Lovers' Vows (25 page)

“Yes, you have seen my gown.”

“I have not seen it on you. Oh, here they are already,” he said, as Jane and the Halls approached. Holly thought there was some little annoyance in his tone. She was aware as well of a feeling of disappointment herself. It gave way to outright foreboding when Swithin was seen, following behind the ladies.

He was bundled into his special greatcoat and helmet, that added so much to his unprepossessing appearance. How could anyone take him seriously, even with a Heron Hall to his credit? A curl had slid or, more likely, been carefully pulled down from under his helmet, to sit pasted to the middle of his forehead. It reminded her of a nursery rhyme. ‘When he was bad he was horrid.’ She feared she was to have a perfectly horrid trip home. Already the others were going out the door, and Swithin was grasping her arm in a possessive manner. She could not but compare him to Dewar, preceding them. He was tall and erect, outfitted in the highest kick of fashion, to be sure, but well within the limits of taste. He was not garishly different, like Swithin.

Just at the doorway, Dewar stopped to hold the door wide for them, giving her a chance to compare their faces as well. “Watch your behaviour, Swithin,” he said, with a joking smile. “And you too, Kate.”

Dewar’s carriage was waiting at the front door. As it pulled away, Swithin’s came forward to take its place. With a heart rapidly sinking to her ankles, she climbed inside. He didn’t even wait till the horses were off before grabbing her hands and smothering them in kisses.

“Please don’t,” she said, pulling away. This only urged him on to greater excesses. His arms, that looked always so ineffectual, got a hold on her shoulders that was impossible to break, and he pulled her against him.

“I will speak!” he announced, in quite a mannish voice. “You have trifled with me long enough, Kate.”

“Trifled?
Indeed I have not!”

“Heart’s delight! Then it is
not
a refusal. I
knew
in my deepest soul you could not be so cruel. You who have such concern for the poor and destitute could not treat me ill.”

“Swithin, I am not going to marry you,” she told him, pushing against his chest, and managing to wrench free from him.

“You must! My life and all my happiness depend on it. I have already planned our life together. I will change my ways for you, Kate. The master bedroom at the Hall is to be rehung in violet silk, so as not to overpower your retired colouring. You will give depth, meaning to my life, and I shall teach you to laugh and sing.”

“I know how to laugh and sing, Swithin, and you must discover a meaning for your life by yourself. I do not mean to marry, ever.”

He sulked and pouted for about fifteen seconds, then a smile, not at all happy, but resigned, noble, took possession of his face, making him look rather like a solemn rooster, but for the lack of a crest. “A mutual vow of eternal celibacy!” he said, in a wondering voice, tinged with tragedy. “What a superb idea!”

“Oh, indeed, I did not mean you must share my celibacy!” she said, startled at his rapid shift of ideas.

“Kate, my own Kate, you underestimate me. People
do,
only because I am short. Napoleon too was a short man, but only look how he conquered the world. For a time. Nothing is forever. But our vow will be forever.”

“It was not precisely a
vow,”
she pointed out but, as she realized how his imagining it was one kept him away from her, she let him chatter on in this vein, knowing instinctively he was play-acting. She recognized the accents and, at times, the very words of Altmore’s Romeo in his rants. She leapt from the carriage as soon as it reached Stonecroft. “Don’t trouble to get out, Swithin. You’ll take cold.”

She darted up the steps, to meet Dewar coming down after delivering Jane home. In her haste, she had not seen his carriage making the turn behind the house.

“How did it go?” he asked merrily.

“Wretched!” She continued without stopping, till Dewar’s arm caught her wrist and drew her back.

“Don’t tell me he turned violent on you! Swithin is a tame man in a carriage.”

“How would you know?”

“Surely he didn’t.... Just what happened?” he asked, startled out of his merriment.

“We have taken a vow of mutual celibacy,
eternal
celibacy at that!”

A slow smile formed on his lips as he glanced to Swithin’s carriage, where his cousin’s helmeted head projected from the window, waving a kiss to Kate, “That won’t last long,” he prophesized.

“It had best last till you get him away from here!” she said angrily, then pulled her wrist free and hastened into the house.

At last, the long-awaited day arrived. The momentous occasion was great enough to get Lady Proctor belowstairs by nine o’clock. She had her own particular problems to attend to. Should she go to the Abbey at noon with the girls for the orphans’ performance and remain through for the evening, or should she spend the afternoon preparing a toilette grand enough to impress the city visitors who were to attend in the evening?

It was the sort of problem that did not come her way often. She was not of a mind to miss a single moment of Jane's glory but, on the other hand, she had no desire either to take a change of outfit with her and make her toilette at the Abbey without her woman, nor to make a hasty dash home between performances. Sloth won out. She would spend her afternoon in the hands of her woman and the local coiffeur, and entrust Jane’s dressing to Holly.

“Do her hair the way we decided, Holly, with some of those silk orange blossoms entwined in it for the balcony scene. Dewar had a wedding on his mind when he bought orange blossoms. It is a certain giveaway of his feelings. And for dinner afterwards she is to wear the spider gauze outfit from the balcony scene, only unstitch those curtain things Swithin had put on the sleeves to flutter in the breeze. They will be sure to drag in the soup or knock over a wineglass.

"Did I tell you what Dewar said to her last night when he brought her home? So very particular, his bringing her alone. He wished a few moments alone with her, you see. He did not come up to scratch as we had hoped, but he said he would call on us in London. He said most particularly too that his aunt would sponsor her at Almack’s, the most distinguished club in London. We were concerned about getting her in. He is planning to take her up. That much is obvious.”

“Yes, I’ll see to her hair and the outfit, Auntie. I wonder if I might borrow your pearls for the play? Swithin thinks that, as Lady Capulet, I should wear some jewels.”

“What a pity, my dear, I plan to wear the pearls myself. But I have an old string of fish-paste pearls in my box I used to wear before Bertie ... before. Wear them and welcome. On the stage, no one will notice the difference.”

“Those are the ones I meant, Auntie! I was not asking to wear your real pearls.”

“Take the old ones and welcome. Keep them. They will look well with the nice black gown you are to wear. I should wear it to the dinner afterwards if I were you, Holly. It lends distinction. That was a good choice. Idle has a sharp eye in his head for fashion; I’ll say that for him. He can spot elegance a mile away. An excellent idea, having my black silk cut down for you. In the normal way, a youngish girl could not wear black to a party, but this will be a good excuse. Why, you might be putting ideas in Mr. Johnson’s head,” she added recklessly.

In fact, it did flit across Johnson’s mind that Miss McCormack would make a charming widow when he saw her outfitted in her new elegance. It was unusual to see her without a few layers of shawls around her shoulders that concealed her shape. The black gown was well cut. The pearls lent an unaccustomed touch of elegance, if they were not examined too closely to see that they were beginning to peel.

The recalcitrant hair, too, had been done up in papers to give it body, so that it held its place fairly well. It was not the word ‘widow’ that occurred to Swithin when he saw his forsaking lady-love enter the refectory hall.

He had passed the greater part of a sleepless night adding dramatic touches to his future proceedings as a man pledged to a blighted love. He would wear black himself for a while. His violet period had been a success; this would be even more tragical. He would be weary, dispirited; utter long sighs and cast heart-broken gazes on Kate. He rather feared the friends coming from the city would jeer at him, but to see Kate look so elegant, really quite pretty, cheered him. He did not wish to appear more than usually ludicrous, and a pledge of eternal celibacy to a woman who was not even pretty might have that effect. Outsiders would not have time to discover all of Kate’s marvelous qualities.

He had been pouring his delightful misery into Dewar’s ears just before her arrival. Dew, the dear boy, was being even more than usually understanding, and suggesting exactly what Swithin wished to hear—that ‘eternal’ in such cases meant a month, six weeks at the outside. Kate began walking towards them to remind Dewar to raise the white flag to indicate the afternoon performance. She could not fail to notice that Swithin was regarding her with an unaccustomed ardour. “Kate—stupendous!” he said, smiling sadly.

“You are admiring my aunt’s pearls,” she said, embarrassed at the compliment, the more so as Dewar was looking on, trying to hide his amusement. “They are false, I’m afraid.”

“No, I am admiring your aunt’s niece,” Swithin countered. “And what I am admiring in particular is not at all false.” This speech was accompanied by a searching examination of her anatomy.

“The flag should be raised, should it not?” she asked in a rush, to deflect any more compliments.

Rex came forward, eating an orange, to suggest that, by Jove, if these were meant as a treat it was a cruel prank to play on an orphan. He had tasted sweeter lemons. “You look very fine today, Holly,” he said, regarding her critically. “You ought to dress up more often. Take the shine out of them all. Where’s Jane?”

When Jane drifted forward in a cloud of white, it was clear that she too took the shine out of them all. But there was little time for flirtation. With all the preparations to see to—the filling of the orange baskets; the final primping of their outfits; the movable heaters to increase the hall’s temperature; the arrival of Mrs. Raymond’s dancing dogs, who had to be taken outside till the play was over; the final running over of troublesome lines—these and a dozen other details kept everyone busy.

When, at last, the orphans were shown into the hall, an agreeable sort of fatigued excitement had been achieved, Mr. Johnson pointed out to Holly that Billie McAuley was well enough to come with them. “We have got him a Bath chair, you see. An excellent contraption.”

“How are you, Billie?” she asked.

“My legs don’t hurt much now,” he replied. “Lord Dewar says when I can walk he’ll get me a pony.”

“Ha ha, one of Dewar’s little jokes,” Johnson explained. “When you can walk, you won’t need a pony, McAuley.”

“I won’t ever walk very well,” Billie pointed out, in a philosophical spirit. “But Lord Byron has got a foot like me, and it doesn’t stop him from riding or boxing or shooting or anything. Lord Dewar says he even dances sometimes, when only his friends are around, and he can swim like a fish. Anyway, I’d rather be like me than blind, like Milton. He was a poet, Miss McCormack.”

“I have heard of him,” she said, but she knew Billie would not have heard of him if Dewar had not taken the trouble to tell him, to buck up the boy’s spirits. “Here, we shall put you right in the front row, Billie.”

“I can make the chair go by myself. I have very strong arms,” he said proudly. With a great heave of the arms, and the fingers pushing the wheels, he could make it roll on a flat surface.

“Plucky little fellow,” Johnson said, looking after him. “Still, it doesn’t do to spoil him.”

“If
he
does not deserve a little spoiling, I don’t know who does, Mr. Johnson,” she answered.

“There is Dewar going to speak to him now. The boy’s head will be turned with so much attention.”

Dewar’s attention was not limited to Billie. He passed amongst the boys, making jokes with them, tousling heads, and even raising his fists, with one stocky specimen for a playful bout of fisticuffs. “Keep that right hand up,” he warned. “You’ll never be my bruiser if you can’t learn to keep up your guard.”

“Abrams was used to be a bully till Dewar took him in line,” Johnson told her. “He has promised to get him a spot in Jackson’s Parlour in London when he is sixteen, to train him up for a bruiser, if he behaves himself. He places more faith in reward than punishment.”

“Can I see your prads, like you
promised,”
a thin, slightly wall-eyed urchin begged, when Dewar passed his way.

“Run along. You’d rather talk to the groom than hear the madrigals, I daresay. But be back here in half an hour for the play. Even a groom should know his Shakespeare.”

“When did Dewar become so familiar with the boys?” Holly asked Mr. Johnson. “He spent his days rehearsing the play.”

“He often takes a run over to the orphanage after dinner, or just before. I have frequently gone with him,” Johnson told her.

From the orphans, Dewar went on to tease the orange girls, to adjust their mob caps and compliment them on their curls. It struck Miss McCormack that he was very much at home amongst his people, for a man who only visited once in two years.

She had not thought
Romeo and Juliet
a play that would give much pleasure to children. Indeed, certain passages had been altered or deleted entirely for the young afternoon audience. How much enjoyment they actually took from the tragedy it was not possible to know, but the children certainly enjoyed the outing. The local school children were there as well. A temporary teacher might have been found for one day, to allow Prendergast to say his prologues, but an occasional dose of Shakespeare was deemed good for them.

The youngsters, as well as that part of the audience composed of servants and merchants from the village, enjoyed the production, exceedingly. The females of all ages pulled out their handkerchiefs at just the right places. They fumed with fury at old Capulet (Sir Laurence Digby) for forcing Juliet’s hand into a match, shook their heads in disapproval of the old Nurse for suggesting bigamy, shrieked in thrilled horror when a sword found its mark in a duel scene and, in general, displayed the proper reactions to the scenes put before them.