The Marquis of Westmarch

by Frances Vernon

  “He has no friends, no kin, no one to object. I wish him to be buried at Longmaster Wood, or if he has not been embalmed here, with us, inside the wall.” She planned to be buried next to him, whether at Castle West or Longmaster Wood, but did not say so.

  Cautiously Philander said, “It might be possible. As you say, he had no near relations living.”

  “Do not tell me it will be quite improper!”

  “No,” said Grindal.

  He was not usually so abrupt, but he had been taken aback: Meriel had given that order in a voice full of irritated challenge, familiar to those who knew her well, and not heard for three days. He pulled out a chair, and sat down, carefully spreading his coat-skirts and crossing his legs. There was a mark on the knee of his breeches, he noticed, and he rubbed at it, remembering that before Wychwood died he had had a dream about being raped by Meriel.

  He had come to envy Auriol Wychwood. He thought secretly that to be mourned in such a way as Meriel favoured was something indeed, and that no doubt if a man was six-foot-seven and broad to match, however silly-faced, he could surrender his body to a Meriel with impunity. Now he, Philander, pitied Meriel for having killed fate’s miraculous provision of a suitable lover for her.

  “Did you mean to marry him?”

  He was simply being clumsy; he did not mean to be cruel.

  Meriel straightened her long body. She stared at Philander, closed her eyes, and continued, blinking, to stare. Her lips did not move and her cheeks looked almost grey. Philander saw that her nose was distorted with crying but that otherwise her face had been improved by tears: her damp eyes, surrounded by delicate shiny pink skin, looked larger and brighter than usual.

  “I have known only since that day in the field! Meriel — my dear old friend, don’t I beg of you, do anything — what would he have wanted? And I have told no one, no one at all.” Thus the essence of his prepared speech came out disjointedly in less than a minute.

  The clock in the corner suddenly struck three: whirr, ting, whirr, ting, whirr, ting. The noise greatly fussed Philander, it seemed undignified to him.

  At last Meriel said, “Why have you not?”

  Philander had been dreading this conversation. He had sincerely feared that if she had a gun in the room she would try to shoot either him or herself, and only courage and resolute duty had made him see and involve himself in a roaring miniature tragedy. Yet now when he quite saw that this would be a very quick and unemotional talk, he was irrationally disappointed. Meriel, poor admirable Meriel, was not behaving as she ought.

  He said, “I suppose because I knew that to do so would be tantamount to killing you. You would have put a period to your existence, would you not?”

  “Yes.”

  “Even had Wychwood been alive.”

  “Yes.” Her voice was quite expressionless.

  “But — yet you did wish to marry him?”

  “No,” said Meriel, “I wished to remain his lover. But it was not possible, I knew there was nothing else to be done. I had no choice, so I did as I ought.”

  Guessing, he said, “For the first time in your life? No, no — I beg your pardon —”

  “Yes, perhaps so.”

  “You did not mean to marry him till you shot him?” This is dreadful, perfectly ridiculous, he thought, how can she, we talk so?

  “We discussed it, we quarrelled over it.”

  “What do you mean to do now?”

  “I have not considered.” She inclined her head slightly, making Philander jump. Her voice developed character. “And so what do you mean to do?”

  Philander looked away. “Now — now, I think that, yes, I know that whatever you decide, in whatever you choose to do, I shall support you, no matter what my own opinion may be. I have no business to do otherwise. I shall stand your friend, whether you remain here as you are or — or — no, you’ve had punishment enough, you won’t confess!”

  “Certainly I have had punishment enough.” No, I have not, she thought.

  “My dear old friend, I wish you had told me. For one thing, I might have helped you put an end to Juxon’s — Juxon’s odious pretensions! I fancy I knew how he contrived to make you appoint him Steward — I hate to think of it.”

  “Oh, so you know all that, do you?”

  “Once one became aware of the bare fact, that aspect of the case was obvious enough,” said Philander.

  “I don’t think I should have told you. This is now. In the past you would not have supported me, would you. Would you?”

  “I don’t know! But Meriel — Meriel — now I swear to you that I will do all I said, I shall always stand behind you as they say, whatever you do — above all I shall never say a word to a soul. Do you hear me? I do not care what my duty may be so far as that goes, any longer!” Thus he tried to make their conversation less like one in a dream, where all discuss something they know to be distressing and unreal in the baldest way, thinking they ought to take it to be natural and proper, then slip out of that dream into another of the same kind.

  “I’m obliged to you. I should not have cared so very much if you had. That is, I should now care very much if you did — it’s very strange, very strange to think of your knowing, Philander.”

  “If you suppose you would not care, that is only because you are as yet in the first shock of a peculiarly horrible bereavement,” said Philander firmly, knowing this was a truth.

  “I hope Juxon won’t come back,” said Meriel, coming back to panicking life herself for a moment. “Oh no. He mustn’t. I shall murder him if he does.”

  “No, you must simply dismiss him.”

  She sank down a little into her chair, and glanced up at Marquis Elphinstone’s portrait. “I fancy he won’t in fact come back. I don’t think he will.”

  “No.”

  “Philander, if he does, you must dispose of him. I’m glad I shall have you to do it.” She looked him up and down, as though he were a horse.

  “Meriel — have you now decided what you will do? From your saying that, I must suppose you have some plan in your head.”

  She pinched her lips together and nodded. “Yes — yes, I have.”

  “I think perhaps — do you wish me to go now?”

  She got up out of her chair, and he went to the door. “Yes. Thank you. I cannot talk now, Philander, but — well.”

  “Don’t give it a thought.”

  He left, and recovered himself slowly in the bedchamber next door. He had to sit down, for he found that his legs were trembling after that confrontation with Meriel’s seemingly total lack of interest in him and his discovery, which he never had expected her to show. I shall, thought Philander, keep my word.

  Meriel began to walk round and round the closet, instead of going back to the open window. Noticing a jar full of dry biscuits, placed pointedly on her desk by Esmond but ignored by her for days, she picked it up and opened it, and began to munch as she paced. She ate six biscuits in two bites each, swallowing them almost unchewed, for she remembered that she had eaten nothing for more than forty-eight hours. The tears were still running down steadily from her eyes, but as though there were a mourning-machine behind them; Meriel’s brain was at present mistily elated.

  She was not dazed, she was able to think. Having been discovered, having her eleven-year-old terror come true, had strangely made her feel less powerless than before, she thought. Yes, indeed, less powerless. Meriel rubbed her neck with her hand and lifted her head as she realised this. Always, she thought, always it would be essential for one other person, not two, to know she was not a man but an impostor, in order to keep her from going mad with perfect star-like isolation and unspoken fear. But not two. Never two.

  *

  Month of Fruit approached, the ninth month of the year. Those families who had remained at Castle West for Hugo’s wedding packed up and left for the country in the following days. Knight Auriol Wychwood’s sudden death was an excitement, but a wholly unhappy one, not of a kind to keep any
one in town to gather information. Many guessed in what condition the Marquis must be.

  Meriel stayed alone, seeing no one, not even Philander, though she wrote several notes to him and sent them round to Chapel Court. She left her rooms only to see Auriol buried inside the great wall, at the point opposite the gateway, where there was a row of Longmaster graves, and where a few much-loved friends and mistresses had been buried over the years. In the end she had decided that even if it were possible, she did not want his body to be sent to Longmaster Wood.

  The day after her conversation with Philander, she sent an express message to Hugo, desiring him to return at once to Castle West from Bury Winyard. Her short letter was polite but imperious, and uninformative: she said only that the matter was urgent and that she had something to say to his advantage.

  “Mr Longmaster, my lord,” said Esmond, throwing open the bedchamber doors.

  Meriel jumped out of the armchair in which she had been sitting since the morning. She had allowed nine days for her message to reach him and for him to come: this was the tenth day, and late afternoon.

  “So,” she said, as Hugo entered. All the impatience, anger and self-pity she had felt at being made to wait ebbed away when she set eyes on him. She merely felt very cold.

  “Well coz, you see I have answered your summons.”

  They stood, separated by yards of carpet, looking at each other as though each had changed profoundly since they were last together, which they had not.

  Meriel, violently wishing to speak to cousin and heir, had made him into an abstraction in her mind, and had almost forgotten the real thick-set, ruddy, shrewd-faced, dandified Hugo. Hugo stared at Meriel because he was shocked by her appearance — not so much by her aged and miserable look as by her wearing mourning purple for Auriol Wychwood. Such a public gesture was unseemly.

  “I was sorry, Westmarch, to hear of your bereavement. Pray accept my condolences, if you will not think them out of place.”

  “Thank you — no, I don’t think that, precisely. Do you sit down, Hugo.” She nodded to a chair, which he swung himself into at once.

  “You said you wished to talk with me about a matter of some importance,” said Hugo.

  “Yes, I felt unable to wait. Is Berinthia with you?”

  “No, I left her in her sister’s charge at the Island Palace.”

  “I see.”

  “She was, very naturally, much intrigued by your communication, and sends her regards, coz.”

  Meriel sat down on the edge of the empty bed, in which Hugo knew Wychwood to have died. He told himself that Westmarch was a most surprising youth, and remembered the day of their curricle-race.

  “How did you discover that he, Wychwood had died, cousin?”

  “How did I discover it? But my dear Westmarch, I have not been precisely living out of the world — it has been known at Bury Winyard a sennight or more!”

  “Yes, I had not considered … Well, I had best come to the point, had I not? I am resigning the Marquisate to you, Hugo, I can’t stay on any longer.”

  For a short while nothing was said. Meriel turned her head slowly towards the window, out of which she could see nothing but a dark bank of cloud. Hugo, watching with his mouth half-open, understood at once why she meant to resign. He stirred in his chair with compassion, before he fully realised that now he, Hugo, would at last occupy the place from which Meriel had effectively ejected him by being born. He would be Marquis.

  “You are not in earnest, Westmarch, or so I assume?” he made himself say. She did not properly hear him. Her mind had strayed as she had feared it would from the Marquisate to Auriol, for whom she was giving it up.

  She had been having pleasant dreams at night of late, dreams not directly concerned with Auriol, but always lit up by his presence in the background. Every morning she had begun to wake up, feeling warm and lazy and as though, some agreeable surprise were in store for her, then she would think: oh, but something terrible has happened! What is it? There followed a second or two of trying to remember through her sleep-haze precisely what it was, then full memory would penetrate her, and in despair she would wonder how on earth she had ever been able to sleep.

  Bewildered, familiar, unbelieving pain now crawled through her at this inappropriate moment. She managed to stifle it.

  “What did you say?” she said to Hugo, raising her eyebrows to make herself look proud.

  “My dear cousin, did you indeed not hear me? But you cannot be resigning your place, only because of Wychwood. Come, Westmarch!”

  She wondered whether it were possible that she could have misunderstood her cousin for years, that she had been made to think him covetous of the Marquisate. Perhaps he would now simply refuse it. It suddenly became enormously important to rid herself of everything she had valued immediately, to amputate the Marquisate as swiftly as Auriol had been amputated from her. Else she might change her mind, and cling to it as being the object for which she had fought all her useless life, though it was a poisonous burden.

  She got off the bed, and tugged at the seal-ring of Westmarch on her right hand. Without looking at it, she stalked over and pushed it at Hugo. “Here, take it. Take it now. My God, of all things your resisting me in this matter was the least expected. Here — cousin!”

  Longmaster took snuff, and looked up at her with narrowed eyes, which he deliberately averted from the ring.

  “Westmarch, do but tell me — is it remorse that is making you behave in this very odd way? Or duty, or a sudden lack of appetite? I am persuaded that the Citizens could be brought to tolerate your remaining in office, however you may have shocked them!”

  “I think my reasons are no business of yours. Certainly the Citizens’ opinions don’t interest me profoundly.”

  Hugo transferred his gaze slowly to the thick carved carnelian now lying under his nose on Meriel’s palm. Made nervous by his own guilty pleasure in her ruin, that he had hopelessly imagined so many times, he began to exaggerate his old casual, mocking, urbane way of talking.

  “I so well remember, coz, how not nine months ago you told me that such a fribble and coxcomb and loose fish as I am ought never to be trusted with such a responsible post as what was it? Oh yes, the Quarter Wardenship. In this very room you said it.”

  “Yes, I too remember, d’you think I could not? I think it would be as well not to talk about it. I am less fit now than you for any post — are you going to take this, or not?”

  He looked up again, and corrected his first impression that his cousin had aged ten years in ten days. Meriel now seemed to him to look remarkably young, and smooth, and innocent, though tired and ill.

  “What a very odd creature you are. Tell me, what shall you do, having resigned? How will you live? Not here?”

  “No, of course not,” said Meriel, at last ceasing to offer him the ring. She put her hand in her pocket. “I shall live at Longmaster Wood — call myself Mr Meriel Longmaster. I shall not embarrass you, cousin.”

  “Indeed, you would be plain Mr Meriel Longmaster,” said Hugo. “But is not Longmaster Wood attached to the Marquisate? I have the wretchedest memory!”

  She gave him a contemptuous glance that he thought a sad one.

  “No, it is not, our grandfather bought it, it’s my personal property. I also have a private fortune of some two thousand a year, cousin. And if it were not, I — should ask you to appoint me your agent and allow me to live in the house. You never cared for the place.”

  “No, very true, I never did. Yes, to be sure, a most excellent plan. And certainly I would allow you to manage the estate, were it not your personal property!” Responsibly, he went on: “You are certain, cousin? Whatever your reasons, this is what you wish to do?”

  “Yes.” She took her hand out of her pocket. It shook a little as she opened it and looked at the ring, then presented it to him again. “For God’s sake, don’t keep me waiting! I cannot possibly remain any longer as Marquis, don’t pretend you have scruples about my doin
g this in a distempered freak.” She added, “No one will be very much surprised at my resigning, you know that.”

  Hugo leant forward, and delicately picked the seal-ring up from her palm, and made himself look grave.

  This, Meriel knew, was exactly what Auriol would have wanted her to do: it was the dull compromise that would enable her to live, recover and remember him. He would have wished her neither to kill herself, nor to remain Marquis, nor to expose herself as a woman in order to punish herself for what she had done. It had occurred to Meriel that he might have said: do not expose yourself for such a reason as that, little Marquis, but only so that you may one day be at peace with some other man than I — those who have once been happy nearly always marry again. But she could not bring herself to do it, though perhaps she might have been able to had he died a natural death.

  She went to sit now on the window-seat, with her back to the view, and refused to think about such things. Hugo was disgusting, she thought to herself as she watched him examine the ring; he was greedy, greedier than she was. She remembered quite how much she had always detested him, and feared him.

  Longmaster raised his eyes, and said with dignified kindliness, “There will be any number of formalities to be attended to, you know, cousin.”

  “Yes, but the Citizens will be delighted at the thought of my going now that I have blood on my hands,” said Meriel quite naturally. “There will be no real difficulty, I’m persuaded.”

  “But I have not a doubt that they will think me a most unworthy successor,” said Hugo in a plaintive voice, his manner suddenly changing. He lounged, and held up the ring between his thumb and forefinger. “Is this not rather dangerous, rather unwise, coz? Ought you indeed to desert your post, leaving it in such shocking hands as mine?”

  “Do not talk to me like that,” Meriel replied.

  There was a pause. Hugo swallowed, feeling irrational fear of his young cousin for the first time in his life. He put the ring in his lap, and drummed his fingers on the arms of his chair, as he seemed to remember Meriel uncharacteristically doing that day he came to ask her for the Wardenship.