Starrbelow

by Christianna Brand

  ‘Yes, Aunt,’ said Sophia; thankful to be gone from this strange, uneasy company.

  ‘We shall take no farewells; if on the way out we come upon the Duchess, curtsey and say nothing. You have disgraced us all.’

  ‘Disgraced?’ said Sophia. ‘I have disgraced you? How?’

  ‘You have disgraced yourself, and ruined our plans; a girl of your age—well, no man would marry you now, you shall be packed back to Italy tomorrow. As to “how”—get yourself out of here as quickly as may be, and I’ll tell you how, miss, as we drive home in the coach.’

  They did, in fact, see the Duchess on their way out; but she did not see them. She was too busy talking, in her high, hooting voice. ‘An Italian, they say. Oh, aye, say I, well that accounts for it! For who are we to be forewarned of what fancy tricks these Italians will get up to? For all we know, every chit in Venice makes her entrance with her bodice “accidentally” pulled awry—and a twist of gauze clutched over a stark-naked bosom.…’

  It was from this time that Sophia Devigne acquired a new habit of downcast eyes as though she were ashamed to look the world in the face: of a secret, half-defiant, half-disdainful smile, as though at the same time utterly to deny that she had cause to be ashamed.

  THREE

  Sophia Devigne to Miss Christine Lillane: Madame—I now learn that when last night you ‘mistook me for a friend’, it was as a true friend that you acted towards me. It is improbable I shall ever see you again: but if passionate gratitude can make a friend, you have one in me, madame, to the end of my life. I am now, as ever, your deeply obliged, Sophia Devigne.

  And Miss Christine Lillane in reply: Dear Madam—Why should you say I shall not see you again? Pray come to me tomorrow afternoon and we can go driving. As for such small service as I was happy to be able to render you—why, I saw that your dress was a little disordered and took the opportunity in saluting you, to twitch it into place again. The whole affair was so momentary as to be scarcely observable; give it no more attention, it is not worth being mortified over such a trifle. If, however, you will reward me—come tomorrow. Yours ever most sincerely …

  ‘The Lily has asked you to go driving?’ said Aunt Corby. ‘Good heavens!’ But she was quick to seize on the advantage. ‘’Tis quixotic, but if of all women in Town she is going to take you up, then everything may not be lost to us after all. A very pattern of virtue, and at the height of the ton. If you’re seen with her driving—’

  ‘She did me a kindness. If she’s all you say,’ said Sophia with that new smile of hers, half shame, half bitter pride, ‘I should do her no kindness by being seen driving.’

  ‘Her reputation is such that it would far outweigh yours. How so young a girl,’ said Lady Corby with unconscious envy, ‘could already have established so indestructible a name for purity, I can’t imagine. That’s why they call her The Lily; and because, of course, one must admit she is dazzlingly fair.’ Neither name nor complexion, however, she added hopefully, was likely to endure. ‘But she’ll marry Lord Frome, no doubt, before she can lose them. She’s been in love with him from her childhood.’

  ‘My father will be disappointed,’ said Sophia. ‘Did you not promise the Earl of Frome to us, in Venice?’

  ‘Then the next best will be to form a friendship with the future countess. She will be enormously rich: though now she has nothing—lives with her foolish old mother, a widow, in London. But Lord Weyburn … Why, yes,’ said Lady Corby, radiant, ‘Lord Weyburn of Starrbelow, of course, is her cousin. Write at once and tell her that you will go driving.’

  ‘It will be of no use, Aunt. I am returning to Venice.’

  ‘In view of this letter, that arrangement can be forgotten.’

  ‘I don’t wish to forget it. I wish to go home to my father.’

  ‘Well, you can’t,’ said Lady Corby shortly.

  ‘I shall not remain here to be stared at and cackled over.’

  ‘Pooh, nonsense: hardly anyone noticed, as Miss Lillane tells you. It was of no consequence, none at all.’

  ‘That is not what you said in the coach,’ said Sophia.

  ‘I was angry, but after all, it is nothing. Mistress Woffington appeared stripped to the ribs in a box at the opera; Lady Lammingham’s bosom, being her only beauty, she scarcely covers at all: ’twas only its being there, at the Withams’, and Royalty present—the court is so frowsty: and you, of course, young and unmarried.… Besides, it wasn’t your fault; I recollect now you said the bodice was ill-fastened, and then it was hurriedly pinned up because you thought the muslin too low.… Madame Turque,’ declared Lady Corby, in a fine indignation, ‘will find herself dismissed from my favour, from this hour.’

  ‘That at any rate will be convenient,’ said Sophia, dryly, ‘since she has not yet been paid.’

  She had learnt to make that sort of remark from Sir Bertram. ‘However that may be, miss, you will accept Miss Lillane’s invitation. You remain in London.’ Lady Corby melted into sweetness. ‘Reflect, my love, that your uncle and I have paid out a great deal of money in your behalf which your father is entirely unable to repay. So that what I request you to do—’

  ‘So that what you request me to do, Aunt,’ said Sophia, ‘I must do. No need to continue—the “reflection” is unanswerable.’ And she curtseyed briefly to her aunt: and smiled.

  Christine Lillane—and Sophia Devigne: whom the wits, in an age of nicknames, dancing obediently to the little piped tunes of Sir Bertram, duly came to christen Sapphire—‘because of her eyes’.… (How long ago—what a world of weeks ago—that far-away day when a voice had said lightly, ‘Here in Venice we call her La Zaffiro—because of her eyes’; when a flick of brown finger and thumb had diverted her destiny on the wings of a kiss.…)

  Sapphire Devigne: and The Lily of Lillane.

  The Earl of Frome drove down to Gloucestershire with his friend and neighbour, Lord Weyburn. ‘How think you, Charles, of the intimacy of your cousin with this Italian girl?’

  ‘Very ill,’ said Lord Weyburn briefly, sitting upright on the box of his coach, well wrapped against the nipping November air; the smooth reins lying controlled yet easy across his gloved palm.

  ‘I, too. The uncle and aunt are received it seems—the more so since they contrived an entrée with the Duchess. But the woman is said to be an adventuress—their house is no place for your cousin.’

  ‘And is moreover haunted by that mountebank from Hanover.’

  ‘Lady Corby will keep her safe from him,’ said Lord Frome. ‘He goes in fear of her; so the gossip says—I know nothing about it. But so should I, I confess,’ he added, smiling, ‘were I in his shoes.’

  ‘I can think of no man less likely,’ said Lord Weyburn, ‘to be in them!’

  The Earl of Frome, magnificent in title and possessions, was in himself by no means magnificent. It spoke much for the universal respect which, despite her youth, Christine Lillane had magic to command, that no suggestion was ever entertained that her regard for him had its origin in his property rather than himself. He was a smallish, plump, almost chubby man: kind of heart, generous and true, but very rigid in his respect for the conventions, properly proud of the greatness of his position and conscious of its responsibilities: for all his somewhat cherubic appearance capable of unremitting dignity, a trifle humourless, often stern: a man whom lesser men might not like but whom all must respect. Christine, visiting her kindred at Starrbelow over the years, had known him from her childhood and in her quiet fashion, reserved and cool, had loved him near as long. Unmarried at well over thirty, it was widely believed, as Lady Corby had said, that he was waiting only for her eighteenth birthday to propose; though others prophesied as freely that he would remain a bachelor to the end. The earldom would be safely taken care of by his brother’s splendid line of boys.

  Christine’s birthday would fall upon the coming Christmas Eve. ‘I shall give a ball for my cousin at Starrbelow,’ said Charles Weyburn. ‘That among other things will serve to bring her awa
y from London and these disreputable friends. I only wish it were sooner.’

  ‘Are they in fact disreputable? I know nothing of them but by hearsay: I’m a stranger to your London life—Frome’s good enough for me.’

  ‘Disreputable enough, I take it. As to the girl, I know nothing—save that she exposes her bosom in public and that that same bosom is lovely: though I have not seen it, nor the rest of the lady, for myself. But the relatives are certainly such as to make it desirable that this infatuation should come to an end.’

  ‘I can’t quite imagine Christine “infatuated”,’ said the Earl, smiling.

  ‘Can’t you?’ Charles Weyburn lifted his whip and flicked its long lash with unnecessary asperity over quivering chestnut flanks. He said only, however: ‘You know that I feel my cousin a special charge upon me. Her mother’s quite useless, a nervous, silly woman and since my uncle died I’ve regarded myself in some sort, at least, Christine’s guardian. Moreover, should I die childless, she would be my heir—she and her children after her.’

  ‘At your age,’ said the Earl, smiling, ‘it’s early, isn’t it—to be talking of dying childless?’

  The coach rocked, dipping and swaying along the deep-rutted country road; all about them was silence, but for the rattle of the wheels, the creak and jingle of harness, the hollow clop-clop of the horses’ hooves. Charles Weyburn also was silent—staring ahead of him over the chestnut backs along the road that wound through the winter meadows to Starrbelow and home. ‘At your age, it is early to talk of dying childless.’ Ah, but shall I not die childless, he thought, if the mother of my children is not to be Christine?

  Christine! His cousin, Christine—fair as a lily, spotless as a lily, remote and untouchable on her pedestal above him, pervading all his dreams. Strong with the inward strength of the solitary, high in courage, bold, independent, a little ruthless—in this lay his only weakness: that a girl’s white hand held all his heart. He said at last, slowly: ‘This leads me to say—I should forewarn you, Edward, as a friend, that—that I intend to propose to my cousin on her birthday night. It is, to some extent at least, my object in giving her the ball.’

  Lord Frome looked down quietly at the gloved hands resting in his lap. ‘Do you? Then “as a friend”, Charles, I wish you all good fortune.’ He raised his head. He said: ‘You of all men, I have long thought, are the one to make Christine happy. You have wealth and position to offer her—well, so have others; but you have other advantages, you’re the right age for her, and a gay fellow with a place in this same fashionable world we were speaking of, such as a beautiful woman must naturally wish for. You’re a month in London, I know, for every day I spend away from Frome.’ He had lowered his face again; but now he looked up and repeated, smiling his steady smile: ‘I wish you all joy, if you succeed with her.’

  ‘Thank you.’ But in the added intimacy of their close companionship, perched up alone on the box in the brisk chill of a sunlit winter’s day, he put out a delicate feeler. ‘May I presume to ask—and if I may not, of course, you won’t answer—whether my good fortune would be your ill? I have sometimes thought—’ He broke off. He said with unwonted hesitancy: ‘I would not wish to enter upon ground that you had a right to consider your own.’

  ‘Only the lady could confer such a right,’ said Lord Frome, ‘and without her permission it would hardly become me to confirm or deny that I aspire to it.’ Lord Weyburn lifted the whip again but he put out a quick hand. ‘Come, Charles—spare the beasts: they, at least, have not offended. Let your cousin have her ball and let who will propose to her that night—the more conquests for her to remember one day, the better.’ He added, shrugging, as though to turn the conversation: ‘But that you will by this or any means separate her from her lovely Venetian—I take leave to doubt. She has sworn to bring the girl into society after the débâcle of of her first appearance: and Christine has a faithful heart.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lord Weyburn. ‘Christine has a faithful heart.’ Is it faithful to you? he thought. Can it be true that, as they say, she has always loved you? This man, this short, stubby, stolid man with his set ways and his pedantic speeches?… And yet … And yet, he thought, I in my own way also love him, knowing him as the man he is. And he looked into the smiling face of his friend and saw behind the smile a strength as steady as his own, a courage as high as his own, a greater gentleness, a loftier integrity: a man who could win and hold the love of a woman fit to recognize him for what he was. If she knows him, he thought, if she sees him as I see him, as he really is—then she is lost to me. ‘Yes,’ he repeated, bitterly, not thinking of Sophia Devigne. ‘Christine has a faithful heart.’

  And so it was that Sapphire at last came down to Starrbelow, in the week before Christmas, 1753: came down with a coachload of gay revellers, bright as parakeets in their velvets and furs, loud as parakeets in their chatter and laughter, flocking out of the coach and into the hostelries, crowding round the great blazing log fires, sipping their hot possets, warming their frozen toes, greeting with parakeet cries other coachloads of parakeets all, all converging upon Starrbelow. Every house of consequence in the neighbourhood was thrown open to accommodate guests, making up parties for the ball. Christine, meeting with an unequivocal refusal from her cousin to do more than entertain her friends—and these must include the Corbys and, it appeared, Prince Anton, too—for the actual duration of the ball itself, had perforce found them rooms at an inn.

  ‘Never mind, my dear; no doubt Lord Weyburn would have arranged matters better if he could,’ said Lady Corby. This was her great chance to bring about her coup, and she would have slept in the stables to settle the matter. ‘We shall stay over Christmas, Miss Christine, and make a holiday of it. No doubt we shall see you during the rest of the time?’

  ‘Oh, yes, Lady Corby, of course, I shall come over to you.’

  ‘And Sophia will come over to you,’ said Lady Corby, sweetly. ‘Never mind us, we are used to it; but Sophia will be so happy to see a great English house.’

  ‘Yes, of course, Lady Corby, if Sophia would like to see over Starrbelow; and Frome Castle also, I could ask permission of the Earl.…’

  Lady Corby cared not two straws for Frome Castle—that Sophia should be accepted at Starrbelow was the height of her scheming. She said, however, with a wink, that no doubt Miss Lillane would have a special interest in showing her friend over the Castle.

  ‘As to that, madame, I must simply ask the Earl’s permission,’ repeated Christine, coldly; but her heart leapt, nevertheless, at the thought that what this ill-bred woman hinted must come true.

  ‘I should like to see Frome,’ said Prince Anton. ‘Our Hanoverian castles are not at all like yours.’

  ‘For the moment, however, my dear, they will have to content you,’ said his mistress, sharply. ‘We must not intrude upon the confidences of young ladies.’ She withdrew to a small inner room where Sir Bertram was sitting, circumspect as a mole in his handsome black coat, silk ankles crossed, buckled shoes perched neatly on the fender.

  He looked up at her. ‘Come in, my dear, and sit down. An excellent claret—it will refresh you and you look in need of refreshment.’

  ‘If Anton is to be off chasing Sophia wherever she goes, he’ll spoil everything.’

  ‘I told you,’ said Sir Bertram, equably pouring wine, ‘not to bring him down.’

  ‘I did not “bring him down”, I don’t carry him round with me like a lap dog—’

  ‘Don’t you, my dear?’ said Sir Bertram, handing the glass.

  ‘—he was invited and accepted of his own accord.’

  ‘After much angling on his part through Miss Lillane: I heard him and warned you accordingly, but you are perhaps a little over-confident, my dear, in the inferiority of Sophia’s charms to your own: doubtless justifiably so.’ He settled himself more comfortably in his chair. ‘Is he paying his own board here, by the way, or leaving it owing with ours?’

  ‘I know nothing about Prince Anton’s financ
ial arrangements.’

  ‘I am sorry to hear it; for the past eighteen months, they have been indistinguishable from our own.’

  ‘You can hardly call ours “financial arrangements”,’ she said grimly; sitting down at the table, however, with the glass in her hand.

  ‘Well, I don’t know. What other term would you apply to a growing burden of debts? His debts and ours.’

  ‘You appear to forget that when he first came to England—’ began Lady Corby.

  ‘Ah, when he first came to England!—an amiable prince, apparently closely attached to the court; and with money to burn. But, my dear, the attachment has proved insecure; and the money has all been burned.’

  ‘With our ready assistance,’ said Lady Corby.

  ‘Well, yes. But it made, you recollect, but a very small conflagration; he appears to be in dread of the wrath at home when his application to frivolous concerns becomes known to the illustrious relatives; and since he cannot apply to them, all the money he needs must be supplied by us. If “supplied” is quite appropriate: perhaps I should say rather “has had to be owed by us”. Indeed,’ said Sir Bertram reproachfully, refilling his glass and holding the wine to the light, ‘if we ever paid bills, I should really have a right to complain that your lover is an extravagant luxury.’

  ‘He is not my lover,’ said Lady Corby, automatically; but she added with real meaning that he would be more likely to be Miss Sophia’s lover if she didn’t take care.

  ‘But you will take care, my dear, I’m sure,’ said Sir Bertram comfortably.

  Sapphire came very late to the Starrbelow ball. It would be her first entrée since the night at the Duchess of Witham’s, her appearances in society in the intervening time having been on small occasions and always in the company of Christine. Now she must go alone again, with only her uncle and aunt, must hear her name called again, must walk again into a great room filled with people—with every eye fixed on the bosom of her dress and a sneer and a whisper behind every fluttering fan. At the very thought, she was filled with a dread so powerful as to be physically prostrating and half the evening had passed before, sick with terror and shame, she allowed herself to be dragged by her aunt into the carriage that was to carry them the distance between the inn and the house. By this time, she knew, it would be vain to hope that her friend would be waiting to conduct her in: Christine must long ago have been obliged to leave the great hall and join in the dancing with her guests. Indeed, they could see her through the bright-lit windows as they drove up the long drive, moving on the edge of the dancing throng with Lord Weyburn himself: could see them stop as the music ended and step out on to the frosty, starlit terrace. Is she happy now? thought Sophia, sparing out of the absorption of her own dread a moment for her friend. Has her beloved spoken? Is it all settled, is she betrothed?