The Marquis of Westmarch (5 page)

“Yes, you are perfectly right.”

There seemed to be nothing else to say.

“Maid Rosalba,” said Meriel in a low voice, “you're a very pretty girl. And — and amiable.” He did not look at her as he said this.

“Oh Marquis, I shall — I shall —” She dropped her handkerchief, and Meriel bent down to pick it up for her, dark red in the face. It was only then that Rosalba became aware of the interest Saccharissa's guests were taking in her miraculous love-scene. I am a person of importance! she thought in a panic.

“I doubt there will be any dancing, there scarcely ever is at my mother's assemblies, but if there should be, I hope you will stand up with me.”

“Oh yes, indeed I should like it of … But as you say, there will be no dancing tonight,” she whispered, twisting her handkerchief. It was impossible that he should admire her, such things did not happen outside romances.

Meriel said awkwardly, “We shall have many a chance now, ma'am, with the season just beginning. Mistress Blowzelinda Sancroft Goodenow's ball is tomorrow — there is always a competition at Castle West between her and Mistress Calantha, you know —” He nodded towards a stout lady standing by the
door “— as to which of them will give the first ball of the season. Juxon has the very devil of a time, trying to settle who's to have the first use of the Moon Gallery!”

“Mr Juxon is not here?” Rosalba said, using a sophisticated voice.

“No, my mother don't like him. To my mind it would do no harm to invite him to this at least.”

Saccharissa's first and smallest assembly of the spring was an important event at Castle West, because it was the formal beginning of the town-season.

“M-marquis,” said Rosalba, “I cannot bear to think that I have displeased the Marchioness! I would do
anything
to win her regard, such regard as she c-could give such a person as I am, to be sure.”

“Would you? Maid Rosalba, don't be thinking she dislikes you.” At last, he took her hand and squeezed it, then dropped it, thinking he was calling far too much attention to her, which could only do her harm. “It is the merest irritation of the nerves. You should hear the scolds I have to endure! Tomorrow you will be ‘my love' and ‘dear child' again, I promise you.”

Rosalba did not tell him that the Marchioness had never called her either of those things.

It did not occur to the Marquis that his own mother could think him capable of such a piece of folly as marrying Maid Rosalba. But he was thinking of doing this, it was true.

Oh God, prayed Rosalba, let me become his mistress when I have married Mr Marling, Mr Marling will be able to do nothing, Aunt Philoclea will be well served, I love him so.

“Westmarch,” said a voice.

“Philander!” Meriel got up, and thumped his friend on the shoulder. Rosalba did not notice Philander Grindal, she only noticed that the Marquis seemed to be delighted at this interruption. “I think you must be acquainted with Maid Rosalba Ludbrook?” Meriel continued.

“Indeed, I had the pleasure of meeting you in this very room not a sennight ago, ma'am,” said Philander, leaning forward.

“Oh yes, sir!” She remembered him. Philander Grindal was well known at Castle West for being the Marquis's boyhood friend. He
was a small, blond, bespectacled man, very neatly and soberly dressed, who might have been handsome but for a bad snub nose.

The Marquis said, “I must be leaving you to entertain Maid Rosalba, Philander, just for the present. Ma'am, I hope to have the pleasure of talking with you again, later.” He bowed to her and whisked away before she could answer. She saw that he was making not for Lady Berinthia, or one of his mother's more important guests, but for Knight Auriol Wychwood who at present was looking vacantly over the heads of the company.

Meriel tilted half a glass of wine down his throat and said, “Wychwood, can you ride out with me the day after tomorrow? Tomorrow's impossible, but I want of all things to get out of Castle West for a few hours, and to have speech with you. We might dine at the Green Garter.”

“Yes,” said Auriol, surprised at Meriel's wanting to make such an arrangement in the middle of a party. “I shall be perfectly free.”

“I have a scheme to put forward,” said Meriel, looking round the room without seeming to see much. Wychwood thought him slightly drunk, but perhaps he was merely suffering over women. “I'll tell one of my people to bespeak a private parlour in your name, for I don't care to be known, you know.”

“No, to be sure not.”

The Marquis looked Wychwood in the eyes. “Till then,” he said. “I must go and do the pretty, you know. Shocking set of quizzes my mother invites to these affairs!”

Auriol watched him go, and saw him make his bow to some lady whom he did not recognise. Meriel's dilemma reminded him of what he himself had suffered at twenty, when his father had arranged his marriage to Maid Clorinda Blandy, and forbidden him to see the girl he had chosen for himself. Depression settled on him.

He had grown to depend on his blonde, clever wife, and had been wretched when she died in childbirth. But Lady Berinthia was not like Clorinda, and Auriol did not think that the Marquis would ever win her respect or learn to love her. Meriel was far too good for her, of course: she was ogling and worldly and she tried to be a wit.

Everyone had to make these marriages. Why had he foolishly helped Westmarch to slight Berinthia in these last few weeks of
freedom? He would marry her, and be first unhappy then indifferent, and she would never be so obliging as to die in childbed. And as for himself, Auriol considered that no woman in the world would really suit him. He had better marry again for money, as Meriel was about to do for the first time.

*

The Marquis walked through the chain of his apartments, through hall, saloon, antechamber, withdrawing-room, dining-room, and bedchamber, reached his closet and slammed the door. There were no servants about, for he insisted on their retiring at half-past ten if he was not entertaining.

The closet was his private room, and very few people had ever been in it. It was austerely furnished, painted white, and had a red tiled floor. On the walls there were sepia drawings of Longmaster Wood, and a portrait in oils of Marquis Elphinstone. This hung opposite Meriel's bed, a narrow, curtained bunk built into the thickness of the wall. He never slept in the huge flat bed next door, though he would have to do so if he married Berinthia. The Marquis sat down on a hard chair and reached for the brandy bottle which Esmond left on his writing-table every night. Then he thought of his prospective marriage and of Rosalba, and looked up at the portrait on the wall.

When he was a child, Meriel had adored his father, whose pride in him had been immense: but Marquis Elphinstone had died less than a week after their only, terrible quarrel when Meriel was twelve. Now Meriel held his father's memory in awe which was as remorseful as it was fierce, for deep down, irrationally, he believed that it was his behaviour which had killed him.

Meriel had refused to forgive his father for beating him. In a savage rage, brought on by discovering that Meriel was quite unhurt after a night spent in the open with a new hunter who was supposed to be far too strong for him and whom he had taken out without permission, Elphinstone had flogged his son over the shoulders with a riding whip. Three grooms had been present in the stable yard when this happened, which added to Meriel's natural pain, fear and fury, and to both men's sense of dishonour. Westmarch custom made it unthinkable for one gentleman to strike another, even if they were father and son, and the son was only twelve years old.

Made adult by the shock, Meriel had said, “Do not think I shall ever forgive you, sir.”

“Well, you can scarcely demand satisfaction of me, Meriel! It's a thousand pities there were witnesses, but don't be making such a piece of work of it. They shan't talk, I promise you. Come, forgive me, forget it.” Silence. “You deserved it!”

“I ain't your wife, sir!”

“Good God, boy, it was only because I was beside myself at having you restored to me, where is the insult in that?”

“Beside yourself! Ay. I wish you were dead, sir, indeed I wish it.”

Meriel, remembering this now, poured himself another glass of brandy, and swore till the tears came pouring down his face.

A few days after that quarrel, Marquis Elphinstone had fallen from his horse into an icy stream. He caught a chill which turned to an inflammation of the lungs, and was dead within a week. Juxon, summoned from Castle West, had been unable to save him.

Then Meriel himself had fallen ill. Juxon had been both physician and nurse to him, and had saved him. Often, Meriel wished he had not. He wished it now, as he looked at Elphinstone's portrait, and raised his brandy glass to his lips. Though he was thinking this and crying, there was a bitterly defiant look on his face. The Marquis tried to imagine what his father would have said about his present difficulties and his attitude towards them. Certainly he would have said among other things, “Mount little Rosalba as a mistress once she's safely tied up.”

Meriel remembered his mother's remarks after the end of the party in her rooms, only an hour ago. “My dear Meriel, I wish you will come to a point! The whole world knows you
must
make poor dear Berinthia an offer. Only think of her mortification, if you do not! Do not tell me you wish to
marry
some other lady?”

He should not be angry with her, but he was, he hated her, even though he knew that his father would have wanted this marriage and arranged it far more efficiently. He hated Saccharissa because he would have wanted, truly wanted, to marry Berinthia had it been possible. He did not believe in love-matches. But it was not possible: for during his illness after Elphinstone's death, Juxon had discovered that he, Meriel, was deformed.

The new Warden of the Westmarch Quarter and the members of the Grand Closet had just left Meriel’s dining chamber. The room smelt of Meriel’s clay pipe, the Warden’s cigarillo and Juxon’s violet scent. It had been a long meeting, and now the Marquis got up from his chair and went to open one of the windows. He had not felt the need of fresh air before.

As the wind blew into the room, Juxon said, “You might very easily forbid Mr Thomazin to smoke, Marquis.”

“You mean that I might very easily give up my pipe,” said Meriel. “And also that I ought never to have appointed him Warden. Not to mention that I ought not to open the window and subject you to a draught.”

“Well, Marquis, you might take to smoking cigarillos like a gentleman of quality, and not a horrid clay pipe. Dear me, the truth is I ought never to have permitted you when a child to keep stable company.”

“It was stable company enabled me to find life tolerable.”

“Ah, my dear, you hurt me when you say that.”

Meriel sat down on the windowsill.

“Well, those minutes should be enough to keep you out of mischief this afternoon, Juxon,” he said, swinging one leg.

“And how shall
you
be keeping yourself out of mischief?”

“Oh, did I not tell you? Wychwood and I are riding out along the coast path — dining at the Green Garter.”

“Alone?”

“Alone. Have you any objection?”

“You know full well what my objection must be.”

Meriel sprang down from his seat. “Juxon, if my peculiarity, my deformity, is so obvious, why is it that Philander, whom you
have allowed to be my intimate any time these ten years, has never wondered, never so much as wondered? To say nothing of my servants, what about them?” He hung over his Steward, gripping the side of the table. “Philander is a knowing fellow in his way, sir, more so than Wychwood. I tell you there can be no danger from him. Oh, what am I talking about, why should there be danger, danger of what?”

“Wychwood’s eyes may be opened more easily than those of men who have known you since a child.”

“Well, I tell you that I won’t be ruled by idiotic fears any longer, this is my private business and I mean to have him, have one friend at least besides Philander. And yourself, to be sure.”

“Thank you, Marquis.”

“Juxon, let’s not argue on this head just at present, there is something of real importance I wish to discuss with you before we have a nuncheon.”

Juxon smiled, and opened his mouth to speak, but the Marquis continued regardless, looking steadily at the other’s hairline. “It’s about this scheme of my mother’s to marry me to my cousin. Last night she all but ordered me to come up to scratch, said it was my duty, and so I’ve decided that — that the only thing to be done in the circumstances is to marry another lady — I think Maid Rosalba Ludbrook. You must know I cannot possibly marry Berinthia.” He drew breath. “Marriage with Maid Rosalba will be the greatest possible protection from further difficulties, and I’m telling you this because if I am to elope with her I may need your help. Do you understand?”

“What!” said Juxon when the Marquis had finished.

Meriel stood back. “Well? Will you not help me? Yes, I daresay it sounds as though I’ve run mad, but pray how else am I to escape from this damnable coil?”

“Simply, you must not offer for Lady Berinthia!”

“Oh, it’s as simple as that, is it? Didn’t you hear what I said? Do you not see that I must appear to be as other men?”

Juxon lowered his eyes, licked his lips, and thought quickly. “Her ladyship is the most meddlesome female in the whole of Westmarch,” he said at length in a normal voice, and raised his head to Meriel. “Of course you are quite right in saying that we
are in a most shockingly awkward position.” He fiddled with one of his quills.

“Just so.”

“It is of all things the most unfortunate!” Juxon fretted. “But my dear Marquis, you are not bound to the lady and you must know you cannot possibly marry anyone. Maid Rosalba Ludbrook! That dowdy little Maid of Honour? I thought she was betrothed to Mr Marling? Marquis, what is this maggot you have in your head? What a notion! Of course, you are not in earnest. You don’t need a wife!”

“Juxon, listen to me and don’t talk like a fool. If I don’t — make a pretence of marriage now, my mother will try again and again to push me into the arms of some eligible female, and I tell you I cannot face the prospect.” He did not feel able to discuss the problem of Rosalba’s being engaged to another man. That was a complication so unjust that he refused to think of it at all. “The strain is already very great, you know.”

“I know, my dear. Believe me, I know.” Juxon was still thinking hard.

“If I were to marry Berinthia and refuse to share a bed with her, before very long some — some tale of my incapacity would be the talk of Castle West,” the Marquis went on slowly, red in the face. It was as though he were explaining things to himself as much as to Juxon. “She would not think to conceal it, think it reflected ill on
her
, oh no! As for bedding her, it’s out of the question, do what I will she would guess the truth at once.”

“I understand,” said Juxon slowly. “But have you discussed this …?”

“Now Rosalba — Maid Rosalba — is an
innocent
, don’t you see? She would never find me out.”

Juxon laid down his pen. “Not perhaps for a month — a year — five years — but you could not keep her from all knowledge of the world, Marquis, and at last she
would
find out.”

The Marquis realised that this objection was sensible. When Juxon made sensible objections, often it meant that he was on the point of giving way.

“No. Not if I have a proper care. I shall be able to make some pretence at consummation, enough to deceive her thoroughly. Besides — I
wish
to marry her.” Meriel scratched his chin and
remembered more good arguments. Juxon, he saw, was embarrassed by his frankness. “She’s a nice bit of game and no one could think ill of me, as a man, for wanting her — though of course it will be scandalous to marry her. Juxon, you know it’s thought devilish queer that I have no mistress, I’m more than three-and-twenty. I need a woman.”

“Men suppose merely that you prefer your own sex,” said Juxon dryly, to show that he was displeased but not embarrassed by Meriel’s coarse praise of Maid Rosalba.

“My own sex! God help me!” He had suspected this, and he snorted with laughter.

“And will not own it even to yourself. Naturally, it is the greatest nonsense.”

“Oh, the devil,” said Meriel in a calmer voice. “Well, leaving that aside, or rather putting paid to such filthy
nonsense
, I fancy my credit won’t suffer overmuch if I marry to disoblige my mother. She has made herself odious to half the ton. I can think of several persons who would be delighted!”

“You have never given the appearance of being an undutiful son hitherto, Marquis. You must act in character.”

“I mean to marry Rosalba.”

“My dear Marquis, this is an addle-brained scheme and well you know it. You
must
live single. I pity you, Marquis, my heart bleeds for you, but indeed, you must! Is my affection, my sympathy, as nothing?” said Juxon. “Am I not a comfort in adversity?”

“And have the whole world speculate about my supposed unnatural tastes?” Meriel was walking round the room; he had found sitting still difficult all his life.

Disappointed that Meriel had not said he loved him as a father, Juxon said, “Marquis Valancourt never married, and so you will have a precedent, my dear.”

“His first heir was a brother whom he liked and besides him he had four nephews. I have Hugo and Florian, who’s a third cousin if you remember, and everyone knows that I detest the pair of them. Oh, I mean to
act
in
character
, very unnatural it would be in me not to try to cut them out!”

“Marquis, Marquis.”

“You see, you understand.”

“Yes. Yes. But the risk is too great, must be too great. Dear me, I wonder what your Maid Rosalba would think if she knew of your plans?” He paused, and Meriel searched for words. “Is it possible that in some fashion you have — er — fallen in love with this chit, Marquis?”

“She touches me,” said Meriel, taken aback, “poor little thing.”

“Ah, indeed! Indeed. A common enough case. Poor little thing!” sighed Juxon.

“What is a common enough case? Being a victim of one’s friends?”

“Marquis,” said Juxon, getting up himself, and going to rearrange a vase of forsythia which stood on a side-table, “do you mean to take Wychwood into your confidence about this matter, this afternoon?”

“Why do you ask?”

“I thought it possible that you might.”

“Juxon,” said Meriel, smiling, “you are by far more useful to me than Wychwood. If I have taken
you
into my confidence, what need have I of him and — and his likely indiscretions? If I can only win you over to my cause, sir! Come.”

The Marquis was disgusted with himself for pleasing Juxon with this gallant little lie. Meriel longed to be supremely honest, straightforward and sharp as a sword.

“Such manliness, such noble sensibility,” said Juxon, touching Meriel’s sleeve, “but my dear Marquis, of course it is impossible.”

*

The great gateway of Castle West faced south, and just beyond it lay the wealthy quarter of Castle-town. Against the north side of the thick castle wall there crouched a little, dirty slum full of Northmarcher immigrants, but this was fairly easy to ignore.

The Marquis and Knight Auriol left by main gate at half-past two, and rode through Castle-town at a strict trot. Meriel rode his favourite mare, Black Belinda, and Wychwood was mounted on a fine bay stallion of nineteen hands. Both wore short, buff-coloured riding coats, and wide hats with the brims turned up at the back.

Castle-town’s most fashionable shopping street, Dolphin Parade, ran alongside the eastern edge of a large public garden known as the Circus, which during the summer was full of carriages, saunterers, and people on horseback. As they came out
of the Circus and entered the Parade, Meriel and Auriol caught sight of Maid Rosalba Ludbrook and Maid Dorinda Udall. The two girls, accompanied by one of the Marchioness’s footmen, had just emerged from the circulating library patronised by Saccharissa. Both were looking rather tired.

The Marquis slowed his horse to a walk. He cleared his throat, wondering whether to greet Rosalba, and Auriol, seeing her, looked at him curiously. If I am to marry her, she ought at least to know it! Meriel thought. But he felt unable even to bow to her as he had bowed to all the ladies in the Circus whom he hardly knew.

Rosalba, who had been looking the other way, turned her head and saw him. It was then that Meriel fully realised that the girl had fallen in love with him, though she did not blush or grow pale but only gaped. Till now he had imagined simply that she would prefer him to Mr Marling, and would in any case scarcely feel able to refuse the Marquis of Westmarch.

“I see you have been fulfilling my mother’s commissions, ma’am,” he said after a three seconds’ pause. “She’s a great novel reader, ain’t she? Maid Dorinda, your most obedient!”

Both women curtsied and smiled.

“Yes, Marquis,” said Rosalba.

Auriol greeted the ladies while Meriel looked on.

“We must not detain you,” said the Marquis, as soon as Maid Dorinda had made a remark about the clemency of the weather. He was feeling ludicrously trapped, bound to both Rosalba and Berinthia, and wanted only to be alone with a man. Auriol, looking at him, guessed a part of this. He glanced at Rosalba, whose face was now shiny and pink under her hat, and absent-mindedly dug with his heels at his horse’s flanks.

Bows were exchanged as soon as Wychwood had quietened his stallion, then the two men rode on. Meriel was convinced that Rosalba’s eyes were fixed on his back, but in fact, they were not. Auriol, riding a few paces behind him, did have his eyes upon him.

The brusque way in which the Marquis had broken up their polite little gathering had disturbed him: Westmarch, though he was a little stiff in company, had never struck him as ill-mannered or unkind before. As they cantered out through the triumphal
arch which marked the eastern limit of the town, Auriol realised he did not merely like the Marquis. Unreasonably he almost loved young, innocent, friendly Westmarch, had a stronger feeling for him than he had ever had for any man; and though he did not wish him to make a girl who clearly adored him unhappy, he hoped that nothing would ever come of this clumsy flirtation with Rosalba.

Women could bring nothing but pain to a man of sensibility, he would tell Meriel that. Auriol’s face was as flushed as Rosalba’s had been by the time they reached the post-road, in spite of the sharp sea breeze.

Just before they left the road to make for the rutted track which ran along the cliff-top, Auriol slowed down his horse and looked back over his shoulder at Castle West. Meriel, still ahead, soon noticed the absence of cantering hooves behind him, stopped, and rode back quietly to join his friend.

The castle wall looked beige, not grey, in the butter yellow sunlight; and above it, the sky was hazy with smoke. Built high upon the spur of rock which edged the Westmarch fens, Castle West concealed the town on its southern flank from those who saw it from the north. It seemed to be a primitive fortress still, and only the minor blot of the north-side slum spoilt the impression it gave of ruling both the sea and the empty cornfields.

“All we see is yours,” said Auriol. His voice was thinner than usual, carried away by the wind.

“Nonsense,” said Meriel, though Wychwood’s remark was literally true.

The Longmaster fortunes were solidly based on the forty thousand acres of wheat-growing fields which three hundred years ago Meriel’s ancestor had drained and made fertile before seizing the Marquisate. Once Castle West had been an impregnable citadel, linked to dry land by a single causeway, surrounded not only by its wall and sea but by bird-filled reedy marshes.