Winsor, Kathleen (72 page)

Christmas
was a welcome diversion to her. The house swarmed With children, more of them
than ever: Deborah who lived in the country had come to spend the holidays,
bringing with her a husband and six children. Alice and Anne, though they both
lived in London, followed the Dangerfield tradition and came home with their
families. William returned from abroad and George came down from Oxford. Only
Jemima preferred to stay at her husband's home, but even she paid them a visit
almost every day, with Joseph always beside her —full of pride for his pretty
wife and so happy at the prospect of parenthood he must tell everyone he saw
the wonderful news. And Jemima seemed, if not in love with Joseph, at least
tolerant of his adoration—which she had not been before; pregnancy had given
her a kind of serene contentment. Her rebellion against the manners and morals
of her class was over, and she was beginning to accept and settle into her
place in that life.

Laurel
and cypress and red-berried holly decorated every room and filled them with a
spicy winter fragrance. An enormous silver bowl of hot-spiced wine, garlanded
with ivy and ribbons and floating roast apples, stood ever ready in the
entrance hall. And there was food in all the glorious ancient tradition:
plum-porridge and mince-meat pies, roast suckling pig, a boar's head with
gilded tusks, fat geese and capons and pheasants roasted to a crusty golden
brown. Every dinner was a feast, and whatever was left was distributed to the
poor who crowded at the back gates in vast numbers, baskets over their arms,
for the Dangerfield generosity was well-known.

Gambling
for money was traditionally permitted in all but the strictest households at
Christmas-time, and from early morning till late at night cards were shuffled
and dice rolled and silver coins clinked merrily across the tables. The
children played hot-cockles and blind-man's-buff and hunt-the-slipper, shouting
and laughing and chasing each other from one room to another, from garret to
basement. And for more than two weeks a stream of guests poured continuously
through the house.

Amber
gave Samuel a heart-shaped miniature of herself (fully clothed) set in a frame
of pearls and rubies and diamonds. She gave gifts almost as expensive to every
other member of the family, and her generosity to the servants convinced them
that she was the best-natured woman in the world. She received as much as she
gave, not because the family liked her any better than before, but to keep up
appearances for their father and for outsiders. Amber knew this but she did not
care, for nothing could have dislodged her now that he thought she carried his
child. He gave her a beautiful little gilt coach, upholstered in padded scarlet
velvet trimmed with swags of gold rope and numerous tassels, and six fine black
horses to draw it. She was not, however, allowed to ride in it but must go
everywhere in a sedan-chair—Samuel would take no chances with her health or the
baby's.

Twelfth
Night marked the end of the celebrations. It was late in the evening that
Samuel suffered another severe stroke, his first since the previous July.

Dr.
de Forest, who was sent for immediately, asked Amber in private if Samuel had
obeyed his earlier advice and she reluctantly admitted that for some time past
he had not. But she defended herself, insisting that she had tried to persuade
him but that he had refused to listen and had said it was ridiculous to think a
man of sixty-one too old for love, and swore he felt more vigorous than he had
in years.

"I
don't know what else I can do, Dr. de Forest," she finished, giving the
responsibility back to him.

"Then,
madame," he said gravely, "I doubt that your husband will live out
the year."

Amber
turned about wearily and left the room. If she was ever to get rich Samuel must
die, and yet she shrank from the thought of being his murderess, even
indirectly. She had developed a genuine, if superficial, love for the handsome,
kind and generous-spirited old man she had tricked into marriage.

In
the anteroom to the bedchamber she came upon Lettice and Sam, and Lettice was
in her brother's arms, crying mournfully. "Oh, Sam! If only it had happened
any night but this one! Twelfth Night—that mean's he'll die before the year is
out, I know it does!" Twelfth Night was the night of prophecy.

Sam
patted her shoulders and talked to her quietly. "You mustn't think that,
Lettice. It's only a foolish superstition. Don't you remember that last year
Aunt Ellen had the ague on Twelfth Day? And she's been merry as a grig all
year." He caught sight of Amber, pausing in the doorway, but Lettice did
not.

"Oh,
but it's different with Dad! It's that terrible woman! She's killing him!"

Sam
tried to shush her beneath his breath, as Amber came on into the room. Lettice
spun around, stared at her for a moment as though undecided whether to
apologize or speak her mind. And then suddenly she cried out:

"Yes,
you're
the one I meant! It's all your fault! He's been worse since you
came!"

"Hush,
Lettice!" whispered Sam.

"I
won't hush! He's my father and I love him and we're going to see him die before
his time because this brazen creature makes him think he's five-and-twenty again!"
Her eyes swept over Amber with loathing and contempt; Samuel's announcement of
his wife's pregnancy had been a serious shock to her, as though it were the
final proof of her father's infidelity to their dead mother. "What kind of
a woman are you? Have you no heart in you at all? To hurry an old man into his
grave so that you can inherit his money!"

"Lettice—"
pleaded Sam.

Amber's
own sense of guilt stopped her tongue. She had no stomach for a quarrel with
his daughter when Samuel lay in the room beyond, perhaps dying. She answered
with unwonted gentleness.

"That
isn't true, Lettice. There's a great difference in our ages, I know. But I've
tried to make him happy, and I think I have. He was sick before I came, you
know that."

Lettice,
avoiding her eyes, made a gesture with one hand. Nothing could ever make her
like this woman whom she distrusted for a hundred reasons, but she could still
try to show her at least a surface respect for her father's sake. "I'm
sorry. I said too much. I'm half distracted with worry."

Amber
walked by, toward the bedroom, and as she passed gave Lettice's hand a quick
grasp with her own. "I am too, Lettice." Lettice looked at her
swiftly, a questioning puzzled look, but she could not help herself; the
woman's smallest gesture would always seem false-hearted to her.

Samuel
refused to make his annual trip to Tunbridge Wells that January because his
wife's advanced pregnancy would not allow her to accompany him. But he did rest
a great deal. More and more he stayed in his own apartments with her, while the
eldest sons took over the business. She read to him and sang songs and played
her guitar, and with gaiety and affection tried to soothe her own conscience.

It
was customary for men with financial responsibilities to check over and settle
their accounts at the end of the year, but because of his stroke Samuel
postponed doing so until early in February. And then he worked on them for
several days. He had his wealth in goldsmiths' bills, stock in the East India
Company—of which he was one of the directors—assignments upon rents, mortgages,
shares in privateering fleets and other similar ventures, cargoes in Cadiz and
Lisbon and Venice, jewels and gold-bullion and cash.

"Why
don't you let Sam and Bob do that?" Amber asked him one day, as she sat on
the floor playing a game of cat's-cradle with Tansy.

Samuel
was at his writing-table, dressed in an East Indian robe which Bruce had given
him, and there was a
many-branched candlestick lighted above his head, for though midday it was dark
as twilight. "I want to be sure myself that my affairs are in order—then
if anything should happen to me—"

"You
mustn't talk like that, Samuel." Amber got to her feet, dropping the
cradle, and with a pat on the head for Tansy, she walked over to where he sat.
"You're the picture of good health." She gave him a light kiss and
bent over, one arm about his shoulders. "Heavens! What's all that? I
couldn't puzzle it out to save my bacon. My senses seem to run a-wool-gathering
at the sight of a number!" She could, in fact, not do much more than read
them.

"I'm
arranging everything so that you won't need to worry about it. If the baby's a
boy I'm going to leave him ten thousand pound to start in a business for
himself—I think that's better than for him to try to go in with his
half-brothers—and if it's a girl I'll leave her five thousand for a marriage
portion. How do you want your share? In money or property?"

"Oh,
Samuel, I don't know! Let's not even think about it!"

He
smiled at her fondly. "Nonsense, my dear. Of course we shall think about
it. A man with any money at all must have a will, no matter what his age. Tell
me—which would you prefer?"

"Well—then
I suppose it would be best for me to have it in gold—so I won't get cheated by
some sharp rook."

"I
haven't that much cash on hand, but in a few week's time I think it can be
arranged. I'll put it with Shadrac New-bold."

He
died very quietly one evening early in April, just after he had gone upstairs
to rest from a somewhat strenuous day.

In
a great black mourning-bed, Samuel Dangerfield's body lay at home in state. Two
thousand doles of three farthings each were distributed to the poor, with
biscuits and burnt ale. His young widow—much pitied because it was so near the
time of her confinement—received visitors in her own room; she was pale and
wore the plainest black gown, with a heavy black veil trailing from her head
almost to the floor. Every chair, every table and mirror and picture in the
entire apartment had been shrouded in black crape, every window was shut and
covered, and only a few dim candles burned— Death was in the house.

The
guests were served cold meats, biscuits and wine, and at last the funeral
procession set out. The night was dark and cold and windy and the torches
streamed out like banners. They moved very slowly, with a solemn stumping
tread. A man ringing a bell led them through the streets and he was followed by
the hearse, drawn by six black horses with black plumes on their heads. Men in
black mounted on black horses rode beside it, and there followed a train of
almost thirty closed black coaches carrying all members of the immediate
family. After that there came on foot and in their official livery the
members of the
guilds to which he had belonged and other mourners in a straggling line almost two
miles long.

Amber
could not go to sleep that night in her black room alone but insisted that Nan
sleep with her and that a torchere be left burning beside the bed. She was not
as glad to be a rich woman as she had expected she would be, and she was not as
sorrowful at Samuel's death as she thought she should be. She was merely
apathetic. Her sole wish now was that her pains would begin so that she could
bear this child and be freed of the burden which grew more intolerable with
each hour.

The
anteroom was crowded. Young men stood about in groups of two and three and
four, leaning on the window-sills to look down into the courtyard where a
violent mid-March wind racked the trees, bending them almost double. They wore
feather-loaded hats and thigh-length cloaks, with their swords tilting out at
an angle in back; lace ruffles fell over their fingers and flared out from
their knees and clusters of ribbon loops hung at their shoulders and elbows and
hips. Several of them were yawning and sleepy-eyed.

"Oh,
my God," groaned one, with a weary sigh. "To bed at three and up at
six! If only Old Rowley would find the woman could keep him abed in the
mornings—"

"Never
mind. When we're at sea we can sleep as long as we like. Have you got your
commission yet? I'm all but promised a captaincy."

The
other laughed. "If you're a captain I should be rear-admiral. At least I
know port from starboard."

"Do
you? Which is which?"

"Port's
right, and starboard's left."

"You're
wrong. It's the other way around."

"Well—it
won't make much difference, this way or that. There never was a man so plagued
by sea-sickness as I. If I so much as take a pair of oars from Charing Cross to
the Privy Stairs I'm sure to puke twice on the way."

"I'm
a fresh-water sailor myself. But for all of that I'm mighty damned glad the
war's begun. A man can live just so long on actresses and orange-girls, and
then the diet begins to pall. Curse my tripes, but I'll welcome the change—salt
air and waves and fast gun-fire. By God, there's the life for a man! Besides,
my last whore begins to grow troublesome."

"That
reminds me—I forgot to take my turpentine pills this morning." He brought
a delicate gem-studded box out of one pocket and snapped it open, extending it
first to his friend who declined the offer. Then he tossed two of the large
boluses into his mouth and gave a hard swallow to get them down, shaking his
head mournfully. "I'm damnably peppered-off, Jack."

At
that moment there was a stir in the room. The door was
flung open and
Chancellor Clarendon entered. Frowning and preoccupied as usual, his right foot
wrapped in a thick bandage to ease his gout, he spoke to no one, but walked
straight across and through the other door which led into his Majesty's
bedchamber.