The Emperor (39 page)

‘
God will help you, my dear. But – ' she stood back from
him to look into his face – 'what of Héloïse? I must ask just this once. How does she feel about it?’

So he sat down with her and told her everything, and it
poured out of him in a flood like tears, like blood from a
new wound, washing everything away, leaving him feeling
empty and weak. He knew that if he was to survive, he must
not think of her or talk of her again. This was the last time,
which must pay for all. Jemima listened, her hand crushed in his, and when it was over, they were both silent, and he gave
a little shuddering sigh.

‘So now you know everything,' he said. 'And now, I suppose I had better go and face my wife. Will she forgive me, do you suppose?'

‘
Yes, I think she will. She is a Catholic, and her principles
are firm.’

James made a wry face. 'I am to be forgiven because it's the Christian thing to do, am I?'

‘What more can you expect?'

‘No more, of course. It wasn't expectation, it was hope. And pride – but I can't afford pride now, can I? Well, then, let's get it over. Where is she?’

 
Jemima stood up. 'I think it will be better if you see her
here, first, where you can be sure of privacy. I will send her
to you.’

The wait seemed very long, and James had time to pass through a number of states of apprehension from nervousness to deep foreboding before the door opened and Mary Ann stood on the threshold.

Tall and pale and serene she was, in a plain dress of leaf-brown sarsenet, her fine hair taken up with tortoiseshell combs. He reflected that when he had first seen her, in her
father's house, she had worn clothes too elaborate, in
colours too rich, which had done nothing for her looks.
Being at Morland Place had taught her to dress, at least.

But then he looked into her eyes, and saw along with resolution and hurt pride, an apprehension as great as his own. Behind that cool, controlled façade, what sort of a woman was she? He had never troubled to discover; but he remembered unexpectedly how on their wedding night, he
had cried, and she had comforted him. Shy, she had been
that night, and despite her own nervousness, she had offered
him understanding. And he knew suddenly, without
knowing how he knew, that she had worn those rich elabor
ate clothes in her father's house, not because she had no
taste, but because they had been of her father's choosing,
and she was too kind to tell him that they didn't suit her.

As she stood hesitating on the threshold, Edward's dog
Leaky pattered up behind her and pushed his nose under her hand, grinning at James but making no movement to
leave her side to greet him. James raised an eyebrow, and
she said gravely, 'I have been adopted, you see.'

‘Yes, I see,' said James. Her light, careful voice gave no indication of her feelings: it was going to be hard for either of them to bridge the chasm between them. James took his courage in both hands. 'I wish, very much, to apologize to
you.' She made a nervous gesture of negation, and he gave a
grim sort of smile and went on, 'Please, let me say it. It
won't he easy, and if I stop, I shall lose my nerve. I have treated you abominably from the very beginning. I was unhappy, through no fault of yours, and I made you suffer for it – you most of all. I am truly sorry.’

 
There was a silence. She did not answer, and her expression did not change, and James felt a ridiculous disappoint
ment. Then he cursed himself for a fool. What had he
expected? That because he apologized she would fall on his
neck and become a different person? That she would
change miraculously into someone he could love, someone as like Héloïse as made no difference, and they would live
happily ever afterwards? That sort of thing only happened
in novels, he told himself with contempt. This was real life,
and in real life nothing was ever easy.

The tautness of expectation went out of him, and he
began to turn away. What must be done, must be done, the hard way, if not the easy way. 'Well, perhaps I should not
expect you to forgive me just like that,' he said. 'But in time,
I hope — '

‘I forgive you,' she said, and her voice was like a breeze moving in the upper branches of a tall tree, faint and light, hardly disturbing the coarse air near the earth, which he breathed. 'I forgave you long ago, before you ever thought to ask.’

He turned back to her, puzzled. 'Then — what?'

‘
You came here expecting something of me. You came to
take, not to give. You were so sure I would forgive you that when I didn't say anything, you were surprised. It was all in
your face. You are quite transparent, you know.’

He felt angry. 'I should not have thought
that
was
something to blame me for. If everyone was like you, it
would be very hard.' He stopped abruptly, hearing himself, and was shocked. 'I'm sorry,' he said.

‘
Yes, I think you are, but it doesn't go very deep, does
it?' she said. He held himself in check this time.

‘
Perhaps not. It is new to me.' He gave her a rueful smile.
‘But in time — with practice — ‘

She looked down at her hands. She was very young, and
alone, and had learned to tread carefully. 'What do you
mean to do?' she asked.

‘
Live here — make amends. Work hard. Be kind to you, if
you will let me.' She waited. 'I don't know, Mary,' he said, suddenly disarmed. 'Just — go on, I suppose. Try to do the right thing. I'm a sinner, I don't know much about duty.'

‘Duty,' she repeated, rather bleakly.

‘I need your help,' he said gently. She looked up at last, and met his gaze, and he saw, wonder of wonders, a blush
spread across her perfect alabaster cheek and a very
womanly confusion in her light-brown eyes. I have been
such a fool, he thought contritely, and something of it must
have been in his face, for she smiled suddenly, a short,
nervous smile, but a smile none the less.

‘I suppose I had better go and meet the rest of the household,' he said. 'Will you come with me?' He offered her his crooked arm, and with only a slight hesitation she laid her hand on it. It pressed no harder than a fallen leaf. 'I was
thinking, ma'am, that you ought to crop your hair,' he said
as they passed out into the hallway together. 'Oh no, don't look alarmed, I didn't mean it for a criticism. It's just that I
have thought for a long time that it would suit you so, and
be less troublesome to keep.'

‘I didn't think you had ever noticed my hair.'

‘
Yes, I have noticed. It is very pretty, fine hair, and not
all the pins in the world will keep it up for long. But if you cropped, it would chew off your handsome neck, and you
need never feel like Saint Sebastian again, stuck full of pins.’

She did not smile, but the hand on his arm rested just a
little more firmly. It was a start, James thought, the first
small step on the way to wooing his wife. It was not much to
put into the emptiness inside him, but it was something.

*

In the day-nursery there was a breathless hush as the three
little girls, round-eyed, watched the completing stages of the
wooden horse James had been making. Since his brief introduction by Stephen, he had taken to woodwork kindly, and found it a useful and soothing way to pass the hours which still often seemed long to him. The wooden horse was a splendid animal, solidly made from a piece of beech, handsomely carved and fixed on a wheeled base so that a small
person, sitting astride it, could propel herself along by
striking her feet against the floor.

The small person concerned was sitting with her enraptured nose perilously close to the glue-pot as she watched
 
her father gluing the real horsehair mane and tail into place.
Hippolyta sat a little further back, holding Flaminia, who was still young enough to have to be prevented from eating wood shavings or nails or anything else that came to hand.
Flaminia was a placid baby, which was fortunate, as Hippo
lyta, in her zeal to be a second mother to her little cousin, often lugged her about with her by the arms. The seat of
Flaminia's clothing was always grimed with the frequent and
forceful contact of her rump with mother earth, but she
never cried when she was bumped, and held out her arms
and smiled fatly whenever Hippolyta came into sight.
Further back still the nurse sat sewing and keeping a discreet
eye on things.

‘
There,' said James, sitting back to admire his work.
‘Now when the glue is dry, that should hold firmly enough
for you to be able to brush them out like a real mane and
tail.'

‘
He's lovely, Papa,' Fanny breathed. She herself had
chosen the horse's unusual colouring: piebald, boldly
marked, with blue eyes and a white mane and tail. 'When
can I have him?'

‘Not until Christmas, my love,' James said, and when Fanny protested, he said, 'You know it was always meant for a Christmas present. And besides, I have to make his saddle and bridle. You don't want to ride him bareback, do you?'

‘
Yes,' said Fanny promptly. 'I don't care. I want him
now.'

‘
You can't have him now, chick,' James said, and
watched the stormclouds gathering over his daughter's face.
Since his absence, she had grown not only very possessive of
him, but very demanding, as if needing to have it made up to her, that he had defected for three months. He sought for
something to distract her, and at that moment Hippolyta
said, 'Sir, Uncle James, could we go and see Brach's
puppies?'

‘Yes, of course,' James said with relief, and looked curi
ously at Hippolyta — Little Polly as she was often called, to
distinguish her from her mother — wondering if it was coincidence or an abnormally precocious tact 'We'll all go,
shall we? I'll just put the horse up here, so that it's safely out
of the way. Now then —’

Fanny demanded a pick-a-back, and rode downstairs on
his shoulders, and the nurse followed with Hippolyta,
carrying Flaminia to save her from the thirty-six separate bumps of the great staircase. Brach's puppies were hardly puppies any more, and their mother had long since abandoned them to return to Edward's heel, but they were being
kept in a separate pen until Edward decided what to do with
them. They were fine big pups, four dogs and a bitch, hand
somely marked, with their mother's brindles and their
father's dark ears. While the children were playing with
them, the doorway darkened, and James looked up to see Mary Ann standing there.

‘The servants said you were here,' she said. She did not
smile — she still rarely did — but her expression softened a
little in greeting. In the six weeks he had been back, James had worked very hard to breach the wall they had erected between them. He sat and talked to her, went walking and driving with her, shewed her the progress of his woodwork,
listened to her piano-playing. If he could have slept with
her, it might have hastened the reconciliation, but he could not bring himself to do that. He slept apart in the bachelor's wing as before, and if he wept at night in his narrow bed there, she was not to know.

The two things which helped them were their religious
observances, in which he was now as regular as she, and
love of Fanny. It was unfortunate, perhaps, that Fanny so
loudly and insistently preferred her father to her mother, but
Mary Ann shewed no sign of resenting it.

‘I'm afraid you've lost Leaky's devotion since Brach left the pen,' James said with a smile.

‘
He still comes to speak to me in the evening sometimes,
when I'm sitting by the fire,' Mary Ann said.

‘Aye, when you're sitting in the same room as Ned, and Brach is hogging his lap,' James pointed out. 'He's a fickle, ungrateful hound. You should have one of your own.’

He said it casually, but he saw the idea take. Mary Ann's
expression brightened. 'Do you think so? Do you think
Edward would let me have one? I know he means to sell them.'

‘
Does he? He didn't tell me that. Well, if he wants a
profit from them, I'll pay him a fair price, if you'd like one.’

She looked pleased with his generosity. 'Yes — yes I think
I would. It would be interesting to train a dog of one's own.'

‘
Which would you choose?' he asked idly, watching
Fanny tugging the tail of the bitch-pup and getting cussed for it.

‘I don't know — they're all so pretty,' Mary Ann said.
‘Perhaps the one with the white mark on its face — it has such
a comical look sometimes.’

James reached over and picked it up, and it paddled its legs as if it hadn't noticed the ground had gone away, and licked out indiscriminately at any parts of James that were within reach. 'Yes, it's a nice little brute,' he said. 'Good tempered, healthy — a good choice.' Mary Ann looked
pleased, but James did not notice. His attention had
returned inexorably to Fanny. 'I've often thought that Fanny ought to have a puppy,' he said. 'It's nice for a child to grow
up with a dog; and when she's a bit older, it will take care of
her.’