Lament for a Lost Lover (13 page)

“What do you know of her?”

“Please come away from here. Let us go where we can talk.”

“Come to my room,” she said.

I felt a wave of exultation. I knew I had come just in time and had averted a tragedy. I felt flushed with triumph and sure that I could talk to her, reason with her, turn her away from this dreadful thing she had been about to do.

She took me to her bedroom. It was smaller than the one I shared with Harriet. It had the remains of some grandeur, though like the rest of the
château
it showed signs of shabbiness.

She sat down and looked at me helplessly. “You must think me mad,” she said.

“Of course not.” How should I have acted if I had found that Edwin loved someone else?

“But it is so weak, isn’t it? To find life so intolerable that one is ready to give it up.”

“One should consider those left behind,” I pointed out. “Think of the effect it would have on your mother, on Edwin … and Charles … He would never forgive himself.”

“You’re right,” she said. “It’s a selfish gesture … when there are those who would suffer. It’s a sort of revenge, I suppose. One is so hurt one looks about to hurt others … or at least one doesn’t greatly care if they are hurt.”

“I am sure when all these things are considered, you would not take that sort of action. It was something you contemplated on the spur of the moment.”

“If it hadn’t been for you I should be lying down there on the stones … dead.”

I shuddered.

“I suppose I should say thank you for saving me from that. I should feel grateful, but I am not sure that I do.”

“I don’t want you to feel grateful. I only want you not to do it again. If the impulse came to you and if you stopped awhile to consider …”

“What it would do to others …”

“Yes,” I said, “just that.”

“I don’t want to live, Arabella,” she said. “You don’t understand. You are lively, attractive, people like you. I am different. I have always been aware of being unattractive.”

“But that’s nonsense. It is because you retire into yourself and don’t try to make friends that you have this feeling.”

“Edwin is so good looking, isn’t he? I noticed it in the nursery. It was always Edwin people noticed. My parents showed their preference. So did our nurses. Look at my hair … straight as a poker. One of our nurses used to try to make it curl. But half an hour after it emerged from the curl papers, it was as though I had never endured the discomfort of them. How I hated those curl papers. They were significant in a way. They meant that all the efforts in the world couldn’t make me into a beauty.”

“Beauty doesn’t depend on curl papers. It comes from something within.”

“Now you’re talking like the priests.”

“Oh, Charlotte, I think you’ve built up this aura round yourself. You’ve made up your mind you’re not attractive and you tell everybody so. I should be careful. They might believe it.”

“It’s one thing I have been successful in then, for they do.”

“You are wrong.”

“I am right … proved to be by … this.” Her voice broke suddenly. “I thought he really cared for
me
. He seemed so sincere …”

“He did. I know he did.”

“So it seemed. She only had to beckon.”

“She is exceptional. It is unfortunate that we came here. Sometimes I wish …”

“She is evil.” Charlotte was looking at me steadily, and her eyes glowed with prophecy. “She calls herself your friend, but is she? I sensed the evil in her … the moment I saw her. I didn’t know she would take Charles … but I knew she would bring disaster. Why did you bring her here?”

“Oh, Charlotte,” I cried, “how sorry I am. How I wish I hadn’t.”

She softened suddenly and looked at me with real affection. “You must not blame yourself. How could you have known? It is I who must thank you for saving me from that folly.”

“We are to be sisters,” I said. “I’m glad of that. At least this has brought us together. Let us be friends. That is possible, I know.”

“I don’t make friends easily. When I was at parties before we came here, I was always the one in the corner, the one who was only wanted when there was no one else. That seems to be my role in life.”

“It is you who make it so.”

She laughed bitterly. “You are stuffed with homilies, Arabella. I think you have a lot to learn about people. But I am glad you were there tonight.”

“Promise me this,” I said. “If you ever think of such a thing again, you will first talk to me.”

“I promise you,” she said.

Then I rose and went to her. I kissed her cheek. She did not respond but she coloured faintly, and my heart was filled with pity for her.

She said: “It isn’t going to be easy, is it? Everyone will know that he has gone. Poor Mama, he was her hope. A third son, not much prospects, but what can we hope for for poor Charlotte?”

“There,” I said. “Self-pity! It’s not going to be like that in the future, Charlotte.”

She looked at me disbelievingly.

“Don’t forget,” I said. “You promised me.”

When I returned to my room I felt shaken. I was glad Harriet was not there. My happiness with Edwin made me understand Charlotte’s grief. She must have loved Charles as I did Edwin. It was unbearable … Thank God I had been on the spot.

Poor Charlotte! My new sister! I made up my mind I was going to care for her.

I saw very little of Charlotte for the next few days. I had a notion that she was avoiding me. I could understand that. Naturally she would feel embarrassed by what had happened and I would remind her of it. Though when I did see her a warm glance passed between us, and I glowed with pleasure thinking of the good I would bring to Charlotte when I was married to Edwin. I would give parties for her and find a husband who would be so much better than Charles Condey.

Then the letters arrived from Cologne … earlier than we had expected. My parents had written:

Our dearest daughter,

Your news fills us with joy. We have been so anxious about you. Everything is so difficult in view of the times we live in. And now this has come about. Lord Eversleigh shares our joy. He is a charming man and there is no one we would rather have as our son-in-law than Edwin.

Lady Eversleigh will tell you the news and this may mean a change of your plans. Rest assured, dear Arabella, that if Edwin and you agree to the suggestion, you have our blessing. She will explain everything to you. Our love, our congratulations on this wonderful thing that has happened. We are assured of your happiness.

Your loving parents,

Richard and Bersaba Tolworthy.

I was a little bewildered by the letter but was not long left in doubt. I had scarcely finished reading it when one of the servants came in to tell me that Edwin was asking that I join him in the salon.

I went down at once. He was standing by the window, and when I came in he hurried towards me and took my hands in his. Then he drew me to him and held me fast.

“Arabella,” he said, his face against my hair, “I shall be going away very soon.”

“Oh, Edwin,” I cried, all the joy in being with him deserting me. “When …”

“There are two weeks left to us,” he said. “So … we are going to be married immediately.”

“Edwin!”

I withdrew myself and looked at him.

He smiled brightly, but I fancied there had been a faint cloud on his brow which he hastened to dispel.

“It is what they wish,” he said, … “my parents … and yours. …”

“And you, Edwin …” I heard myself say in a rather small, frightened voice.

“I? I want it more than anything on earth.”

“Then so do I.”

He picked me up, and as my feet were swept off the ground he hugged me.

“Come,” he said, “let us go and tell my mother.”

Matilda Eversleigh’s feelings were mixed. She was overjoyed that the marriage was to take place so soon and at the same time apprehensive about Edwin’s journey overseas.

“There must be no delay,” she said. She knew of a cleric who would marry us and he should be sent for at once. The smaller of the two salons should be transformed into some semblance of a chapel and the ceremony would be a simple one.

I could not believe this was happening. Such a short time before I was in Château Congrève and had never heard of Edwin Eversleigh. Now I was to be married to him. I thought of the children who had been left behind and wondered what they would think when they heard the news.

We should just have a week or so together before Edwin left. I felt life was moving along too fast for me to savour it fully.

But I was happy … as I would never have believed I could be. I was deeply, romantically in love, and it seemed fate was determined that nothing should stand in the way of our union and was in fact rushing us madly towards it.

Edwin and I rode together, talked together and made plans for the future. Soon, he said, we were going home, and home was Eversleigh Court. There we should begin our married life, and it must be soon, for they would not be sending him to England if they were not almost certain that the people were ready to rise against Puritan rule and recall the King.

There in Eversleigh Court all would be well with England … and with us.

The days flew by and yet there was so much to do in each of them. I was exhausted by bedtime and usually fell fast asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow. I was glad, because I did not wish to talk to Harriet. Since my encounter with Charlotte I had felt aloof from her. I thought she had deliberately set out to attract Charles, with what tragic consequences I knew, because I had helped to avert them.

I woke up one night and was aware that Harriet’s bed was empty.

I called her name softly but there was no reply.

I lay there wondering where she was. I could not sleep because I was so uneasy.

It was just before dawn when she crept in.

“Harriet,” I said, “where have you been?”

She sat down on her bed and kicked off her shoes. She was wearing her nightgown and a wrap over it.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “I went down into the gardens and walked a bit.”

“At this time of the night!”

“It’s not night. It’s morning. I feel sleepy now.”

“It’ll soon be time to get up,” I pointed out.

“Then I should get some sleep before it is.” She yawned.

“Do you often … do that?”

“Oh, often,” she said.

She threw off her wrap and pulled the bedclothes up about her.

I waited awhile. Then I said: “Harriet …”

There was no answer.

She was either asleep or pretending to be.

The smaller salon had been converted into a chapel and Matilda Eversleigh had indeed found a priest who would marry us.

It was a simple ceremony, but I could not have been more enthralled if it had taken place in Westminster Abbey.

As Edwin took my hand I felt overcome with emotion because he was my husband and I his wife.

I was so happy I wanted to sing a paean of praise to the fate which had brought him here at this time.

Matilda Eversleigh—now my mother-in-law—had determined that the wedding should be celebrated in as grand a manner as was possible in the circumstances, and she had invited everyone within travelling distance. The guests were mostly the people who had been present during the house party, and during the feast which followed the ceremony, there were inevitably references to Romeo and Juliet.

I was like one intoxicated. I was unable to savour my happiness because I could not really believe it was happening.

The future seemed perfect. I was married to the man with whom I was passionately in love; my family approved absolutely and their only regret was that they could not be present; my new family had received me warmly. Matilda purred with pleasure every time she looked at me. I had had a warm letter of affection from her husband; and with even Charlotte (who, I must confess, had retired into her shell and had become as aloof as she had been when we first met), I had managed to form a special relationship.

In such a mood I retired with Edwin to my bridal chamber.

As I prepared for bed I thought of what I had read in my mother’s journal of the differences between her and her sister, Angelet. My mother warm and passionate, her sister frigid, fearful of this side of marriage. I knew that I should resemble my mother in this respect. And I was right.

How I loved Edwin. How kind and tender he was! And how happy I was to love and be loved. I had never imagined such happiness as I experienced during that week of marriage.

It was true that over us hung the threat of separation. The fact that he would soon have to leave was the very reason for a hasty marriage, but Edwin’s nature being what it was, he did not look beyond the day or even the hour, and he carried me along with him.

I did not see so much of Harriet during those days. Naturally I no longer shared her room, and when I did look in to the one we had occupied, she was rarely there. Of course we met at meals but then there were others there. I felt there was a subtle change in her. I had never seen her anxious before, and I could not imagine her so, for she had always seemed to have a blind faith in her future, but there was a shade of something in her expression when caught unaware that made me a little uneasy.

I determined to talk to her, and as we left the table one day, I whispered to her that I must do this. She nodded and we went up to the room we had shared.

“Harriet,” I said, “are you worried?”

She hesitated. “No,” she said at length. “I confess, though, that I am wondering what I should do next. Here are you facing a lifetime of married bliss …” Her lips curled in a way that sent shivers of alarm through me because it implied that she did not believe in that blissful lifetime. “And I … where do I come in?”

“You could have married Charles Condey.”

“How can you, secure in your love match, suggest that I should take something less?”

“I’m sorry, Harriet.”

She lifted her shoulders. “It’s no fault of yours. You happened to get born into the right family, a matter for which you can neither be blamed nor praised. Let’s be serious. I have been wondering what I shall do now. Life has changed, hasn’t it? We are no longer at dear, old Château Congrève where I should use my talents in the schoolroom.”