The Rose Stone

by The Rose Stone (retail) (epub)

  Of outside events she took little notice, until the late June day that she awaited Richard by the little pool in the secret garden that had lately become their habitual meeting place. Not even she, that morning, could have missed Uncle Josef’s agitation at the news that had filtered into their closed small world. She pondered it now as she watched the water insects busy about the glimmering surface of the water. They reminded her of the lovely jewellery her Aunt Anna designed, their bodies gleaming in the sun against the metallic background of the water.

  “Sophie! Sophie!” The unmistakable footsteps on the path beyond the cottage were swift, the voice breathless, “Sophie – are you there?”

  “Here – yes, I’m here.”

  Richard scrambled through the tumbled bricks. “Have you heard?” he asked with no preamble.

  “What – that some old duke’s been assassinated in Sara-something by some beastly anarchist? Yes – Uncle Josef seemed very upset about it all. But what—”

  “No, no! Ma and Pa – they’re home! Came home unexpectedly early this morning!” Richard’s face was flushed and excited. He reached for her hand.

  It was as if someone had rudely shaken her awake in the heart of a dream. Her pulse had taken up an irregular hammer-beat of apprehension.

  “But – surely – they weren’t due home till the end of next week?” All the light-hearted certainty that had attended the last delightful weeks had deserted her entirely.

  “That’s right. But Pa detested Egypt, and with all the stupid war talk that’s been going on – well, they just decided to call it a day and come home.”

  Sophie spoke with some difficulty. “It wasn’t – wasn’t because someone told them about us?”

  He threw back his dark head and laughed. “Of course not, silly! Oh, I can’t wait to tell them! Don’t worry, my darling, darling Sophie! They’ll love you. Just as I do! What else could they do?”

  She stood in shaking silence, and at last her apprehension touched him. He stepped to her and caught her in his arms, resting his face on her tumbled air. “Don’t worry!” he said again, more seriously. “It will be all right. I promise it will. For heaven’s sake, Sophie, Ma and Pa aren’t ogres, you know—”

  As they drew apart a cloud slid over the sun and the garden around them darkened.

  “No, of course not.” Sophie summoned a not very convincing smile. “It’s just that—”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know – something’s changed, hasn’t it? And nothing is ever going to be exactly the same again. I’m just not ready for it, that’s all. Richard,” she caught his hand suddenly, urgently, “let’s not tell them? Not yet—”

  He smiled his brilliant, confident smile. “Not tell them? Don’t be daft – why shouldn’t we tell them? They’ll be delighted, you’ll see. And as for things changing—” he took her hand and they strolled towards the cottage, “—things change all the time, don’t they? Nothing ever really stays the same. It can’t.”

  “I suppose not.”

  For both of them the events in far-off Sarajevo were already forgotten.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “The girl, quite obviously,” Alice said, her voice perilously calm, “has learned well the lessons of the gutter in which she was bred.”

  “I say, old girl, steady on.” Alex was uncomfortable.

  Richard, white to the lips, stood as one struck entirely dumb.

  Alice continued as if her husband had not spoken. She totally ignored the speechless Richard. “She has seduced our child whilst our backs were turned – one can only assume in the hope of some financial gain—”

  “Mother!” Richard stepped forward, “Please – stop talking like this. You don’t know what you’re saying!”

  Coldly she turned on him. “On the contrary, Richard. I know very well what I’m saying. It is you – you, Richard – who have been gulled by this girl. Nor is that the only bone of contention between us.” She paused, her gaze forbidding. “Quite apart from this – unsavoury – matter, the reports of your behaviour have been scandalous. Truly scandalous. Besides your outrageous and feckless behaviour with this girl you have stolen from your father’s cellar – stolen, I say,” she repeated as her son opened his mouth to protest, “you have invaded the servants’ quarters, acted like a young hooligan—”

  “Come, now, Alice. Mrs Brown was not complaining when she told us of the incident—”

  “Then she most certainly should have been. Is this any way for a gentleman to behave? Is it?” Alice brushed her husband’s half-hearted remonstrance aside and still faced her white-faced son.

  “Mother – please – won’t you listen to me? Sophie and I—”

  “Silence, Richard! And understand, once and for all, that I will not have that – that hoyden’s name mentioned again in this house. Do you hear me?”

  “But – you don’t even know her—”

  “No, Richard—” her voice was very quiet “—it is you who don’t know her and her kind. Be thankful that we came home in time. The Lord only knows what mischief she might have achieved had we stayed away longer.”

  Richard stepped back from her. “I won’t listen to this.”

  “You will listen to anything that I choose that you should. Alex,” she turned her head, but her eyes remained upon Richard, “that girl must be made to leave. Immediately. I won’t have her here.”

  “It’s a little difficult, my dear – she is father’s guest, after all.”

  “A guest who has abused your hospitality – seduced your son – played fast and loose with the morals of the household—” Alice’s tone was vitriolic.

  “Stop it! Will you stop it! I won’t listen!” Richard’s face had suddenly flamed with anger. “You shan’t say such things about Sophie—”

  Alice turned back to her son, an expression of almost theatrical astonishment on her face. “I – beg – your – pardon?” she asked, icily.

  “Mother – please – you have to listen to me. To let me explain—”

  “I don’t have to do anything of the sort.”

  They faced each other in fury. Richard backed towards the door; mortifying tears stood in his eyes. “If you make Sophie go, I’ll – I’ll go too. I swear I will. I’ll leave. You’ll never see me again—” He heard, himself, the emptiness of the childish-sounding threat, and his frustration and anger grew. “I won’t have you saying these awful things about Sophie! I won’t!” He had reached the door. Blindly he reached for the handle.

  “Richard! Come back here at once!”

  But he was gone, his running footsteps echoing behind him. They heard the front door open, saw the tall, flying figure as he ran down the drive towards the cottage.

  “Don’t you think you were – perhaps – a little hard?” Alex, awkwardly, asked the furious silence. “He’s right in a way, my dear – you really don’t know the girl.”

  Alice stood like a statue, staring out of the window. “I don’t need to. Her schemes are perfectly clear to me – as they would be to you if you weren’t so absurdly short-sighted. The girl is out to get Richard – his position, his – our—money. Well—” her fine mouth drew to a straight, harsh line “—she shan’t succeed. I’ll make absolutely certain of that. We must get rid of her. Immediately. Josef’s guest or no. Once out of sight this – this ridiculous infatuation of Richard’s will die. She must leave at once.” She turned and fixed portly Alex with a steely eye. “You’ll see to it?” It was a statement rather than a question.

  Alex subsided, reflecting as he had done more than once in the past weeks of close contact with his wife that Alice and that damned Kaiser fellow that was causing so much trouble had a lot in common. “Yes, my dear. Of course.”

  * * *

  They stood together in miserable silence. Sophie’s face was tear-streaked, Richard’s fierce and bone-white. Sophie bowed her head, looking at the hands that were twisted and clenched before her, and a heavy lock of hair fell across her eyes. He reached
for her and drew her almost roughly into his arms again. She stood rigid, fighting fresh tears.

  “I won’t let them do it,” he said into her hair. “Don’t think it. I won’t let them part us.”

  She shook her head miserably. “There’s nothing you can do about it.”

  He stepped back from her, looked into her face. “That doesn’t sound like my Sophie. You aren’t going to let them beat us?”

  She sniffed.

  “The worst that can happen – the very worst—” Richard’s voice was calmer and in face of her distress his own desperation was giving way to determination “—is that they win temporarily. We’ll have to wait, that’s all. Once I’m twenty-one—”

  “Twenty-one! Richard – that’s more than four years!”

  “I know.” Doggedly he kept the misery from his own voice. “But – it isn’t the end of the world. We knew we’d have to wait—”

  She flung from him. “To wait, yes – wait to get married, perhaps. But not that long. And – not like this! They’ll keep you from me. We’ll never see each other – oh, Richard, I can’t bear it! Why are they so beastly? What have I ever done to them? Oh – I hate them! Hate them!” Her voice shook with the sudden rise of rage. “They’ve no right to do this to us!”

  He was silent.

  “They’ll send you away. You know they will. And they’re trying to make Uncle Josef send me home – poor little Maria, too, though I don’t see what she’s done to deserve it.”

  “What did grandfather say to Pa?”

  She calmed a little. “He said that we were his guests, and that he could see no reason why we should leave. He stood up for us. Tried to explain to your father the way it’s really been—”

  “And what did Pa say?”

  “He didn’t really say anything. To be truthful, if I hadn’t been so angry – so miserable – I might have felt a bit sorry for him. It isn’t him, is it? It’s your mother. She’s always hated my mother and father, and now she hates me.” There was desolation in her young voice as she turned from him and dropped on to the grass, her skirts spread about her, and picked at the slender stems with long, brown fingers. Her mouth was set into an unhappy line, and her breath still caught a little, tearfully, in her throat. She plucked a dandelion clock and held it in front of her. The delicate bowl of the seedhead was soft and fragile in the sunlight. She blew, sharply. Some of the seeds lifted and sailed into the still air. “One year,” she said, and blew again, and again. “Two years. Three. Four.” She lifted her head. She was suddenly very calm, and her voice was intense. “We can’t wait that long, Richard. We can’t. Something awful will happen. We’ll lose each other. They know it.”

  He seemed to have run out of words. He sat beside her, half-turned from her, knees on elbows, shoulders hunched, head bowed.

  With restless fingers she tore the blown dandelion head to pieces. Above them a robin sang, piercingly sweet and in the distance a cuckoo called.

  She lifted her head, an odd, defiant expression upon her face. “Richard?”

  He turned his head. She was looking not at him but at what remained of the stem of the dandelion, twirling in her fingers.

  “Do you know – what you do – to—” She stopped, nibbling her lip, then said, very fast, “That is – what people do – to have a baby?”

  Silence lengthened. She turned to look at him. He had flushed a deep embarrassed brick red.

  “Well,” she asked a little sharply, “do you?”

  “I – well – yes.”

  She looked away again. “It’s no good pretending that I do, because I don’t. I looked in a book once – in the San at school – a medical book. But – I didn’t understand it.”

  The quiet this time was fraught with question and implication.

  “I thought—” she said at last “—that if you knew, we could – could—” she lifted a brave head and looked at last directly at him “—could do it. Then – they’d have to let us marry. Wouldn’t they?”

  He was staring at her. She flushed, but her eyes were steady. He it was who turned away, abruptly, shaking his head. “No. We can’t do that.”

  “But – why not?” Perversely his opposition overcame her own qualms, and her voice was suddenly positive and determined. “Why not? If it is the only way to make them let us be together?”

  “It – isn’t that.”

  “What then?”

  He reached for her and hugged her to him, fiercely and awkwardly. “Oh, Sophie, darling Sophie! Don’t you know? Don’t you know what people would think – what they’d say of you?”

  She was very still against him. “Of course I do. I’m not stupid,” she said, very quietly. “But what does it matter? What people say – what they think – I don’t care about them. I only care about you. And if it’s the only way—”

  He thrust his face hard into her hair. “We can’t,” he said. “We can’t.”

  * * *

  Sophie was right; they were prevented from meeting for anything but the most fleeting, stolen moments in the next few days. At last, and inevitably, Richard allowed himself to be persuaded that their only chance to see each other was to meet at a time when there could be no one to stop them. The loft of the stables that adjoined the cottage was the designated place. Sophie, slipping from her bed, down the creaking stairs and across the brick-paved yard, got there first and sat, alone and terribly afraid, in the rustling darkness, her eyes and ears strained for a sign of Richard’s coming. The misery of the past few days, the quarrelling, the awful things that Alice had said of her when she had stormed down to the cottage on being told of Josef’s attitude to her demands, were still with her. She ached with unhappiness. Her eyes were hot and tired with tears. The moonless night was a threat and a loneliness about her. She knew, with sudden awful clarity as she sat, chill and huddled and afraid, that she had made a mistake. He would not come. She knew it. Her rash suggestion had, after all, confirmed the truth of his mother’s accusations. He was at home at this moment safe in bed. They were going to lose each other; they stood no chance against so hostile a world. Sooner or later he would begin to listen to what they said about her. He would believe it. He would despise her—

  He wasn’t coming.

  She drew her dressing gown about her, shivered a little, though the night was not cold. Beneath her the great hunter and the two carriage horses moved softly in their stalls, chains clinking. It seemed to Sophie that they were the luckiest of creatures. Mindless and obedient, they were never called upon to take a decision, to take responsibility for their actions—

  There was movement then, and through the trap of the loft she saw softly moving shadows. Someone had come into the stables carrying a carefully shaded lantern. For a moment her heart stopped. Then in the uncertain light she saw the familiar, lifted, dark head.

  “Richard? I’m up here.”

  He climbed the ladder, the lantern swinging and sending shadows dancing wildly about the rafters. Once in the loft he set the glimmering light safely upon a cleared space on the floor, and then turned to her. Wordless, she flung herself upon him and they clung to each other, more like fearful children than like lovers.

  “Your mother came,” she said. “Oh, Richard – it was awful! She said the most terrible things—” The last thing she had intended to say to him, yet the words tumbled out and she could not prevent them.

  “You mustn’t listen. Mustn’t take any notice.”

  “I thought you weren’t coming. Thought you must have listened to her. She hates me so—”

  “Nonsense.” His voice was gentle. “She just doesn’t understand, that’s all. Give her time. I’m sure she’ll come round in the end.”

  “No! She won’t! Richard – you didn’t hear her—” Sophie drew away from him and dropped back into the heap of straw. Their whispers were counterpoint to the rustle of the breeze around the tiled, unlined roof. Sophie huddled disconsolately, her arms about her drawn-up knees. “She’ll part us. For ever.
She will.”

  “No!” He was beside her, his arms about her, his mouth close to her ear. “No! She won’t. Because we shan’t let her. Or anyone. I love you, Sophie – don’t you believe that?”

  She turned her face to him and with a desperate, unpractised urgency he kissed her, bearing her back into the warmth of the straw, his weight crushing the breath from her body. She was crying again, silently and wretchedly, as they embraced. He rained small, frantic kisses on her wet face, her hair, her neck. “Sophie – darling – don’t cry. Please don’t cry—” Brought up in a household of three men and a woman who rarely – if ever – shed a tear, he could not bear the sight of the girl’s distress.

  But she could not stop; as if they had been his own her tears wetted his lips and his cheeks. He lay beside her, his face buried in the fall of her hair, holding her, silently and tightly, until she quieted. Then they lay so for a long time, scarcely breathing, their young warm bodies pressed closely against each other. The lantern lit the mossy, cobwebbed roof above them. The horses moved again, hooves scraping upon the brick floor. Very, very gently Richard slid his hand under her dressing gown and caressed her body, warm and smooth beneath the voluminous fine cotton nightdress that she wore. She trembled a little and her breathing was uneven, but she did not pull away from him. His hand moved quietly, stroking, touching, gentling. The excitement that rose between them was fired by his hard-held restraint. Sophie it was who, with a sudden movement of her body, brought his hand into contact with her hardened breast. He could feel the beating of her heart, the lift of her breath. For a moment neither of them moved, and then his self-control broke and he kissed her again, hard and a little clumsily, his teeth sharp against her soft mouth, his body sprawled across hers. She held him to her with fingers that bit strongly through his shirt to his skin.