“Old Jethro died, then?”
“Yes, some time ago. Some said he starved himself to death and all them whippings didn’t help.”
“Where does Young Jethro live? Is it near here?”
“Not far. On the edge of the estate. In a sort of barn. Very rough it is and Young Jethro be his father all over again. He’s got a nose for sin. If there’s a bit of sin hereabouts he’d sniff it out. Polly, one of our kitchen girls, was in a bit of trouble. Jethro knew it before the rest of us … almost before Polly knew herself. Took her in his barn and told her she was damned and how the Devil was laughing his head off and getting his imps to stoke up the fires for her. Poor Polly: she went to her grandmother’s place and hanged herself. ‘Wages of sin,’ said Young Jethro. Poor Polly, ’twas only a little frolic in the stables. If she hadn’t got caught, she’d have been no worse than the rest.”
“This Young Jethro sounds a very uncomfortable sort of person to have about.”
“Them that’s over good is often uncomfortable, mistress.”
I agreed.
By an odd chance a few days later when I was riding with the boys, we tethered the horses and went down to the beach near that cave where I had sheltered with Harriet and Edwin when we had come back to England. I had a morbid fancy for returning to such places and conjuring up visions of the past.
There on the shingle the boys took off their boots and dabbled their feet in the sea while I sat watching them.
The waves were a little rough on that day and every time one came in they would shriek with laughter, run forward daringly and then run back. Then they amused themselves by sending pebbles skimming over the water.
The noise of the sea, the odour of seaweed, the happy shrieks of the boys were a background to my thoughts. I remembered the boat’s coming in. I pictured Edwin and Harriet exchanging looks. I tried to remember what they had said, and how they had said it. It was there for me to see and I had been blind.
I was aware suddenly of a crunching of boots on the shingle and looking up I saw a man coming along. He carried a basket in which he had some pieces of driftwood and perhaps other things he had picked up during his beachcombing.
He was muttering to himself. “Sinful. Should be beaten.” I knew instinctively that I was face to face with Young Jethro whose father had murdered my husband. I could not let him pass. “Sinful?” I cried. “Who is sinful?” He pulled up and looked at me with fierce, fanatical eyes shaded by brownish yellow brows so untidy that they sprouted in all directions and threatened to cover his eyes themselves. His great pupils stood out, for the whites of his eyes showed all round them so he had a look of fierce surprise and horror. His mouth was tight and drawn in, turning down at each side.
“Them bits of sin,” he said pointing to the boys. “I can assure you that they do not know the meaning of sin.”
“You go against God’s Word, woman. We be all born in sin.”
“Even you?”
“God help me, yes.”
“Well since you share in the sin, why are you so eager to point it out in others?”
“Laughing, shrieking … two days off the Sabbath!” I felt angry with him. His father had killed Edwin. But for his father Edwin would not have died. I might never have discovered his infidelities. But could he have gone on through his life pretending …
“Nonsense,” I said, “people are meant to be happy.” He moved away from me as though he feared to be contaminated by such wickedness. “You’re a sinful woman,” he said. “God will not be mocked.” Edwin had seen the man. He thought I needed protecting and came running up.
“Mama, Mama, did you want me?”
I was so proud of him. He looked up boldly into that repulsive face and said: “Don’t you dare hurt my mama.”
I had risen to my feet and placed my hand protectively on my son’s head.
Recognition dawned on Young Jethro’s face. “I knew your father,” he said.
“My father was the best man in the world,” said Edwin.
“Ananias,” cried Young Jethro. “Ananias.”
“What does he mean, Mama?” asked Edwin.
I did not speak. I was very shaken by this man who knew so much about my husband.
“The wages of sin …” muttered Young Jethro, his eyes on Edwin.
Leigh came running up. He was breathless. “I’ve thrown a pebble over and over the water. It’s gone all the way to France.”
“It couldn’t have,” said Edwin.
“It did. It did. I saw it go.”
Young Jethro had gone off muttering, “And the wages of sin is death.”
“Who’s that old man?” asked Leigh.
But Edwin was thinking of the pebble which had gone skimming across the water to France and was determined to throw one himself.
“Show me,” he said. “I’ll send one farther than you.”
They raced back to the water while I watched the retreating figure of Young Jethro.
I think I knew it was going to happen, and when I was sure, I felt a sense of relief because fate had made up my mind for me.
I knew I must act quickly and I did.
When I was alone with Carleton, I said: “I am pregnant.”
His eyes lighted up. His face seemed to shine with the enormity of his satisfaction.
“My dearest Arabella. I knew it.” He had lifted me in his arms. He held me tightly. He kissed me again and again. We were in the garden and I said: “We could be seen.”
“Does it matter? A man is allowed to embrace his future wife. Oh, my dear girl, this is the happiest moment of my life.”
“It is what you wanted. You will be Edwin’s stepfather and Eversleigh will be yours in all but name.”
“As if I was thinking of Eversleigh.”
“You know you always are thinking of it.”
“I am thinking of everything. My wife and already carrying our child. That is wonderful. I am an impatient man, you will find, my darling. This suits my mood. I am to acquire a wife and a child in the shortest possible space of time.”
“I see no alternative but marriage,” I said, trying to sound doleful.
“There is no alternative. I shall go straight in and tell my uncle. I know he’ll be delighted. It was what he wanted. Or shall we marry secretly? Then we might have another ceremony and festivities later. That would account for the early arrival of our child.”
“I did not think you were one to set such store by the proprieties.”
“I like to observe them when they fit in with my needs. Oh, Arabella, I am a happy man this day. That which I have so long desired has come to pass. Yes, let us marry in secret. I will arrange for a priest to do this. Then we will tell my uncle, and I know they will probably want another ceremony and celebrations here.”
“There seems no point in such subterfuge.”
“Yes. Because the sort of wedding they will wish us to have might take a little time to arrange. There is our child to consider. We want him to make a respectable entrance into the world.”
“Please do not think I am duty bound to provide you with a boy.”
“Believe me, it is Arabella I want. I shall be grateful for whatever she deigns to give me. Leave this to me, Arabella. Arabella, how I adore you.”
“At least,” I said, “I should be grateful that you are ready to make an honest woman of me.”
“Never change.” He smiled at me gently. “I could not bear you to change. There was always something of the polygamist in me, so I need my two Arabellas. Arabella of the sharp tongue by day and Arabella adorable, loving me as I love her in the dark of the night.”
“There is only one of me, you know. Do you think I can really supply all your needs?”
“You already have the answer to that. Proof positive.”
He went off that day and did not come back until the morning of the following one. I was to meet him at the stables that afternoon. We rode off some five miles together and there in a small church we were
married. Two of his Court friends were witnesses.
I said: “It is exactly like what I hear of a mock marriage. I believe that is a practice some of your profligate friends indulge in now and then.”
“Alas, they do. But this is no mockery. This is true and binding. We shall go straight back to Eversleigh and I will tell my uncle that we are married, but I shall not tell him when the ceremony took place. I’ll promise you he will insist on our being married in the Eversleigh church with many spectators and a feast to follow. Then you will not be able to say it is like a mock marriage.”
I felt an odd elation, a desire not to look beyond the moment. I was too excited to be unhappy.
By a stream we paused to rest awhile. We tethered the horses and sat on the grass.
Carleton took my hand and said: “So at last it has happened.”
“You always knew it would, didn’t you?” I said. “You made up your mind and what you decide you want you get eventually.”
“It seems to work that way,” he admitted with unaccustomed modesty.
I looked at the ring he had put on my finger. I had taken off that which Edwin had given me and had left it in a drawer in my court cupboard.
He took my hand and kissed the ring. Then he put his arms about me and drew me down beside him.
I said uneasily: “We should be going.”
He answered that we should celebrate our marriage.
I knew what he meant and I tried to rise. “Someone could come past,” I said.
“This is a very isolated spot. Besides, I want you now. Do you realize this stupendous fact? You and I have just been married.”
Then he held me to him and laughed and the leaves fluttered down on us as he made love to me.
The notion came to me that it would always be what he wanted unless I firmly resisted which, I promised myself, I should do if the inclination so moved me.
But I would be honest. I was elated. I didn’t know whether this was happiness. It was not what I had found with Edwin, but I wanted no more of that.
Excitement, passion, satisfaction. How much more appealing than romantic love!
I never intend to be hurt again, I told myself.
Carleton was right. There was great rejoicing when my father and mother-in-law were told the news.
“You sly dog,” cried Lord Eversleigh, gripping Carleton’s hand. “Marrying in secret, eh? Keeping it from us.”
Matilda embraced me warmly. “My dearest daughter,” she said, “for that is what you are to me. Nothing could have pleased me more.” She whispered: “You will be so good for Carleton … after that unfortunate marriage. It makes everything so right.”
“Why did you keep it secret?” asked Charlotte; her voice was cool but there was a strange edge to it.
Carleton was ready for her. “We decided on the spur of the moment. We knew that if we announced a formal betrothal, you would have wanted us to wait and do everything in style. I know you, Aunt Matilda.”
“Yes,” said her husband, “that would have been just like you, Matilda.”
“Naturally I should have wanted to have had a beautiful wedding. In fact …”
“It’s coming,” said Carleton. “What did I tell you, Arabella?”
Then Matilda said that of course if would be pleasant to have another celebration. That could be done. “Everyone will be so disappointed if we don’t. We owe it to everyone on the estate …”
Carleton looked at me and smiled.
“We’ll consider it, eh, Arabella.”
I said we would, for I could see that Matilda was already making her plans.
She thought that we should have a ceremony in the church—people never really liked those secret ceremonies—and there would be a reception afterwards at the house. The servants should have theirs in the hall beyond the screens. It was traditional.
“We must let everyone know that it is a repeat performance,” said Carleton.
“Oh …” said Matilda, a slow smile spreading across her face.
Then she turned to me and embraced me. “You have brought great happiness to Eversleigh, Arabella … as always.”
Charlotte sought an opportunity to speak to me. I was passing her bedroom and she called me in to show me, she said, how she was progressing with a piece of tapestry she was working. That was just a pretext, I quickly realized.
“I am thinking of working in a new shade of red, so you think it would be the right thing to do?”
I said I thought it would be very good.
“So you are already married to Carleton?” she went on.
“Yes.”
“It seems so strange. I thought you didn’t like him. Were you pretending?”
“Of course not. It was just … our way.”
“You always seemed to be sparring together … trying to score over each other.”
“I suppose we were.”
“Then how could you be …?”
“Relationships are complicated, Charlotte.”
“I see that they are. You were different with Edwin.”
My lips tightened. “Yes,” I said.
“You loved Edwin dearly. It was a terrible tragedy. People suffer when they fall in love. Perhaps it would be better not to.”
“That’s certainly a point of view.”
“Was Carleton implying that you are already …?”
“I am going to have a child,” I said.
“Is that why … I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. It was just that it was such a surprise. You and Carleton, when I thought you disliked him. Of course I knew he was interested in you … but then, if all accounts are true, he is interested in lots of women.”
“From now on,” I said lightly, “he will have to be interested in one only.”
“Do you think that you can make a man interested in you only?”
“I believe that is what a wife must find out for herself by trying, of course.”
“You are attractive, Arabella. I’ve always seen that. It was only when that woman came …”
“You mean Harriet,” I said firmly.
“Harriet Main,” she repeated softly. And I guessed she was thinking of how Harriet had wantonly taken Charles Condey from her and then refused him.
“I am going to change things at Eversleigh, Charlotte,” I said. “We shall have balls and banquets. I think we should. And then you will …”
“Yes—” she said.
“Perhaps you’ll find out that there are other men in the world besides Charles Condey.”
“Oh, I always knew that,” she replied, smiling at me.
I’ll do it, I told myself. I’ll bring her out. I’ll find a husband for her. I’ll stop her brooding on the past. I had freed myself from it. So should she.
Yes, that was how I felt during the months that followed. I was free from the ghost of the past. Edwin had never really loved me. A bitter revelation, but it was proving helpful. I could not let my resentment against him smoulder. I was someone else’s wife now.
And Carleton. What can I say except that he carried me along on the waves of passion like a frail craft on hitherto uncharted seas? I began to wait to be alone with him, to long for him, to give myself up to him entirely.
I understood so much of what my mother had told me. I knew how she had fought against such a passion. I understood her story as I had never been able to before. She came to Eversleigh for the wedding celebration with my father and the rest of the family. Lucas could not come because his wife was having a baby.
My parents were delighted. I could see they liked Carleton. My mother told me confidentially that she could clearly understand the attraction, and she was sure I should be even happier in my second marriage than I had been in my first. I realized then that, although she had considered Edwin a suitable husband, she had felt he was so young and not quite as serious as she would like the husband of her darling daughter to be.
Carleton talked a great deal with my father. They discussed the s
tate of the country—my father from the military angle, Carleton from that of politics. They were clearly interested in each other.
After they had returned to Far Flamstead, my mother wrote frequently and they were all delighted at the prospect of the birth of my child.
Happy days they were. Uncle Toby was beside himself with delight.
“There is nothing pleases me so much as to see young people happily married. There is nothing like marriage. Married bliss—ah, it should be the dream of us all.” He became maudlin when he had drunk too much wine, talking of all he had missed. And now he was forced to go and watch pretty women on the stage and try to live vicariously the adventures they portrayed there. If he had married he might have had sons and daughters by now. Ah, it was sad. Life had passed him by.
He was constantly going to London. Carleton said there was not a play in London that he had not seen. He was either at the King’s House or the Duke of York’s. He was an honoured patron there and well known in the green rooms.
“Poor Uncle Toby,” said Carleton. “He’s trying to catch up with youth.”
Christmas came and went, and with the New Year I began to be more and more aware of my child. Sally Nullens was joyous. Nothing could delight her more than the prospect of having a baby in the house. “The boys are growing out of babyhood,” she said. “My word, they’re a handful. It will be pleasant to have a little one.”
Carleton was the devoted husband. He was beside himself with joy, and I realized how frustrated he must have felt during all the years when he was married to Barbary. I knew he was thinking of a son. I kept reminding him that our child might well be a girl.
He said it wouldn’t matter. We should have boys in time.
“Pray allow me to deliver this one first,” I retorted.
Indeed, they were happy days. We bantered our way through them, always taunting each other, and there were nights tender more than passionate now that my pregnancy was advancing.
I was no longer mourning for Edwin. I realized that I had kept that grief alive. Someone had said that the wise drown their sorrows, and it is only the foolish who teach them to swim. I thought that was apt. I had nourished my grief, I had brooded on it; I had built a shrine to Edwin in my heart—and I had worshipped a false God. Feet of clay indeed!
Lament for a Lost Lover Page 30