Starrbelow

by Christianna Brand

  ‘The other members of the club being—yourself, Squire Reddington, Sir Pardo Ryan and the Honourable John Fair?’

  ‘Do you mean to say, Sapphire, you haf robbed Marcia off her precious box?’

  ‘Don’t tell on us,’ implored Sapphire, on a note of alarm again.

  ‘But Marcia cannot … That is to say, Lady Corby must haf this box; she does not travel without it, it is her first object of care always. You will return it to her, off course?’

  ‘Why, as to that, you see—it is Lord Franks who now has the box: it is his “treasure”, possession of it constitutes him a member of the—the Treasure Seekers’ Circle.…’

  ‘And meanwhile,’ said Sir Henry, relentlessly pursuing the course of his thoughts, ‘Lady Corby, of course, without her box, will be unable to appear—er—properly dressed; that is to say, will be unable to appear at all.’ And he looked at the Prince and thought, He at least is not a party to this.

  ‘I shall do my utmost to persuade his lordship to part with his treasure, Sir Henry.’

  ‘To persuade his lordship—or his heirs,’ suggested Sir Henry.

  ‘Or his heirs,’ she agreed, shrugging. But she had little hope, she added, that Lord Franks if he lived would prove easy to deal with in the matter; he was not now, after all, very likely to be anxious to oblige her in anything, however much she might wish it.…

  ‘Oh, I am sure you wish it most devoutly, my lady,’ said Sir Henry, and he could not forbear from asking her curiously, ‘Are you not at least a little alarmed, Lady Weyburn—lest the man may be dead?’

  Why, no, said Sapphire, gazing back at him limpidly, not in the least alarmed for had not Sir Henry himself pointed out to her that it was no crime, in self-defence; to kill—a highwayman?

  All this, carefully noted down at the time and with his own interpretation upon it, Sir Henry Kidd was to recall years later at Lady Weyburn’s Trial-by-Society: and not to her advantage. Lord Franks was dead by then—though by his own hand, not hers; but there was evidence also of the scandal in the neighbourhood, stemming, no doubt, from the doctor called in to attend to the unexplained bullet wound.… And Lady Corby had been confined to her room ‘suffering from shock’ and there followed upon Sir Henry’s recollection, reluctant testimony from the Earl of Frome that he had discovered through his wife, then Miss Lillane, that her erstwhile friend had been encountered riding with Prince Anton of Brunswick in the woods above Starrbelow—which are not on the whole favourable for riding in.… And so on and so on; the ‘escapade’ in fact had been framed for one purpose and one purpose only—to get Prince Anton’s mistress out of the way.…

  And meanwhile, Lady Weyburn, uncaring, pursued her own wild will—and suddenly late in June announced imperiously that Aunt Corby was in need of attention from London doctors; they must all move up to Town.…

  She spent a night with Sir Bertram and Lady Corby at Albemarle Street; but one night only. Lord Weyburn had left instructions that when in doubt she should apply to his lawyers, and next day she drove to their office—in a hired carriage, the last she ever used in London—and sat with Mr. Boone in his quiet room looking out over the grey old cobbled street where a lady’s equipage had seldom been seen before. ‘You should have let me call upon you, my lady.’

  ‘I have no address at present,’ said Sapphire, shrugging.

  ‘You have Lord Weyburn’s house in Berkeley Square.’

  ‘Have I?’ said Sapphire. ‘I did not know, or I was not sure.’

  ‘His lordship’s instructions are that you are to be treated exactly as though—as though—’

  ‘As though I were his lordship’s wife by preference,’ suggested Sapphire, ‘instead of through a vulgar wager.’

  Mr. Boone coughed and bowed and looked awkwardly down his long legal nose. ‘His lordship has been most generous in his arrangements.’

  ‘Oh, certainly. Let me see if I understand them correctly. I am to have the use of either of the two houses—when he himself does not happen to wish to use them. What is to be done, may I ask, if I am in Berkeley Square when his lordship arrives? I take it he does not propose to remain with Miss L—P—for ever?’

  ‘Miss …?’

  ‘In Bath,’ said Sapphire.

  ‘His lordship will give due notice of his coming.’

  ‘And her ladyship will strike her tents and scuttle out of his way? If Lord Weyburn feels restless at any time, it seems hardly an idyllic outlook for me, Mr. Boone—driving back and forth between Starrbelow and London, bowing to my husband out of the window as our coaches cross.’ She shrugged. She examined minutely the seaming of a glove. ‘Supposing, Mr. Boone, that I were to return to Italy?’

  Mr. Boone looked startled. That eventuality, apparently, had not been considered. ‘I shall have to discuss the question with Lord Weyburn.’

  ‘Please do,’ said Sapphire. ‘As soon as possible.’ She gave her entire attention to the glove. ‘Will he be soon again in Town?’

  ‘I understand,’ said Mr. Boone miserably, ‘that his lordship proposes passing through Town about the end of July.’

  ‘I see. Meanwhile, I have the use of the family house?’

  ‘Oh, certainly, my lady. And the carriages—I am horrified to see your ladyship so equipped, with no attendance but a maid and a hired coachman. Your ladyship must remember,’ said Mr. Boone proudly, ‘that you are the wife of Baron Weyburn of Starrbelow.’

  ‘That is a tragedy,’ said the wife of Baron Weyburn of Starrbelow, ‘that I am very unlikely to forget.’ And she swept him a curtsey and gave him one blue blaze which Mr. Boone, also, thought he was unlikely to forget.

  So Sapphire installed herself in the lovely house with the high pillared portico and the long lines of tall windows exquisitely balanced in their regular pattern across the glowing pinky-red new brickwork: and within a week had made it the most notorious house in Town.

  Lady Corby, terrified, summoned her niece to Albemarle Street. It said something for Sapphire’s reputation, indeed, when, after but a few days of her occupation, such a woman as Aunt Corby dare not be seen entering the portals of Berkeley Square. ‘Sophia, are you mad? What are these rumours I hear of you, and your behaviour?’

  No hired coaches, no simple white and blue dresses for Lady Weyburn now. She sat in the little back drawing-room that would have been but a cupboard in her own great house, arrogantly beautiful in a dress of light green satin with a splendid crimson velvet cloak, rubies in her ears and on her fingers, ruby buckles in her shoes; and now at the door, the fine matched Weyburn greys fidgeted in their trappings as the family carriage waited, coachman, footman and page in attendance (her ladyship had told the coachman she would not be long). ‘Rumours, Aunt? Did you bring me all this way to ask me a question to which you already know the answer?’

  ‘I know the answer; but is it—can it be—the truth? That your husband’s house is frequented by the riff-raff of this town—Lord Warne, Lord Greenewode, Francis Erick, Ross, Tom Jeans—?’

  ‘Prince Anton of Brunswick,’ said Sapphire, continuing the catalogue.

  ‘I am happy to have Anton keeping some check on your doings,’ said Aunt Corby stiffly.

  Sophia laughed outright, fluttering her fan, the naughty side outward. ‘Ha, ha, ha! Poor Anton my watchdog—well, well!’

  ‘Do you know, Sophia, that it is said that half these men are your lovers?’

  ‘Good gracious,’ said Sapphire, ‘I must be kept very busy.’

  ‘Are there so many of them?’ said Lady Corby, nearly fainting.

  ‘There are twelve—if you count the two or three country members.’

  ‘I do not understand you, Sophia. What I wish to know is—are you taking lovers?’

  ‘I have as many lovers as—as your ladyship has,’ said Sapphire.

  Lady Corby closed her own fan sharply and rapped with it on the table; just so—how very long ago, and yet but a few brief months ago!—had she rapped Prince Anton over the head because he agreed that
Miss Devigne’s dress was too low. ‘A married lady of some years’ standing, Sophia, may—discreetly—take a lover. That is something different from a woman in your position playing ducks and drakes with her husband’s good name, with his home, his possessions, his money.… In God’s name, what will Weyburn say when he hears of this?’

  ‘As long as he does not say it to me,’ said Sapphire, ‘I care not two pins what he says. So why should you?’

  Lady Corby cared because through her niece she had hoped to dig deep into the Weyburn resources. ‘He will cut you off with a pittance, forbid you his house.…’

  ‘He will be very foolish to do so,’ said Sapphire, shrugging. ‘He has given me a taste of wealth and I might find myself unable to live without it. He may drive me to—earn it, in a way even less creditable to his precious family name.’ And she drew back her pale satin skirt and showed the ruby buckles blazing on her insteps and lowered the hem again without a word; but she smiled. Lord Franks was known to boast that any woman in London could be bought with a pair of jewelled buckles: they were at present the rage.

  Lady Corby looked at her niece in utter terror. ‘To think, Sophia, that you are the innocent girl I brought over from Italy less than a year ago!’

  ‘Indeed, yes: I have a great deal to thank you for, Aunt Corby,’ said Lady Weyburn, and rose and swept out to the waiting carriage.

  The Treasure Seekers’ Circle meanwhile, improvised for the staunching of Sir Henry Kidd’s inconvenient curiosity, had become established fact and within a brief week was the talk of the ton. Red Reddington and Pardo had come roaring up to Town in her train, Lord Greenewode and Francis Erick, his familiar, had joined immediately and brought in a group of friends; Prince Anton, now openly ever at Sapphire’s heels, was an ardent member—on the score, no doubt, of ‘keeping an eye on her ladyship’ for the benefit of her ladyship’s aunt. And Sir Cecil Prout was a member. An object had been suggested for Prince Anton’s acquiring—a hoop from the Duchess of Witham’s petticoat. Sapphire had proposed it—conducting the first full meeting of the club, sitting wickedly elegant upon a curved and gilded couch in the drawing-room at Berkeley Square—one woman among a dozen men, half of whom, at least, no decent woman would know. ‘A hoop, I say, from Gossip Wit’s petticoat.’

  The Honourable John went off into gales of his boyish laughter: the cleanest wind that blew through the lovely rooms in these days of Lady Weyburn’s early occupation. ‘That iss too easy,’ said Prince Anton, laughing too. ‘I must but creep up the back stairs and kiss the maid.’

  ‘I amend: a hoop from the petticoat her Grace is wearing,’ said Sapphire, sparkling. Her hands held, as ever nowadays, a wine-glass; she looked at him over the rim, across the red wine. ‘Come, Prince—you accept?’

  ‘Sir Cecil Prout should be the one to send after petticoats,’ said Anton. ‘Since she publicly declared he should never have left them off.’

  ‘I have not the pleasure of Sir Cecil Prout’s acquaintance.’

  ‘He is a foolish fop,’ said Tom Jeans, who was among them, ‘but he would amuse your ladyship.’

  ‘Let us make him a member, then, and the hoop his challenge. We must keep up our membership: Lord Franks in his venture was supported by four lieutenants—it’s agreed we may call for as many volunteers as we require. Very well then—now for Prince Anton. He has wriggled out of the—hoop: what else can we devise for this member, brother devils?’

  ‘His Majesty’s snuff-box,’ suggested Francis Erick.

  She clapped her hand over her mouth. ‘Anton! You dare not?’

  Prince Anton leaned forward in his chair, looking back at her, unsmiling. His face had aged of late, there were fine lines about his eyes that gave him a haggard look, the broad planes of his handsome face were pale, and the long, knuckly hands, clasped together between his knees in a familiar gesture, were tensely clasped these days. He said, slowly: ‘Why, no—her ladyship is right; I would not dare. Thiss iss—for others: for me—I am too near the court, thiss iss not fair to my family and I must not.’ He bowed to Sapphire, bending his head down, not looking up at her. ‘I may forget I am a chentleman; I must not forget, however, that I am a prince.’

  Sapphire also bowed, a little mockingly; and she smiled at him—but it was the new smile, the smile that had been born at the Duchess of Witham’s ball. ‘I will not contradict you, sir, in either respect.’ She shrugged. ‘Well—you are absolved your royal cousin’s snuff-box. You shall have instead—come, gentlemen, what shall he have?—the Prince is difficult to accommodate. A page from the visitors’ book at Witham House?’

  ‘We have already used Gossip Wit,’ said Prince Anton.

  ‘A page then from—from the record book of some Fleet-wedding parson?’

  ‘They are abolished,’ said Honjohn, ‘since last quarterday.’

  ‘Not abolished: made illegal. Many still exist, however, who may legally perform marriages; he must get one of those.’ (Did she glance over at Anton then, as was afterwards suggested, with a look that said: Splendid! We have delicately steered them in the direction we meant them to take at last: an excuse for extracting that page …?) ‘’Tis a hard task to set him, gentlemen, but he has had other choices.’ She laughed. ‘I will come with you, Anton, disguised as a bride!…’

  And so the club, casually born, went forward and—disgracefully—flourished. Lord Warne had been set, that very day, to try for a wine-cup from the nunnery of the Daughters of St. Paul on Blackheath, and at supper arrived, triumphantly bearing with him not only one of the nuns’ wine-cups but one of the nuns as well—who at first affected terror and tears and then went off into giggles and then was quizzed by half the gentlemen present and proved to be only some doxy of an actress pressed into his lordship’s service for the occasion. It was generally felt by the company that his lordship had gone a little far in introducing so unequivocally undesirable a young person to her ladyship’s house; but Lady Weyburn took it with the utmost complacency and only saw to it with tact and charm that the woman was complimented, paid off and dismissed, without the necessity of inviting her to join familiarly in with herself. But in future, she said, she thought the rule should be: no ladies. ‘I will play all parts when it comes to feminine assistance and I assure you, Brother Devils, shall not be found wanting. Sir Cecil Prout must let me have a share in the matter of her Grace’s petticoat; and—you will not forget, Prince Anton, your blushing Fleet bride?…’

  EIGHT

  On August the first—and we must keep these dates before us, for they were to become important later on—on August the first, then, 1754, Lord Weyburn returned to London from the pleasures of Bath. The marriage had taken place at the end of May; and of the intervening nine weeks Lady Weyburn had spent the first two in solitude at Starrbelow, the next two also at Starrbelow, but in anything but solitude; the remaining five in a mounting crescendo of wildness and folly—there were many to give it a far worse name—in Town. If she remembered the lawyer’s warning that his lordship would be passing through London at the end of July, she paid no heed to it. She was conducting a meeting of the Treasure Seekers’ Circle when, late in the evening, his coach drew up at the door of the house in Berkeley Square.

  He stood in the great hall, tall, slender, handsome, swinging the light travelling cloak from his shoulders, handing his hat and his gloves to the manservant. This was an old man, long in the service of the family. He ventured, wretchedly, that her ladyship was in—in the drawing-room, my lord.…

  ‘Her ladyship?’ said Weyburn, astounded.

  ‘Her ladyship is—entertaining, my lord.’

  ‘Do you mean—Lady Weyburn? Lady Weyburn is in the house?’ On the man’s unhappy, half-apologetic nod, he added, still incredulous, ‘Did she not know I was coming?’

  ‘I conveyed your intentions to her ladyship, my lord, as you instructed me: I had heard from you with orders to prepare for your arrival this evening.’

  ‘But, then—what did she say?’

 
‘Why, merely that I doubtless knew my duties, my lord, and should make all arrangements accordingly.’ He hesitated. ‘Her ladyship is occupying the yellow suite: I have prepared your lordship’s own rooms as usual.…’

  A woman came down the great broad curve of the stair, not Sapphire, but some painted doxy with Sapphire’s ivory skin and brass-gold hair; dressed in a gown of white that looked like a wedding-dress, dragged down half off her shoulders, with some tawdry finery of white feathers and veiling in her hair and an overloading of diamonds—which, however, were real diamonds. He stood in the shadows of the hall staring up; behind him the man made a sign of dismissal to attendant footmen and himself slipped away. In a moment Charles Weyburn was alone with her. Three steps from the bottom of the stairs, one hand on the marble rail, she stopped and lifted her heavy eyelids and looked full at him. He closed his own eyes for a moment against the—the terror of it; the sick disillusion, the mounting disgust and rage, the astonishment, the fear. Red as a rose against the white dress, a glass of claret glowed in her hand. He said: ‘Dear God in heaven! Is this you?’

  She looked back at him unsmiling, over the shifting rose-red light in the glass. ‘Do you not recognize me, my lord? I am much as you saw me last.’

  ‘That at least,’ he said, ‘is not true.’

  She put on a look of doubt. ‘This was the very dress.’

  ‘But not the woman,’ he said swiftly, and looked away from her, away from the wreck of the woman who a few brief weeks ago had worn the dress—the wreck of the young girl in the white dress whose eyes had suddenly stared up at him with a look of startled innocence, of bewildered pain that had haunted him ever since. He blurted out, ‘And, anyway—why do you wear this dress?’

  ‘Oh, the dress?’ She laughed, pecking at it with her free hand, looking down disparagingly at its snowy white satin, dropping a fold of it from fastidious fingers, brushing it into place again with a back-hand flick as though this old rag of a wedding-dress were something hardly worth consideration at all. ‘A masquerade. We have all been down to the Fleet.’