The large park known as the Circus was very close to the main gate of Castle West, and in the early morning, the shadow of the tower and of the eighty-foot-high castle wall fell so far across it that it was three-quarters in deep shade. Now, at one in the afternoon on a very hot day, it was dark only under the cedar-trees, of which the park was full. Rosalba, who disliked the heat, looked wistfully at the nearest clump, but every shaded spot within view of the finishing post was already occupied by people on horseback, in carriages, and even on foot. The Marquis and Longmaster were to race round the three-mile perimeter of the Circus, starting and finishing inside the south gate, and so already, an hour before the race was due to begin, a throng of spectators had gathered. Everyone, Mr Marling among them, seemed to be jostling discreetly to obtain a good view.
When he thought he had no more room for manoeuvre, Marling said, “What’s that? Will the Marquis win? My dear wife, I should very much doubt it, I don’t say he is not a first-rate fiddler, because he is, and those greys are a couple of prime ’uns, but Longmaster is quite his equal in skill, and he must ride all of fifteen stone. He is the more powerful man, he must be better able to control a high-couraged pair.”
“But perhaps, if the Marquis’s horses are pulling a lesser weight, they will have the advantage.”
Mr Marling was surprised by this evidence of his wife’s intelligence. “Longmaster’s horses are the more strengthy beasts,” he said briefly. “But upon my word, I hope the Marquis does win! It is no very pleasant thing to have one’s bride snapped up from under one’s nose, and by a member of one’s family, too. But he is the oddest fellow — seems not to mind in the least.” Hugo’s betrothal to Berinthia, announced just after Meriel and Auriol left for Longmaster Wood, had been the main topic of conversation at Castle West before the Conybeare scandal broke.
“I suppose he is not capable of love. They say love-matches are vulgar, but I think it charming that Mr Longmaster and Lady Berinthia should be able to marry for love.”
“Do you, indeed! Cream-pot love is what I call it, on his side, that is, to be sure: more than ninety thousand crowns they say she has. Are you feeling quite the thing, eh, my dear?” said Marling, who hoped his wife would soon be pregnant.
“Yes,” said Rosalba. “I had no fortune, I know.”
She fiddled with the gauze veil which drifted down from a comb at the back of her head and concealed her plait from view. It was an ornament which she had assumed on her wedding day, and she was still not used to it, though gradually she was beginning to like the thought that everyone knew her at a glance to be a married woman, and thus grown-up and free from women’s authority. Rosalba looked round the crowd and hoped that she was being noticed.
She and Marling had only just returned from their wedding-trip to an Eastmarch spa, and were now living in Castle-town in the house he had rented for the season when he knew Rosalba and her aunt were going to Castle West. They had not been inside the castle walls since their return, and Rosalba would never live inside it again. Mr Marling had told her that he had no intention, ever, of paying some fabulous sum for a poky courtyard lodging when for the same money he could hire a fine house outside what he called the magic circle.
To Rosalba, who had weeks ago persuaded herself that she had once been loved and deserted by a Marquis, her husband’s sturdy attitude to Castle West was a torment and a disgrace, and the reason for everyone’s seeming to take no more than polite notice of her now. Sometimes she thought that if she could only have lived within the walls of her true home, she would not have regretted her marriage in the least. She did not love Mr Marling, but his ugliness gave her a pleasant sense of her own youth and beauty and good-breeding, and she had discovered that he was a more ineffective bully than she had once feared.
When, at last, Meriel carelessly drove her greys through a cheering throng to the starting post, Rosalba gracefully watched her through a powerful lorgnette. She thought suddenly how odd it was that when the Marquis had seemed to be paying her attention, she in her modesty and fear had not supposed he could really be in love with her, and that as soon as his interest strayed, she had realised that he must indeed have adored her. My life, she thought, as she kept her eyes on Meriel’s red pigtail, is over.
Longmaster drove up beside the Marquis, to louder but coarser cheers. He was dressed in a yellow silk coat fit for a ballroom, and wore a straw hat laden with artificial flowers. The coat’s huge sleeves had been turned back and pinned on his shoulder in order to leave his arms free, but the toilette still implied that he would win the race so easily he had no need even to be suitably dressed. Meriel was too much preoccupied to give any thought to the little insult, but she noticed how easily he handled his chestnuts, exerting only a part of his strength. Her own wrists were already aching.
“Well, coz!” he said, smiling. “I must confess that your pair is not quite so short of bone as I had thought. Dear me! I wonder whether those who have backed me will be disappointed after all?”
“I fancy yours are poled up too tight, Hugo,” said Meriel. Turning round to her groom, who was perched up behind her, she added, “Glasbrook, go to their heads! I must assure my mother that I shall at least survive the engagement without a broken neck.”
Saccharissa’s barouche was stationed under the largest of the cedars, and had a clear view of the finishing post. She had insisted, when she was first told of the race, that she could never enjoy such a dangerous, disreputable spectacle, and had carried on insisting so until this very moment. Berinthia, who had never pretended to be other than entertained, was sitting up beside her in the carriage. Meriel made her way towards them, and when she drew close she was taken aback, and wonderfully pleased, to see Auriol, on horseback, just behind the barouche. She did not address him.
They had had an ugly quarrel in her closet the day before yesterday, during which she had told him that she could never give her word of honour to marry him and rather thought she never would, and he had told her that in future he would not allow her to risk her neck.
“I’m excessively glad to see you feel able to watch me, ma’am, it is very good in you to overcome your sensibility,” she said to her mother. “Cousin Berinthia, your servant!”
“Meriel!” said the Marchioness.
“I hope you have backed me to win, Mamma? Entered your bet in Sylvester’s book?”
“Certainly not,” said the Marchioness, unstopping her vinaigrette. “Berinthia and I have made a private wager. What a nonsensical boy you are, Meriel, and so improper, too! Not but what I hope you win, for Hugo is become so puffed up in his own conceit there is no bearing him, now he has won dear Berinthia and shown himself to be a most admirable person, having resisted poor Tancred’s lures.”
Auriol edged his horse towards the carriage, and looked down at Meriel.
The Marchioness went on without observing him. “People say that Tancred must have been a great gaby to have thought Hugo might turn conspirator, but I say no such thing, how should any one of us have guessed Hugo knew where to draw the line?”
“Exactly so, ma’am,” said Meriel, her thin hand twitching on the side of the barouche.
“Yes, he is a bad man,” said Auriol. Saccharissa jumped, and gave a proud distasteful stare, but with his eyes on Meriel, he did not see it. “He had no business to make such remarks as all but forced the Marquis to challenge him to a race — at such a time as this.”
“Had he not?” said Berinthia, inclining her head.
Auriol jerked his horse’s bridle and blushed like a child. He had quite forgotten that Berinthia had become engaged to Hugo, and that partly through his own devices, what seemed like so long ago.
“I beg your pardon, ma’am, indeed! And yours, Marchioness. What made me say such a thing, I can’t conceive — I —”
“Oh, I can,” said Meriel. “I think.” She continued, facing Berinthia, “Cousin, you must own at least that Hugo’s rig is perfectly ridiculous. Come now!”
“
Yellow does not become him,” Berinthia agreed.
“Nonsense,” said Saccharissa.
Meriel tightened the string of her hat beneath her chin and looked at Auriol. “I must be off, Mamma, I see Leoline Usher ready to fire. Cousin!” She bowed and walked away, out of the shade.
“Westmarch!” Auriol called after her, making her turn. His horse took two paces forward. “Be sure you win,” he said quickly. “I have fifty crowns on you — made the wager this morning. If you don’t, I shall be quite run off my legs.”
Meriel put her head back and smiled hugely. “Never fear sir, you shan’t lose!” Then she ran through the crowd.
Auriol watched her. He had decided today that he had been both cruel and foolish to expect her to come to an absolute, independent decision about whether to run away with him and become a woman or not. It was too great a responsibility for anyone to bear without encouragement. He now meant to kidnap Meriel, by drugging her one night and carrying her off in a hired postchaise. It was a disagreeably dramatic move, but he could see no alternative. When he had her to herself, in some inn on the Southmarch road, he would ask her for her decision, knowing that once the initial break from Castle West had been made, she would find it far easier to think and to see him as he really was.
There would be no question of forcing her. If she believed that she must remain Marquis, at least for the present, they would go back, and make some excuse for their one day’s absence. He had quite decided that. Oh Meriel, win this, he thought, win your damned race and then you’ll come. The thought of his own plan for the future brought him close to panic.
The greys were fretting and pawing the ground, causing trouble to the groom who held them. Meriel swung herself into her curricle and took the reins, leaving him to jump up behind. Hugo edged up beside her, and Leoline Usher, a young relation of Philander Grindal’s who had agreed to start the race, surveyed the two of them critically. For the first time, as she looked at the colourful blur of laughing spectators, Meriel became aware of the full heat of the sun on her back. She guided her horses a few paces forward and pulled them in with grim hands in too-thick, damp gloves.
Leoline Usher walked to his post, screwed up his face against the sunlight and raised his starting-pistol. The crowd became flatteringly quiet.
“Well, coz?” murmured Hugo.
“Well?” she said.
At that moment, she realised that her cousin was more violently excited and eager to win than she was herself. But why? she thought. It could not possibly matter to him, he was a man and did not need to prove himself. She herself now thought she needed to race, and win, to prove to Auriol and to Castle West that whatever happened and whatever she was, she was a brave Marquis, fast and bold and proud and worth loving. Now Auriol had showed himself to be too generous to grudge her any triumph.
“Westmarch,” said Usher, making her start. She nodded swiftly. Then she tried to concentrate solely on her reins and the horses, and found it even at this moment as difficult as praying. Seconds passed, Hugo seemed very close, though their curricles were ten yards apart.
Usher’s pistol banged into the earth. Hugo’s horses were, by a fraction, the first to leap forward. Meriel had been thinking so hard about the necessity of being first off the mark that her real reactions had been slowed down. But he was slightly reining in his pair for this first part of the course, and she, not thinking it worthwhile to restrain hers over such a short distance, overtook him within a minute.
The sun dazzled her, and irritation at this made her whip her horses into a hard gallop. Hugo behind her increased his speed: he would never give her too great an advantage. Meriel’s arms and back and shoulders were already in pain. Trickling sweat glued her neckcloth to her skin. She raced into and through a patch of shade cast by a chestnut-tree which she knew marked the first half-mile; she had studied a map of the Circus yesterday. A terror that one of her horses was running faster than the other persistently possessed her. She began to think of Hugo as a figure of vengeful justice. But it’s unjust, she thought, unjust.
The curricles were now out of sight of those watching by the gate. Lorgnettes were lowered and chatter resumed, though a few men who had risked large sums on the encounter waited in impatient silence, glancing at their watches and glaring at the course. Auriol, having strained his eyes for a glimpse of the last puff of dust driven up by the carriage-wheels, felt lost and sad when they were gone. The gabble round about him did not affect him; he scarcely noticed it as he rode unthinkingly out into the sunlight.
“Knight Auriol!”
It was Juxon, who had arrived too late to squeeze his own carriage into a good place, and had been obliged to take a seat in Dianeme Sandeman Grindal’s barouche. She had kindly offered it to him when she had observed quite how deeply it distressed him to be on foot in a crowd of horses, every one of whom he thought likely to kick.
Auriol blinked at him. “Mr Juxon, I trust I see you well? Mistress Dianeme, your very obedient!”
Dianeme, who was looking amused, inclined her head. “Good day to you, Knight Auriol sir.”
“Are you surprised at my coming? Indeed, I did not conceal from the Marquis that I think this a shocking affair. But it was of no use to cavil, and so you see me — prepared to enjoy his victory,” said Juxon in the most amiable way, smiling from under an enormous flat hat. He did not know what Meriel might have told Auriol about his attitude to this race. “I am very much obliged to Mistress Dianeme, as you see.”
“And you will be on hand should any accident occur, for I know Westmarch don’t like to be attended by any other physician than yourself,” Auriol replied, smiling back.
“Do not, I beg of you, mention such a distressing possibility! This heat quite knocks one up — I hope we may see them again soon. Dear me! How vastly exciting it is, to be sure!”
Dianeme leant over the side of the carriage and beckoned to Auriol over her huge pregnant stomach. “Don’t be telling his lordship, Knight Auriol, but I’ve put my blunt on Longmaster, much as I hated to do it, for I do think he’s the more likely to win. The dibs ain’t in tune you see, for I lost a deal more at play than I generally like, last week, and I only hope to make a recovery now so that Mr Grindal need never discover it.”
Auriol laughed. “I hope he loses, if only so that you may be well served for your disloyalty, ma’am, I confess.”
She sighed. “Very likely I shall be. What a world it is! I’m sunk below reproach.”
“I am not a betting man,” Juxon told them. “I am by no means addicted to sporting pursuits.”
They lapsed once more into silence, having nothing else to say. Auriol thought how lonely the Circus looked. Beyond the edge of the crowd, it was perfectly empty and quiet, with a heat-haze wafting above grass tawny with drought. He longed for Meriel. It must be strange for her, to be racing her cousin without spectators as she was at present, in constant danger of disaster. Auriol had ridden round the park half an hour earlier, and seen that almost no one had turned up to watch from the middle of the course. News of the afternoon’s event must have reached few of the townsfolk and interested still fewer. He considered that they ought all to be cheering her on, and not leaving her alone in this cold way.
Hugo Longmaster was driving hard now, exerting himself as Meriel had been exerting herself from the first. She thought she heard the dinning hooves coming closer, but could not be sure because she was straining so hard at once to control her horses and to force them on, and could scarcely distinguish her noise from his. Her greys’ flanks were rippled with sweat. One kept tossing his head to the side in a way that maddened her. They were more than half-way round the Circus, there were a few straggling, cheering watchers, and they were coming up to a short avenue of cedar trees. Only through the trees, thought Meriel. Just to keep ahead through the trees.
Scarlet-faced, breathing harshly like his horses and like Meriel, Hugo chased her into the avenue. He found the dust which Meriel kicked up intolerable, he wanted h
er to know what it was to have dust in her face. It seemed to take an age to draw near her, to drive alongside her. Perhaps her horses were better than his. He could tell that she was having hellish difficulty in managing them, she was a fool to try. He used the whip on his chestnuts’ backs, but not too hard, though the expression on his face was so terrible. Hugo was intensely controlled, in spite of all, in spite of the unjust fact of his cousin’s existence.
They were coming into sight of the main crowd by the gate, but they were merely beetling dots to the spectators as yet. Lorgnettes were raised again. The crowd’s opinion of their behaviour mattered nothing to them now. There was a roaring in Meriel’s ears which would prevent her hearing any noise they made. Only to that phaeton, she thought. Let me only keep ahead till then.
For four hundred yards they were racing neck and neck, and to them, it was almost as though they were not moving at all. They could only look ahead at their own horses, it was as though they were blinkered. When at last the issue was decided, and Longmaster ground ahead, both became aware once more of pain and of choking heat, neither of which had they thought of when they were forcing along side by side in hateful hope.
Meriel’s previous, unthinking desire to keep ahead seemed a piece of childish folly, when at last she saw his chestnuts really inching forward to disgrace her in Auriol’s eyes. She thought her heart must explode, and her sand-dry mouth wasted energy by croaking aloud: “Go on, go on, go on brutes, on!” She could see the flowers on Hugo’s hat, and the tight, scared demeanour of his groom. The greys were not winning, but they were pulling her arms out of their sockets to no purpose at all.
Meriel and Longmaster did not hear the crowd’s shouts as, slipping on their boxes, half-blind with sweat, they began the last quarter-mile. Those by the gate could see them clearly now.
Auriol knew then for certain that if Meriel lost, it would all be useless. To kidnap her would be useless. She would never marry him if she lost this race, and it was so bitter, because now he did not want her to win only so that he might gain her, but for her own sake, the sake of triumph, as well. He adored her and forgave her and was proud of her, his Marquis. He found himself calling in a whisper, “Meriel, Mer — iel!”
The Marquis of Westmarch Page 21
