Robert had still not gained his preferment, and was still living at Shelmet Rectory, where he vented his frustration in blistering indictments of his flock’s wickedness. It had made him very popular locally, where his fierce threats of hell-fire made a refreshing change from the usual restrained and languid preaching; his services were always well-attended, and his congregation went home stimulated and agreeably scathed to their little sins, which seemed far more important and enjoyable for his condemnation.
His son Robert had also gone into the church, and had succeeded to a stall at Westminster where he drowsed and dined away his days in a manner which irritated Robert into fresh sallies of rhetoric. His son Frederick was still at home, living at his expense now since Morland Place had been banned to them. Frederick had reached the age of twenty-eight without ever doing anything useful or praiseworthy, and he spent his days in idleness, hunting five days a week, drinking too much when his father could afford it, and making himself an unparalleled reputation amongst the female servants of the neighbourhood.
It was Jemima who had forced Robert and Frederick to live upon their own resources, and had discouraged Augusta from living out her widowhood there, and it was not from spite, but from necessity. The years which had been so good for England and satisfactory for Edmund’s progeny had been hard for her and for Morland Place. Rupert’s expenses grew year by year, and he was a more and more careless gambler, capable of losing a thousand pounds in one night. He would gamble on anything: which of two raindrops would reach the bottom of the window-pane first, which spilled drop of wine a fly would land upon, what day a mare would drop her foal. And all his expenses had to be met from the income of Morland Place, or from selling some one or other of its assets. Shawes was still let; Chelmsford House, too, was let, and for the past eighteen months Rupert had been living in lodgings in Drury Lane – an advantage from Jemima’s point of view, since it had meant she had been able to go home to live permanently at Morland Place. It did mean she was no longer able to exert any kind of restraining influence on him; but in any case her influence had been growing more and more negligible, and she had come to hate him so much that she was glad to get away from him.
There was no longer any doubt amongst the denizens of Morland Place about her husband’s true worth – the last two summers he had spent in Yorkshire had revealed the truth to them, at least about his drinking and gambling, if not about his more vicious propensities. Lady Mary had witnessed the truth before she died in 1738. She had achieved her ambition of seeing her daughter more wretched in marriage than she had been, but had failed in her ambition to rejoice at it. She had been ill for some months, and the truth only wearied and disgusted her. Jemima had been too hard-pressed by other worries to grieve much at her mother’s death. It was becoming daily a harder struggle to keep Morland Place together, which was the task that obsessed her, even though she was doing it, ultimately, for someone else. But she was the servant of her inheritance, and she could not abandon it. Economies had to be made, the dependant personnel reduced. Gradually the staff shrank, though she never turned a servant away against their will or with no other place to go to. Robert and his family she turned firmly away, to live upon their own. Uncle George stayed – she could not send him anywhere else, and he was so much a part of the background of her life that she hardly noticed him. In any case, he was little expense: he ate, drank, and rode her horses, and that was all. He even, in his silent, shy way helped her, for when he rode out now, he hardly ever came back empty handed; understanding, at least dimly, her predicament, he would ride not simply for pleasure, but for the pot, and would come home with pheasants or wood-pigeon or rabbits or even, occasionally, a deer, and then stump, red-faced, up to his room before she could thank him.
Morland Place, increased over the years by the purchases of the generations, shrank back closer and closer to its original dimensions. The land in Northumberland was sold to Viscount Ballincrea, who gave, she suspected, a better price than it was worth, for kinship’s sake. The outlying farms at Healaugh and Crockey Hill were sold. All the family plate, and many of the family jewels went, though she refused, doggedly, to part with the major family heirlooms.
She worked, and the reduced staff worked, to wring the best income possible out of the estate. She sold horses, unbroken yearlings, half-broken two-year-olds, promising four-year-olds, proven brood mares, one of the stallions. After the races, she sold the best and most successful of the geldings and colts, and raised the stud-fees. She sold wool, she sold farm produce, she sold Morland Fancy cloth, going herself to market to be sure of the best price, glad of the experience her father had given her. In 1756, when the market in Briggate was disturbed by the widening of the road, she and fourteen other clothiers got together to raise subscriptions to buy a piece of land and build a Coloured Cloth Hall, where their markets could take place under cover, just as the broadcloth merchants had built their White Cloth Hall back in 1711.
Jemima was so convinced that this was a good thing to do that she sold her finest breeding mare in order to be able to invest in it herself. They bought a fine piece of land near the centre of the city, and building began at once, and in April 1757 the hall was opened for business. Each subscriber received one stall in the new hall for every £2.IOS he subscribed, and could either use, sell, or hire out the stalls. The hall was divided inside into five ‘streets’ around a central courtyard, and the streets were lined with stalls, each 22 inches wide, with the owner’s name painted on the front, there being 1,770 stalls altogether. Jemima kept the best stall on Mary Lane for herself, and hired out the other two. Her faith in the venture was amply justified by the immediate expansion of trade, the brisk demand for stalls, and the amount that could be obtained by selling or hiring the stalls. The hall was strictly controlled by fifteen trustees, of whom Jemima was elected one for the first period of three years, and was to be used only for the sale of coloured, mixed, or fancy cloths, and only by those who had served their full apprenticeship in the trade.
The scheme gave Jemima an interest, and she worked at it with a passion that made Pask and Jane shake their heads, and Jane to murmur that she ought to be having babies, poor lady, to devote herself to. But of that, they at least knew, there was no chance.
Then in October 1760 King George died, and Jemima was just congratulating herself that, now she lived in obscurity in the country, she did not need to put on mourning, when an Express arrived from London. She opened it with a sigh, expecting it to be another demand for money; but it was from Boy, to say that Lord Chelmsford had collapsed and was seriously ill, his life was despaired of, and that she should come at once.
Jemima stood looking down at her dead husband’s face with a curious detachment. She had not been able to guess what she would feel when he died, but in fact what she did feel was nothing. She felt unconnected with him or his demise in any way. His handsome face was ravaged by his lifelong debauchery, and by the illnesses he had suffered during his last two years, but the suddenness of his death had smoothed away many of the lines, and he looked younger than she remembered. His hair was still luxuriant and still untouched with grey, and it lay across the pillow looking curiously springy and full of life, when you considered it was growing out of a corpse.
Boy’s face was beslobbered with tears, his eyes red, his mouth shapeless with misery. Jemima looked at him curiously.
‘You really loved him, didn’t you?’ she said. He nodded wordlessly, and flung himself on his knees beside the bed, catching the cold, dead hand in his and pressing it to his wet face. Jemima watched him with detachment. It was right, she thought, that someone should have loved him. All human creatures should receive love from some source, even if it was only from a dog, or from a creature such as Boy, who was less than a dog. She looked again at Rupert, and wondered whether he had appreciated the devotion, or returned it.
‘He should have lived many more years,’ she said. ‘It was the manner of his life that shortened it.’
He had left no will, and his personal possessions in that poor and shabby house were few and unimportant, and she did not think the new Earl would mind if she gave them to Boy.
‘What will you do now?’ she asked. He shook his head miserably.
‘I don’t know. I must find another place, I suppose. There is someone, a friend of my master, who might help me.’
‘I wish you luck,’ she said, and Boy looked at her with a doubtful frown. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I do. It was none of it your fault.’
‘Thank you, mistress,’ he said. ‘I wish you luck, too.’
Jemima smiled a little grimly. ‘My luck ended the day I married him. I am now as homeless and penniless as you, and I have no friend to find me another place.’
*
She wrote to the new Earl, telling him of his brother’s death, bidding him come home to take up his inheritance. She ordered her mourning clothes, gave orders for Rupert’s burial, instructed the solicitor to gather together a record of his debts to give to the new Earl on his arrival, and then there seemed nothing more to do but go home to Morland Place and wait. There was an air of quiet nervousness at Morland Place. No one knew what was going to happen to them, and though Jemima tried to comfort them by saying that she was sure the new Earl would not turn them out to starve, she knew she had no right to say so, and knew that they knew it too. No one knew any harm of her brother-in-law, but no one knew any good either. She promised Jane and Pask a home, at any rate.
‘He is obliged to pay me my widow’s portion out of the estate, and that should be enough to keep us, if you don’t mind living in a very small way.’
They hastened to assure her that they didn’t.
‘As long as we can be with you, my lady,’ Jane said, and Jemima looked up sharply.
‘Don’t call me “my lady”. I am Miss Jemima Morland. I have my name – no one can take that from me, at least.’
And besides her name, she had her clothes, her horse, and the diamond collar the Countess had given her. ‘I have money saved, mistress,’ Pask said. ‘All of it is yours, if you want it.’
‘That is a new departure,’ Jemima said. ‘The servant shall keep the mistress?’
‘Don’t despair,’ Pask said. ‘Maybe your luck will change. Something may happen.’
The new Earl arrived in November, with his wife and their five-year-old son, the only one of their children to survive. Jemima travelled to London to meet them. She found her brother-in-law a small, heavily built man, with the distinctive Morland looks, but with his mother’s dark Italian eyes. He spoke English with a slight accent from his long sojourn in Italy, but his manners were perfect, and his mein kindly. His wife was jolly and freckled and rather flamboyant, evidently devoted to her husband and doting on the chubby boy to the extent of wishing to do everything for him herself, despite the nursemaids’ protests.
In a toneless voice, Jemima told Charles of the death of his brother, and of the state of his fortune.
‘Your inheritance, I’m afraid, is much reduced. You still own Shawes and Chelmsford House, but only just; they are both let, Shawes on a long and Chelmsford House on a short lease. The Morland property is reduced to the house and home estate. The city property was sold, I’m afraid, as well as the Northumberland estate, all except the houses on Goodramgate, and they bring in so little I didn’t think it worth while selling them.’
It was Lady Chelmsford who answered, irrepressibly, before her husband could gather his words.
‘Oh it doesn’t matter in the least,’ she said. ‘I’m sure you have done wonderfully well, because, believe me, Charles knows what kind of a man his brother was, and the wonder of it is there is anything left at all. But we have the title, which is wonderful, and a home to come to, and as for money, we have plenty ourselves, quite apart from what my father left me.’
‘I am sure no one was ever sorry to have more,’ Jemima said drily. Molly smiled.
‘Why, no, but we are so glad to be home that nothing could trouble us less. I want to live in London, and I’m sure little Charles ought to be brought up here, as he will be Earl one day in his turn. We shall take Chelmsford House and give the most wonderful balls, and you must stay here for as long as you like. In fact, Charles and I would like you to regard it as your home.’
‘Thank you, my lady,’ Jemima said. She beamed.
‘It is only what is right.’
‘And what about Morland Place?’ Jemima asked, trying to sound casual, and failing. Molly glanced at her husband, exchanging some message with him, and he shook his head slightly, and she answered the question.
‘We think of selling it.’ Jemima heard the words with a dull shock. She had not thought of that.
‘Do you not want to have a country estate? London is very tiresome in the summer, you know.’
‘Oh yes, but Yorkshire is too far away,’ Molly said, anxious to justify herself. ‘We should like to have an estate nearer to London, in Hertfordshire or Oxfordshire -Charles favours the latter. He has very happy memories of Oxfordshire.’
‘I do not think you would raise sufficient from the sale of Morland Place to buy an estate of any note in Oxfordshire,’ Jemima said in one last attempt to save her home.
Molly said gently, ‘As I mentioned before, Charles and I have plenty of money, enough to supplement the price of Morland Place. Indeed, we would be happy to sell it to you for a very reasonable price, as it is your home and you are fond of it, but—’
She did not need to finish the sentence. Jemima nodded miserably. She could not meet even the most reasonable price Molly might name, and Molly knew it.
A few days later Jemima went back to Yorkshire. Molly had offered her every accommodation in London, but she said she preferred to go back to Yorkshire for the time being.
‘You will find it convenient to have me there until it is sold,’ she said, and they agreed, gratefully, that they would.
‘And afterwards, you will come and live with us at Chelmsford House,’ Molly said. ‘Perhaps you could be governess to little Charles.’ Jemima could only be grateful that she would have a home to go to. She knew that in many ways it would be better for her to make a clean break and stay in London, but she owed it to the servants to tell them the news herself, and to be on hand until the sale was completed, to make sure that they were suitably provided for. It would certainly be some months before a sale of such magnitude could be completed, so she would have a little time more to say goodbye to everything. I shall have Christmas there, she thought, and the idea was both attractive and heartbreaking.
She knew as soon as she rode into the yard that something had happened in her absence by the number of lights that were blazing and by the air of suppressed excitement. There were torches in the sconces on either side of the great door, and they flared so brightly that they dazzled her, and as she dismounted she could not see who it was that came out to stand on the top step to greet her. Then she handed Jewel to William, and at the foot of the steps looked up to see Allen standing there, smiling at her.
She felt dazed, she thought she was dreaming, and she rubbed her eyes in a bemused way that made him laugh aloud.
‘No, it is me, it really is,’ he said. ‘I’ve come home, my dear Jemima. Aren’t you pleased to see me?’ And he held out his arms, and a moment later she was pressed close against him, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.
‘Allen, Allen, is it really you? How did you get here? What are you doing here? Have you – why did you not come before? Did you—’ Her questions tumbled out in disarray, but her arms were round him and never for a moment relaxed their grip. He hugged her and set her back a little to look down into her face.
‘Dear Jemima, I will tell you all in a moment, but first I must look at you, and look at you. You cannot imagine how often I have thought about you and dreamed of seeing you again; but I never imagined anything as beautiful as you are in reality. You have grown up while I’ve been away, and grown very, very beautiful. But you aren’t r
eally any different, are you?’
‘No,’ she said, meaning it from her heart in a way he could not know of. ‘And you haven’t changed either.’
‘I am older and sadder, but I hope I haven’t changed in appreciating your worth. I still wear your locket, you know, round my neck under my cravat. Here, you can feel it through my shirt.’
He took her hand and pressed his fingers to his chest so that she could feel the hard shape of the locket underneath the linen. But the gesture, begun jokingly, changed at the touch of their hands. He looked into her eyes, and there was a moment of stillness and strange intensity. Then he released her gently and said, ‘Come inside. You must be cold and hungry. There is a good fire in the drawing room. Come and warm yourself, and eat, and I will tell you everything.’
For a long time he only spoke of his life in France, telling her amusing or interesting stories of his soldiering or of the French Court, while she ate and drank and held her frozen toes to the blaze. Then when she had finished eating he slipped from his seat to crouch on the hearth beside her, and took up her hands from her lap, and held them in his own.
‘You have changed in some ways, Jemima. You are older and sadder too. I know about your marriage to Lord Chelmsford. When he died, Pask wrote to me and told me everything, and that is why I came home.’
‘Why did you not come before, when I wrote to you about the amnesty?’ she asked, holding tightly onto her senses, afraid they would run away with her. She must not hope for or expect too much, or she would be hurt.
‘Can you not guess? You wrote telling me you had married, and for all I knew, had married for love. And even if you had not – what good would it have done me to come home? There was nothing for me in England. But when he died, and Pask told me – I thought – I hoped—’ He seemed to find it difficult to phrase, until he looked up into Jemima’s eyes, and cut through his hesitation with straightforward words. ‘I have thought about you so much in France. You have become so precious to me, precious as you always were, only I was too blind to realize it. Hearing you had married opened my eyes when it was too late, but I have never stopped loving you. I came home hoping that perhaps you might be glad to see me, perhaps you might love me too. I know that you were fond of me, years ago, and I hoped that the fondness might still be there, might be capable of growing into something more tender.’
Dynasty 8: The Maiden: The Maiden (The Morland Dynasty) Page 40
