Starrbelow

by Christianna Brand

  A message came for Miss Devigne. Miss Lillane was unwell, she was lying down in her room with a headache: would Miss Devigne come up to her there?

  It was a lovely room, the room Christine always had when she came to Starrbelow, kept specially for her: a small room with tall windows looking out over the wooded park where the deer grazed beneath the great, spreading beech and chestnut trees; with a high ceiling, painted with a design of naked cupids playing among the clouds, all tangled up with pink and blue ribbon bows. Christine lay in her white ball-dress on the white four-poster bed: looking indeed, Sapphire thought, like a lily that had been flung down, broken, there. ‘Christine: are you ill?’

  ‘No, no, though my head aches dreadfully.…’

  ‘And you have been crying?’

  ‘I have many things to cry about,’ said Christine, turning her head away on the lacy pillow.

  ‘Has Lord Frome …?’

  ‘Lord Frome has said nothing. I danced with him, I walked with him alone in the gallery—oh, Sapphire, you may almost say that I threw myself at his head—and he has said nothing; I have been mistaken all along.…’

  She could be tender with only this one friend—she who had been so gay and tender with all the loving, beloved friends but a few brief weeks ago; but now she sat down on the edge of the bed beside her, and took the pale hands in hers and smoothed back the disordered hair. ‘Oh, Christine—what can I say? I am so sorry; and yet—surely it must be all a mistake, it must come right in the end—’

  ‘How can it “come right”? If he is ever to speak—surely then was the time? And now … Oh, Sapphire, dear Charles, who has always been so good to me …!’ She put up her hand to a throat that ached with tears. ‘Are they all gossiping about me, down there among the dancers?’

  ‘About you? Why no—why should they?’

  Christine lifted her head from the pillow to stare at her. ‘You mean—you have not heard?’

  ‘Heard? No—heard what?’

  Christine did not answer. She said: ‘Is Lord Frome below?’

  ‘He crossed with us in the hall, going out, just as we arrived. I’m afraid … Well, it is true, Christine, that I have not seen him since.’

  ‘How long have you been here, Sapphire?’

  ‘An hour—an hour and a half? You came out on to the terrace with Lord Weyburn as we drove up the approach.’ She said, ‘You have not been weeping all this time, dearest, up here alone in your room?’

  ‘I have been weeping: what does it matter where one weeps? I was in the garden; and then, when you were all dancing, I crept up here.’ She thought it all over, miserably. ‘So Lord Frome has gone home, you see, Sapphire, and will not come back tonight. He—does not like scenes; and he does not like women who make scenes—and if he did not like me before, what chance is there now that he will change his mind? My cousin, Charles, out on the terrace, spoke to me honourably and asked me to be his wife; and when, taking my silence for consent, he put out his arms to me, I—I hit out at him, hardly knowing what I did, because my heart was breaking for Edward—for Lord Frome. And Charles said nothing but walked away from me and into the ballroom: and you tell me now that Edward has gone home?’

  ‘Oh, darling, no: we don’t really know that—I tell you only that I have not seen him in the ballroom. As for Lord Weyburn,’ said Sapphire, with a flash of her own wry pride, ‘he has lost no time in consoling himself with another.’

  ‘With another?’ said Christine, astonished out of her self-absorption. ‘Charles? With whom?’

  ‘Ah, my pet, you are not so lost in love as to be devoid of a touch of chagrin?’ said Sapphire, laughing. She shrugged. ‘Have no fear, however, you are in no danger of losing your admirer through his attentions to this particular lady: nor, though he would not care as to that, is she in danger of being hurt by them.’ And she got up off the bed and made her an ironical curtsey.

  Christine sat upright, lovely as a wild flower in the tumbled disarray of her dress and hair. ‘Lord Weyburn—has been making love to you?’

  Sophia smiled her little smile. ‘You are so surprised?’

  ‘Only that he so lately had made love to me,’ said Christine hurriedly.

  ‘Ah, no.’ She said, sadly: ‘That he should flirt with another woman to assuage his wounded pride, that would not much astonish you, Christine. But that he should choose Sapphire Devigne, that by-word among your London outcasts, just clinging with one poor hand, and that only through your loving-kindness, to the mud-scattered skirts of the ton—that does amaze you.’ She shrugged again, the gentleness in her face hardened to that look of scornful pride that was coming to be habitual there. ‘I don’t know why it should. He chose me the more to affront you by the very contrast; and at the same time to make sure, lest at any time you showed signs of softening, that you would never suspect him of serious attentions elsewhere. This is a comedy only too often played.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Christine, very thoughtfully. ‘Yes.’

  ‘So ready an agreement,’ said Sapphire with a mock bow, ‘is not flattering. But you pay me the compliment of sincerity: which must take its place.’

  ‘Oh, Sapphire!’ Christine jumped off the bed and ran to her friend, putting her arms about her. ‘Forgive me, I was far away, I was not thinking of you at all; or of what I was saying.’ And she held her at arms’ length, looking into the lovely face that but a few weeks ago had been so frank and sweetly smiling and so young. ‘You make too much of it all, this foolish incident at Witham House—it is spoiling you, Sapphire, you are building it into a tragedy that will ruin your life. It is forgotten already by everyone but yourself.’

  ‘I am remembered, Christine, as that Italian adventuress who, to attract attention in the marriage market, went to the Duchess’s rout with her bosom exposed.’

  ‘Oh, Sapphire!’ said Christine, half despairingly. ‘You have been brought up according to other lights, you do not understand our English ways, you make far too much of it all. Besides, you are not unchaperoned. The blame, if any, must attach to your guardians.’

  ‘I am no tender admirer of my Aunt Corby, Christine. But she was not guilty of any intention there.’

  ‘Probably nobody really believes she was. But she is—not popular—in society, and if something goes a trifle wrong with her plans, why, there is gossip and a little malicious pleasure, no doubt: but at her expense, not yours.’

  ‘I am believed to be an accessary to her “plans”.’

  ‘By very few. At worst you are thought to be the innocent victim of a silly little ill-contrived plot; whose worst fault, after all, was that it was a lapse of taste.’ She looked anxiously at her friend. ‘I have told you all this so many times, Sophia, I thought I had convinced you.’

  ‘So you almost had,’ said Sophia, ‘until this evening. Otherwise I should never have come at all; as it was I was ill with dread—’

  ‘But needlessly; what little breeze of gossip there was has long ago blown itself out, the whole trivial incident is forgotten, nobody thinks of it.’

  ‘Oh, certainly. I could almost hear them not thinking of it, so profound was the silence as I entered the ballroom tonight.…’

  Entering the ballroom: standing in the doorway in her snowy white dress against the looped, curving background of the red velvet curtain, all unconscious of that voice that had cried out a challenge, all ignorant still of the voice that had answered, ‘Done!’ ‘Not a soul spoke, Christine. Every head turned as I came through the door; every eye, I dare say, to the bosom of my dress—’

  ‘If they were silent, it was not upon your account. You forget,’ insisted Christine, ‘that a new scandal had raised its head. Tonight, in public, I slapped Lord Weyburn’s face. If they were silent, it was the silence before a real storm—your little breeze, Sapphire, was as nothing to a scandal involving Lord Weyburn, of all people, and The Lily of Lillane; and all the world knows, but himself, of my love for the Earl of Frome. Three untouchables, found vulnerable at last.…’
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  ‘Well, we will not fall out over our claims to be objects of scandal, Christine.’ But her heart was sore for a friend. ‘Rather a thousand times it should be I than you—’

  There was a knock at the door. Christine’s maid entered carrying folded paper. ‘From his lordship, madame.’

  ‘From Lord Frome?’

  ‘From Lord Weyburn,’ said the servant quickly, sorrowfully watching the disappointed face.

  Christine handed the note to Sophia.

  My dear cousin—I scribble this hurriedly, as you will understand. You must return to your guests, your absence is causing comment and it will be far worse for you if you are not seen again—and holding up your head. I regret that tonight I should have proposed a question which merited such an answer. The question was put, however, and the answer given. Let us therefore agree to cry quits; let the matter never again be referred to between us—be assured, at least, that the question will never be repeated. But you must come down now to your guests.… There had come a pause here, the ink on the quill had dried, the quill been dipped again. The note continued: Pray ask your friend, Miss Devigne, if you will, to join our Christmas gathering and remain a few days. Another pause. If there is gossip or if you fear gossip, she will stand your friend and with her wit and courage, which I truly believe to be great, will help you through. I suppose her aunt will wish to come also: better invite the whole party. But come down now; it is necessary. Hurriedly … I remain your cousin, and from now forward merely your cousin,

  Weyburn.

  ‘What—Sapphire Devigne to stay at Starrbelow—and Sir Bertram and Lady Corby,’ said Sophia, folding the note and handing it back. ‘The very rooks would take flight and the elms be deserted.’

  ‘Sapphire!—you must stay.’

  ‘Not I,’ said Sapphire. ‘To be sneered at by my fellow-guests, to be further insulted by Lord Weyburn’s counter-flirtations: thank you, no.’

  ‘Oh, dearest, you are so bitter. What nonsense is this? Why should my cousin not sincerely admire you?’

  ‘With his cheek still tingling from another woman’s rejection? I’ll warrant him,’ said Sapphire, overwhelmed suddenly by the bitterness of what she took to be merely his cynical choice of her defencelessness for attentions in fact directed towards her friend, ‘I’ll make his cheek tingle and not with the flat of my hand.’ And she struck her own hand against her forehead and cried out, like a child in the dark, to think that she, Sophia Devigne, who such a little while ago had been far away at home in the sunshine of Italy, surrounded with only love and tenderness, greeted with smiles and simple friendship as she walked light-heartedly through her happy days, had been reduced in so short a time to this: a young girl still and yet, it seemed to her, long schooled in wary appraisal of hidden, unlovely motive, hard of head, chill of heart, using her natural wit as a weapon instead of a charm, using her gift of beauty as a mask to hide a mortified and resentful heart. ‘Go down, Christine: call back your maid and let her re-dress your hair, and go down to your guests. I will walk down with you and stay with you a little while; but no power on earth shall keep me at Starrbelow beyond this night.’

  ‘Oh, Sapphire, I beg! I hardly know Lord Weyburn’s other guests, how can I keep up appearances a week, with no close friend here of my own?’

  ‘You have your mother here.’

  ‘You know my mother, Sapphire. She … Well, I mean no disrespect, but my mother is too nervous, too—too undetermined; she is no friend for me, no support to me, at a time like this.’

  ‘I will not stay, Christine. I have some pride left, poor tattered flag that it may be, and I will not stay.’

  Christine did not answer; but after a moment she opened her little travelling-desk and from a drawer took a letter. 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. And: If passionate gratitude can make a friend, you have one in me to the end of my life.…

  ‘Very well,’ said Sapphire, handing the letter back to her. ‘I will stay.’ And she said, as she had said to her Aunt Corby not very long ago, ‘Whatever you ask me to do, Christine, I must do.’ But this time the blue eyes genuinely smiled.

  It was not so late when they returned to the inn, but that Lady Corby whispered a command, and Prince Anton met her accordingly in the private sitting-room set aside for their party, when the rest had retired to bed. But he said uneasily, the guttural intonation unusually pronounced, ‘In a public inn, Marcia—iss not this indiscreet?’

  She had been waiting for him, standing in the shadows of the great brick chimneypiece, and now she did not move, but just raised her little hand, like a doll’s hand, and beckoned him over to her, smiling up into his eyes. ‘Indiscreet or not—come here and claim your reward!’ But as she reached up to put her soft arms about his neck she added, murmuring, ‘Or at any rate an earnest of rewards to come.’

  He almost shuddered under her kiss but, fatally weak, allowed her to hold him, stooping over her from his considerable height; and something of the magic of her power over him returned with the kiss. But when at last she released him, he moved away and stood unhappily, one hand against the brick chimneypiece, head bent, the straight, fair hair falling forward over his forehead as it often did—for it was his habit to wear a wig as seldom as possible and he grew his hair longer than men who habitually wore one; and repeated only, ‘Iss this not very indiscreet?’

  ‘Bertram knew I was coming. After this evening, I had to talk to you.’

  ‘And I to you, Marcia. The moment this vos done, I haf regretted it. I think it must be undone.’

  ‘Undone?’ she said, staring up at him in amazement. ‘You must be mad.’

  ‘I vos mad when I did it. I had gone in ahead of you, as you said I should since we arrived so late.… As I came into the room he spoke; he said he should marry the first that came through the door. I knew the chance was great that the next to come in would be you with Sir Bertram and Sophia. I saw the chance suddenly; I knew you desired this marriage for her; I had not time to reflect—almost before I knew it, my voice cried out.’

  ‘An inspiration, Toni!’

  ‘But no. It vos wrong. I can’t let it rest like this; I can’t let her go in ignorance, condemn her to such a fate.’

  Her face hardened under the baby-doll look. ‘Oh, if your objection is only that it harms Sophia …!’ But she sweetened her voice, she forced herself to smile. ‘Why, dearest, you’re being foolish. “Condemn her to such a fate!”—when you’ve just said yourself it’s the fate we’ve “condemned” her to all along. That she should become Lady Weyburn—it has seemed to me the highest pinnacle of happiness the child could attain to; and her happiness,’ said Lady Corby, shrugging as though such a truth must be self-evident, ‘is all I ask. What does it matter how the work is begun? He will pay her attentions now because of the wager; fall in love with her, marry her, and—there we are! Did you see his face all evening? He’s already enchanted.’

  ‘Sophia will soon disenchant him,’ said Anton grimly.

  ‘Sophia is difficult. We know, Toni,’ she said, confidentially deprecatory, ‘what Sophia can be. But to him, you see, it’s provocative, he’s intrigued by the difference between her cool manner and the flattery of the rest of these chits that pursue him.’

  ‘Very well then; if all goes so well, let me call off the bet; let the affair simply take its natural course.’

  ‘But, my foolish one, what harm is there in it, why not let it remain as it is?’

  ‘It vos not a fair bet,’ said Prince Anton. ‘I knew she would come.’

  If it were truly only this, she thought. If it were not that in his heart he cares more about what happens to her.… Her own heart—honest in only one thing, her passion for this handsome boy, so many years her junior—sank at the thought that even this wager might prove the rock on which the affair between them might founder. She went off into peals of her pretty, tinkling laughter, however, coming up to him, put
ting her little hands up on his shoulders, resting her dark head against his heart. ‘Not fair! Oh, Toni, you are so sweet and so comical! You are like a child playing tag.’

  ‘It is an affair of honour,’ he said stiffly, enduring rather than accepting her embrace.

  It was an agony to her to feel, to sense that drawing-back, but she forced herself to ignore it. ‘An affair of honour? Why then, I suppose it is—and in that case, Toni, it is serious. For, to unmake the bet, you must confess that when you made it you knew it to be, as you call it, “unfair”: and that will not look pretty.’

  ‘Everyone must know thiss already,’ he said wretchedly.

  ‘A few may suspect it; but you must keep quiet and if it is ever mentioned, then will be the time to start, to stare, to declare that upon your honour it never occured to you till now—to rush off to Lord Weyburn, conscience-stricken, if it comes to the last, and say that this matter has been brought to your attention, that of course now that you see it in this light, you must cancel the bet. But be warned by me, I implore you—to “confess” will be to give yourself away. And besides,’ she insisted, ‘we hoped for the marriage for her anyway; without this, it could still have taken place.’

  ‘If it does so now, this will cost me a thousand guineas,’ he said gloomily. ‘And I have not got it.’

  ‘I will pay it; Sir Bertram and I will pay it.’

  ‘You have not a thousand guineas either, Marcia.’

  ‘Precisely!—and does that trouble us? When Sophia is well married,’ said Lady Corby, ‘money will be flush. He is enormously rich, she will have but to reach out her hand into the coffers—’

  ‘Do you suggest I shall take money from her—to pay off her husband?’

  ‘Pouf, nonsense! I say only that her wealth and position will all be owing to us; and she is not a girl to forget her friends.’ She smiled up at him. ‘Nor am I, when I am rich, one to forget my friends.’

  ‘I will not haf your money, Marcia,’ he said stiffly. ‘Nor hers.’