by M. M. Kaye
The candle-flames flickered wildly in the rush of cold air, to flare up again as a tall footman in black livery leant his weight against the door, shutting it upon the wild night. Captain Randall stared about him in the grip of an odd sense of unreality. Weariness appeared to be playing tricks with his eyesight. Was it only imagination or the effects of cold and fatigue that made the shadowy walls about him seem to move and tremble?
The ancient steward who had peered at him through the half-open door tottered across the hall and lifted the branched candlestick, holding it high, and Alex saw with a sense of shock that the walls of the vast hall were hung from ceiling to floor with black curtains that still swayed and shifted uneasily from the wind that had blown in from the night.
The old man tapped on the stone floor with the long steward’s wand he held in one shrivelled hand, and two more sombre-liveried flunkeys materialized out of the shadows. ‘Your horse shall be attended to, sir, and Thomas will see that you have all you require. You will be one of the family? I do not for the moment recall the name. Forgive me, sir - your Lordship - we were not expecting—’ The old man’s voice quavered to a stop and Alex spoke curtly:
‘You mistake me. I am Captain Alex Randall. Lord Ware requested me to wait upon him on this date. I was delayed upon the road, or I should have reached here before dark. You will find my valise strapped to the saddle.’
‘ His Lordship requested you …?’ The words appeared to carry a note of disbelief, and Alex thrust a hand into the bosom of his coat and drew out a folded sheet of paper that bore a few lines written in a wavering, spidery hand. ‘I received this a week ago, and sent a letter in reply, informing Lord Ware that I would do myself the honour of waiting upon him. Was my letter not received?’
‘I - we - there have been so many letters,’ said the aged steward uncertainly. ‘Perhaps it was overlooked. A week ago, you say—’
To Alex’s puzzled amazement he saw that tears were standing in the old man’s eyes, the feeble tears of old age that brimmed over and trickled down the furrowed, parchment-like face and flashed in the candlelight. And suddenly several things that had meant nothing to him a moment before took on shape and meaning. The smith at Highelm who had said: ‘It’s for Thursday we hears. There’s bin many goin’ past this day.’ The London doctor who might have saved himself a journey. The open gates at the entrance of the oak avenue; the black liveries of the servants and the funereal hangings that draped the walls of the great hall. He said suddenly, sharply: ‘The Earl—?’
‘His Lordship died five days ago,’ said the old steward.
The morning dawned wet and cold. It had snowed again during the night, and although the snow had once more turned to sleet, patches of it still lay in the hollows of the park and along the margins of the long oak avenue. The wind moaned among the dark corridors of the great house and bellied the funereal hangings that draped the walls.
Captain Alex Randall awoke with a headache and a sense of acute irritation. He had slept little, and that uneasily, for the problem that he had intended to transfer to the Earl of Ware was once more back upon his own shoulders. Lord Ware, thought Alex crossly, had no right to die before settling his ward’s affairs. Now what was to be done? It was one thing to explain the true state of affairs to an elderly man of the world, but quite another to interview Mr Conway Barton’s betrothed herself. What the devil was he to do now? Simply deliver the letters, discharge his duty as courier, and let the woman go hang? After all, it was no concern of his whom she married or did not marry. Who was he to play Providence? And yet— Here he found himself back once more at the interminable argument.
He breakfasted alone in a small panelled room warmed by a blazing log fire, and an elderly and sedate secretary waited upon him with a message from the new Earl. Lord Ware, owing to pressure of work, found himself unable to see Captain Randall until late in the day. He trusted that it would be convenient for Captain Randall to spend another night or so at Ware, since the business he had come upon was not one to be dealt with in haste.
‘It is most damnably inconvenient,’ said Captain Randall sourly. ‘But I suppose there is no help for it.’
Left to his own devices he passed a tedious morning, and the company at luncheon proved unenlivening. They were all, with the sole exception of himself, relatives or connections of the family who had assembled for the funeral of the late head of their house, which was to take place the following day. They were dressed in deep black and conversed in the hushed undertones deemed suitable in a house of mourning, but bereavement had evidently not impaired their appetites. The meal was rich, indigestible and interminable, and the conversation, of necessity, lacking in sparkle.
Alex spent the greater part of the afternoon moodily watching a stream of black-clad tenants and their families who, despite the inclemency of the weather, were moving slowly up the oak avenue to pass through the guardroom where the late Earl’s coffin lay in state. Eventually, more for lack of other occupation than from any desire to pay his respects to the unknown dead, he abandoned his post at the window and went down to join that sombre procession.
They moved forward slowly and in silence through a low stone porch in the oldest part of the castle and entered a long passage leading to the guardroom. The air was heavy and cold and the walls were hung with black drapery that billowed continuously in the draught. A short flight of stone steps led down into the guardroom, and at the foot of them stood the catafalque.
Alex drew to one side and stood looking down on a strangely impressive scene. The walls were draped in the same unrelieved black, and the catafalque itself and the floor about it was covered with heavy black cloth and lit by four massive candles in iron sconces. But the rest was colour and glitter and magnificence; a magnificence made even more startling by very contrast with its funereal setting. A defiance and a boast in the face of death.
The ornate hatchment suspended above the coffin-head gleamed with all the colour and gilding and pride of heraldry, and below it crimson velvet drapery covered the heavy oak of the coffin, on which, placed upon a velvet cushion, stood the Earl’s coronet and the Star and Garter. The diamonds flashed and blazed as the candle-flames wavered in the draught, sending out splinters of brilliant light - violet and green and blue, scarlet and white. The breastplate, surrounded by various orders and badges of honour, was surmounted by the Earl’s own arms, while below them, together with the gilt spurs of Knighthood, lay two crossed swords; the dress-sword of a Knight of the Garter and one which Alex took to be the sword of some Militia regiment.
At the foot of the coffin hung a Knight’s gold collar, and beneath it were grouped on either side of the bier the Earl’s mantle and the velvet and ermine of a Knight of the Garter, the hat of a Colonel of Militia and a military scarf. Servants dressed in black livery stood guard at each side of the coffin, and as the silent procession of mourners passed slowly by the bier and out through the low stone arch at the far side of the room, Alex found his lips moving in scraps of remembered poetry: ‘The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, and all that Beauty, all that wealth e’er gave, await alike the inevitable hour. The paths of glory lead but to the grave.’ A sobering reflection. Yet there was no meek acceptance of the latter end here. His aged Lordship was moving to the grave with all the pomp and ceremony that had attended him in life.
The steady stream of mourners thinned gradually to a mere trickle, and beyond the narrow stone embrasures of the guardroom windows the grey daylight took on the purple hue of dusk.
A woman, veiled and in heavy mourning, brushed past Captain Randall and went swiftly down the steps to pause beside the resplendent bier, her clothing outlined with a faint nimbus of gold from the candlelight beyond.
The thick veil that fell from her bonnet’s edge almost to her feet permitted no glimpse of her features and did not betray even the colour of her hair. But the vast hooped crinoline, the heavy crêpe veil and a deeply fringed pelisse, unwieldy as they were, failed to conceal the wear
er’s youth. They failed, too, to conceal something else. Despite its rigidity there was about the slight figure in its cumbersome mourning a poignant impression of intense and hopeless grief. Alex could not have explained even to himself why this should be so, for the girl stood stiffly; head erect and black-gloved hands pressed back the spreading skirts of her dress. But he was aware of a sudden sense of guilt, as though he were eavesdropping on some private and very personal conversation, and turning abruptly he walked quickly away.
Darkness had fallen by the time the secretary appeared to request Captain Randall’s presence in his Lordship’s private apartments, and to lead the way along interminable corridors to a more recently constructed wing. Turning the handle of an ornate white and gold door, he ushered Captain Randall into a large high-ceilinged room whose original Regency character had been successfully submerged in a wave of taste generated by the Great Exhibition of 1851. But it was the Countess, and not the Earl, who waited to receive him.
Lady Ware rose with a rustle of heavy silks. Julia, lately Viscountess Glynde and now Countess of Ware, was a tall woman, verging on middle age, with a coldly handsome face and smooth loops of light brown hair already streaked with grey. She held out a white hand with a gesture that was almost royal, and Alex Randall bowed over it and straightened up to meet the critical gaze of a pair of slightly prominent blue eyes, cold, pale and calculating. She studied him for a moment in silence and apparently liked what she saw, for her somewhat thin-lipped mouth relaxed in a faint smile.
‘My dear Captain Randall,’ said the Countess of Ware, ‘you must forgive me for being unable to receive you earlier, but under the present sad circumstances - well, I am sure that you will understand how difficult it has been for us. Pray be seated. My husband has asked me to convey to you his regrets that he cannot, after all, find the time to see you today. He hopes that he will be able to do so later.’
The Countess seated herself again, the vast expanse of her black silk mourning billowing about her in impressive folds, and waved Captain Randall to a chair beside her. Captain Randall sat down warily. He had never had much to do with women, and apart from several light and lovely ladies who had provided him with amusement and a substitute for love, had met singularly few of them. This, it may be added, was not from lack of opportunity. Alex Randall was no celibate, but two things obsessed him to the exclusion of all others: India and ‘John Company’. The glamour of India - the vast, glittering, cruel, mysterious land teeming with violence and beauty - and the romance of ‘John Company’, that prosaic collection of merchant-traders from London who had conquered a sub-continent and now maintained their own armies and administered justice and law to sixty million Indians. These were the things that held his heart and his imagination and his loyalty, and he had little time for other matters.
Now, facing the imposing figure of the Countess of Ware, he knew himself to be at a disadvantage. He could have dealt with a man. He disliked having to deal with a woman.
‘I must apologize for my inopportune arrival,’ he said stiffly. ‘I had of course no idea—’
Lady Ware cut him short in her clear, incisive voice.
‘My dear Captain Randall, no apology is necessary, I assure you. We are exceedingly grateful to you for all your trouble in being the bearer of these letters. We have heard of you from Mr Barton of course. He sent other letters through the post, apprising us of your arrival and giving us some indication of the nature of your mission, although naturally he did not write so fully as in the letters he entrusted to your personal care. You must know that we had expected to see you some months earlier.’
‘Yes. I am sorry. I had myself expected to arrive a good deal earlier, but I visited the Crimea en route, and was delayed. I wrote to Mr Barton and the late Lord Ware to explain matters.’
‘We quite understand. You were wounded, were you not. Did you see much fighting?’
‘A certain amount,’ said Alex uncommunicatively.
Lady Ware lost interest in the Crimea and returned to Mr Barton.
‘… and now that we have had the opportunity of meeting you, and of reading the letters you brought with you,’ she concluded, ‘the position is of course quite clear.’
She lifted one of the letters under discussion from an ormolu table at her side, and the thin sheets of paper, covered with the familiar erratic handwriting in heavy black ink, crackled sharply in the stillness, echoing the sound of the burning logs in the wide hearth. One letter was still unopened and the seal intact: ‘We have not,’ said Lady Ware, ‘given Winter her letter as yet. I shall now do so at the earliest opportunity.’ The shadow of a frown passed over her face and her narrow mouth drew itself into a tighter line.
‘Winter?’ Captain Randall’s voice was puzzled.
‘My cousin. The - Condesa,’ explained Lady Ware, pronouncing the title with palpable distaste. ‘Naturally she will be allowed to express her views. But I am convinced that she will consent to dear Conway’s plan. It is unfortunate that he cannot come home, but in the circumstances I feel that to delay the marriage for a further, and possibly indefinite, period, would be unnecessarily harsh. Both on dear Conway and on Winter herself.’
Winter! thought Alex Randall. What an impossible name. Probably the diminutive of some more lengthy Spanish one.
‘There are times,’ said Lady Ware with the air of one who is prepared to be both broad-minded and magnanimous, ‘when one must sacrifice one’s own wishes in order to forward the happiness of others. I am sure that you will agree with me.’
Captain Randall was far from being in agreement with her, since he felt tolerably certain that the dear Conway of five years ago bore little resemblance to the Commissioner of Lunjore as he had last seen him. Five years in the East were apt to leave their mark on most men, and with a man of Conway Barton’s character and habits the change was not for the better.
‘Have you any knowledge of the East?’ inquired Alex abruptly.
Lady Ware looked a little taken aback. ‘If you mean, have I ever been there, I have not. Why do you ask?’
‘I only wondered if you have any idea as to what life, and to what conditions of life, you are sending your cousin? It is no country for a young lady who has been brought up in such surroundings as these.’
‘Nonsense!’ said the Countess crisply. ‘Thousands of Englishwomen - many of them well bred - have managed admirably out there. I myself am acquainted with some of them. Lady Lawrence, Sir Henry’s wife—’
‘She is dead,’ interrupted Alex curtly. ‘Did you not know?’ It seemed to him incredible that anyone who had known Honoria Lawrence should not know that she was dead.
‘Dear me,’ said the Countess inadequately. ‘I had not heard. Poor Sir Henry. Of what did she die?’
‘India,’ said Alex laconically.
The Countess stiffened indignantly. ‘I do not understand you, Captain Randall. You yourself have spent some years in that country—’
‘Twelve,’ interjected Captain Randall.
‘Then surely you have met many of your fellow-countrywomen out there? Are you trying to tell me that none of them finds life supportable? I cannot believe that you are serious.’
‘No,’ said Alex slowly. ‘Many of them would be nowhere else if given the choice. But as a general rule these fall into two categories: those who remain, and endure every hardship that heat and disease and exile can bring, for love of husband or father. And those whose social status in this country is such that India gives them a sense of position and importance that they cannot obtain here. The rest hate it. The latter consideration will hardly apply to the Condesa, but can you be sure of the first one? I understand that it is five years and more since she last saw Mr Barton.’
‘That is a matter that must be left to my cousin,’ said the Countess frostily. ‘It is no concern of ours. No doubt she will decide for herself.’
She rose with an impressive rustle of silk and held out her hand. Captain Randall stood up and bowed over it.
‘I hope,’ said the Countess with a return to graciousness, ‘that you will not mind extending your stay for another two days? My husband hopes to be able to see you tomorrow afternoon. Most of our guests will be leaving after the funeral, and he will then be able to give you his undivided attention.’
Captain Randall murmured his thanks and turned to go, and as he did so he noticed for the first time a large portrait that hung above the clutter of a velvet-draped overmantel. It depicted a young girl in a white crinoline and a blue sash. A pretty creature, barely more than a child, with pale gold ringlets falling onto sloping shoulders, and one small hand holding a single rose. He had observed the original of the portrait at luncheon that day, and looking at the painted likeness he had a sudden and disturbing vision of what a few years of scorching heat, difficult childbirths, cholera, typhus, dysentery, and the society of a dissolute and drunken husband would do to that face. It did not seem made of the stuff of endurance. ‘No stamina,’ thought Alex with a stab of anger and frustration. It would be unthinkable to have a hand in condemning such a defenceless creature to the life that awaited any wife of Conway Barton, Commissioner of Lunjore.
‘My daughter, Sybella,’ said the Countess complacently, and Alex drew a quick breath of relief. At least the future of that fragile-looking child need not be on his conscience. He turned and smiled at the Countess. Few women were proof against Alex Randall’s smile, and Julia Ware proved no exception. She thawed visibly. ‘Such a dear child. You must meet her, Captain Randall. Herr Winterhalter informed me that of all his subjects Sybella was—’ The discreet entrance of an elderly lady, evidently a companion, interrupted her: ‘What is it, Mrs Barlow?’
‘Lady Augusta. You asked that she—’
‘Yes, yes. I shall not be a moment. Good night, Captain Randall. I have so enjoyed our little talk.’