“Russian, English and, of course, Irish blood. What do you expect of a complex, beautiful, very enigmatic young woman who, as far as I am concerned, is as mysterious as the Sphinx but as lovely as Cleopatra must have been at that age?”
“You paint a very glowing picture,” Rex remarked with a smile behind his eyes, knowing that Sir Terence was deliberately trying to intrigue him.
“My wife entertained for Quenella and there is no need for me to tell you that she was an outstanding success. Invitations poured into our house from all the great hostesses. The Queen herself complimented us on Quenella’s beauty when she was presented at Court.”
He looked across at Rex Daviot and then he said in a different tone of voice,
“Two months ago disaster struck!”
“What happened?”
There was a note of curiosity now in his voice that Sir Terence recognised.
“At a party at Windsor Castle, Quenella met Prince Ferdinand of Schertzenberg.”
“That swine!”
The exclamation from Rex Daviot was involuntary.
“Exactly,” Sir Terence said. “While I agree with you that he should be barred from every drawing room in the land and kicked out of every gentleman’s house, he is nevertheless of importance in Europe, and he is a distant, although very distant, relative of the Queen.”
“What happened?”
“He pursued Quenella in an extremely reprehensible manner. After all he is a married man and the days of Monarchs being expected to behave in an imperious and licentious manner are well and truly over especially at Windsor Castle!”
“What were the young woman’s feelings in the matter?”
“She loathed him,” Sir Terence responded briefly. “She told me that the moment he came near her she felt repelled as she would have been by a reptile.”
Sir Terence fell silent, but there was obviously an end to the story and Rex insisted,
“What happened then?”
“The Prince refused to leave Quenella alone. He bombarded her with letters, flowers and presents until I told him firmly that his behaviour could not continue.”
Sir Terence sighed.
“It was not an easy thing to do and the Prince was offensively rude as only the Germans can be. He even threatened that my manner would, if I was not careful, cause a Diplomatic incident and he would have me dismissed!”
“Good God!” Rex Daviot expostulated and then he added,
“You did not take him seriously?”
“I assure you that His Royal Highness was very serious, but I told him that, if he continued to behave in such a manner, I would inform the Queen of what was occurring.”
“Did that quieten him down?”
“He was furiously angry, but I felt that like everyone else he is afraid of Her Majesty and would behave better in the future.”
“So that put paid to the whole problem?”
“On the contrary,” Sir Terence replied. “It merely drove underground what had been easier to see and perhaps easier to cope with when it was out in the open.”
He knew as he spoke that Rex Daviot would understand only too well for the sedition and the intrigues amongst the tribes incited by the Russians were always fomented by secrecy and suppression.
“What did he do?”
“He arranged, without my being aware of it,” Sir Terence answered, “to be included in a house party together with Quenella. It was unfortunately one that neither my wife nor I had planned .to accompany her at. The hostess was one of our closest friends and my wife was only too happy to have the girl in her care.”
Sir Terence paused and then he continued,
“How was I to know that that devil would get himself invited at the last moment and take advantage of the fact that his hostess was a trusting woman and Quenella an innocent young girl?”
The fury in Sir Terence’s voice was very evident before he resumed,
“The Prince forced his way into Quenella’s bedroom, tore at her clothes and attempted to rape her!”
“I have never heard of anything so outrageous,” Rex exclaimed. “I have always known that he was an outsider and a bounder of the first water, but what you tell me is incredible even for a German with an inflated ego.”
“Fortunately somebody in the next bedroom heard Quenella’s screams,” Sir Terence went on, “but frankly it was a near thing and the girl was shocked in a way that is difficult to understand.”
“Did she collapse or have a nervous breakdown?”
“It might have been better if she had,” Sir Terence answered, “No, she just seemed to turn inwards on herself.”
He saw that Rex did not understand.
“It is difficult to put into words what happened. Quenella has always been proud. She has also been reserved and a little aloof, I thought, in her dealings with other people, I attributed it, as I said before, to her foreign ancestry, but after this episode with Prince Ferdinand – ”
He paused as if he was seeking for words and, because now he was undeniably curious, Rex said almost insistently,
“Go on.”
“It is as if she has put a barrier between herself and the rest of the world. She is charming and attentive to my wife and myself, but otherwise she has withdrawn from all contact with human beings. I have a feeling, although she has not told me so, that she now hates men!”
“That is understandable,” Rex Daviot nodded.
“She has refused every party and every other sort of entertainment that she has been asked to.”
“Surely she is afraid of meeting the Prince again?”
“He is, I believe, still trying to get in touch with her,” Sir Terence answered, “but even when she is certain of not meeting him, Quenella still tears up every invitation she receives.”
“I suppose she is still suffering from shock.”
“I wish it was just that. I have a feeling that it is something much deeper, something that might affect her whole life and her whole outlook.”
He thought that Rex Daviot smiled a little sceptically and he said quickly,
“That is why I am asking for your help.”
“My help? What can I do?”
“You can marry Quenella and take her away from here!”
There was a stupefied silence and then Rex Daviot asked,
“Are you mad?”
“If you think it over, you will see that it is a rather sane suggestion. Because I love Quenella I want her to get away. I want her to be completely free of the Prince. The only way she can be quite certain that he will not pursue her is to have a husband who will protect her as I quite frankly am unable to do.”
“Why?”
“Because the Prince can make an immeasurable amount of trouble for me if I continue to oppose him.”
Sir Terence spoke frankly and Rex Daviot was aware that it was the truth.
The Head of the India Office held a post of such responsibility that a brawl with a Ruling Prince of Europe would not only hurt Sir Terence but perhaps the whole system.
Rex Daviot knew that it had been a great feather in Sir Terence’s cap that he had been appointed when he was comparatively young, but his list of qualifications had made him the ideal man for the job.
That his career should be ruined now and that he should be forced to resign would be a tragedy for Britain and, he thought, a tragedy for India.
As if he knew exactly what Rex Daviot was thinking, Sir Terence went on,
“I may be wrong, but I have the idea that even if you were willing to marry some young woman so that you could accept the post of Lieutenant-Governor, you do not know many except those of the ‘Fishing Fleet’!”
This was a joke for the girls who went out to India every year in the hopes of finding a husband were known always as the ‘Fishing Fleet’ and those who came back unsuccessful in their quest were referred to as ‘Returned Empties’.
Rex Daviot did not laugh, however, and Sir Terence continued,
; “It seems to me a very reasonable proposition. While you need a wife with money, Quenella has to find a husband who will take her out of reach of the Prince. So, why not think it over?”
When Sir Terence had stopped speaking, it seemed as if the silence was different and somehow much more poignant than it had been before.
“Are you really serious about this?” Rex Daviot asked slowly.
“I have never been more serious in my life,” Sir Terence answered. “And I will not pretend to you that I do not have a great deal of self-interest in your reply.”
He gave a deep sigh before he added,
“I am asking for your help, Rex. Quite frankly I am in a hell of a hole and I cannot see any other way out.”
There was no mistaking the sincerity in his voice and it was that more than anything else that made Rex Daviot pause before he voiced the categorical refusal that trembled on his lips.
Then, as if he knew that the older man was waiting tensely for his answer, he said,
“I would naturally need time to think this over and perhaps without committing myself in any way I could meet your niece.”
He saw Sir Terence’s eyes light up.
“Do you really mean that? My God, it would be a weight off my shoulders!”
“I have not said anything about accepting your extraordinary and, I am sure, quite unprecedented solution for my future and your difficulties,” Rex Daviot declared warningly.
“I know that,” Sir Terence agreed swiftly. “But at the moment I feel that you are a lifeline for a drowning man.”
He looked at Rex Daviot with appeal in his eyes and said,
“Perhaps you think it ridiculous that a man in my position should be afraid of a minor German Princeling, but I am afraid that I can see everything I have built up in the last year or two, the networks I have constructed with such care, the agents planted in many different parts of India who are responsible only to me, smashed and destroyed.”
He paused before he added,
“Or rather, should I say, burnt to a cinder by the lust of one debauched uncontrolled cad!”
It was obviously, Rex Daviot thought, the right word to describe the Prince.
“The difficulty is that outside these four walls,” Sir Terence continued, “I have to treat him with the respect that he and his position demand.”
Rex Daviot knew that he was not exaggerating the situation and yet at the same time the end could hardly justify the means as far as he was concerned.
He was also aware that the repercussions would not be particularly pleasant ones. And was he prepared to refuse the Queen’s award for his services and turn down what was the greatest compliment he was likely ever to receive in his career?
It was also at the back of his mind, now that he had time to realise what it entailed, that he could carry on his work in a different way, but just as successfully by being in a very different position in the North-West Provinces.
No one knew better than he that it was impossible to bring off another coup the size of the one that he had just achieved without leaving a long time to elapse.
However carefully he might have covered his tracks and however ignorant those whom he had tricked had been at the time, there would always be in the future a whisper, a gesture, a question in the eyes of those who surrounded him.
Perhaps no one would betray the whole secret, but it might make those who were interested suspicious.
‘I have to go to ground,’ Rex Daviot thought to himself, ‘and where better than at Government House in Lucknow?’
As he thought he could see it all clearly and indeed more important than the famous battle-scarred residence at Lucknow was the Governor’s residence at Naini Tal among the wooded crests of the Himalayan foothills.
Like all those who worked and lived in India, driven by a spirit of service that was not to be found anywhere else in the world, Rex Daviot had developed an intuitive sense that it was difficult for those who remained at home to understand.
It was not merely clairvoyance, it was something deeper still, a sort of entering into an encompassing life of the spirit that lay behind the colourful fantastic surface of India herself.
It was at Naini Tal when he had been visiting the last Governor of the North-West Provinces that he had stood looking up at the Himalayas with a sheer drop of thousands of feet below him.
Above the cloud-curled summit of a snow-capped mountain peak two golden eagles swirled and quivered against the translucent sky.
It was a picture that seemed in its sheer beauty to strike Rex Daviot in his very heart and be imprinted there for all time.
Now, unexpectedly, as he had experienced before when he had a decision to make in some crisis in his life or when he was quiveringly aware of some threatening danger, the eagles were there, omnipotent, serene and yet strangely a part of himself.
He knew that Sir Terence was waiting. He knew that he had come to a crossroads and the direction he would go in depended on the next words he spoke.
The eagles were hovering as they waited!
He smiled and it seemed to illuminate his face and sweep away the last shadow of a frown between his eyes.
“I mean it,” he said aloud. “Will you ask me to dine with you?”
*
Sir Terence’s house in St. John’s Wood was a prototype of those occupied by members of the Social world who were well off but not outstandingly wealthy.
There was a butler to take Rex Daviot’s coat and tall hat when he arrived and two parlour maids with white caps and starched aprons to assist in serving the adequate if not superlative dinner.
Sir Terence produced what Rex Daviot knew were his best wines and he did justice to them, having found from bitter experience that few wines survived the heat of the Indian climate.
As he had walked into the L-shaped drawing room on the first floor, where Lady O’Kerry waited to receive him, he had thought that it was stereotyped like the familiar illustrations of a book one had read over and over again.
Often when he was in India he would think of England and the cool comfortable drawing rooms in which small-waisted women in décolleté gowns would be waiting with conventional smiles on their well-bred faces to greet their guests.
Their diamonds in their slightly old-fashioned settings would in most instances need cleaning and there would be a faint perfume of lavender or violets as they moved.
The hands they would extend would be white and soft, the skin not dried by excessive heat and their faces not wrinkled from lack of moisture.
The flowers of the Season would be stiffly arranged in the same vases that received them week after week, month after month.
There would be daffodils in the spring, roses in the summer, dahlias, chrysanthemums and, if the host and hostess could afford the upkeep of a country house, carnations grown in their own greenhouses.
In the summer there would be at dinner large luscious peaches and huge purple Muscat grapes from the same well-ordered gardens.
Rex Daviot had accepted a glass of sherry from Sir Terence and Lady O’Kerry had asked after the health of his father and if he was glad to be home and, if it was very hot in India, when the door opened and the girl he had come to see appeared.
*
While finding his way to St. John’s Wood from the Travellers Club where he was staying, Rex Daviot had tried to imagine what Quenella O’Kerry would be like.
He had been surprised and rather amused by the lyrical and at the same time puzzled manner that her uncle had tried to describe her in.
Despite his imaginative vision when it concerned his work at the India Office, Rex Daviot had always thought that Sir Terence was a very conventional man.
There was certainly nothing unusual or particularly outstanding about Lady O’Kerry, but he had always thought when he had seen husband and wife together that it appeared to be a happy marriage and they were content with each other.
They had, Rex Daviot knew, three sons, who were all a
t boarding schools and Lady O’Kerry had once confessed to him that she had always longed to have a daughter.
“I suppose as things are,” she had added with a little laugh, “I shall have to make do with daughters-in-law, but I have a feeling that it will not be quite the same as a daughter of my own.”
Rex Daviot had wondered if she found Quenella as incomprehensible as her husband did, but he was sure that they would share the same feelings.
Lady O’Kerry would find that any girl who was unusual and perhaps in her mind difficult was not the type of daughter she had envisaged for herself.
He had also queried Sir Terence’s description of Quenella’s looks. If Lady O’Kerry was anything to go by, beautiful meant one thing to Sir Terence and something quite different to him.
Rex Daviot never worked out exactly what he might look for in a wife.
It had always seemed such a remote possibility that he should ever have one, especially with the financial strain of keeping his father in the luxury that he had become accustomed to.
He knew what he did not want and that was the type of memsahib who was all too prevalent in India.
The difficulty there was that they had not enough to occupy themselves, having too many servants, not being allowed to make any contact with the Indians and with their husbands often away on manoeuvres or on tour if they were civilians.
Their children were separated from them and they were bored frustrated women.
The only outlet was the gossip, the intrigue and the endless parties that took place at Simla when they went there in the hot weather or the clandestine flirtations with a brother Officer that often ended in tragedy.
A wife like that, Rex Daviot had told himself often enough, would make him want to strangle her within a few months of their marriage.
His love affairs, and there had been quite a number, had always been conducted with what his contemporaries would have called “Grand Ladies”.
India had become very social since the opening of the Suez Canal had made it so easily accessible.
Since the long four-to-five-month voyage round the Cape of Good Hope now took less than three weeks from London to Bombay, the Indian way of life had been revolutionised in many ways.
Flowers For the God of Love Page 2
