Until the Colours Fade (7 page)

A silence followed, only broken by the chirping of small birds sheltering in the conservatory from the cold outside. Charles was alarmed by the strange expression on Helen’s face.

‘Why have you told me this?’ she whispered. ‘To make me wretched? What possible gain can there be in my knowing?’

‘Bear with me, Helen,’ he murmured, knowing that the
critical
moment had arrived. Now he could no longer delay telling her his plan. His eyes gleamed with excitement as he leaned towards her. ‘Should you try to force a separation now, Harry could not resist your demand, if you threaten to make his
behaviour
public.’

He watched her face intently, not knowing what to expect. When she spoke, the soft sadness of her voice contrasted strangely with the harshness of what she had to say.

‘You must think me desperate indeed to dare suggest such a dishonourable course to me.’

‘I only do so,’ he cried, ‘because I cannot bear to see you
humiliated
.’ He gazed at her with tender entreaty. ‘Let me talk to this doctor, Helen. I will say that, unless he goes on with his divorce and tells Harry that he is going to, I intend to inform his superiors that he is taking bribes. To avoid the loss of his medical licence, he will oblige me.’

Helen shook her head and frowned.

‘How can it help me if he does cite Harry? A wife cannot seek a divorce on the grounds of adultery alone.’

Charles’s hopes rose again with what he took to be
acquiescence
on her part. He turned to her, his normally impassive face glowing with animation.

‘Tell Harry that only you can prevent the case being brought. Explain your hold over the man. If you do that, I’d stake my life Harry will consent to a separation in a month or two and make you a generous settlement. He has too much to lose to dare gamble on whether you are in earnest. Everything’s on your side – Harry’s reliance on old Braithwaite, the election …
everything
.’ He jumped up unable to hide his feverish excitement. ‘Your chance may not come again. A few months’ time and Harry will snap his fingers at any threat of scandal. You must act now or not at all.’ Her thoughtful silence maddened him. ‘What do you say, Helen?’

She hung her head for a moment and then said quietly:

‘I will not pretend to maidenly outrage at your proposition. I can’t tell you what I think now. I hardly know myself. I must have a few days to consider.’

‘You will send word then?’

‘Yes.’

Charles walked towards the doors, exulting in his success. Standing with his hands clasped behind his back – a pose which concealed his mutilated fingers – he said:

‘Now perhaps you will appreciate my mention of the servants. Harry knows his present danger well enough. It would suit him to be able to produce trumped-up evidence against you if you prove awkward.’

‘I have nothing to conceal.’

‘Much can be made of little,’ he replied with a grim smile. ‘I would suggest that after this meeting you receive no gentlemen if you are alone. I would also advise you not to sit for your portrait, if that is your intention.’

‘Nobody would believe that I would….’ She left the sentence unfinished, seeing his sceptical expression. ‘Harry would not stoop to using perjured statements,’ she ended, regaining her composure.

‘If I am to help you, Helen, I think you should abide by my advice,’ he said gently.

‘Very well,’ she sighed, ‘I will do as you ask, although I know you are no friend to Harry.’

‘If I were, you would hardly trust me.’

Taking her silence for assent, Charles bowed to her and pushed open the doors. On reaching the Red Drawing Room, he did not bother to say anything to Strickland, but picked up his hat and cane and left the room. On his way to the stables, his
elation
was so great that he would have thrown his hat into the air or slashed the bushes with his cane, if he had not feared being observed.

When Helen returned to the room, Tom could see that
whatever
Crawford might have said had made a deep impression on her. Her former gaiety and sharpness of observation had given way to a self-absorbed and indifferent mood. He almost felt that she had forgotten his presence until she sat down in a chair close to him and said absently:

‘I fear that I shall after all be too much engaged during the next few weeks to sit for you.’

Tom looked at her aghast. She had made this devastating
announcement
with the distant unconcern that might have been appropriate for a remark about a change in the weather or the unexpected addition of another guest for dinner. The cruelty of the volte-face astonished and enraged him.

‘If your ladyship would rather another artist …’ he
replied
with icy control, deliberately leaving his sentence
unfinished
.

‘I told you your work pleased me,’ she replied sharply. ‘I have not changed my mind. The timing is all that is in question.’

‘Your ladyship knew that I would be leaving for London in two weeks and told me distinctly that you could spare the
necessary
….’

‘Perhaps even you have overlooked things on occasion, Mr Strickland,’ she cut in, evidently annoyed that he should have pressed her.

‘Indeed,’ he conceded with a show of contrition. ‘I hope your ladyship will not think me unreasonable if I ask you during which month at least I should expect….’

‘I’m afraid I cannot tell you anything at present.’

Although Tom thought he could detect a hint of apology in her voice, her refusal to give him even the vaguest commitment convinced him that he had been rejected. If she had any intention of employing him she would surely prefer to guess now and change the dates later rather than say nothing. No reason could explain her behaviour satisfactorily, except an inability to tell him to his face that she had changed her mind. The initial shock had passed, and his hands shook with anger as he took his sketch book and ripped away the top three pages.

‘In case any further events prevent you sitting at all, please allow me to leave these with you as some reward for what will then prove to have been a wasted hour.’ He got up and placed the sketches on his chair. Now he was eager to leave as quickly as possible. The room with its boulle tables and scantly appreciated works of art made him want to shout his disgust.

‘I will keep them carefully, Mr Strickland.’

Tom picked up his hat and moved towards the doorway, where he turned.

‘It may be unbecoming of me to make such an observation, your ladyship, but it might be less painful for any artist you may consider commissioning in the future, if you withhold your appreciation until you are able to make some firm undertaking.’ His memory of Goodchild’s treatment of him added to this rebuff, made his lower lip tremble.

She rose and came several steps towards him, and said very softly:

‘Mr Strickland, not everything is always just as it seems.’

‘I have had proof of that today,’ he returned, refusing to be won over by the slight hint of pathos and appeal in her voice. How delightfully capricious to make a riddle out of a straightforward rejection; how amusing to try to make a man feel that his fall from favour is in some obscure and mysterious way impossible to explain; how enigmatic. Perhaps she thinks I will blame myself in the end, he thought bitterly, shutting the door behind him.

Alone, Helen raised clenched fists to her face and pressed them against her eyes. She did not suppose that in Strickland’s
position
she would have behaved very differently. She cursed Charles and her husband silently and then with a sinking heart remembered what had been said in the conservatory. There were few things that she desired less than being beholden to Charles Crawford. But then, if Charles could be so resourceful, might she not be the same? The steward’s books must surely have some record of payments to a Manchester physician. They would look quite innocent there. Men paid dearly for their health,
particularly
those like Harry, who set such store on physical prowess. She could discover this doctor’s name; yes, and see him too … herself. She breathed deeply, feeling suddenly sick as she
remembered
Charles saying that he could not bear to see her
humiliated.
Perhaps he would not have to bear it after all.

Not long afterwards she heard the sound of raised voices coming from the hall; the members of the hunt were returning. She rested her forehead against the cold marble mantelpiece for several seconds and then went out to meet them, a smile already on her lips.

Three miles from Hanley Park was Leaholme Hall, a smaller house but two centuries older, although the Crawfords had owned it for a mere seventy years. When the first baronet had bought the hall the trees in the park had been wastefully and wantonly cut down, leaving the place naked and unsheltered on its low eminence, and since then his successors had done little to remedy this beyond planting a few scraggy poplars and
light-leaved
birches, which now formed an interrupted screen to the south-west. The only old tree near the house was an ancient cedar, whose dark foliage conveniently obscured the modern brickwork of the new wing. Two stories high for the most part, with small leaded panes set in mullioned windows, the house was too low and rambling to be imposing, and too large to be
idiosyncratically
homely, like so many smaller Elizabethan halls and manor houses.

As his gaze passed from the dark outer hedge of the topiary garden to the small clock tower above the stables, Magnus slowed his horse to a trot. His heart was full of misgiving and, apart from his eagerness to see his sister, he took little pleasure in his homecoming. In any case Leaholme Hall was his home only in the most limited sense, since it, like his father’s title and most of his possessions, would finally pass to Charles as Sir James Crawford’s heir. But, as Magnus rode under the shadow of the squat central tower, resentment of the inferior prospects of a younger son had little to do with his despondent mood; the roots of that lay in the host of memories summoned up by the
creeper-covered
walls of his childhood home.

Even as children Magnus and Charles had been markedly
different
; Magnus devoted to his mother and sister; Charles, four years his senior, concerned only with an assiduous emulation of their father. When Charles had gone to sea as a boy of thirteen, Magnus had remained at home, rarely seeing his brother for more than a month or two every three years. The navy had also separated Magnus from his father who, like Charles, had
disapproved
of his remaining at home; but Magnus’s mother had encouraged him to do so and had employed a succession of tutors rather than have him sent away to school.

Magnus had been sixteen when his father took command of the blockading squadron engaged in suppressing the West
African
Slave Trade. His mother, in spite of her younger son’s pleas, had gone out to join her husband. Six months later Magnus had opened his father’s letter telling him that she had died of fever. The dangers of the African coastal towns had been well-known, and Magnus had never forgiven his father for allowing her to go. At Oxford, the following year, Magnus had embarked on what an outsider might have thought a frenzied course of
self-destruction
, but which was in truth aimed at his father. Sir James had considered him a coddled and over-sensitive youth, and now Magnus set about showing him something different.

More innocent, because of his sheltered upbringing, than most of his contemporaries, Magnus had at first been forced to assume a cynical air of sophistication to avoid being hurt and ridiculed; but, before long, the pose seemed to have become the reality. Working not at all, drinking to excess, and gambling with a
recklessness
unusual even among the richest aristocratic set, Magnus had gone down with no degree and debts of over two thousand pounds. His father had settled them on condition that his son took a post in the colonial service. The best Indian regiments being considered too expensive, he had been bought a
commission
in the Ceylon Rifles. He had served with distinction and had satisfied his conscience by testifying against the Governor of the colony at a Commons Select Committee Inquiry into the recent disturbances there. Now, seven years after he had sailed from Southampton, he was returning home with little more than the sum raised by the sale of his commission – returning to live at his father’s expense while Sir James’s term as Admiral on the North American Station lasted. His future seemed uncertain and ominously empty.

On learning from the butler that Captain Crawford was not at home, and that Miss Catherine had been riding earlier in the afternoon, but might by now be back at the stables, Magnus
immediately
made his way there. She was not in the yard, so he walked on towards the thick hawthorn hedge enclosing the two paddocks. He opened the gate of the smaller one but did not at first see his sister. In the centre of the field, a groom was ringing a colt. A bolster had been strapped to the animal’s back to get him used to carrying weight, and he was lunging and dancing round at the end of a long halter, vainly striving to dislodge the
unfamiliar
object. As Magnus glanced to his right, he saw Catherine watching the proceedings from the gate leading into the adjacent
paddock. He shouted to her and then started running across the rough grass.

They embraced on meeting, and Magnus, finding himself close to tears, could not imagine how he had felt such gloom
approaching
the house. In a neat black riding habit and soft
dove-grey
hat with a feathered plume, Catherine stood before him, and suddenly his time away seemed a brief interval of weeks not years. She smiled at him, cheeks flushed with excitement, and took both his hands in hers. The same vivid blue eyes, the same silvery blond hair dressed in ringlets, the same Catherine after seven years. The same, he repeated to himself, as if seeking
conviction
. Yet, even at this moment of meeting, he could not forget that George Braithwaite had proposed to her. Twenty-five, thought Magnus, and she was eighteen when I left.

As they walked in the direction of the house, Catherine turned to him and squeezed his arm.

‘You must stay ever so long, Magnus.’

‘I’m not going back,’ he murmured.

‘The hero of Kandy not going back?’ she laughed, evidently suspecting a joke until she saw the seriousness of his face. ‘But why?’ she asked in astonishment.

‘I sent you the extracts from my evidence printed in
The
Times.
’

‘I read them.’

‘Then you know why I can’t return. The very men who praise me to my face for doing what I did, snarl at me behind my back.’

‘Poor Magnus.’

‘I’m not going to force any more natives to work on roads while their rice harvest rots. The coffee planters need the roads; they can get them built without me.’

The sun was sinking, an indistinct red sphere, and the wind seemed colder. Dead leaves rustled across the gravel path,
swirling
in wide circles.

‘So what will you do?’ she asked with a nervous frown.

Her concern touched him, but Magnus had no wish to agonise over his future so soon after his arrival. He shrugged his
shoulders
.

‘Become a briefless barrister or make my fortune in the
Australian
gold fields,’ he answered with a laugh, and then stared at her with a parody of sternness. ‘Since I have come so far to see you, I trust you have given thought to my entertainment.’

Catherine opened her eyes very wide and simpered coyly:

‘Oh yes indeed, but I fear you will find us very dull with our
muslin work and piano pieces from Donizetti and Bellini.’

‘On the contrary,’ he objected with great earnestness, ‘muslin and Donizetti are both absolute passions with me. In Ceylon I felt the absence of them sorely.’

He gazed at her intensely until they both started to laugh. Then, arm in arm, they resumed their walk towards the house. Once they had laughed a great deal together. Magnus stopped as they reached the carriage sweep. From where they stood the sun’s reflections in the diamond-shaped window-panes made them glow like dull points of fire in the dark façade.

*

Most of the rooms in the house were narrow and low-ceilinged, but not so the Great Hall, which was still used for dining. With its high oak hammer-beam roof, carved screen and minstrels’ gallery, it dated from that remote period when the family had sat at a high table on a dais, while their servants ate below them in the main body of the hall. Now there was only a single mahogany table in the centre of the room, immediately beneath a massive brass chandelier holding two dozen candles. Yet, not even with added light from the candelabra on the table and from oil lamps on the sideboard, was more than a fraction of the cavernous room well-lit. In the sombre grandeur of this ancestral hall, Magnus dined with his brother and sister.

As the meal drew to a close the atmosphere was tense and uneasy. Just as Magnus had supposed he would, Charles had argued that his decision to leave Ceylon was a virtual confession of failure. Principles, in his view, ought not to come into what was a matter of common sense. Whatever the shortcomings of officials and planters, Magnus would be a fool to throw away years of experience without having any alternative profession to take up. While Charles held forth, Catherine said nothing, and Magnus merely gazed at Beechey’s portrait of the first baronet above the wide Tudor fireplace, recalling how much he had
infuriated
his father by comparing their ancestor’s eighteenth
century
admiral’s full-dress uniform with the cocked hat and broad facings of a modern beadle’s outfit.

He had vowed that, whatever his brother might say, he would not lose his temper. So when Charles had finished with Ceylon to his satisfaction, Magnus did not argue, but instead steered the conversation back to the troubles in Rigton Bridge, which had received an airing earlier, when he had told them about the riot. Wishing to find out Catherine’s opinion of the Braithwaites
indirectly
, he thought this could be achieved by speaking of the
strike. As though quite unversed in such things, he asked Charles humbly whether he thought the strikers would give in before the election. The naval officer snorted derisively.

‘Not a chance. They’re stubborn as mules.’

‘Couldn’t the masters make concessions?’

Charles filled his glass from a decanter and pushed the coaster towards Magnus.

‘Of course not. They can’t afford to lose face.’

Magnus glanced at Catherine but learned nothing from her impassive expression. They had finished eating and she might choose at any moment to withdraw, so that the cloth could be
removed
and port set out for the brothers to drink alone.

‘Won’t the union also worry about loss of face?’ asked Magnus mildly.

‘They’re just out to intimidate sensible men who want to work.’ The slight flush on Charles’s cheeks might have been the claret, but Magnus thought it indicated strong feelings about the troubles. He placed his elbows on the table and leant forward.

‘But surely, Charles, not even sensible men can work when Irishmen fill their places?’

‘I told you, the union stopped local men selling their labour.’ Charles sipped his claret thoughtfully and smiled. ‘With respect, Magnus, I don’t think a colonial soldier is ideally equipped to make judgments about an English strike.’

‘Judgments? I didn’t know that I’d even expressed an opinion,’ he replied, struggling to suppress his mounting irritation. He had never forgotten the way Charles had used his superior years to deride his views in childhood. ‘But I’ll tell you my opinion, in case you misunderstand me. Unless Braithwaite discharges the Irishmen, last night’s violence will be a trivial hors d’oeuvre to the feast we can expect on polling day.’ He turned to Catherine and asked quietly: ‘Does your opinion differ?’ He could tell from the way she refused to meet his eye that she knew that he was asking a question that was partly a challenge and partly an appeal for her loyalty. She looked down at the table and
hesitated
a moment before saying rapidly:

‘My opinion can neither differ or agree. I know nothing of trade.’ She rose and smiled briefly before withdrawing.

When she had gone and the butler had removed the cloth and set glasses in front of them, Magnus still felt stunned by her reply. Her genteel and prim assertion, that trade was too far
beneath
her to be considered, had been out of character. She had listened to their conversation patiently enough until he had
mentioned
Joseph Braithwaite specifically. Only then had she
decided
to leave. There could now be little doubt that she was seriously considering George’s proposal. Not wanting to have to talk, Magnus asked his brother when he thought he would next have a ship; and soon, as he had expected, Charles was embarked on a lengthy monologue about the inadequacies and vacillations of the Board of Admiralty. The subject would undoubtedly last them until they joined Catherine again and possibly longer. While Charles talked, it occurred to Magnus that his brother would almost certainly favour a marriage to George
Braithwaite,
since if Catherine were to remain a spinster the ultimate responsibility for her support would fall on him. With her mother dead and her father almost always away from home, Catherine was not well placed to have many London seasons. None of this would have escaped Charles if, as seemed probable, he had assessed the possible alternatives to George.

Two hours later, when Charles eventually rang for the
chamber
-candlesticks to be brought to light them to bed, no word had been spoken by anybody about George Braithwaite. But Magnus remained certain that Strickland had told him the truth the
previous
evening. He had been prepared to let matters rest awhile because, in spite of some doubts, he believed that he knew a way to end Braithwaite’s chances.

Earlier that day in Rigton Bridge, he had visited the offices of the
Rigton
Independent,
the town’s only radical newspaper, with the intention of finding out more about the troubles. Instead he had discovered something of equal interest – something that involved George in a racing fraud.

The fact that race-horse owners often found it more profitable to enter an animal to lose a race rather than to win it was
well-known
to him. To encourage heavy betting, the owner would make every public effort to persuade punters that the horse was a certain winner. Such bets would then be taken up by the owner’s friends, who would of course be very careful not to appear as such. In the race the jockey’s instructions would be to hold the horse back. According to one of Braithwaite’s grooms, who had tipped off the
Independent,
George had followed this unsporting procedure in the Yorkshire Stakes, and had won more money by laying against his own horse than he would have done if he had taken the prize. The paper had printed the groom’s story in the sure belief that Braithwaite would not sue. Few owners liked to gain still greater notoriety by suing their detractors for libel, but George had done just this; and since the jockey could not be
found and none of those who had taken up bets could be linked directly with Braithwaite, the case had gone against the paper. The lack of evidence had disturbed Magnus; in such cases
something
unpleasant always came out, but if the groom had been
told
to tip off the paper everything fell into place. The editor could not pay the fine and would therefore have to liquidate at a very convenient time for George’s father, whose electoral
prospects
would be the better for the disappearance of the town’s only radical newspaper. If George and Joseph Braithwaite had really planned such a thing, Magnus did not consider it unlikely that they had also provoked the strike deliberately to frighten electors into voting for the manufacturer, as the reactionary
candidate
more likely to be firm with law-breakers and to restore order in the town.