Reluctantly we returned to the boat and I was a little sad as we rowed back. I had been indulging in dreams and as I came out of them I realized as never before, what a rash act it had been to marry Edward. When I looked at this man, pulling at the oars, smiling at me in a significant manner, all the melancholy I had seen in his face when he had talked of his trials disappeared. I was stirred as I never had been before. I wanted to go on being with him. I wanted to see that joy in living which he could display and which seemed particularly exciting when I heard of all he had endured during his years of servitude which would have been so hard to bear for a man of his nature.
In those moments on the river I said to myself: This must be falling in love. I had thought it would never happen to me, and now it had … too late.
We alighted from the boat and began the walk to the house. I realized it must be nearly three o’clock. I felt faintly irritated, frustrated. I had forgotten how anxious they would be about me, so completely absorbed had I been.
We came out into Piccadilly. I must have increased my pace a little, and he said: “You are anxious to get on.”
“I didn’t realize it was so late.”
“Let’s take this street. It’s a short cut.”
That was how I saw her. Recognition was instantaneous—after all she had made a great impression on me. It was the girl who had pretended to be blind.
How different she looked now! There was no doubt that she could see. She was fashionably dressed in rather a gaudy manner; her cheeks were startlingly red, the rest of her face very white; those eyes which had seemed so pathetically sightless were rimmed with kohl. She had crossed the road and gone into a building.
I said: “What place is that?”
Jake said: “It’s Frinton’s Club.”
“Frinton’s! I’ve heard of that. That was where Jonathan lost so much money. What sort of place is it?”
“It has rather a shady reputation, I believe.”
It was very strange. What was that girl doing in Frinton’s Club? Something should be done. I did not know what.
“Do you know who owns it?”
“It is said to be a Madame Delarge.”
“I’ve heard of her.”
“There are a chain of clubs like Frinton’s. I’ve heard all sorts of things go on in them. Not gambling only. They are the haunts of prostitutes and idle young men—and perhaps older ones—who have more money than sense.”
“I see.”
“There are a number of them in London. Madame Delarge is the accepted owner, but I have heard that she is just a name, and there is some big organization behind her. Frinton’s is just one of a chain of such clubs. Madame Delarge is the one behind whom the real owners cower. At least so I’ve heard.”
“Why should there be this need for anonymity?”
“It is rather an unsavoury business. It wouldn’t surprise me if the real owners are posing as pillars of society.”
I felt shaken. After my idyllic experience I had seen that young woman who for some time had haunted my dreams. To say the least, it was disconcerting.
When I told my parents I had seen the girl who had pretended to be blind and that she had gone into Frinton’s Club, my father said: “She’s obviously a loose woman. Many of them frequent those clubs. There’s nothing much we could do even if we approached the girl. It’s too long ago.”
“There is a woman who is said to own the place. A Madame Delarge.”
“Oh yes. She’s just a figurehead, I believe.”
“It was a great shock to see that girl. I should have known her anywhere although she was so dressed up and quite different. And her face …”
“Let’s hope she sticks to her trade,” said my father, “and doesn’t attempt any more to kidnap young innocent girls.”
“I think something ought to be done,” said my mother.
My father said to me: “Don’t you attempt to follow her if you see her again. Don’t do anything like that.”
“As if I should!”
My mother was more concerned about my going out with Jake Cadorson.
“I wondered where you were,” she said, mildly reproving.
“I came to tell you I was going but you were out. He wants to come down to see Tamarisk. I am not sure how Tamarisk will feel having a father suddenly presented to her.”
“She’s an unpredictable girl,” said my mother.
“I think,” I mused, “it will be best to break it to her gently. Then when she knows, I’ll ask him to come down.”
“We’ll have him at Eversleigh.”
“Why should you? Tamarisk is at Grasslands.”
My mother looked faintly embarrassed.
“I wondered …” she said.
She betrayed to me that she, who was very perceptive where I was concerned, had guessed that my feelings for this man were perhaps a little more intense than was desirable.
I said calmly: “I will ask him in due course.”
He called next day and my father asked him to dine with us. He accepted with alacrity. It was quite clear that my parents liked him. He had a special gratitude towards my father and quite openly they discussed the trial and the state of the country after this most devastating and prolonged war which had been going on.
“Twenty years one might say,” said my father. “The people are in a merry mood at the moment… singing the praises of the great Duke, but wait till the taxes are enforced. It will be a different story then.”
“You expect trouble?” asked Jonathan.
“I know there’ll be murmuring.” He turned to Jake. “I don’t know how things are in Cornwall.”
“Very much the same as in the rest of the country, I fear,” replied Jake. “And of course the people there are considerably poorer to start with.”
“We’ve had an example of what the mob can do,” said my mother. “Jessica’s husband has been a victim of that.”
“Yes, so I heard.”
“We are better off on our estates,” put in my father. “We manage to weather these storms. It’s townsfolk who suffer most.”
“In addition to the poverty engendered by the war, the people have another complaint,” said Jake. “They are demanding representation. They want universal suffrage.”
“It will be some time before we get that,” said my father. “Do we want every Tom, Dick and Harry who can’t read or write making the laws of this country?”
“They are not asking to make the laws,” I pointed out. “They are merely asking to have a voice in which man they send to Parliament to represent them.”
“Nonsense,” said my father. “The people have to learn. They have to accept what is. They have to march with the times.”
“I would say that is just what they are attempting to do,” I said.
“My daughter is a very contentious woman,” my father remarked to Jake. “Raise a point and she is bound to come up with the very opposite.”
“It makes life interesting,” said Jake.
I was glad they liked him. I was glad he fitted in so well.
After he had gone my father said: “Interesting fellow. Fancy entertaining an ex-convict at your table, Lottie. I’m surprised at you.”
“I found him better company than quite a number I could name.”
“Such experiences are bound to leave their mark. I’m glad things worked out the way they did. It would have been a tragedy to hang a man like that. He was only in that position because he’d saved a young girl from a drunken bully. Silly young idiot.”
“Why silly?” I said. “It was just the sort of thing you would have done in your youth.”
“My dear daughter, you flatter me. I never did much which was not going to bring me good.”
“Why do you always make yourself out to be so much worse than you are? You’re bad enough without that.”
We grinned at each other. I felt so happy because they all liked Jake Cadorson.
I did not think it could happen so so
on.
We should be leaving London at the end of the week and it was a Wednesday. It was arranged that Jake should visit Grasslands one week after our return. That would give me time to break the news to Tamarisk that she had a father.
He had said there was so much he wanted to know about Tamarisk, and he confessed that he was a little nervous about meeting her.
It was afternoon. I wanted to go out and make a few purchases and when I left the house I met him. I believe he had been waiting for me.
“It seems so long since we have met,” he said.
I looked at him in astonishment. “It was yesterday.”
“I said it seemed a long time … not that it was.” He went on: “I want to talk to you. I have so much to say to you.”
“Still? I thought we had talked a lot.”
“Not enough. Let’s find somewhere quiet. I know. You have not seen my house yet. It isn’t very far.”
“I was going shopping.”
“Couldn’t that wait?”
“I suppose so. It wasn’t really important in any case.”
“I should like to show you my house. It is small by the standards of your family home. My brother used it as a pied á terre, and as he was a confirmed bachelor I suppose it sufficed.”
He took my arm and I felt as though I danced along those streets. The house was in a quiet little cul de sac. There was a row of Georgian houses with a garden opposite.
“It’s charming,” I said.
“Yes. My brother had elegant tastes and liked to indulge in the comforts of life.”
“Who looks after the house for you? Have you servants?”
“There is a basement in which live Mr. and Mrs. Evers. They as they say ‘do’ for me. It’s an excellent arrangement. Everything is looked after. Mrs. Evers is a good cook and their great virtue is that they don’t intrude. My brother taught them that. They appear like Aladdin’s genie when called on. Otherwise they remain tucked away with their lamp, which is of course in their basement apartment.”
“How fortunate you are. I often think we are plagued by our servants. They note everything we do, embellish it, garnish it and serve it up as salacious titbits.”
“I am free of such observation. It can be very comforting.”
He opened the door with a key and we stepped into the hall. There was a grandfather clock and an oak chest on which stood a big brass bowl, very highly polished. The silence was broken only by the ticking of the clock. I thought to myself: I ought not to have come.
He turned and faced me.
“It is a wonderful moment for me,” he said, “to have you here … in this house.”
“I’m longing to see it.”
“Here is the dining room and the kitchen, and on the next floor a drawing room and study, on the next two bedrooms. It is quite small, you see, but enough for my needs.”
“And you have the estate in Cornwall. I take it you will be living there most of the time.”
He took me up to the drawing room. It had big windows, reaching from floor to ceiling. The apple green drapes were trimmed with gold braid and the furnishings were a deeper shade of green. The furniture was elegant in the extreme.
“Let me take your cloak,” he said, and did so, throwing it over the back of a chair. We stood facing each other and suddenly he put his arms round me and kissed me.
For a moment I did not resist. I had forgotten everything in the acute pleasure such as I had never experienced before.
Then I withdrew myself trying to give the impression that what had passed between us was nothing more than a friendly greeting. It was a poor pretence.
He said: “It is no use trying to pretend this does not exist, is it?”
“What?” I retorted sharply.
“This—between us—you and me. It’s there, isn’t it? Wasn’t it there right from the beginning? You were only a child but I knew. Of course it seemed ridiculous then. You a little girl… Myself a man who had abandoned everything to go off with the gypsies. I can’t tell you how I regretted that when I saw you. Do you remember?”
“Well… vaguely. You were sitting under a tree wearing an orange shirt. You had a guitar. Do you still play it?”
“Now and then. I was playing a part, playing at being a gypsy.”
“You had gold rings in your ears.”
“Yes. I worked hard at it. When I saw you I thought I had never seen anyone quite like you.”
“I certainly had never seen anyone like you. But then I knew little of gypsies.”
“I thought: I shouldn’t be meeting her like this. It should be at a ball and she should be older. She should be seventeen, her first ball, and she should have the first dance with me. I realized then what I had done by throwing away my old way of life, my background, everything … just for a whim.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“It’s true, I swear.”
“But you did not go back to your home.”
“You know the pride of the young. They take a step and refuse to see that it is folly. I was determined to go on with what I had begun, but I never forgot you. And then … there I was in danger of losing my life and you came to save it. Doesn’t that show that you and I were meant to be a great deal to each other?”
“I don’t know about such things. Perhaps I don’t believe that anything is meant. Things are what we make them.”
He said slowly: “I am not going to let you go now I have found you.”
“I daresay you will visit us. You are Tamarisk’s father. You will want to see her and she will probably want to see you.”
“I was not thinking of that. I love you. I always have. I used to think of you on that fearful ship and later in my hut. I used to come out at night and look at the stars overhead. I used to imagine that you, too, would be looking at the stars and they would be different from the ones I saw. We were on opposite sides of the world. We should be together always.”
“I think I should go,” I said. “Show me the house quickly and I will get on with my shopping.”
He rose, took my hands, and pulled me up beside him. For a moment we stood very close. I felt an extraordinary lassitude creeping over me. I was unsure what it meant except that it was a warning. I ought to get out of this house as quickly as possible.
We mounted the stairs, he leading the way.
“Small, as I told you,” he was saying. “But compact.”
We had reached a landing and he threw open a door. There was a large bedroom with a four-poster bed. The curtains were of green velvet; they matched the drapes at the window and there were touches of green in the carpet.
“Your brother was very fond of green,” I said.
“His favourite colour obviously. Do you like it?”
“Enchanting. It’s so fresh.”
He shut the door and I said: “Show me the next room. Then I must go.”
He put his arms round me and pulled me down to sit on the bed. “What are you doing with your life?” he said.
I laughed on a rather high note. “I believe,” I answered, “that I am doing what most people do with their lives. I am living it.”
“You are living in a half world, Jessica. You have shut yourself away from reality.”
“My life is real enough.”
“You are merely existing. Why did you do it?”
I turned rather angrily to him. “I had to do it. Why did you leave your home and become a gypsy? Why did you kill a man for the sake of a girl and almost lose your life for it?”
“Why do we do these things? But having done them should we suffer for them for ever?”
“You won’t. You have cast your misfortunes aside admirably. I shall never forget how you looked at the Inskips’ ball. No one would have guessed.”
“One doesn’t have to live for ever with one’s mistakes. You cannot shut yourself away. You can’t just wither away in that place.”
“I’m not withering away. I am living a very useful life.”
“Now that I have found you, you don’t imagine that I am going to let you go.”
I was shaken. I wanted to hear him say that. I should have gone then … but I could not. More than anything I wanted to stay.
I replied: “I have made my bed, as they say, and I must lie on it.”
He shook his head. “You and I will find happiness together.”
“How can that be?”
He drew me to him and kissed me over and over again.
No, said my conscience. But something else said: Stay. Why shouldn’t you? What harm is it doing?
Harm! But I was married to Edward.
Edward would not know.
That was the danger signal. I was actually telling myself that Edward need never know. I felt quite depraved and with it a sensation of great excitement. I knew in that moment that I was going to succumb to temptation.
He went on kissing me.
“It had to be,” he said.
I made no effort to break away.
“Please, Jessica,” he said, “I have dreamed of this for so many years. It has sustained me … brought me through. One day I shall find her, I told myself. And now I have, I shall never let you go.”
I was in love with him. How different this was from the mild attraction I had once felt for Peter Lansdon. This was overwhelming, an intense longing to be with him. I thought, I shall never be happy when he is not there.
“I know you love me,” he said.
“I can’t. I must not.”
“You cannot say you can’t when you do.”
“Jake,” I said pleadingly. “Jake, I must remember my obligations. I never knew until now what a terrible mistake I have made, but it is done, and it is my mistake. I must live with it.”
As I was speaking he was slipping my gown from my shoulders; and I knew I could not resist.
So it had happened. I felt bewildered and exhilarated by the experience. I felt as though I were dreaming. But there he was beside me and I knew that I loved him, had always loved him, and would love him for ever.
He kissed me tenderly. “You must not be sad,” he said. “It had to be. You could not go on in that way … not when I was near you. You must not be afraid.”
I could only say: “I have done this … to Edward.”
Return of the Gypsy Page 30