Through a Glass Darkly: A Novel (71 page)

   Diana strolled out of the house toward them, a huge hat shading her face and softening the fact that she wore too much makeup for the harsh sunlight. She also wore a gown cut in the style that Barbara had introduced; Barbara looked like a sylph in hers; Diana resembled several, but she possessed that supreme confidence some beautiful women retain in spite of extra lines and wrinkles and sags. In her own mind, she was always beautiful.

   "Diana," Roger said, meeting her halfway and bowing over her hand, "your visit is unexpected and pleasant. Come and sit with us. You know Philippe, of course."

   Philippe and Diana nodded coolly, each having long ago recognized the other as a worthy opponent. Diana had never once mentioned Philippe's duel with her son. But Philippe felt her knowledge in many cunning, cold ways.

   "I had thought to speak privately with you," she said to Roger.

   Philippe raised one eyebrow. "If you will excuse me, Lady Alderley, I have an urge to stroll along the river."

   "Prince," Diana said, purring, giving him her hand and smiling at him, "how understanding, how kind you are. And do take your time."

   She sat down in Philippe's vacated place. Nearby, footmen were setting up a table for tea under the shade of some oaks. A breeze lifted the edges of the white linen tablecloth as they attempted to lay it across the table. Swans, their long, slender, curving necks rising out of the cool, green weeds, clustered at the edge of the river. Diana saw Philippe clap his hands to them.

   "That is a lovely necklace."

   Roger's words startled her. Instinctively, she put her hand to it. "Barbara let me borrow it," she said defensively, before she thought. Then she collected herself to gaze sadly up at him. She spread her arms wide, a gesture Roger recognized a popular actress using in the last tragedy presented at the Haymarket Theatre.

   "Roger, you see before you a crushed woman."

   He saw before him a plump, still beautiful one, as ruthless and amoral as a tigress. He said nothing, but watched her gravely, his eyes narrowed slightly.

   She sighed dramatically. "My mother's heart is broken. You have heard the news, I know it. I am consumed with forebodings. Are you going to divorce her?"

   The question had the grace of a cannon shot. She was alert for his reaction. He caught his breath.

   "Understand my concern," she said quickly. "I must know."

   "Why? What possible business is it of yours?"

   Then he saw some emotion she was unable to control under the false ones she used so well.

   "Diana." He was staring at her, his face amazed, and then he smiled slowly, and for that moment, with his high cheekbones and blue eyes, he was completely beautiful, like an artist's dream of an archangel. "You love her.…Yes, she has that effect on people."

   Diana was suddenly restless, agitated, unsure of herself, as if he had caught her in a compromising position.

   "She is headstrong, stubborn, and will not listen to a word I say!" she said in aggrieved tones.

   "I know."

   She stared at him. Her mouth fell open. He was looking toward the river, and the expression on his handsome profile was somehow vulnerable, yearning, passionate.

   "No," he said softly, as if he were speaking to himself, "I am not going to divorce her…ever." He turned to her. "Amusing, is it not? But then life is, if one only has the perception to see it."

   "I will be damned…" she said slowly.

   "You probably will be. And I with you. But until then, have the grace to close your lovely mouth and say nothing more on this subject. I will not discuss it. Come, take some tea. I have brandy or claret for you, and you may tell me the latest gossip from Norfolk. How is Robert?"

   They made idle talk under the shade of the trees, almost as if her visit had been a social one, as if no nerves—from them both—had been touched. There was tea and cream and brandy and claret and hot scones and a mound of small iced cakes on a silver tray. Roger threw crumbs to a trio of greedy squirrels while Diana told him the gossip she knew and drank several glasses of claret and made the mound of iced cakes grow steadily smaller. Finally, there was a silence between them. Roger tossed a final crumb.

   "When is she returning?" he asked, unable to stop himself.

   And quite naturally, Barbara was once more the topic of their conversation.

   "Tonight."

   "And her plans?"

   "I do not know. To retire to Tamworth, I think. She would discuss nothing with me, though I did my best to help her. I told her she has only to lie low for a few months, but she does not listen. She is taking it harder than I realized she would. She is . . ." She had to stop, unable to find a word to describe her daughter.

   "Too sensitive?" suggested Roger. "Ashamed? Mortified?"

   "Whatever. I do not understand her. She did not kill the boy. You know, Roger, I am so relieved you are not going to do anything hasty. It is time she settled down and had some children. Surely you two could get along together for enough time to make a child or two. I have a feeling she might be happier with children. She always liked them…God only knows why. You lose your figure, your breasts leak, it hurts to have them, they are ugly and red–faced for years. Still, when they grow, sometimes they change. Barbara had so much spirit. She is hard underneath, like a rock. My arm would ache when I whipped her before I could make her cry even when she was a little girl. I wish Harry had her spirit. But he is all flash. No spirit. He is in debt, you know."

   "What young man is not?"

   "It is more than I had realized. Much more. I worry, Roger." She looked at him. He did not rise to the bait. He never did, but she never tired of trying. Usually she managed to hide whatever irritation she might feel about Roger's ability to ignore the fact that Harry existed. Today, however, the journey or the duel or Roger's perception of her true feelings or perhaps just the claret must have made her irritable because she said, abruptly, "I sent you a note over a month ago asking you to buy back my shares. Did you receive it?"

   "I am short of cash just now, Diana."

   "Send a note to your banker, and he will pay me. I need the money."

   "You distrust the market? Why, Diana?"

   She shrugged. "What goes up must come down. And I have no one but myself to depend on."

   "You have Robert Walpole."

   She was silent. Never had she mentioned the duel, the estrangement between him and Harry. If once she had, he could have refused her.

   "I will write the note; but you owe me a large favor, Diana, because it will stretch me to the breaking point to pay for your shares. So I warn you, I will collect on the favor."

   She squeezed his hand. "Trust me. Whatever you need will be yours. I cannot afford a loss just now. Somehow I am overdrawn, and I have already borrowed from Barbara, and Mother will not advance a farthing on my allowance. I may just have to make up my mind to marry again."

   "I am amazed. And Robert?"

   "What difference would marriage make?"

   "Yes. I see your point."

   "Oh, here comes the prince. I must go. I have never understood why you allow him about—ah, Philippe, I was just saying what a shame it was you took such a long walk. I had wanted to visit with you a little, but now I have talked Roger's ear off and managed to forget another appointment in the bargain. So I will leave you two gentlemen. No, Roger, do not get up. About that note—"

   "Montrose will send it to your lodging."

   "Excellent."

   They touched cheeks. Philippe bowed over her hand. He and Roger watched her walk back toward the house. The claret had put the voluptuous sway back into her walk. It was a sight to see, and both of them watched appreciatively.

   Philippe sat down. "What did she want?"

   "What does she always want?

   "I thought so. Where is she rushing off to?"

   "I would imagine she is going to see the Prince of Wales. Diana always plays all sides against one another, as I learned only too well before I married. But the Frog will be difficult to handle. He will croak with fear and offend the lovely maiden."

   Philippe stared at him. The happy mood was gone, but Diana's visit would explain that. What was not explained was the sudden restlessness, the yearning that appeared on his face and at the edges of his voice.

   Roger looked up at the sky, quoting softly:

   "Come live with me, and be my love,

   And we will some new pleasures prove

   Of golden sands, and crystal brooks,

   With silken lines, and silver hooks."

   He stood up abruptly and rubbed his chest. "John Donne, a major poet lost to the church, whom I admired in my youth. I am going to walk by the river awhile. No, by myself, please. Order more tea. Later we will go to Spring Gardens and listen to the birds—not that they can match these." He rubbed his chest again.

   "What is wrong?"

   "I have a pain. It must be love."

   The words were flippant, hard, no stranger than the manner in which he said them, walking away even as he spoke, as if he could not bear to be where he was another moment. Philippe watched him stroll into the coming twilight, that time when everything was so beautifully, so softly lighted, and over his own face came the terrible gray shadows of sorrow.

* * *

   A small boy, four years old, played in the ditch that ran along the edge of the main lane from Richmond to the tiny neighboring village of Petersham. Jane Cromwell, overseeing laundering—it was washday—wiped her face and noticed that her son was not in the yard with his brother and two sisters. Amelia and Thomas were tied to a large oak tree and the baby, Winifred, sat in the glorified chicken coop Gussy had made to hold her outdoors. But Jeremy was four, and he did not have to be tied to a tree or sit in a coop. He was old enough to be trusted. Still, her heart gave a funny leap when she did not see him. He was her firstborn, and as a fetus, his little presence growing inside her had taken her mind from her past and toward her future with Gussy. Jeremy was special.

   "Keep stirring," Jane told Betty, her maid, who was stirring clothes in a large iron pot of boiling water with a great oak stick. Betty came from Ladybeth Hall. She had a harelip, but not a bad one; her palate was not split, only her upper lip, but it was difficult to understand her. She was a good, obedient girl for all her deformity, but the other servants at Ladybeth claimed she was unlucky and would not work with her. Finally, the Ashfords sent her to Jane, reasoning that Gussy could cast out any bad luck with his prayers. Jane walked by Cat, her other maid, who sat on the porch churning butter. She could hear Cat mumbling, "Come butter, come. Come butter, come. Peter stands at the gate waiting for a buttered cake. Come butter, come." It was an old country charm to make the butter take. Jane sighed. Cat might have sweet red lips, none of them split grotesquely up toward her nose, but she was lazy and willful. Charming butter, when she had only been at it an hour. Cat was Gussy's Mary Magdalene, only all of Cat's devils had yet to be cast out. She could depend on Betty to watch the children, to see they put nothing they should not in their mouths or wandered away, but not Cat, who watched only men.

   She went to the white picket fence surrounding her yard and garden and saw Jeremy playing in the ditch along the lane. She smiled at the sight of his wayward hair, the seriousness of his expression. He was far away from her in his thoughts. She called his name, and finally he looked up.

   "You be careful," she told him. "And next time, tell me before you leave the yard."

   "Yes, Mama."

   Petersham was not large; there were only fifteen or so houses and the chapel, St. Peter's, next door, but when the court was at Richmond, many carriages made their way through on their way to Kingston, some six miles away, which was the corporate town of the county of Surrey. She always wor ried that Jeremy would be run over by a passing carriage. He did not hear as well as he should. Since birth, he had suffered from earaches, and she had spent so many nights walking with him in her arms while he screamed with pain that now she dreaded the least sign of a cold.

   "Jeremy, I am going to need you in a moment. Do not stray."

   "No, Mama."

   She smiled again at the high, clear sound of his child's voice. It reflected his heart. He was a good boy. Today, for instance he was helping her hang out the wash to dry. Before the day ended, there would not be a bush or tree or fence post that did not have wash drying on it. She hated washday, the laborious, tiring work of stirring the clothes over and over, the carrying of kettle after kettle of water from the pump to the kitchen fireplace to the iron pot, the stoking of the fire—though Jeremy fetched wood without complaint—the rinsing of the clothes in cold water, the wringing of them to take out excess water, the way there was never enough bush or fence post for the next load and she would have to hang clothes over the yews at St. Peter's next door. She was tired and her back hurt, and she needed rest, but that was not merely washday. She was with child again.

   Thomas was crying. Amelia had taken away his cloth ball (a gift from Barbara, who spoiled the children with her constant presents). Jane went to pick him up, untying him, cradling his fat body in her arms, wiping his dirty mouth with her apron. He had been eating dirt and grass. He was teething, and everything went to his mouth. At night he woke up crying, but Gussy, knowing her condition, usually put him back to sleep. Even so, she did not rest well. And not even her mother's favorite recipe for teething, black cherry water into which spirits of hartshorn had been mixed, was making Thomas any easier to live with.

   "I know, sweetie," she told him. "I know."

   She did know. She wished someone would pick her up and cradle her. Another child on the way…another birth, but she would not think of that now. There were months ahead yet in which to worry, to cry, to dread the moment until it came as she was swept up in its throbbing pain and the memories of it paled beside the reality. "I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception, in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children…." The pain grew and grew; your body was no longer your own; it heaved and pushed without you, pressure always mounting until you thought you would be split in two; your body's heaving becoming the focus of all the world until you whirled downward into nothing but pain and blood and screams….Afterward, she would lie there, feeling nearly dead and think, Never again, please, dear merciful Lord, never again. But childbirth was a woman's lot, her legacy from Eve's sin, and it was God's own commandment to be fruitful and multiply. And Gussy was so good. He prayed throughout her childbirths. He sobbed in her arms when it was over and said, "If I could take the pain from you, Janie, if I could just take the pain," and she thought, If you just could.