truth is, your hold on me is such I never even thought of them till we came here.”

  Meriel lit her pipe with a taper. “Thank you, Wychwood, you have succeeded in terrifying me, will you now play me at piquet and please hold your tongue?” Brandy-glasses, card-table and cards had all been set out in the library before they dined, just in case they should want them. They had not played cards once since coming to Longmaster Wood.

  “No, I will not, and I wonder you should dare ask it of me when you must know how hard it is for me to say these things to you! I will be heard.”

  She brought her fist down on the mantelpiece and shouted at him, “Do you think I have not thought of them? Do you think I have not tortured myself wellnigh into madness?” Afraid of her voice’s rising to a female pitch, Meriel had trained herself years ago never, ever to use all her lung-power when she shouted, no matter how angry she was. In fact, as Auriol noticed with slight selfish disappointment, her scream was a passable counter-tenor roar.

  “Meriel,” said Auriol, to whom another argument had occurred, “I know you live in terror of the constraints of female existence, but only think how your life is circumscribed now. No female has to be forever on her guard as you have to be!”

  “Oh, yes,” said the Marquis. She felt very weak, having let herself go, but would not sit down. “Yes, I am forever on my guard, Wychwood. That I think can scarcely be denied.”

  “I can’t offer you power or rank, indeed I am asking you to sacrifice both, though you have an absolute right to them in my view,” said Auriol, “but — but, oh, damn it, I wish I could put it as I would like, so as not to offend your precious sensibilities, Meriel! All I can think to say is that we might live at Wychwood as we ought to be able to live here. This is your home, as you have so often said.” He swallowed. “Could you not be happy with me? With me as your only — subject?” He knew that the exaggerated word would touch something in her, because since she was twelve, she had never felt herself to be any kind of true prince or princess, but only a sneaking unjust tyrant. “Meriel, have you never thought of it?”

  “Yes,” Meriel said slowly, drawing on her pipe. “I will own to you I have thought of it, as you must know, for I showed no true surprise when you first mentioned the matter, did I? Yes, it would mean giving up only what is valueless to me. In a sense, and yet —”

  He ignored that. “Then would it not be brave, and right, to put an end to this charade?” Thank God we understand each other, thought Auriol, my little Marquis.

  “You don’t understand! It is the Marquisate that is valueless to me —” No, it is not, said a voice in her head “— but I could not, could never allow the whole world to know I am a female, and it could never be done without that, if you’ve thought at all, you’ll know that. Have I not explained it to you? The shame, the disgrace, the dirt, sir!”

  “Yes, you have indeed explained it.” Auriol poured himself some brandy. “Meriel, I have been meaning to say this to you. When I saw you at your election I thought for the first time that femaleness ought in justice to be no bar to office, public life. Indeed, I feel a fool and a brute for never having considered the matter in such a light before. For what evidence is there of female inferiority that cannot be traced to a stupid piddling upbringing? How can you feel yourself to be dirty, morally an impostor? Is your predicament not proof that it is the notions of society which are nonsensical?”

  Meriel was amazed and delighted to know that he had had such thoughts, but she concealed it. “Yes, Wychwood, I am no such fool as you think, I have considered the whole matter. But you don’t understand, cannot understand, because you are not accursed yourself, I tell you that if the whole world were turned upside down and there were perfect equality, formal equality, between men and women, still it would be hell on earth to be a woman!”

  “Why? Why?”

  “Sir, imagine that your parts were cut off.” She made a gesture, and he hunched his shoulders, then quickly straightened himself and glowered at her. “Ay. How would that be? Imagine that you had no shoulders, and ugly little short bow legs, and fat hips — by God it is intolerable — and not only that, but that your body was filled with a great bleeding, stinking, cancerous wound — how could you feel yourself to be the equal of a man? That is how women feel, ay, though few of them know it themselves as I am forced
to do! Oh, the mind is well enough, it’s the body, the slavish vileness of the body! Do not tell me women could ever be equal to men. Oh, the laws could be changed, and should be, but equal, no, never!” She drew breath.

  Auriol wanted both to hold her and comfort her and to slap her face, because the knowledge that in all these months her mad views on the subject of woman’s filthiness had not really changed filled him with helpless disappointment and awareness of his own unseeing arrogance. He tried to speak, but Meriel swept on, trying to sweep him down on to the floor, because she loved him and wanted him to understand her only intellectual passion.

  “You seem to forget I have lived all my life among men and I know as other females cannot quite how intensely they hate and despise them and long to make them wretched. No, they are not human, they do not exist, not females. And I tell you they never will be, never will exist in men’s eyes, whether legally free or no.”

  “That is a great piece of nonsense,” he managed to say.

  Meriel walked over to him, and did not touch him, but poured herself more brandy. “If I were indeed a man you would never dare say that to me. You would acknowledge the truth, not dismiss it.” Looking down at his face, she then said with sad quick gentleness, “God damn it, Wychwood, why could you not have accepted the Wardenship?”

  “The Wardenship?” he said, bewildered.

  “I offered it to you, do you remember? To remove the damnable temptation of your being at Castle West. I would to God you had taken it, that’s all. Yes, I do. Then none of this would have happened, none.”

  Auriol got up from his chair at last, and brushed past her. “Do you? Are you in earnest, Meriel?”

  “I don’t know!” she cried.

  “It is infinitely horrible to me to think that you might indeed regret all that has passed between us. I hope you were not merely seeking to hurt me, I would find that unforgivable.”