8
To travel from one country to another may be tiring, but when the same journey crosses the frontier of a new sort of life, it increases in excitement at every moment. By the time Alexa arrived in London she had forgotten the tedium of the hours which had passed since she left Naples and her eyes shone with the delight of seeing Margaret again after such a long separation.
Before they could do more than embrace and stammer their first greetings, the luggage must be carried in. Alexa had brought back to England everything she owned. She was not accustomed to travel with all her possessions at once and was amused by Betty’s wide-eyed astonishment as valises, hat-boxes, jewel cases and portmanteaux were carried upstairs.
Her maid could look after the unpacking. Alexa herself followed Margaret straight into the drawing room, and for an hour or more kisses and compliments were interspersed with jumbled items of news drawn from the past ten years.
Gradually Alexa felt herself becoming calmer. She was able to accept a drink of tea, to sit and smile.
‘What are your plans?’ Margaret asked her. ‘Is this only a brief visit, or do you intend to return permanently to England?’
It was too soon for Alexa to answer that question fully, but in one respect she could be specific. ‘I have agreed to sing at Covent Garden during the first half of the season,’ she said. ‘After Christmas, nothing is decided. I was invited to return to Naples, but I’ve turned that down. And only the day before I left there I received an invitation to sing with Caruso in San Francisco next spring. I shall reject that offer as well. How can anyone seriously expect me to travel halfway across the world, away from all my friends, beyond the bounds of civilization?’
‘A city which has an opera house can’t be wholly uncivilized,’ laughed Margaret. ‘But for my own sake I’m glad that you don’t propose to go so far away. Speaking of your friends, Alexa, I told Lord Glanville that you planned to return. He has arranged a ball for you at Blaize. I am to tell you that he is sure you will be the star of the winter season; he intends to presume on his acquaintance by being the first to present you to society.’
‘He’s very kind, considering how long it is since we last saw each other, and under what unfavourable circumstances.’
‘What were they?’
‘He called on me one evening after a performance – an evening on which I was previously engaged to dine with another gentleman. I owe Lord Glanville so much that I ought to have freed myself for his company. But I was taken by surprise, and the two men had quarrelled once before – well, I mismanaged the occasion. It’s generous of him to forgive me. You’ve continued your own acquaintance with him, then, since he found your hospital post for you?’
‘We see a good deal of each other when he is in England,’ Margaret said. ‘We are friends, in fact.’ The tone of her voice as she spoke of him intrigued Alexa, and she would have pressed for further details, but Margaret was still speaking. ‘And have you maintained your relationship with the Duke of Caversham?’
Alexa was tempted to be annoyed. She could never have expected Margaret to approve, but she had hoped that the news would not have reached her. Certainly she herself had never mentioned the duke’s name in any of her letters. ‘You know about that, then?’ she said.
‘It’s no great secret, is it?’
‘Are you shocked?’
‘I was when I first heard. Shocked but perhaps not surprised.’
‘I remember, you always regarded the theatre as a cradle of sin. Well, all that is over now. I gave Caversham his congé in the spring, and he announced his engagement while you were in Jamaica. His debts were pressing, because the estate is entailed and he had mortgaged its revenues for many years ahead. His mother succeeded in finding an heiress from Boston whose parents were prepared to pay handsomely for the pleasure of seeing their daughter a duchess. She’s said to be a young lady with a mind of her own, and scornful of some of our European customs. It’s thought that – at least for a little while – she may expect fidelity in exchange for her fortune. She’s welcome to him as far as I’m concerned. I can promise you, my heart is far from being broken.’
Had she chosen to do so, she could have taken the opportunity then to tell Margaret her news. But the happiness she felt in her love for Matthew made her hug the secret to herself a little longer. He would come soon to see her, she was sure, and they would make their announcement together.
The maid who had come with her from Italy appeared in the doorway and began to murmur questions in her own language.
‘Will you excuse me for a few moments?’ Alexa asked. ‘There are one or two decisions to be made. Which jewels should go to the bank: that sort of thing. And I ought to change my dress. The journey has left me dirty.’
‘Of course,’ said Margaret. ‘You must be very tired. But Alexa, when you are refreshed, and before you go out or make any arrangements, will you allow me time for a serious discussion?’
‘That sounds most forbidding.’
‘I don’t intend it to. But you already know that I have something which should have been handed to you on your twenty-first birthday. And there is an explanation which must go with it.’
‘I shall be back very soon.’ Alexa embraced her guardian again and ran lightly up the stairs. She threw off her travelling clothes and wrapped herself in a light robe of smocked silk as she supervised the stowing-away of her possessions. At one moment, while she was speaking to the maid, she heard the ring of the front door bell, but took no notice. Margaret’s callers were no concern of hers. It must have been twenty minutes later that she glanced out of the window and was startled by the sight of a young man in the street below, walking away from the house with a reluctant lack of speed.
Surely that was Matthew! Barefoot as she was, Alexa flew downstairs and arrived panting in the drawing room.
‘Has Matthew been here?’ she demanded.
Margaret was standing beside a small table, looking down at a box which lay open on its surface. Her expression was unhappy, and Alexa was forced to repeat the question before it was answered.
‘He has called, yes. And he will call again tomorrow.’
‘Why should he need to wait?’ Alexa moved towards the door again, but Margaret put a hand on her arm.
‘Alexa! You can’t go outside like that. Nor could you receive a gentleman in such a state. I guarantee that Matthew will return tomorrow. He told me that you had agreed to let him paint your portrait. His call was to arrange a time for the sittings. But one day’s delay will do no harm. And you have promised me time for a conversation before you embark on your social life in London.’
Alexa’s mouth pouted in petulance. She was quite accustomed to receiving gentlemen in the dressing rooms of opera houses in a much less modest attire than her present robe. But it would never do to quarrel with Margaret on the very first day of her stay. She sighed a little, and then smiled. ‘Then let us have this conversation now and get it out of the way.’
‘First of all I have some jewellery to hand over to you,’ Margaret said. ‘When you see its richness, you will understand why I was so unwilling to send it out to you in Italy. And you seemed to feel little impatience to receive it, even after I told you it was here.’
’You told me the jewels were a gift from my father, and I have no interest in my father,’ said Alexa. She spoke indifferently, but that did not prevent her from moving to stand beside Margaret.
A small leather case stood open on the table, with its velvet-lined drawers pulled out in front of it. Alexa caught her breath as she looked down at the necklace of rubies, set in silver and diamonds, with matching ear-rings and a hairpiece in which diamond-veined leaves trembled round a rose petalled in more rubies.
‘It’s true,’ she said slowly, ‘that I had never imagined they would be so beautiful.’ She unbuttoned the top of her silk robe and held the necklace against her skin, moving across to a glass in which she could study herself. ‘The stones suit my colouring as though
they had been chosen for me.’
‘And so they were,’ Margaret told her. ‘Tell me, Alexa, why have you felt such a coldness towards your father, when you cannot really remember him?’
‘That is the reason,’ Alexa answered. ‘He is a stranger to me. How should I feel warmth towards a man I’ve never met? What do I know of him? Only that he allowed my dear mother to starve. And if he could afford a gift like this, it would hardly seem that he could plead poverty on his own part as an excuse.’
‘He died,’ said Margaret. ‘He couldn’t help that.’
‘It’s usual for some provision to be made in such circumstances.’ The coldness of Alexa’s voice reflected her feelings.
‘This was the provision he made,’ said Margaret. ‘If your mother refused to turn jewels into food after he was dead, that was not his fault either.’
Alexa shrugged her shoulders. ‘I’m not concerned to attack him,’ she said. ‘What I told you before was true. I have no interest in him. If he were still alive, I would give him back his jewels. Since you say he is dead, I might as well accept them, because they are certainly very pretty. But if you are proposing now to tell me who he was, you needn’t trouble yourself. My dear mother and my dear guardian have been all the family I need.’
‘It’s necessary for me to tell you,’ said Margaret. ‘And then you will tell me that I should have done it long ago. I’m afraid you will be very angry with me.’
‘How could I be angry with you when you have accepted all my own follies without a word of reproach?’ Alexa kissed Margaret affectionately and then sat down with a patient expression on her face to hear whatever she had to be told.
‘Your mother was my music teacher when I was a girl,’ Margaret began. ‘She was very beautiful. You may not remember that, because the time of her poverty began almost as soon as you were out of babyhood. Her colouring was dark, not like yours at all, but she had the same grace and slender elegance as you. At that time, the time of my music lessons, my mother was still alive, but was an invalid – or at least, she called herself one. She had retreated from my father. He was an old man by then, but still vigorous. And he was lonely.’
Alexa’s quick mind understood at once what Margaret was about to tell her, but the conclusion was too extraordinary for her to accept at once. ‘Your father?’ she whispered incredulously.
‘My father, John Junius Lorimer. Your mother was proud. When she discovered she was pregnant, she made no claim on him. She went away, in fact, to London. But later he discovered where she was, and saw you for the first time. His daughter. You must never feel cold to him again, Alexa, for in the time that was left to him, he adored you. He gave your mother an establishment of her own and for a little while she lived in comfort and gave comfort to him. But – well, you’ve heard often enough from me the story of how Lorimer’s Bank collapsed. My father was ruined both in reputation and in estate. Everything he owned was owed to the bank’s creditors. He was able to conceal the rubies from them only by a subterfuge which came near to being criminal. There was no way at all in which he could have given you or your mother more, and I know this caused him great unhappiness. He spoke of you in the very moment of his death. Your father loved you very much, Alexa – more, I believe, than he loved any of his other children.’
Alexa was too stunned to speak. Everything that had happened to her in her life, it seemed, must be reappraised in a new light, and she hardly knew where to start. ‘So you are my sister,’ she whispered at last.
‘Your half-sister, yes. And William and Ralph are your half-brothers.’ With an unexpected firmness Margaret looked straight into Alexa’s eyes. ‘And Matthew,’ she said, ‘is your nephew.’
‘No!’ There had been a moment, or perhaps only a second, in which Alexa had been poised on the brink of happiness at the thought that she was linked by blood to the woman for whom she had always felt a deep affection. Now, abruptly, delight turned to disaster. ‘It’s not possible!’ she cried. ‘He is older than I – he cannot surely –’ But even as she fought against the discovery she knew that it must be true. Groaning, she buried her head in her hands and felt Margaret sitting beside her. A comforting arm gripped her shoulders, but she could not accept comfort. For a long time neither of them spoke.
‘This is why William behaved as he did all those years ago,’ said Margaret at last.
Alexa dried her eyes and tried to steady her emotions by breathing deeply. ‘Neither Matthew nor I could understand what led him to be so unkind,’ she said. ‘Why could he not simply have told us the truth?’
‘He has always refused to recognize the relationship with you publicly, and presumably he felt satisfied that as a result of his deceptions you and Matthew would never meet again.’
‘And you?’ Alexa tried to conceal the bitterness she felt, but Margaret’s unhappy expression made it clear that no accusation was needed to make her feel guilty.
‘When your mother died, you were still a child,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t married then – in fact, I had no expectation that I would ever marry. Although I had qualified as a doctor, I was experiencing difficulty in finding employment. If I was to bring you up, I needed William’s help. His generosity was conditional on my promise of silence. At that time, I must confess, it didn’t seem important. Later on I most certainly ought to have told you. I had intended it all to come together – the jewels and the truth – on your twenty-first birthday, but by then you had left England. To send the jewels seemed unsafe and to make a written announcement of your parentage was somehow too formal. I wanted to break down your coldness to the memory of your father by convincing you of the warmth of his love. And of course I didn’t expect you to stay away so long. I’m afraid I allowed the matter to drift. I warned you that you would be angry with me. Neither you nor William had ever mentioned your attachment to Matthew. Until your letter arrived in Jamaica, I had no idea how important it was that you should have known years ago – and no suspicion that it was important still. I’ve been very much at fault. I’m sorry, Alexa.’
‘You’ve guessed, then, that Matthew and I planned to marry?’
‘Yes. Although only today did I feel sure of it.’
‘And does all this matter?’ Alexa asked. ‘We are of the same generation. To say that we are aunt and nephew is only a form of words.’
‘It’s a legal impediment,’ Margaret pointed out. ‘No one who knew the truth could perform a marriage service. And anyone who told the truth could prevent the marriage.’
‘I remember when I was eighteen,’ Alexa began; for a moment she paused to savour the bitterness of the memory. ‘Matthew asked me whether there was any chance that I might be your daughter. You had given us a lecture the previous day – I wonder whether you remember? – on the dangers of in-breeding, of marrying a first cousin. And yet if we were first cousins there would be no legal bar to our marriage. Why should this be any different?’
Margaret’s gesture was compassionate. ‘I can only say that it is. And if you consider the matter, the child of an aunt and nephew would be genetically more at risk than that of cousins. It would be a risk which you ought not to take even if the law were to permit it.’
‘Does Matthew know?’ Alexa demanded.
‘Not yet. I wanted you to hear it first. He will have to be told, of course.’
‘Alexa received this in silence and could see that her lack of agreement was causing her guardian – who must now be thought of as a sister – anxiety.
‘Alexa, there is no choice! It would be easiest, I imagine, if I were to tell him, so that you need not meet again. I understand what an unhappy situation it is for you both.’
‘But he is going to paint my portrait,’ Alexa pointed out.
‘It would surely be wise to abandon that project. The strain –’
Alexa interrupted with a sudden determination in her voice. ‘Matthew has left his life in Paris, and all his friends, for my sake,’ she said. ‘It was agreed between us that he should pa
int me at a time while I am of some interest in London, so that all the most beautiful women in society will see the picture and hurry to commission their own portraits from him. If I have to deprive him of his hopes of marriage, he must at least have the chance to make his fortune. Will you leave it to me, Margaret, to tell him?’
It was Margaret’s turn to be silent, and Alexa could guess why. Nor were the older woman’s doubts unjustified, for already Alexa’s mind was searching for some solution to the problem.
‘I reminded you earlier of the risk to any children who might be born to you and Matthew,’ Margaret said at last. Alexa could tell from the way she spoke that the subject was distasteful to her. ‘You must realize as well that standards in England are different from those which you may have encountered on the Continent. If you lived with Matthew as anything but a wife, you would not be received in Society here. Nor would many rich gentlemen allow their wives to visit Matthew’s studio, however great his skill as portrait painter.’
‘I’m not tied to England. I can make a living anywhere. I don’t care about Society. I don’t care about marriage ceremonies.’
‘All this has come as a great shock to you, Alexa, and it’s natural that you should be upset,’ said Margaret quietly. ‘I’ve told you already how much I blame myself for what happened. Please don’t add too much to the weight of guilt on my shoulders. And remember that if you were to deprive yourself of a proper family life in the way you’re suggesting, you would be robbing Matthew of the same thing.’
‘Yes, I’ll remember,’ said Alexa. ‘But we’ve both suffered, Matthew and I, from his father’s refusal to let us discuss the true situation frankly between us. Now that we’re adults, we have the right to settle our own affairs. When Matthew calls tomorrow, I will see him. And as soon as the time is right, I’ll tell him the truth. And now, if you will excuse me, Margaret, I think I’d like to retire at once. I’ve been travelling so long that I’m very tired.’
The Lorimer Legacy Page 16