‘Napoleon? But he’s on St. Helena.’
‘Precisely. And we’re here, in Savannah, as near to him as anyone else in the civilised world.’
‘You’re joking!’
‘About him? Never. You should know me better than that. And you used to feel the same; you know you did. Remember how you cried, back in ‘15 when he came back from Elba and your father wouldn’t throw his bonnet over the windmill, like mine, and join his new army?’
‘Yes,’ doubtfully, ‘but that was three years ago.’
‘Precisely. Three years in which the Bourbons have proved themselves the tyrants they are. Three years in which France has learned to long for her great man back. It is but to get him there, and the country will be at his feet. And that,’ proudly, ‘that I am going to do.’
‘You? Are you run mad, Jo? St. Helena’s Lord knows how many thousand miles away, down in the South Atlantic! You might as well talk of getting the man down from the moon. And Napoleon’s guarded, too. I read about it somewhere.’
‘Of course he is!’ Impatiently. ‘That’s why it will all take time: why I need your help. It’s not just to get the boat; that will be easy when the time comes. Perhaps you don’t quite understand that I’m a rich woman now, love. Hyde — Mr. Purchis — wished it so. He said it would be better that I have my own. He’s a desperate progressive; you and he will deal together admirably.’
‘A progressive! And planning to free Napoleon? Now I know you’ve run mad.’ She stopped, puzzled, as her cousin burst into a peal of laughter.
‘Hyde!’ She spoke through a fresh burst of laughter that struck Juliet as oddly nervous. ‘It’s you who are crazy, pet. You don’t think he knows anything of this project of mine, do you? That’s why I need you so. That’s the cream of the jest.’ She stopped, eyeing her cousin cautiously as she took in the full enormity of the suggestion.
‘Josephine!’ The first reaction was as inevitable as it was expected. ‘You don’t mean to suggest that I take your place with your husband? That he’s not to know?’
‘But of course, love; what else? It will be a perfect Restoration Comedy for you: The Husband Deceived, The Substitute Bride, what you will.’ And then, anticipating a further outburst from her cousin. ‘And before you get on your high prudish horse with me, I had better tell you that ours has been more of a farce than a marriage from the start. Hyde Purchis doesn’t need a wife, he needs a talking dictionary!’
‘You mean —’
‘Separate bedrooms, pet; separate everything.’ She coloured and Juliet felt a dangerous twinge of sympathy. ‘Oh, not quite from the first,’ Josephine went on. ‘I’m not so unattractive as that, thank God. For a while, I think, he had it in mind to get an heir for Winchelsea. But I doubt his heart wasn’t in it from the first.’
‘And yours, Jo?’
‘Mine? Who cares about a woman’s heart! But I’m telling this all wrong. You must try to understand how things are between us. He married me, you see, to save me, to give me the protection of his name. I was in hiding, penniless; what else could I do? You don’t know what it was like in Paris after Waterloo. The Prussians were bad enough, but the Russians! Barbarians. Hyde saved me —’ She stopped. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘Of course not, dear. But, Josephine, if he has done all this for you, how can you repay him by using his money for a cause he must detest?’
‘It’s not his money.’ Angrily. ‘It’s mine. He told me so. To do what I like with. And this is what I like. Oh, of course, to begin with, I tried, carefully, to see if I could win him round to the cause. Speaking in a general way, you know, so as not to make him suspect. It would have been beyond anything to have had him as our leader! The Purchises are one of the first families here, you must know. One ancestor came over with Oglethorpe on the Anne, and two or three, on the distaff side, on the Mayflower. A Purchis signed the Declaration of Independence, and his cousin died serving Cornwallis at Yorktown. Hyde could be anything he wanted, and all he does is sit out there at Winchelsea and dream of universities and new machines. He says politics are no occupation for a gentleman! But they send for him to Savannah whenever they have trouble there, just the same.’
‘And does he go?’
‘Of course. It’s his duty, isn’t it? He always does his duty. Purchises do. Dear God I’m so tired of the Purchises! Don’t you see, I need to get away somehow, Ju, or I’ll go mad. There’s an old aunt, out at Winchelsea. She must be a hundred if she’s a day. She remembers everything! Oglethorpe kissed her in her cradle. Tomochichi made her an honorary Yamacraw — They’re an Indian tribe, you know, or were ... She’ll tell you all about it. Over and over and over again.’
‘No, she won’t, love, because I’ll not be there.’
‘Juliet, you must!’
‘Josephine, I’m sorry; I can’t. You should have known I couldn’t!’
‘Nothing of the kind. Do you remember what your mother used to say, when you lost your temper? “Think rationally, Juliette; you are not a beast”?’
‘Of course I remember.’
‘Well, then, listen to this. On St. Helena, Napoleon is ill, dying of despair, they say, and I believe them. And in France, men are in prison for thinking rationally. The rest of Europe has been put back, like a child’s game of bricks, to where it was before Napoleon blew across it with his wind of change. Think of Germany, think of Italy, united by him for the first time in human memory, with new laws, education, chances of prosperity, after all the years of petty tyranny. And, now, what has that Congress done, that danced so hard at Vienna? I tell you, they have brought back all the little tyrants, all like Louis, worse for their exile, bitter, frightened men who will make life such a hell for their subjects as to bring on years of blood sooner or later. Would it not be better to have Napoleon back? And, you loved him, remember? He was your godfather, as Josephine was my godmother. Can you shrug your shoulders and leave him to eat out his heart in exile?’
‘He’s really ill?’
‘Yes; that I know. Look! I brought this, just in case you were obstinate. You see, I have not wasted my time, here among the Goths, in Georgia. You know the hand?’
‘His?’ She glanced swiftly over the short letter, then up at her cousin with the first sign of wavering. ‘It’s so bad? But what would he do, Josephine?’
‘Back in Europe? Not what the Bourbons have; surely you know him well enough to see that? He’s a man, one that can learn from experience. You know as well as I do that all he wanted, when he came back from Elba, was peace, time to put France on her feet again. It was the British who insisted on hunting him down.’
‘It’s true.’
She was visibly wavering now, and Josephine pressed home her advantage. ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘you know, whatever you decide, I’ll never let you suffer, Ju. What I have, is yours, either way. Only —’ She was on her feet now, pacing the little room as if it was a cage. ‘My heart is in this! If I could only do it, then I think I could pick up the ruins of my life, and make something of them. Help me, Ju?’
‘It’s as bad as that?’
‘It’s worse. I can’t bear myself, don’t you see? So how can I bear with Hyde, or his old aunt, or those good people of Savannah? I warn you, Ju, if you don’t help me; if I don’t get this chance to live; I may do anything; shame us all; break Hyde’s heart — If he has a heart, which I doubt — But he has pride — Oh my God, he has that!’ She stopped for a moment in her frantic pacing and looked down at her cousin, whose hands were working in her lap. ‘Forgive me, pet. It’s a great deal to ask, I know, and you need time to think about it. Well, I’m going to give it to you. I shall leave you now and go back to Winchelsea to fetch Anne. She will tell you, better than I can, how it has been with me. We’ll bring food, of course. Everything you need. Sleep on it, then. I’ll come back in the morning. If you find you can’t do this for me, never mind. I’ll take you to Savannah for a right royal welcome from Hyde, and what happens to me afterwards, i
s no one’s business but mine. And his, poor man. But, Ju,’ she took her cousin’s hand, ‘if you think it over, and find you can ... For his sake ... Do you remember sitting on his knee, and calling him “mon petit oncle”? If you do — just think of the game it will be! You’ll stay here, of course, with Anne. I’ll come to you daily —’ she anticipated a question. ‘Hyde will never notice. He cares nothing of where I am, so long as I appear when there are guests. No! Don’t say anything now. At least think it over while I’m gone ... Tonight ... Please?’
‘Very well.’ Doubtfully. ‘But I beg you, don’t count on anything, Jo, I don’t see —’
‘Hush!’ Josephine swept her into a scented embrace. ‘I must leave you, pet, or I’m likely to be benighted on my way back to Savannah after I’ve brought you Anne. Hyde doesn’t like me to be out in the dark. I love it!’ She smiled the wicked little smile Juliet remembered so well. ‘Oil and vinegar, that’s Hyde and me. Be good, pet!’ They were outside now, on the desolate shore. ‘Not that there’s much else for you to do.’
Left alone, Juliet prowled restlessly about the disused paths of the old garden. From that first moment when she had seen Josephine’s name in the tattered newspaper that held her scanty shopping, she had been so sure of her. And now, this. If she refused to do what Josephine asked, how could she accept her help? And yet, what could she do but refuse? To deceive the world, as they had done as children, might be entertaining enough: she felt a little stir of excitement at the thought. To be Mrs. Hyde Purchis, all of a sudden! To deal with the friends and relations who had, she gathered, taken her cousin in instant and understandable dislike! She was enough her father’s daughter to find the prospect almost irresistible. And acting had always been a passion with her. She lifted her tattered calico skirts delicately, as Josephine had done when she went down the bluff, the gesture the exact replica of her cousin’s, ‘Mon dieu,’ she had Josephine’s accent to a nicety. ‘But I vow I could fool the whole set of them to the top of their bent.’ Impossible, of course. She picked an acid little cluster of grapes from the vine that had invaded the neglected garden and began systematically to strip them from the stem and throw them over the edge of the bluff into dark, fast waters below. To deceive the world was one thing, to deceive the husband quite another.
And Anne would agree. Here, suddenly, was a consideration to calm her tumultuous thoughts. Anne, with her splendid French bourgeois common sense would never countenance such a project for a moment. No need, then, to fret herself. Josephine would be back, quite soon now, to admit her mistake, to be comforted a little, as when she was a child, and then to take Juliet home to Savannah. But time was passing. The heat had gone from the sun and the shadow of the big magnolia lay heavy across the dusty garden. Juliet hurried into the house and began to collect her few belongings, ready to leave as soon as Josephine returned. ‘He doesn’t like me to be out in the dark.’ Her cousin’s voice echoed in her ears. ‘Oil and vinegar.’ Ah, poor Josephine, who had always planned to marry one of Napoleon’s marshals, and live gaily ever after. And, for a moment she allowed herself the luxury of self-pity, poor Juliet. She, too, had had her plans, back in childhood at Fontainebleau, her dreams. Not at all like Josephine’s, for the two of them had always been as different in character as they were alike in appearance. Having watched her mother silently suffer from her father’s rambling, gambling style of living her own hopes had all been for security, for peace and quietness. ‘And look at me now!’ Angrily, she turned her back on the big glass and pushed her other equally shabby dress into the battered old portmanteau that had been her father’s. ‘Dreams!’ It was a bad sign to be talking to oneself. ‘So much for dreams.’
Chapter Two
It would be dark soon. Juliet lit the lamp, noticing that it had oil for only one more night. Josephine’s rowers might need the light to guide them to the decaying wharf below the bluff. Stupid! She had never thought of them. They were bound, surely, to tell the master who had freed them about today’s odd excursion. That would settle everything. No need for her to refuse Josephine, she need merely point out the unpracticality of the whole scheme.
But she would be glad to see them coming. Whippoorwills cried and fire-flies flickered here and there on the bluff as she strained eyes and ears for evidence of the boat’s return. It was a week now since they had buried her father in the forlorn graveyard behind the house, a week of nights alone here in the wilderness. She had managed, almost, to convince herself that she was not afraid, and had known, doing so, that only a fool would not feel some fear so circumstanced. Anything could happen: a runaway slave, a rattlesnake bite or just a mere commonplace illness. As she had trimmed the lamp, night after lonely night, and made herself concentrate on her battered volume of Shakespeare’s plays, she had been aware, all the time, of death, looking quietly in at the window.
Dreams? Nightmares. And over now, please God. For, at last, she heard, somewhere down where the backwater joined the main river, the sound of singing. Josephine’s rowers, keeping their hearts up against the gathering dusk? She must hope so.
The tune was vaguely familiar. Now she began to distinguish words, sung in the thick negro dialect she found so difficult to understand:
‘Jenny shake her toe at me
Jenny gone away.’
They repeated it with emphasis, coming nearer all the time, and then:
‘Hurray, Miss Susie, oh,
Jenny gone away.’
The boat swept into sight, lanterns hanging at bow and stern, and Juliet let out a long sigh of relief. Had she really imagined that Josephine might not come back?
She ran down the path she had had to remake over the bluff and stood on the rickety little pier to watch the boat in. She ought to have a lantern to guide them, but there was no such thing in the house. Luckily, it was not quite dark yet, and the boat nosed its way in easily enough.
‘Getting impatient, pet?’ Josephine jumped lightly on to the wharf, skirts gathered in one hand. ‘I can tell you, so was Anne!’ She turned back to help a solidly-built figure climb laboriously ashore.
‘I should just about think so!’ Anne’s English had improved beyond recognition since Juliet had last seen her. But now, suddenly, she burst into a flood of angry French. ‘Nom d’un nom d’un nom, le pacquet!’ and then, still in French. ‘I forget myself; the poor creatures do not understand,’ and, slowly, in English, ‘Careful with the box, there. Keep it the right way up!’ She turned to envelop Juliet in an immense bear’s hug of an embrace that smelt hauntingly of garlic. ‘Ma petite! Dieu but it’s good to see you.’
Returning the embrace as warmly, Juliet nevertheless spared an anxious glance for the men who had moored the boat and were now busily passing bundle after bundle ashore. Could she have been wrong in all her comforting calculations? It looked as if Anne actually intended to stay.
‘Come up to the house, pet.’ Josephine was very much in charge. ‘You’d best tell them where to stow all this stuff. I’m sorry we were so long. I’d not thought how much you’d need. But Anne did, of course.’
‘You mean ... You still mean? I’m to stay?’
‘You thought I’d have changed my mind?’ They were walking up the path, now, Anne a little behind them, keeping an anxious eye on the men who were carrying her precious box.
‘Well — yes. Anne will never agree, for one thing. And, besides, what about the men?’
‘The boys? Good God, they’d never tell on me! They know how their corn’s buttered! And as for Anne, just ask her! But not yet.’ She pulled Juliet a little away from the house. ‘Don’t worry about the things. Anne will cope; she always does. And loves it. She’s busy now, but once she gets loose on you, I won’t have a chance. So, quickly, pet: I’ve news for you, bad news. There’s a warrant out. For your arrest, and your father’s. In Savannah.’
‘A warrant?’
‘For debt. Poor Uncle Charles seems to have borrowed from the wrong people in New Orleans. And in Charleston. And, I’m afraid
, in Savannah too, a little.’
‘Oh, my God.’ He had told her, gaily, that he had a little something saved. That they could pay their way in Savannah. She should have known better than to believe him.
‘Yes. And the worst of it is, he used your name as well as his own. Told a doleful tale — as well he might — of his daughters out here, with not even the bare necessities of life. Of course they believed him. Besides, they’re kind, the Savannah merchants.’ She seemed to admit it almost reluctantly. ‘And then, a few days later, comes the news from New Orleans and Charleston. Well, you can see how they felt!’ She laughed, and for an angry moment Juliet felt her quite heartless. ‘Isn’t it a fortunate thing even our maiden names were different! Nobody, for a moment, connects you with me. But you do see, pet, that it narrows your field of choice?’ She turned to lead the way back to the house. ‘We’re not going to talk about it any more tonight. For one thing, I must be off the moment the men have finished unloading. For another, I want you to hear what Anne has to say.’
‘You mean, she’s for it?’
Josephine laughed. ‘You were counting on her, weren’t you, pet? Well, I won’t pretend she didn’t make me a great scene at first — all in French, luckily, so no one understood but me. The convenances, your good name, Hyde’s bad temper ... oh, a terrible deal of rubbish she talked, until I showed her his letter.’
‘Napoleon’s?’
‘Of course. Had you forgotten how she adores him? Compared with his, your life and mine are trifles in her sight. Well, she’s right, isn’t she? There, love, they’ve finished.’ A quick, warm, pleading kiss. ‘Sleep well, and dream of him, down there on St. Helena, eating his heart out. Oh —’ she turned back, ‘and don’t fret yourself about the debtor’s warrant, pet. If you decide you can’t do it, that will be the least of our troubles. Hyde will see to it all for you. It will but be for you to stay here until he’s paid off your creditors. I don’t suppose they’d move against you anyway, once they knew you were my cousin.’
All for Love Page 2