Life and Death of the Wicked Lady Skelton

by Rowland Hughes

A detached onlooker, observing first her face and then Paulina’s, would have been struck with the contrast between their expressions. There was a restlessness, an unstable look about Barbara’s that might have repelled or fascinated according to the temperament of the beholder. Paulina’s was serene, with an air of confidence that was just shy and tender enough to avoid complacency. Her looks had improved amazingly during her six months’ absence. Some warm and happy emotion had thawed the reserved look which had given an unbecoming touch of austerity to her handsome young face. When she glanced at Kit Locksby it did not need much perspicacity to guess what that emotion was.

  Nothing that Paulina could have done or said would have deflected Barbara now from her purpose, but if anything was needed to spur her resolution it was that tender and possessive look in Paulina’s eyes. Barbara noted too with cruel satisfaction that Kit Locksby could only give Paulina a dutiful kindness in return. This was child’s-play – like robbing an unarmed traveller.

  She put her hand to her bosom. ‘My brooch! My diamond star brooch. Great heavens! I have lost it.’

  She secured everyone’s solicitous attention. Paulina, her level brows drawn together said, ‘But are you sure that you were wearing it, Barbara? I noticed as you were dancing that your only ornament was that crescent moon in your hair.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I fastened it on just before I left my bedchamber. I thought it would suit well with my costume.’

  They were asking her when she had last seen it? Where it might have fallen?

  Barbara said, ‘I had it when I was waiting in the yew glade for the music to strike up. I know that for certain, for I remember glancing down at it. It will be somewhere between the bridge and the glade. I will go and search for it, before it grows dark.’

  She cast an appealing look at Kit Locksby, and he said, ‘I will go with you. I am good at finding things – even my cravat ribbon in the morning!’

  She had known that he would offer to help for he was that kind of young man. She said quickly in a playful tone, ‘I have heard that you are a most accomplished young man, Mr Locksby. Come then, and I will see if you are as clever a finder of lost treasures as you make out.’

  They walked together across the lawn and down to the river. The glowing day was dying exquisitely. The colour of the western sky was as elusive as an aquamarine; roseate and violet clouds, feather-shaped, floated in it like islands in the sea of Paradise. The colour of grass, trees, flowing water, was strangely rarefied in the sunset light, as though the earth, abashed at its grossness, was trying to imitate the ethereal beauty of the celestial world. For Barbara Skelton there was, at that moment, only one reality in earth or heaven – the presence of the young man by her side. She walked with downcast eyes, waiting in a kind of anguish of longing for him to speak.

  He said, as though on a sudden impulse: ‘After all, Actæon was a fortunate fellow.’

  ‘What! to be torn in pieces by his hounds?’

  ‘Well, everyone has to die. Few men see a goddess in déshabille first!’

  He smiled down at her, frankly admiring her loveliness. Her heart leapt exultantly. He too then felt the physical attraction that had sprung up between them as their eyes first met. Everything about him pleased her madly – his fresh skin, his good, strong, white teeth, the generous width of his mouth, his bright blue eyes. He wore his own hair (no need to wonder how he looked in bed without a periwig) – its colour, a fine golden brown, would have graced a woman – but there was nothing foppish about his appearance. He looked clean, sweet tempered, vigorous – altogether charming. But he must feel more for her than even this compelling physical appeal. She must kindle within him her own headlong sense of their converging destinies, her yearning to be united with him body and soul for ever.

  They paused in unspoken agreement on the bridge and looked down at the smoothly gliding water. He said: ‘My friends laugh at me because I like fishing. They say, “Why sit for hours by a river staring at the water, when you can get all the fish you want out of your fish pond?” I like hunting and horse-racing better still perhaps, but for a summer sport I delight very much in fishing, and I believe it is the sight and sound of the running water that is the chief part of my pleasure. Do you like it too?’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps I could learn to like it if I knew why you liked it. But it does not give me the pleasant sensation that it gives you. It seems to me when I look at this river that my life is slipping away like the water – useless – wasted.’

  Her mouth trembled, her eyes filled with tears of sincere self-pity.

  Kit Locksby looked down at her with startled compassion. ‘Why, Lady Skelton, you must not say that. You must not give way to such a black melancholy humour. Your life wasted and useless! You who are so well-loved and beautiful. Everyone was praising your looks while you danced. You made me think of Ben Jonson’s poem. You know – “Queen and huntress, chaste and fair”.’5

  She rested her fingers on his lace ruffle. ‘Yes, I have had my fill of praise and compliments, but that is nothing. You can’t understand. You are too young and carefree.’

  He laughed. ‘Young! I am not as young as all that. I am twenty-one.’

  ‘And I am twenty-two. But grief and disappointment, such as I trust you will never know, have made me older than my years.’ She sighed faintly. ‘But I must strive against these melancholy humours. If I can give some pleasure to those around me I must be content.’

  They walked on together, her arm resting familiarly on his sleeve. Every now and then he glanced down with tender interest at her lovely, wistful face. What were those sorrows at which she hinted? Paulina, who seemed oddly out of sympathy with her lovely sister-in-law (but he knew that the best of women were apt to be jealous of a different type from themselves) had hardly discussed her with him, beyond saying once, ‘I would not buy a horse with such uneasy nostrils as my sister-in-law Barbara’s.’

  No doubt that self-opinionated ass Sir Ralph could not appreciate this rare and sensitive creature as she deserved to be. Could it be that he was unfaithful to her, neglectful, perhaps positively unkind? Probably he blamed her for her barrenness, made her life a misery by his reproaches. A surge of indignant pity rose within him. Almost unconsciously he pressed her arm to his side in a protective gesture which set her heart racing.

  They had entered the yew glade. A deep and shadowy coolness surrounded them. It was like passing into another world, like moving about together in some dim region under the sea. They walked in a pregnant silence till they came to the open space where a carved stone urn marked the meeting-place of the yew glades.

  They paused by it and he turned to her and said vehemently, ‘I wish from my soul that I could dispel your sadness.’ She said softly, ‘You do. I felt happier as soon as I saw you. You are so kind, cheerful – and gentle. That sounds a strange thing to say about a young and robust man! I never knew before that one could love a man for that quality. But I see now that only strong people dare to be gentle. Anything would be safe in your hands – a bird, a horse’s mouth – or a woman’s heart.’

  His face went red – partly because he was abashed at receiving this (in his opinion) undeserved and fervent praise, but also from a sudden strong emotion which he felt he ought to, but knew he neither wanted to nor could, control.

  Barbara placed her hands on the stone urn, leant her head on them and wept, because for the first time since her mother’s death she had found someone whom she could love as well as, perhaps better than, herself.

  It was not in Kit Locksby’s nature to allow a lovely woman to weep disconsolately on a stone urn. In a moment his arms were around her and her head was on his shoulder. Then as she turned her face up to him he bent over her and kissed her mouth.

  When their lips parted at last he said in some confusion, ‘Barbara – Lady Skelton – I don’t know what came over me. You are so beautiful – the loveliest woman I have ever seen. I can’t help thinking this but I suppose I have no right
to say it. You are married and I am all but betrothed to Paulina.’

  Barbara clung to him like a drowning woman. ‘Paulina! What does she matter? She lives only for her horses and books. Oh Kit, do not be trapped as I was into a cold and loveless marriage. You cannot know the hell it is – never alone at bed nor board, yet always lonely. It is I who need you. I who love you with a pure and sincere love.’ The tears were streaming down her cheeks.

  He clasped her to him, submerged by his own and her desire, fondled her hair, kissed her wet lashes and her mouth again and again. ‘Barbara – my moon goddess – my dear love. Never weep – your eyes are too beautiful for tears. Trust yourself to me and I will swear that I will make you as happy as you deserve.’

  11

  LOVERS’ MEETING

  ‘She must go fro’ and she shall go fro’ and she shall

  go whether she will or no.’1

  ‘Now turn from each. So fare our sever’d hearts,

  As the divorc’d soul from her body parts.’2

  HER FACE LOOKED back at her from the mirror. She gazed at it intently, almost greedily, as though in its eyes and contours she would read the secret of her future and her fate.

  She said to herself, ‘This is the last time I shall ride out on the highway. I swear it. This last time and then no more.’

  And so, as she sat before the mirror in the little secret room, she said, as it were, farewell to the face of that Barbara Skelton that only she and Jerry Jackson had seen. It looked out at her from between the lighted candles, like a pale mask against the shadowy background of the garret room; provocatively feminine above the mannish cravat, the bronzen curls hanging down on to the shoulders of the mannish coat; the eyes glistening, sleepy yet watchful as a cat’s, between the long lashes; the nostrils eager and predatory, the lips parted – the face of a lovely and dangerous woman.

  But she would never look like this again. After tonight she would strive in every wakeful moment to be the Barbara of Kit Locksby’s desires and imagination – the tender, loving, long suffering woman, whom he adored and longed to cherish and protect. She would burn her man’s clothes and her crepe mask, bury her pistols, give away secretly to the poor all her ill-won gains. The unknown young highwayman who had terrorised the countryside for over a year would disappear, and would never be heard of nor seen again.

  Barbara had not robbed on the highway since she and Kit had become lovers soon after their first meeting. She dreaded inexpressibly that Kit might discover her secret. He was the most easy-going and tolerant of men; unassuming and modest, he was too conscious of his own failings to set himself up as a censor of morals; he would excuse much in the woman he loved. But Barbara had noticed that he had a violent, to her mind almost morbid, aversion to any form of cruelty. He had told her that when he was on his travels he had lived for a time with a Venetian courtesan, a superb redhaired creature. He admitted that he had been much under the spell of her physical attraction. Then one day he had seen her throw a newly-born kitten into a bucket of water. He had left her house at once and never seen her again. He had told the story half jokingly, as though apologising for his squeamishness, but Barbara had noticed, with a terrified contraction of her heart, that, as he told it, his eyes had gone as hard as blue stones. How would his eyes look if he knew that his sweet Barbara had not only committed robbery with violence but had also taken life on the King’s Highway?

  But it was not only this dread of discovery, and determination to cut loose from her sinister and dangerous secret, that had stopped her from riding abroad. She no longer felt the need for the emotional stimulation that she had derived from her nocturnal activities. Her whole soul was wrapped up in her love for Kit Locksby. If she had not found complete satisfaction and fulfilment in this love it was only, she told herself, because she could not be with him every day and every night, and take her place by his side as his acknowledged wife. She resented fiercely everything and everybody that came between them. Paulina had been a serious menace at first. Kit could not rid himself of the feeling that he had behaved very shabbily towards her, but Barbara’s constant assurance that Paulina did not care for him, and had only complied with the matrimonial plans of her family, appeared to be borne out by Paulina’s air of proud indifference when it became clear that Kit was, as Agatha Trimble described it, ‘in a cooling condition’. She seemed so very restrained and calm beside his passionate and demanding Barbara. It was easy as well as comfortable to believe that she was secretly as relieved as he was to avoid the marriage.

  He worried less about Sir Ralph. Barbara had easily convinced him of the unhappiness of her marriage. According to her he was merely taking something that Sir Ralph had not troubled to claim for a long time. All the same it was not his habit to cuckold men in their own houses. Barbara and he met secretly, sometimes by day, sometimes by night, at a small house near Whaddon which Kit had been left by an uncle, and where he went occasionally to fish, for a trout stream ran through the grounds.

  Here Barbara experienced a happiness that soared beyond her most excited imaginings. She had never known before the deep delights of living for another beloved person. A new world of feeling seemed to open before her. ‘No woman had a greater kindness for a man than she had for me.’ Those words in Jerry Jackson’s farewell letter no longer filled her with a spiteful and contemptuous bewilderment. She understood now the motive that had made the St Giles’ drab strip herself of her tawdry possessions to ease a highwayman’s last days. She herself – pampered woman of rank – would willingly sacrifice all her luxuries and comforts to help her dear love.

  More than this, she was ready to transform her whole nature, discarding like outworn garments her craving for excitement and callous egotism. She would teach herself to be warm-hearted, clinging, sensitive, because this was how Kit Locksby imagined her to be. When she was his wife – she found it impossible to contemplate her future under any other guise – how assiduously she would devote herself to him and to the children that she would surely give him, bringing to bear all her remarkable zest for living on to the pattern of her everyday life. She had been quite sincere when she had told him in one of her letters, ‘All pleasure I find is nothing without you.’

  But one thing remained to be done before she could attain to this state of domestic felicity – one final risk must be taken. Sir Ralph stood in the way of her complete happiness and must be removed.

  She who had so delighted in secrecy was impatient now to put an end to subterfuge where her love was concerned. For she knew that Kit would never be satisfied or at ease in the entanglements of a secret amour. Already he had suggested, with a hint of desperation in his tone, that they should abandon their families, friends and country, and flee together to the Continent. Barbara had a better plan than this, a plan, however, that she must carry out alone. Another visit to the Sign of the Golden Glove in Buckingham, a few months of patience, and she would be free to enter again into those bonds of marriage which she found so galling at present, but which, with Kit as her partner, would be the fulfilment of her heart’s desire.

  But all this lay in the future. At present, Barbara, all aflame with love, lived for the brief reunions with Kit Locksby. Whenever he was able to leave home – for his father was something of an invalid and upon Kit as eldest son devolved much of the management of the estate – he sent her a note arranging a meeting at the house beside the trout stream. She had been six days without seeing or hearing from him, six dragging, fretful days. Then at last he had written explaining that his father’s serious illness had kept him at home, and arranging to meet her this very night. She had been keyed up to a pitch of ecstatic expectation, when a second letter had arrived with the news that his father’s condition had taken a worse turn and that he could not leave after all. The disappointment had been too much for her excited nerves. She felt the imperative need to relieve her pent-up feelings in some form of violent action. Almost against her will, certainly against her better judgment, she had crept onc
e more up the winding stairs to her garret chamber. Robbery on the highway, this was the only drug that could deaden the tumultuous longing within her.

  And now, dressed in her highwayman’s clothes and sitting before the mirror in a little pool of candlelight, she picked up her lover’s letter, and read it again to charm and reassure herself by its loving phrases and its promises of a speedy meeting. He wrote:

  ‘To my most passionately beloved mistress, Barbara Skelton.

  ‘Dear heart,

  I thank you for your tender letter and the lock of your delicate hair which I begged of you and which I will always carry with me. What an unhappy wretch I am to have nothing to send you in return but the news that I cannot come to you the day after tomorrow, for my father’s heart is plaguing him sorely, and till I know how things go with him I dare not leave him or my mother. He is in great peril of his life I fear, and we all in sharp apprehension and distress, and so I know that I need make no further excuses to my kind sweetheart, nor tell her how much I long for her delightful company, and to kiss her sweet mouth, for if she knows anything she knows my true love and passion for her. I write in haste that this may reach you in time. Adieu my dearest dear. I shall be with you, God willing, at the earliest opportunity.

  Your ladyship’s passionate lover and faithful servant,

  Kit Locksby.’

  He had scribbled a postscript. ‘I have found something to send you. This rose. It is not as sweet as you.’

  Barbara laid down the letter and picked up a white rose which lay on the table beside her. Smiling gently she held it to her nose, breathed in its delicious perfume, then brushed it lightly with her lips. She began to fasten it to her coat, then, with a movement of revulsion, laid it down again. No! her lover’s gift had no place in that dark, midnight life of which she was going to take final leave tonight. It must wait for her here, token of all the enchanted, candid tomorrows which she would share with him.