An Introduction To The Eternal Collection Jubilee Edition (90 page)

Mistral drew a deep breath. Somehow she knew that events of the greatest importance hung on her reply.

‘That is not really a difficult question,’ she said in her clear, sweet voice. ‘To give up something that is wrong is always the right thing to do, however hard it may seem, however many difficulties there may be in the way. One must always try not to hurt other people. One must always give them the greatest possible consideration and kindness, but there is something more important than their feelings, however dear they are to us. In doing what is right we are doing the will of God, and that comes first. We must do what is right, however great the cost to ourselves or – to other people.’

Stella threw back her head and it seemed to Mistral as if she threw a great burden from off her shoulders, then she said quietly,

‘Thank you! I knew you could help me – you are good!’

9

Violet Featherstone moved restlessly about her sitting room. It was a very attractive room with windows opening out onto a balcony from which there was a magnificent view of the sea.

Wisteria hung over the balustrade in long purple tendrils, and from two ancient stone urns, which Violet had discovered broken and forgotten in some peasant’s garden, pink geraniums cascaded in luxuriant profusion.

The Villa was furnished with period pieces brought from England and there was none of the gaudy, ornate pomp which so many residents in the South of France thought desirable. Violet had always loved beautiful things. She had an inborn instinct for what was good, and Eric’s considerable fortune had enabled her to indulge her taste.

But today Violet had no eyes for her own possessions. She moved from the Sheraton bureau to the Knole settee, from an Adam console table to the window and back again without seeing any of them. She was thinking of one person and one person only – Robert Stanford! It was the middle of the afternoon and still he had not called on her. She guessed that in all likelihood he was out riding and alone, nevertheless it was a departure from their usual routine and with a sudden fear she began to recollect the times recently when Robert had seemed less eager for her company and to add them up to a formidable total.

When he had first come to Monte Carlo but a few days after her own arrival, it had seemed that he could never see too much of her and that the days were too short for all the things they had to say to each other. But slowly, so that she had not realised it until now, he had changed. She could not explain even to herself how it had happened. It had been so gradual, and intent on hiding the depth of her own feelings from him, she had not noticed the change in his.

Now, twisting her hands together as she walked up and down on the valuable Persian rugs with which the room was carpeted, Violet knew there was a barrier between them, a barrier of reserve and unspoken secrets.

What was it and how had it come to be erected? She could not answer the question even to herself. She only knew that Robert was different, Robert, whose tempestuous, exciting love making had swept her off her feet, was now quieter, his impetuosity gone.

Why had she been so blind?

She should have been alert, perceptive enough to notice the very first severance in the links which bound them together. She should have been on her guard, knowing that her power over him was never as strong as she would have herself believe.

She caught a sudden glimpse of her own reflection in an ancient gold-framed mirror which hung on one wall. She looked old, with a frown between her eyes, her lips drooping. She threw back her head defiantly – this was no way to captivate a man or to keep him enraptured. But her eyes were still frightened and uneasy.

Always, all through her grown up life since she had discovered her power over men, Violet had been the one to tire first. Men had found her irresistible. It was she who exhausted their talents and their charm to the point where each became just another familiar face and one which inevitably began to bore her. Never had she had to fight and scheme to keep a man in love when once his heart had been laid at her feet. It had all been so easy. She had merely to smile and he was enraptured, she had merely to beckon and he followed her eagerly – too eagerly at times to make the effort worthwhile.

But Robert Stanford was different. She had known that from the first moment when they were introduced at a ball. He asked her for a dance, then said quietly,

‘Why have we not met before?’

She looked up into his face and knew only too well what he was feeling, with a tumult of excitement the quiet, conventional question covered. She, too, was wondering how life had continued for so long without him, how anything could have seemed amusing or gay when he was not there. She had known then, as the music started and he held out his arms, that she was surrendering herself to far more than an invitation to a waltz.

And she had determined that night, when they had danced tirelessly until the dawn, that she would marry him.

She had not thought of anything save her own desire for Robert and of his for her. She had not known at first how rich and important he was. She had known nothing of his family, of the famous house that he owned or of his vast circle of friends.

She had heard of Cheveron, of course, for it was as much a part of England as Windsor Castle, but she had not realised or else had forgotten to whom it belonged, and she had not for a moment visualised what an important part it was to play in her life.

Often when she and Robert were together and she was striving to bewitch him and make him utterly and completely her captive, she had thought it was only Cheveron which stood between her and her goal. Robert talked of his home so often that she knew full well that it was not only the background of his life but a very part of it. It was Cheveron which fought her, Cheveron which stood for all the things she could never give him – respectability, local prestige, the respect of his own class, the admiration of his employees, and more than that, much more than that – children.

She had known almost from the first that the task she had set herself would not be an easy one, but Violet had always had courage, the type of moral courage which laughs at chattering tongues and the narrow, confining codes of social convention. But it was only as she grew to know Robert better that she realised how deeply rooted he stood in his traditional environment. She had rebelled against the smug pomposity that was an inescapable part of her father’s ducal home in Lincolnshire. But Robert had no wish to rebel or to escape from anything that was Cheveron.

It all came back to her so vividly, for she had been born and bred in just that very same atmosphere which she knew existed at Cheveron. There were the tenants who had served the Great House generation after generation, the employees who for centuries had relied on the same family for their livelihood, their jobs passing from father to son as part of their natural heritage. There was the Church built in the Park, its Living in the gift of the Lord of the Manor, its huge carved pew set apart for him.

There was the Home Farm from which employees in the Estate obtained free milk, the gardens which meant free vegetables to the same number of families, the laundry where many of the girls first started their domestic service, the stables, the carpenters’ shops, the Estate Office – all creating a world within a world, a state within a state, with one interest, one ambition – service to the Great House.

Little things, trivial things, but all meaning so much when they were added together. The Great House was an institution, too, for many others. For the neighbours who would drive over for dinner parties, come to tea on Sundays and attend the big annual garden party when all the County would be invited. They had almost a language of their own, too, in their knowledge of local gossip and local customs. The conversation was invariably the same, Violet used to think.

There would be trouble between the M.F.H. and a farmer who was incensed because the foxes had eaten some of his hens, there would be arguments about the shooting prospects and the right way to rear pheasants, gloomy predictions about the crops, optimistic hopes of a new hunter or a litter of puppies, and a general agreement that the country as a whole was ‘going to the dogs’.

How well Violet knew it all! How much she had hated that life, and how glad she had been to escape from it! Yet Robert loved it. She knew he did from the warmth of his tone when he spoke of his home. She could hear the added depth in his voice, see the affection in his eyes.

Yes, Cheveron was her rival and it was perhaps a more dangerous one than any woman could have been. Cheveron demanded of Robert his whole future. Could she be strong enough to hold him? Until this moment Violet had never doubted her power or her ultimate triumph. Now she was not sure.

Three o’clock and still Robert had not come! What could have kept him? She thought of the mornings when he had called her from the garden before she was properly awake. She found it difficult to get up early. She was usually tired after their late nights and she liked to sleep until nearly luncheon time. Robert had teased her for being a ‘lazy bones.’ and in her complete confidence in herself she had not been afraid that he would think that her sloth was due to her years.

That was the truth, of course, for as she grew older she did find things more tiring. At Robert’s age she had been able to dance all night and be riding in the Row at ten o’clock, but now she could hardly bear the sunlight on her face before midday. Why should he know that? She had made every effort to do exactly what he wished, always remembering to tease him a little by her unexpectedness, by an elusiveness which would promise a thing one moment and refuse it the next.

Invariably they had lunched together, although it had never been spoken of as a definite rule, for Violet was too clever to allow anything between them to degenerate into a monotonous custom. As luncheon time approached Robert would say,

‘If you have not a better invitation, I hope you will honour me.’

And she would smile at him and answer,

‘Just for once I will cancel my other appointments.’

Those luncheons had been such fun. Meals eaten together at the little cafés down by the harbour, meals at the big prosperous hotels at Nice, picnics when they went high up the mountains and ate with a wonderful vista of the Côte d’Azur lying far below them.

They had laughed and had been happy –
happy
, Violet thought, until just recently when there had been a tiny cloud on the horizon, a shadow between themselves and the sun of their happiness. Robert had been more grave, his laughter had come less spontaneously from between his lips. But Violet had thought that perhaps this new solemnity was a good thing. She imagined that he was considering asking her the question she longed to hear from his lips, and because it would be unlike him to make a proposal of marriage lightly, he was therefore in anticipation more serious and less light-hearted.

Now she knew that her judgment was at fault. Yet he had seemed so devoted, so desperately in love that she had believed not only what he had told her but what she wanted to believe with her whole heart.

Suddenly Violet heard a bell tinkle. Robert at last! She glanced towards the mirror and saw that already the frightened look had vanished from her face. How silly she was to imagine things! There was doubtless some very reasonable explanation as to why he could not come earlier, but now that he was here all would be well. She must be gay and bright and amusing. Men had no use for dismal women who complained.

She patted her hair into place and gave a last look at her face in the mirror, then slipped across the room to stand in the open window looking on to the balcony. He must not think that she had been anxiously awaiting his arrival. She must appear at ease and indifferent, as if not for a second had she been perturbed or worried by his failure to arrive earlier.

She heard the door of the room open, but she did not turn her head. She heard it close and still she went on looking out to sea, knowing that she made an attractive picture in her leaf-green dress, the sun bringing out the chestnut lights in her well-arranged hair. There was a little cough.

‘Hello, Violet!’ a voice said.

She swung round, the astonishment of her expression almost ludicrous.

‘Eric! What in the world are you doing here?’

The words burst from her lips, she was so surprised. Her husband smiled deprecatingly.

‘Sorry if I startled you, old girl. I came over from Nice.’

‘Nice! Really, Eric, I could not be more astonished if a balloon had dropped down the chimney.’

‘So it appears,’ Eric Featherstone smiled, ‘but I wanted to have a talk with you.’

Violet realised they were both standing with half the width of the room between them.

‘Come and sit down,’ she said, moving towards the sofa.

As she watched him seat himself, she thought he was looking well.

Eric Featherstone had no pretentions to good looks, but he would never be mistaken for anything but what he was, an English gentleman. Six feet two in height, slightly stiff in his bearing, there was something quietly authoritative and reliable about him which made both strangers and animals trust him instinctively. He was nearly fifty and there was hardly a grey hair on his head. He had, too, the healthy weather-beaten complexion of a man who spends most of his life out of doors.

‘What can you be doing at Nice?’ Violet asked when finally they were both seated on the sofa. ‘I thought you hated the South of France.’

‘It isn’t much in my line, as you know,’ Eric replied, ‘but Uncle Harold is dead. He died about three weeks ago.’

‘Not really?’ Violet exclaimed. ‘I must have missed it in
The Times
. I never can remember to read the Deaths column. Fancy his being dead at last. We always thought he would live to be a hundred.’

‘He died two days after his ninety-first birthday,’ Eric said. ‘I couldn’t be particularly sorry, for the old man had had a good innings.’

‘Sorry’ Violet exclaimed. ‘He was so disagreeable, so mean, that I don’t think anyone could be hypocritical enough to pretend to be sorry. But what has that got to do with your coming to the South of France?’