A Dark and Distant Shore (91 page)

It was too much for Gideon’s exhausted mind to take in. What on earth could Vilia be up to where Guy was concerned? There seemed no sense in it. Poor Lizzie. Gideon hoped she wasn’t too much in love with Guy, or she would be made very unhappy. It would be a quite unsuitable match. Guy, not too plump in the pocket, and with his head somewhere in the clouds, could never care for timid, gentle, not very clever Lizzie in the way she needed to be cared for.

The lamp was beginning to smoke, and the flame was edged with black. Gideon turned it out and lay back, still shivering, on his bed. Vilia would put a stop to it, he knew.

After a long time he drifted off into a troubled sleep, and dreams in which Balaclava and Kinveil were inextricably mingled, and it was Vilia who touched the match to the Russian guns, after Theo had pushed home the ramrod. Lizzie was wearing a scarlet crossbelt, and there were tears in her eyes.

Vilia was waiting, not patiently, when Sorley brought Lizzie and Guy – the first quaking and the second defiant – back from the hill in the light of a full, frosty moon. They had been out alone, unchaperoned, for eight hours. And with unbelievable stupidity they had missed dinner, so that their absence had caused remark.

Magnanimously, Guy was prepared to apologize. They had perhaps been thoughtless and had undoubtedly misjudged the time, but they had already been on their way back when Sorley found them. ‘There was a stag, you understand, outlined against the sky, and it was necessary that I should commit every detail to paper before my memory lost the
ambiance.
And then I prevailed on Miss Lizzie to take me to a corrie – I have that right? – where there was likely to be a stag with his hinds, and on our way we saw a most magnificent beast rising from a – a peat wallow. Quite superb! And then at the corrie
such
a scene,
such
an experience! Imagine to yourself two great stags locked in battle! The agility, the plunging and the circling, the...’

‘Quite!’ Vilia interrupted. ‘I do not require a description of something I have seen often enough for myself. What I require is an explanation of why you and Lizzie were on the hill at all. I am aware that in
artistic
circles’ – there was a wealth of contempt in her tone – ‘it may be perfectly acceptable for a young couple to elude friends and chaperons and spend a whole day together, but you must know that more conventional persons are inclined to put an extremely undesirable interpretation on such an escapade.’

‘
That
for conventional persons!’ Guy exclaimed, snapping his fingers in a very adolescent fashion. ‘How is it possible for spirit to talk to spirit, and soul to soul, in the presence of your “friends and chaperons”?’

He really was the most impossible young man. ‘Spare me these theatricals!’ Vilia snapped. ‘What I am concerned with is my granddaughter’s wellbeing!’

‘Ahhhhh! You suspect impropriety? Then you will permit me to say that I had not expected a reaction so
bourgeoise
from you, madame!’

Before Lizzie’s terrified eyes, her grandmother turned white with anger, but Guy went on, oblivious. ‘I must tell you that I worship the ground on which Miss Lizzie walks. So pure, so trusting! It is inconceivable that I should so much as touch the hem of her gown. You insult me by suggesting that I could ever harm her!’

‘All very fine, Guy.’ Vilia’s voice had dropped several tones, and flattened, as it always did when she was at the end of her patience. Then her arbitrary gaze swivelled towards Lizzie. ‘The fault, however, is not entirely yours. Perhaps Lizzie will be so good as to explain to me why, despite everything she has ever been taught, she was so vulgarly ill bred as to agree to this expedition?’

Lizzie could still remember, as a child, how distraught she had been when her mother was angry with her papa. It hadn’t happened very often, but it had petrified her. Once, in a rare moment of communication, she had said as much to him, but he had belittled her fears and told her that mama’s tantrums didn’t mean anything except that, perhaps, and just for a little, she wasn’t her usual happy self. Lizzie hadn’t been reassured. Always, and unfailingly, angry voices reduced her to a jelly.

If that had been all, it would have been enough. In the years of her growing up, few adults had ever spoken to her angrily, and they had always been disarmed by her patent misery. But she had discovered there was another kind of anger, that wasn’t loud but quiet and cold, and she had no idea what to do about it other than fall back on silence. It didn’t help much. Grandmother Vilia had never been unkind to her, but she was brisk and sometimes imperious, and Lizzie knew only too well that her own mute refusal to fight irritated her grandmother very much. Lizzie was terrified of her.

‘Answer me, please, Lizzie!’

Even the room they were in, Vilia’s private drawing-room, was always enough to throw Lizzie into a state of nerves. It was so cool, so stylish, so impeccably tidy, so unpropitious to clutter, whether of possessions or emotions. Vilia stood with her back to the window, and the moonlight reflecting off the water lit her hair with frosted silver and blanched the lines of her neck and cheek. Her mouth was set uncompromisingly, and her eyes were dark and unreadable.

‘I am waiting, Lizzie.’

Lizzie’s breath caught raggedly in her throat, but all she could do was stammer; she knew that never in her life before had she done anything so dreadful.

Vilia stared at her, as much depressed as angry. Lizzie was one of Nature’s victims, whose passivity would never bring her anything but hurt. Vilia had tried to rouse her, to armour her against the brutal realities of life, but she had recognized long ago that it was useless. If there was anything to be done for Lizzie, she was the wrong person to do it. She suspected that the only treatment Lizzie would respond to would be a slow, gentle, infinitely careful drawing out. She didn’t even know whether there
was
anything to draw out, but thought probably not. And she herself hadn’t the patience for it, or the self-denying heart. Only a cleverer Shona – or a less self-centred Lucy Telfer – could have done it. What strange quirk of heredity, she wondered, for the hundredth time, had produced a child like Lizzie? There was nothing of Gideon in her at all, except perhaps his detachment carried to impossible extremes. And Elinor, who had been neither clever nor astute, had at least had a kind of vivacity.

Gideon had married Elinor for her pretty face and taking ways, and had salved his conscience when she died by convincing himself, not that he had erred in his judgement of her, but that marriage was a state that wasn’t for him. He was certainly being slow to embark on it again. Shona had told her two or three years ago, with extreme confidentiality, that there
was
a lady, handsome and terribly intellectual, a newspaper writer. But nothing seemed to have come of it in the end. Vilia’s eyes on her granddaughter didn’t flicker. Lizzie was one of her failures, and she wasn’t used to failing. There were times when the girl exasperated her almost beyond endurance.

‘Lizzie!’

And then Guy began to bluster. ‘Madame, you must not speak to Miss Lizzie so! It is not right that you should persecute one so young, so sensitive. Indeed, I will not permit it!’

The lids heavy over her eyes, she turned her head unhurriedly towards him.’
You
will not permit it? My dear Guy, you have nothing whatever to say in the matter. Lizzie is not your concern.’

‘Mon dieu,
but she is! Madame, I must tell you that I worship and adore her!’

Heaven preserve her from callow youth! Vilia thought. He knew nothing
– nothing.
‘Do you, indeed? I am sorry for it, because there can be no question of your suit being acceptable. Your Uncle Magnus is exceedingly angry over today’s escapade, and has asked me to tell you that you are no longer welcome at Kinveil. Since your instant departure might give rise to precisely the kind of talk we wish to avoid, you may remain for another three days. No more than that. And during that time you will make no attempt to see Lizzie alone. Perhaps it would be as well if your friends left at the same time. That is all.’ She could hear herself, as if from another planet. If there had been someone to cut
her
ruthlessly off from Perry Randall, before their love took hold, how different her life would have been. A few months’ tears, perhaps, in place of forty years’ tragedy. Oh, Lizzie! Stupid little Lizzie. Do as I say.

And then Lizzie found her voice at last. ‘No. No, it isn’t all! You can’t send him away. I love him. I’ll
die
if you separate me from him!’

‘Don’t be foolish.’

The child was clinging to Guy’s arm as if she had no other support in the world. ‘That’s what you always say! “Don’t be foolish, Lizzie!” You think I’m stupid and weak, and that I don’t have any feelings. Well, I do. I have feelings just like anyone else. But you’ve always hated me...’ Vilia opened her mouth. ‘Yes, you have. You’ve always thought me contemptible. I know I’m not clever, like everyone else in the family, but Guy doesn’t mind. He cares for me, because I’m
me.
I love him and I won’t be parted from him. I won’t!’

Her auburn hair was tumbled after the day on the hill, and her skin flushed, but there was no expression at all on her lovely, immobile face.

Vilia stared at her, confounded. Never in the whole of her life had Lizzie answered her back. And
what
a time to start, when sober discussion might just have won concessions that defiance never would.

Guy, his face radiant, clasped his free hand over Lizzie’s, and gazed worshipfully into her eyes.

Two shallow children infatuated by the trappings of romance, he by her beauty and vulnerability, she by his poetical good looks and articulate self-esteem. The worst kind of match possible. Vilia said, ‘Please refrain from edifying me with such sentiments, Lizzie. They do you no credit. However, if you are sincere, I imagine that your Uncle Magnus might be prepared to reconsider the situation in two or three years, assuming that in the meantime Guy has made some progress with his career, and that you both feel as you do now.’

Lizzie exclaimed, ‘But it has nothing to do with Uncle Magnus! It is my father who is my guardian. I will write to him –
he
will support me!’

‘Do you think so? I am afraid, Lizzie, that even if your father did not have more important things on his mind at this moment, you would find his opinion in the most complete agreement with mine. You are too young to know your own mind yet, and Guy is not in a position to support a wife. I have no knowledge of what expectations he may have from his father, but I can assure you that he will certainly have none from Uncle Magnus unless he behaves in future with considerably more sense of responsibility and decorum than he has done in the past. No, don’t interrupt me! I wish to hear no more about it. Guy, you will go and join the company in the Long Gallery for what remains of the evening. Lizzie will go to her room.
That is all.’

When they had gone, Vilia sank into a chair and rested her forehead for a moment on forefinger and thumb. She was tired, and there was a steady throb in her head that made it difficult to concentrate, more difficult still to exert tact or understanding in a situation that filled her with a weary indifference. She knew she had mishandled it, but she scarcely cared. If today had done nothing else, at least it had confirmed Magnus’s rooted dislike for a young man to whom he might otherwise some day – just might – have bequeathed Kinveil.

‘Well, it’s perfectly simple!’ Lavinia exclaimed to the distraught young lovers. ‘You must do what my parents did. Run away! It’s quite legal in Scotland, you know. You can be married without any difficulty at all.’

Juliana gazed at her in awe. ‘Did your parents run away? I didn’t know that.’

‘Goodness, yes. I suppose Vilia must have been annoyed at the time, but it soon wore off. My mama says she couldn’t have been kinder to her, once the deed was done.’

‘Run away?’ Lizzie’s small voice was completely devoid of expression. ‘Oh, I couldn’t.’

But Guy, to whom the Middle Ages and tales of Gothic romance and courtly love meant more than the present ever could, grasped her limp hands and exclaimed,
‘Pourquoi pas
?
Why not,
ma mie
?
Why not,
ma petite fleur
?
Was I not born to be the knight who plucks the one perfect bloom in the garden of love?’

Juliana’s mouth was very slightly open, and Lavinia said, in a kindly aside, ‘The
Roman de la Rose,
you remember?’

Juliana didn’t. ‘Oh,’ she said.

‘I couldn’t,’ Lizzie repeated. ‘It’s wrong, I know it’s wrong.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ Lavinia said. ‘In the law of Scotland, you don’t have to be married in church, and you don’t need your parents’ consent if you’re over sixteen. Even if you just live together, that’s known as “marriage by habit and repute”. Then there’s marriage by declaration
de praesenti;
before witnesses, in other words.’ She ticked it off on her fingers. ‘And marriage by promise
subsequenti copula.
That means – oh, well, perhaps it doesn’t matter. Anyway, I don’t think it’s relevant. But you see, whatever happens, you’ll be legally married, so it
must
be all right.’

Three pairs of eyes were on her. ‘How do you know all that?’ Juliana asked.

‘Oh, pooh!’ said Lavinia airily. ‘Everyone knows it. Besides, I asked Peregrine James.’

‘Why?’

Lavinia cast her a repressive look. ‘Because I was interested.’

Juliana remembered that Lavinia had designs on Mr Harvey. Rounding her mouth into a silent ‘Oh!’ she reflected that Lavinia was really the most determined girl.

Lizzie said doubtfully, ‘But I would like to be married in church.’

Guy clasped her to his bosom. ‘You will,
ma mie!
You will.’

‘That’s all very well,’ Lavinia objected. ‘But it isn’t quite as simple as that. I wouldn’t
dream
of encouraging you to run away together unless you were to be married at once, and you can’t arrange
that
in a church!’ Her thin, vivid face was unnaturally virtuous.