Maulever Hall

by Jane Aiken Hodge

  He made a last stand. “That’s all very well, ma’am—Your Grace, I should say—but if you didn’t expect vilence, why did you come down here in such a hurry? This gentleman here’s bleeding too! And tied up! Do you expect me to take no notice of that?”

  “Yes,” said the Duchess. “That is exactly what I expect, Mr. Barnaby. We have things to talk over. In the morning, perhaps—” Her tone made it clear that she promised nothing. Then, to her nephew: “John, Mr. Barnaby seems unable to find his way to the servants’ quarters.”

  The Duke smiled and moved forward. “This way, Mr. Barnaby.”

  It was too much. The little man looked round the company. Urban ignored his anxious glance, Marianne could not help feeling a little sorry for him. Lady Heverdon was speaking quickly, in a low voice, to Mauleverer. He gave it up. “Just the same”—he moved away down the hall—“violence is Bow Street’s business.”

  “He may be right at that,” said the Duchess thoughtfully, “but we had better talk things over first. What, for instance, has Lady Heverdon to say?”

  Marianne had been straining her ears in a vain attempt to try and hear what Lady Heverdon had been saying to Mauleverer in her rapid, half-whispering, pleading voice. Now he turned to the Duchess, his voice dry. “She says, Your Grace, that it is all a terrible mistake. She knew nothing of any plot; cares nothing for Mr. Urban there; cannot imagine why you and your nephew have thought fit to abduct her. I use her words, you understand.”

  “But it is true.” Lady Heverdon moved forward into the full glow of the candlelight. She was wrapped in a blue cloak that showed up the gold of her hair. Dark shadows under her eyes merely gave an unwonted distinction to her candyfloss beauty. Her face, as she turned great pleading eyes from Mauleverer to the Duchess, was that of a child misunderstood. “Mr. Urban and I are old friends, it is true, have often, jestingly, called each other cousin, but—you know who it is that I love.” Her huge eyes pleaded with Mauleverer. “If Mr. Urban has deluded himself that I felt more for him than friendship, it is not my fault. Though I still cannot believe he is guilty of the things you have told me of. Surely there must be some mistake.”

  “Mistake!” Ralph Urban spoke explosively from his chair.

  “There has indeed been a mistake—mine. So you would throw me over, so lightly, in defeat, would you, Miranda? Never loved me, did you? Never promised me—” He stopped. “Never mind. Because you show yourself worthless, I need not do the same. Cousin”—to Marianne—“I owe you a greater apology than I thought. I would have sent you to the madhouse for That.” His burning eyes, fixed on Lady Heverdon, underlined his words.

  She pouted. “But I have been engaged to Mauleverer this age. Everyone who knows anything, knows that.”

  There was a thick silence in the hall. Everyone’s eyes were turned on Mauleverer, except the Duke’s, which Marianne felt closely, searchingly, compassionately fixed on her own face. For a long moment, Mauleverer was silent, gating down into the beautiful face so becomingly tilted up to him. One little white hand held the cloak loosely around her, the other crept out to touch the front of his dark blue coat in a gesture at once pleading and proprietorial. His own hand moved toward it and Marianne’s teeth clenched hard together. But, gently, and yet, somehow ruthlessly, he brushed it off. “I am loath to give the lie to a lady, and so publicly, too, but you know, madam, that there has never been any question of an engagement between us. I am your stepson’s guardian: that is all.”

  “Oh, monstrous.” Her wild eyes appealed to them all. “How can you say such a thing! And if you betray me, who will stand my friend?” Tears flooded from the great blue eyes as she turned from the silent Duke to the Duchess and then at last, as if involuntarily to Urban, very still in his chair.

  It was he who answered her. “Not I, for one, Miranda. I hope he has betrayed you, though, frankly, I doubt it. You have taken your goods to too many markets at last, cousin.” The last word was a mockery. “Do you see it all ahead of you? Widowhood—poverty—the long, solitary years? Last year’s blacks turned and turned again—tallow candles taking the place of wax—one man, if you are lucky, acting footman, butler, everything, in greasy outmoded livery. And then, the gossip, just think of the gossip, cousin. Lady Heverdon—she was the beautiful Lady Heverdon once—not considered fit to have charge of her own stepson.” His mocking eyes swept from her to Mauleverer and back. “Am I not right?”

  Mauleverer said nothing, but his face was confirmation enough. Lady Heverdon did the only thing left to her. She went into violent hysterics.

  “How tedious,” said the Duchess. “What shall we do with her?”

  Inevitably, Marianne moved forward. “I will take her upstairs,” she said.

  “Good. Sal volatile and bed, I should think. As for me, I am absolutely perished with cold. Is there a fire anywhere in this freezing house?”

  “In the kitchen,” said Marianne, as she put her arm around Lady Heverdon’s waist and prepared to help her upstairs.

  “Then let us adjourn to the kitchen. With your good leave, Mr. Mauleverer?”

  “Of course. I am only sorry you find my house so at sixes and sevens.”

  “Oh well,” she shrugged, “let us hope there is ham—and eggs. It occurs to me that I am starving too. Don’t look so shocked, John. Have you never eaten in a kitchen before?”

  He laughed. “Do you know, I don’t believe that I have. But what are we to do with Mr. Urban there?”

  The Duchess looked at him reflectively and he returned look for look. “Personally,” she said at last, “I am inclined to take him to the kitchen and feed him ham and eggs too, but it must be entirely your decision, Mr. Mauleverer.”

  “Marianne!” Mauleverer’s voice made her turn halfway up the stairs. “What do you think?”

  “I think he is punished already,” she said, and turned back to guide the sobbing, screaming Lady Heverdon round the curve of the stairs.

  XVIII

  When Marianne reached the kitchen half an hour or so later, it was a scene of the most sociable activity. All the lamps were burning, wood had been piled on to the big open fire and the Duchess was supervising Ralph Urban as he built up the fire in the huge cooking range. Under her orders, Mauleverer had just fetched up several bottles of champagne from the cellars, while the Duke was standing in the middle of the room concluding what seemed to have been an impassioned speech of protest.

  “Yes,” said the Duchess as Marianne entered the room, “that is all very well, but Mr. Urban can light a kitchen fire, which is more than I can say for either of you two. Ah, Marianne, you are just in time. Eggs from the larder, please.”

  “Yes.” Marianne looked around. “What did you do with Mr. Barnaby?”

  “Sent him to bed, of course. And Lady Heverdon?”

  “Martha gave her some of Mrs. Mauleverer’s drops.” Her eyes met Mauleverer’s as she spoke. “She will sleep now, I think.”

  “Good. John, if you will stop arguing and slice that ham, we are almost ready to eat. There will be time enough for argument in the morning. But where is my champagne?”

  “Any minute now.” Mauleverer sounded almost lighthearted as he deftly loosened the cork, which promptly flew out and hit the cook’s ginger cat where it slept majestically by the fire. Inevitably, the wine began to foam out of the bottle and Marianne hurried to his help with a miscellaneous collection of glasses. “Thank you.” His voice lost all its lightness as he spoke to her, and his eyes would not quite meet hers. There was an awkward little silence as they poured out and passed round the wine, their hands working in perfect unison, their minds, it seemed, a world apart.

  The Duchess broke the silence. “There!” Triumphantly, she brought the huge iron frying pan to the table and began to serve delicately fried eggs on to the slices of ham the Duke had cut. “Food at last. Mr. Urban, you may leave the fire now, and come and eat. John, I’ve had enough of your arguing. Mr. Mauleverer, perhaps you will cut the bread. Marianne, come and sit here
by me, and you on the other side, Mr. Urban.” She had thus separated him by the greatest possible distance from Mauleverer and the Duke.

  Mauleverer was smiling again. “A truce, is it? Very well, ma’am, if you wish it.” He began to cut great slices off the loaf and pass them around, while the Duke took his place on the far side of Marianne, still muttering to himself about law and order.

  The Duchess raised her glass. “A toast,” she said. “Marianne, and her memory.” And then, “Come, Mr. Urban, you have nothing to lose by drinking, and making yourself pleasant.”

  “And not much to gain either.” But he spoke lightly now, and raised his glass with the others in the toast to Marianne.

  Blushing and thanking them, Marianne tried, once more, in vain, to catch Mauleverer’s eye. If only she knew whether it was himself he could not forgive, or her. But the Duchess, busy spreading her bread with half an inch of butter, was dauntlessly initiating a general conversation about, of all things, the Reform Bill. She soon had Mauleverer and the Duke at it hammer and tongs. The Duke maintained that the first election after what he admitted to be the Bill’s almost certain passing would mean the end of all order and true democracy in the country. Mauleverer, on the other hand, urged that the Bill was the only hope of saving democracy; without it, there would be revolution, maybe as bloody as that in France.

  Urban was silent at first, but Marianne, who felt as if she was in some fantastic dream, could see that he was following the argument with close interest. Soon, he joined in, offering some shrewdly sensible suggestions—on Mauleverer’s side. The Duchess smiled at Marianne, pushed aside her well-cleaned plate and rose to pass Mauleverer a second bottle of champagne and put on the huge kettle. “Coffee, I think,” she said quietly to Marianne, and then: “There’s nothing like politics.” She and Marianne worked quietly together, clearing the table and putting out heavy Queen’s Ware coffee cups, and still the argument raged. The fire in the big hearth was burning high now and the kitchen made a wonderfully snug scene, with its check cotton curtains, tiled floor, and huge scrubbed table. Pouring coffee, Marianne could tell that Mauleverer and Urban had got the Duke cornered with historical analogies and were forcing him to admit that after all the Bill might not, perhaps, be quite the dramatic disaster he expected. Just the same, he shook his head gloomily, and had the last word: “You may be right,” he said, “but I still think it the end of all true order. I do not like to think what the results may be, say, in a hundred years’ time. Why, anyone, then, may get to be First Minister! Cobblers in the cabinet—”

  “A hundred years’ time!” His aunt interrupted him, with the effect of calling the meeting to order. “We have more immediate problems to consider. It will be dawn soon. Mr. Barnaby and his conscience will be awake. We must decide what we are going to do with Mr. Urban.”

  “Yes, yes, of course.” The Duke came back from a great distance. “So we must. What is your view, Mauleverer? After all, he was going to kill you.”

  Mauleverer, too, had been far away. Now he drained his glass and turned to look at his late companion in argument. “What do you suggest, Urban?”

  He shrugged expressively. “Well, since you ask me, I should very much prefer not to be turned over to that Mr. Barnaby, who struck me as a singularly unimaginative character and not at all the kind of man with whom I should wish to associate. My cousin”—here a courtly bow across his coffee cup to Marianne—“was so good as to suggest, some time ago, that I have been punished enough. And”—his face darkened—“I am not sure that she is not right. Lady Heverdon—” He stopped, with an obvious effort. “We will not talk of that. Though I might, perhaps, point out, in passing, that any scruples I might have had about exposing her part in the business have been most effectively laid to rest by her behavior. Take me to court, Mr. Mauleverer, for what I have failed to do, and I shall have the greatest pleasure in dragging her down with me.”

  “Quite so,” said the Duchess, almost Marianne thought, with approval. “That is just what I thought you would say. It would make a nine days’ wonder for Mr. Westmacott and The Age. There’s been nothing like it since the trial of Queen Caroline, or that uncomfortable business of the Duke of Cumberland and his page. Hard on the child, of course, being left to bear the name.”

  “Yes, I had thought of that,” said Mauleverer. “Poor little creature, he starts life with heavy enough disadvantages as if is.” He shrugged. “I confess it goes a little against the grain with me, but I believe we are going to have to let you go, Urban. With proper safeguards, of course. A signed confession, to begin with. Preferably one that does not involve Lady Heverdon.”

  Still harping on Lady Heverdon! Marianne scalded herself with a great draught of hot coffee and would almost have started a protest if she had not felt the Duchess’s restraining hand on hers under the table. She choked, and was silent.

  “I should find that difficult to do,” said Ralph Urban.

  Mauleverer’s hands clenched on the table. “You have the insolence, I believe, to think that we will bribe you into silence about her part in the affair. Bribe you!” His scar stood out livid white in his angry face. “Consider yourself bribed enough if you escape imprisonment—transportation, perhaps.”

  Urban smiled. “What a trial scene it would be,” he said thoughtfully. “I think I should act as my own lawyer ... When I had finished describing the spell Lady Heverdon cast over me, I should turn to cross-examine my accusers.” He looked from Mauleverer to Marianne and then back again. “How would you like answering my questions?” he asked mildly. “Myself, I think I should enjoy showing in open court what a couple of gullible fools you were. You”—he turned to Marianne—“believing me a Bow Street officer, Mr. Barnaby himself—Lord, how the court would laugh. And coming haring down here to save Mr. Mauleverer from the consequences of his crime! I spun her a fine yarn, at that.” He turned to Mauleverer now, boasting, Marianne realized, as he had the night before when he thought he had them in his power. “I told her Lord Grey had given special instructions for your protection—if possible—because it would be such an embarrassment to him for you to be arrested. I don’t suppose,” he said casually, “that he would like it overmuch even to have you involved in such a case. And then, you, too, so easy to deceive. You really believed that my cousin here”—again a mocking bow for Marianne—“that my dear cousin had carried off the child the first time in a moment of madness and would do so again to prevent her crime being discovered. It will indeed, as Her Grace remarked, make a quite notable scandal for The Age.” And he leaned back, hands in pockets, very comfortably in his chair and surveyed them all blandly.

  Mauleverer pushed his own chair back and rose. “I’ll stand no more of this!”

  “Quite right,” said the Duchess, “we need another bottle of champagne, and, when you have opened it, I have a suggestion to make. In the meanwhile, Mr. Urban, I recommend that you keep quiet, if you can manage to. You have said, I think, quite enough. John, some more wood on the fire, if you please. It is perfectly obvious that we are none of us going to get to bed tonight; we may as well be comfortable while we sit up. More coffee, Marianne?”

  “No, thank you.” Marianne watched with amused admiration as the two men obeyed the Duchess’s commands, which had effectively eased the tension that had built up in the room. It would not be her fault if reason did not prevail tonight. And, more and more, she was herself convinced that any attempt to prosecute Urban must bring nothing but disaster in its train. Besides—she did not want him prosecuted. The habit of affection dies hard, and they had spent their childhood together.

  He turned his head and his eyes met hers with a flash of comprehension. He smiled, and leaned toward her across the table. Behind him, the Duke was still busy with the fire and Mauleverer concentrated on easing yet another cork out of its bottle. “I have been the greatest fool of all, have I not, cousin,” said Urban softly. “Imagine losing my heart to that pretty doll upstairs, when I knew you. I suppose the only exp
lanation is that I knew you too well. Do you remember hide-and-seek along the cliffs? And the day the smuggler’s ship was thrown ashore? And Uncle Urban acting the perfect magistrate, as if everyone did not know where his brandy came from? And the time I ran away? And how you pleaded my case with him?”

  “Yes, I remember.” Marianne’s eyes were far away, seeing the past.

  “What a fool.” His hand struck his forehead. “Marianne, is it too late? You and I—home on the island together. You admit that my uncle has been unjust: there is the perfect solution. Is your heart large enough to forget and forgive? It is what the islanders have always wanted, as you must know.” His intimate, pleading tone was for her alone. The Duchess, leaning back in her chair between them, might not have existed.

  Marianne raised her eyes to meet his. “God knows, you’re a brave man, Ralph, but—no.” She could not help smiling at the monstrous bravado of his proposition. “You have fooled me, as you boasted yourself, quite enough already. Enough is enough. I’ll not add marrying you to my lunacies.”

  He smiled back at her amicably. “I was afraid you would not. A pity though; it would have solved so many problems.”

  “For you,” she said.

  “I must say”—the Duchess leaned forward to join in the conversation—“one can but admire your spirit, Mr. Urban. What a pity that you should not have thought fit to use your capacities in a more profitable direction.”

  He bowed ironically. “I am still hoping that I may have the chance to do that very thing, ma’am. Ah, thank you.” Mauleverer had just refilled his glass.

  The Duke returned to his place, and now Mauleverer, too, sat down again at the table. From their behavior, Marianne could only infer that the rattling of the fire tongs had drowned out Urban’s remarkable proposal. She leaned forward. They were calmer now. It was the moment for her own suggestion. “Cousin.” She found she could speak to Urban with perfect calm. “My proposal is still open to you. Why should you not be steward of Barsley. I truly do not wish to go back there.” Impossible to explain her reasons for this, but then, why should she? “You would be the best possible substitute—indeed, better than I could ever be, since you love the island so dearly.” Dearly enough to have been prepared to do murder for it, she thought, but did not add.