The Demon Lover (26 page)

“I will make a wager. You will love this child more because of the problems of its birth.”

“You are a very worldly woman, Nicole,” I said.

She smiled at me and said softly: “It is the best way to survive.”

Madame Dupont gave her ball, which was to launch Emilie into society.

There were many guests and I was treated with great respect. My work was admired and Nicole was right. Two people gave me definite invitations to visit their houses and paint portraits.

I was effusively complimented on the miniatures. Madame Dupont had had them set in frames embellished with diamonds and rubies. She could hardly copy the Baron so blatantly as to choose sapphires, but I felt sure she would have liked to.

However, it was very satisfactory and I could see that I was really being projected into a successful career.

How gratifying it would have been but for the part the

Baron had played in my life. if only I had never met him! But then all this would not have happened if I had not.

I was meeting Nicole regularly and getting to like her more and more.

She was frank about herself. She told me she was lonely and wanted friendship. Perhaps she felt a little resentful about being cast off by the Baron (although she always insisted that he was not to blame and that the position had been understood from the first), perhaps she felt that we who had both known him would understand each other;

however, the friendship between us nourished, and the more I thought of her proposition the more it seemed that it was the only road open to me.

I left the Duponts and went to the Villefranche house. Madame Villefranche was a pretty little woman with a happy temperament and very contented with her lot. She gave me little difficulty and I was able to produce a very beautiful picture other.

I was feeling more calm now and no longer awoke in a cloud of horror.

Nicole had convinced me that with a little careful planning, I could come through the ordeal which lay before me. Moreover, I was beginning to feel something for the child, and I realized that if I were to discover it were all a mistake after all, my feelings would be very mixed.

Nicole was right. I should love the child when it came, and the thought of its coming gave me a strange sense of fulfilment.

By the time I had finished the Villefranche portrait I had made up my mind that I would go to see my father immediately. I would stay at home for a week and then come back to carry out my next commission.

During that time I would definitely decide what I was going to do.

Nicole said that was a wise procedure.

It was the beginning of October when I went back. I felt emotional as the train carried me across the Kentish country. I noticed that the hops had been gathered in. They would be storing them in the oast houses scattered across this part of the country; and now was the time for the fruit to be gathered in.

Ladders were propped against the trees and rosy apples and russety pears were being packed into baskets.

Home! I thought. I shall miss it. But it is not so very far away. I can come back sometimes. Nicole will think of something.

So much would depend on what happened within the next week. If I could bring myself to tell my father, he might have some plan. Perhaps he and I could go away together. No, that would not do. Besides, how could we live? I knew he had saved enough to live on in a modest way, but that would not include travelling and how could he live away from Collison House, and how could I live there with my child? It would be in the minds of everyone in the village even if they were kind as I knew my friends would be that my child was a bastard.

A warm welcome was awaiting me. How comfortable it was! More homely than in Evie’s day. A little untidy perhaps, but I could only repeat myself homely. That was Clare’s influence.

She came out with my father when I arrived and they both hugged me tightly.

“It is wonderful to see you,” said my father, and Clare echoed:

“Wonderful, wonderful. Your room is all ready. I have made sure the bed has had a good airing.”

“Clare is always fussing about airing.” said my father fondly.

“She coddles us, in fact.”

Clare tried to look severe, which was impossible.

“It is something I insist on,” she said.

I felt more grateful to her than ever. Having someone like Clare to look after everything at Collison House made my decision so much easier.

My father wanted to know all that had happened. I told him about the portraits I had done and the new commissions I had. , He was completely delighted.

“Splendid! Splendid!” he cried.

“It’s like a miracle. Who would have thought on the day we received that letter from France all this would grow out of it.”

Who indeed? I thought. And if only he knew what had grown out of it!

“It’s the most wonderful thing that could have happened to you, Kate,” he said.

“But for this you would have stayed here with me. Nobody would have given you credit for the work for years. It’s changed you, Kate. You even look different.”

“How different?” I asked.

“Ready to face the world. Ready to take all it offers you.”

“Can you see a difference then?”

“I know you so well, my dear. You now look and talk like the assured artist you are .. I wish I could have seen those portraits.”

“I knew they were good,” I said.

“You have been doing fine work for a long time now.”

“And what of you, Father? What have you been doing?”

“I do a little painting. I have taken up landscapes and can manage quite well. One doesn’t have to produce exactly what one sees. If you miss something you say, ” That’s art. This is not copying”.”

“And you enjoy this landscape painting? I must see some of it.”

“Well, we have plenty of time for that.”

“I have only a week, you know. Then I must go back. I’ve promised.”

“Yes, yes, of course. You have to paint as many miniatures as you can while this fashion for you lasts.”

“Do you think it is just a fashion?”

“It may not be. In fact I think you’re too good for that.

Let’s say it began as a fashion because of the glowing comments of a man whose opinion is respected in art circles . and in society. “

“I have to make it more than that, Father.”

“You are doing so. As I said: Do as much as you can now. I am glad you found time to come and see me.”

Now was the time to tell him. He looked almost contented. He had come to terms with his disability; he was finding satisfaction in his landscapes. He would not be able to continue indefinitely with them, of course, but they were forming a pleasant bridge for him. He was not going to be catapulted into blindness without having time to prepare for it. And I knew that my success had been the greatest help of all in this sad matter. He could bear his own disability while he could think of my carrying on the family tradition.

I thought in that moment: “No, I cannot tell him. I have to play it Nicole’s way.

“There is something I want to talk to you about, Father,” I said.

“Do you remember Nicole St. Giles?”

“Wasn’t she a friend of the Baron?”

“Yes. He’s married now. He married the Princesse. I saw something of the wedding. But I wanted to talk to you about Nicole. She is a very sophisticated woman and has a largish house on the Left Bank. I have become quite friendly with her.”

“A very pleasant woman, as I remember.”

“She is very pleasant. She has suggested that it would be better for my career if I took a place of my own in Paris … as that is where the work is. Her own house is too big for her and she has offered to let me part of it.”

He was silent for a few moments. I felt my heart beat uneasily. I thought: He doesn’t like it. But the cloud passed. He said: “You have to plan your career very carefully, Kate. You’re handicapped by being a woman. I’ve always thought that was foolish … foolish and unworthy. A good painting is a good painting, whoever does it. You would live there on your own, Kate?”

“Well, Madame St. Giles would be in the house … a sort of chaperone.”

“I see.”

“Sharing the house is her idea. There’s an attic which could be turned into a studio and a magnificent room where I could entertain clients.

Madame St. Giles knows many people and it is her opinion that if I just carry out commissions that come in the way they have so far there will be a time when I shall run short of them. I should then return to England . and obscurity. “

He lapsed again into silence for a few seconds. Then he said slowly:

“I think she may be right. It’s a bit of a venture. And, Kate, remember, if it doesn’t work you can always come home.”

I put my arms round him and held him close to me. How I hated deceiving him! But I simply could not tell him that I was going to have a child. He was happier now than he had been since the fearful discovery. He was seeking so many compensations. Because he had lost his keen vision I was taking on the family mantle. I was being given my chance which he realized I might never have had. Evie had gone and at the time that had seemed a calamity but lo, here was Clare, to bring a warmer atmosphere into the house.

He was happy as things were and I had made my decision.

It was moving to see how pleased they all were to have me home and yet in a way it gave me an uneasy qualm to think of what I had to do. Mrs. Baines had made the usual steak pudding, and as I knew the amount I ate would be reported, I did my best.

I had to hear what was going on in the village.

Clare knew a great deal about village life. She had thrown herself into it so wholeheartedly. Dear Clare, I sensed her delight in having

become part of a family, part of a com LOVER

munity. She must have been very lonely before coming to us.

Dick Meadows was fully qualified now and there was a new curate at the vicarage. Dick was doing a stint as curate somewhere in the Midlands and Frances was still keeping house for her father.

“Poor Frances,” said Clare with feeling, ‘that will be her life. “

Her eyes filled with tears of compassion. She was, I knew, thinking of what Frances’s life would be . looking after her father until she was middle-aged, and when he died it would be too late for her to have a life other own. A fate which befell many daughters and could have been Clare’s own.

“And what of the twins?” I asked.

There was silence. I looked from my father to Clare.

“There was a tragedy,” said my father.

“Poor Faith.”

“A tragedy!”

Clare shook her head and turned appealingly to my father.

“You tell her,” she begged.

“It upset Clare very much,” said my father.

“She was one of the last people to see her alive.”

“You mean Faith Camborne is dead?”

“It was an accident,” my father explained.

“You know Bracken’s Leap.”

Indeed I knew Bracken’s Leap. It was always forbidden to me when I was young.

“Don’t go near the Leap!” I could hear those words now. They had been used so often, Bracken’s Leap was that spot where the road wound upwards to a high headland. It rose stark up from the valley below. Someone had committed suicide there two hundred years before, and I had never known whether he had been named Bracken or whether it was so called because of the bracken which grew there.

“You mean Faith Camborne …”

“She fell,” said my father.

“We don’t know exactly whether it was an accident… or suicide.”

Q

“You mean someone may have …”

“Oh, no, no, no! Whether she did it herself or slipped and lost her balance …”

“But she would never kill herself. She was such a timid creature. Oh dear, what an awful thing. Poor Faith! It is terrible when something like that happens to someone you have known.”

I kept seeing Faith and I couldn’t see Faith without Hope. They were always together. Faith clinging to her twin as though her life depended on that support. Poor, poor Faith.

Clare was clearly too overcome for speech. I remembered how friendly she had always been with the twins.

“It’s dangerous up there,” my father went on.

“They’ve fenced it off now.”

“Rather like shutting the stable door when the horse has run away,” I commented.

“Oh poor Faith! What about Hope and the doctor and his wife?”

“Very cut up … all of them. It’s a good thing that Hope is getting married and going away.”

“Do you think that Faith … Do you think it was because of Hope’s engagement?”

“We don’t know,” replied my father.

“The verdict was accidental death.

It’s better to leave it like that for everybody’s sake. “

I nodded.

Clare was quietly crying.

I leaned over and touched her hands. She turned her swimming eyes to me.

“She was my special friend,” she said.

“They both were … but I think Faith specially … more than Hope. It was terrible.”

There was silence at the table. Then my father said: “I wonder what she would have done when Hope married.”

“Poor Faith,” said Clare, ‘she would have been lost without her sister.

”

My father sought to change the subject which so clearly upset Clare. He said: “Kate has had a wonderful offer. Someone she met in Paris has offered to rent her an apartment in the heart of Paris.

There is a studio and everything that is necessary for her work. She can take it for a while and see how things work out. Commissions at the moment are rolling in. “

Clare was smiling at me.

“Oh, Kate. I’m so happy for you. It is wonderful how everything is turning out for you. I love to hear about that party when that … what was he … Baron or someone .. told them all what a great artist you are.”

“It’s not more than she deserves,” said my father.

“How will you like living in a foreign city … away from everyone?”

asked Clare.

“I shall miss you all,” I told her.

“But I shall come home when I can.

And it seems to me the right. the only thing . to do. “