The Devil and Drusilla

by Paula Marshall

  More, in their subsequent conversation, before they had begun to betray their feelings for one another, she had gained the impression that what had been said had disturbed him greatly—even though he had joked a little with her about it.

  Once her game with Giles was over, Drusilla did something which she had been meaning to do for two years and that was to go again through Jeremy’s desk. She had done so immediately after his death, on her lawyer’s instructions, to see if he had any financial documents there of which he ought to know.

  The rest had been a jumble of papers: letters never sent, and a commonplace book with most of its pages blank. Jeremy had been neither a great writer nor a great reader, and part of his admiration for Drusilla had come from the fact that she was both. Perhaps, among them, she might find something to explain why he had changed so much in his last days.

  The desk stood where it had always stood, in the big drawing room under the window. It was a delicate piece of Chippendale, finely wrought. Drusilla opened it, and began to sort through its contents. Among memos about small matters on the estate there were notes on the building of a Folly in the grounds of which he had talked eagerly about a year before his death, but in which he had suddenly lost interest.

  There were also letters, one half-written, to the architect about the Folly, and another to a landscape gardener about creating a lake on the lowest lawn—another project which he had suddenly dropped.

  There seemed to be nothing in them which might help her. When she picked up the last scrap of paper but one she had almost given up hope of finding anything. Written on it in an agitated hand, quite unlike Jeremy’s usual writing, were the words, ‘Dru must never know.’

  Drusilla stared at them. What must Dru never know? And now that Jeremy had gone, would she ever know what she mustn’t know? To add to the mystery when she turned the paper over, the name and address of the Lord Lieutenant of the county were written on the back.

  The commonplace book yielded nothing of value—other than the name, constantly repeated, of Apollyon.

  Drusilla’s hair stood on end. She remembered reading, years ago, Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, and being frightened by the Pilgrim’s struggle with Apollyon, the Devil. Why should Jeremy be writing down his name so urgently and so apparently frantically? Even as she thought this, Drusilla began to shiver.

  The feeling of intense cold which she had experienced by the sundial at Marsham overwhelmed her again. Added to it was a terrible nameless fear which brought her to her knees before the desk, still clutching the commonplace book. Scarcely knowing what she did she cast the book from her—and the fear disappeared. But the memory of it did not, nor did the feeling of cold leave her quickly, so that minutes later she was still shivering.

  The Devil, the black candles, the dead sheep on the altar, and her strange experience by the sundial, added to this most recent one, were all mixed together in her mind, telling her—what?

  No one now believed in the Devil as people had done in Bunyan’s time, but all the same she left the book on the carpet. Before she could stop him, Giles, who had been reading in the window seat and was plainly unaware of her distress, came over, picked up the commonplace book and placed it on the desk.

  It was also quite apparent by his manner that handling it had had no effect on him. This made Drusilla feel colder than ever, and caused Giles to remark to her, ‘You look ill, Dru—are you sickening for something?’

  ‘Yes…no,’ she replied distractedly. ‘I had bad dreams last night and couldn’t sleep.’ This was not a total lie. Yes, the dreams had been bad, but she could not remember the detail of them. Only that Devenish had been in them—and now, she suddenly recalled, he had been in danger, and she had been unable to help him.

  This is quite ridiculous, she told herself sternly, to start at shadows, and to imagine that I have been afflicted by a sudden chill. I am suffering from the megrims and must learn to control myself.

  It was at this moment that Devenish was announced by the butler, fortunately before Giles could continue his tactless mothering of her. It had come to something that he should be worrying about her, instead of her worrying about him! On the other hand it proved that he was beginning to grow up at last, something which he demonstrated by bolting past Devenish as he walked through the door, exclaiming, ‘I’m off to the stables—you two will want to be alone together.’

  Both Devenish and Drusilla began to laugh together. ‘Really,’ Dru said apologetically, ‘Giles’s idea of tact is somewhat primitive.’

  ‘He has the right of it, though,’ commented Devenish. ‘A few weeks ago he would have sat staring at us, content to make up a happy trio, without the slightest notion that we might wish to be tête-à-tête. It only goes to show that we mature without knowing it.’

  Drusilla said, melancholy in her voice, ‘There are times when I wonder whether I shall ever be mature.’

  Devenish looked sharply at her. ‘What’s this? Does the most commonsensical person I have the pleasure to know doubt herself, and why?’

  Should she confide in him? The last time they had met he had refrained from seducing her and had asked her to call him Hal. Did that mean she could trust him? Drusilla made her decision. She must trust someone and, whatever else, Devenish was a strong man, both physically and mentally.

  She pointed to the book on the desk and the scrap of paper beside it and briefly described her recent experience with them both.

  ‘And you must not laugh at me, Hal,’ she told him, ‘for seeing phantoms where none exist and feeling as though December had arrived in August.’

  Devenish shook his head as he picked up the piece of paper and the book. ‘I would never laugh at you, Drusilla, now that you have honoured me with my true name. I was Hal before I was ever Lord Devenish, and would always wish to be named so by my friends.’

  After he had finished examining them both, he said, ‘And you truly have no idea why Jeremy should have written these?’

  ‘None at all. Oh, Hal, could this conceivably have something to do with his strange death? What could it be that he knew and I must not?’

  Devenish could not answer her yet. He was beginning to think that he might know what it was that Jeremy had been engaged in which he was ashamed to reveal to his wife and had caused him to write down repeatedly one of the names of the Devil, but he still had no real proof.

  Until then he must hold his tongue.

  ‘I don’t know anything definite yet, Drusilla. I wish I did. When I do I will tell you—although I fear that you might not like the answer.’

  She knew that already—and told him so. Jeremy’s note about her proved that there was something dreadfully wrong with him.

  ‘And as a result of all this,’ she exclaimed suddenly, ‘I have become as mannerless as Giles. I have never asked you to sit down, but have plagued you with my worries.’

  He took her hand and kissed it. ‘You could never plague me, Drusilla. I am always at your service. Never forget that.’

  She would not. His eyes told her that what he had just said was the truth. She nodded, near to tears.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, and then was silent.

  Her answer, he thought was simplicity itself without embroidery or qualifications or pretty simperings. She might look fragile but he had no doubt that she was as true as steel.

  ‘I have come to tell you that I am on my way to London for a few days to perform a necessary errand. When I return I shall invite most of my neighbours to the house party which I promised them some weeks ago. You, of course, will be my most treasured guest. I may not stay long with you because I wish to leave later today.’

  ‘Long or short, you are always welcome.’

  ‘I know.’

  There was nothing of his usual acerbic wit about him. He had become as simple as she was.

  To prove it they sat silent for a time.

  ‘You have a quality of restfulness,’ Devenish said, ‘which is rare. Your presence restores me.�
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  ‘You must not flatter me.’ Drusilla was even a trifle agitated as she spoke. It seemed to her that they had been love-making by proxy, as it were, as though no words, no actions, were needed, just a meeting of minds in a quiet room.

  ‘No flattery,’ he said. ‘And now I must go. I would not wish to leave Tresham without telling you for I would not have you think that I had abandoned you.’

  If he were playing de Valmont’s game then he was doing so in such a masterly fashion that it was indistinguishable from the truth, and for that reason Drusilla did not think that he was.

  They rose together to stand face to face, not touching. The passion between them was all the stronger for not being directly expressed. It seemed to fill the very air, resonating between them as it did.

  ‘I will kiss your cheek before I leave,’ he said. ‘It is all I dare to do.’

  ‘I know—and I dare not respond…’

  ‘…lest we are lost,’ he ended.

  The kiss was given and taken. Long after the door had closed behind him Drusilla held her hand where his mouth had blessed her as though doing so might prevent the sweet sensation it had created from ever dying.

  Devenish was tired when he reached London. He slept badly. In his dreams, or rather nightmares, he was back again on yet another day when he had returned to his attic home to yet another shock.

  There was a carriage outside the door, a splendid one with a coat of arms on each door panel, two footmen at the back, and a coachman at the front. They stared at the ragged boy he had been as he rushed past them into the house.

  He ran into the attic to discover that his mother was seated in the armchair by the empty hearth, instead of lying in bed. She looked more ill and shabby than ever beside the splendour of the old man who stood in front of her, leaning on his cane. Thirteen-year-old Hal Devenish knew little of the fashionable clothing worn by the great and mighty, but he knew at once that few men were ever as finely turned out as this old man was.

  He was not the only strange person in the room. There was a large, fat man whom he later discovered to be a physician and a tall, thin one dressed as finely as the old man.

  But it was the old man who dominated the attic room as he dominated every room he was ever in, and that by his manner as well as his appearance.

  He raised a quizzing glass to stare at young Hal as though he were some insect which he had been unfortunate enough to encounter.

  ‘Never say that this is the boy, Augustus’s child.’

  His mother said, ‘Yes, this is Henry, your grandson. We call him Hal.’

  ‘Henry. He shall be Henry in future. Make a note of that, Jarvis, I think nothing of the name Hal.’

  His grandfather? Was this rich old man his grandfather? He could not be. He, Hal, would not have it so.

  ‘Who are you?’ he demanded, and although he was not then aware of it, he looked and sounded like a miniature version of the dominant old man who had arrived from nowhere to change his life forever.

  ‘As your mother said, I am your grandfather. Has the boy been taught no manners, ma’am, that he speaks so rudely to me in the accents of a street Arab?’

  ‘I have done my best,’ his mother faltered. ‘But after Augustus died we ran out of money. And I had to remove him from the grammar school and teach him myself.’

  ‘And a remarkably poor fist you appear to have made of it, ma’am. Do not glare at me, boy. I’ll not have it.’

  ‘And I’ll not have you speak to my mama like that. She says that you are rich—well, you may take your riches away and leave us alone. We don’t need them. I can look after her. As I have done since long before you came here to insult us.’

  His mother cried, ‘Oh, Hal, do not speak so,’ whilst the old man, turning to the thin man, said languidly, ‘Take the boy downstairs to the carriage, Jarvis, whilst the doctor examines his mother to discover whether she is fit to travel.’

  Jarvis seized him by the arm, saying firmly, ‘Come, boy, do as you’re told. It’s all for the best. M’lord will look after you both.’

  Hal wrenched his arm away. ‘I can look after her, I can. Master Gabriel, the magician, is teaching me his magic tricks and I shall be his boy when he travels South and he has promised that my mother will go with us, now that she’s a little better.’

  The old man, who was looking indifferently out of the grimy attic window, his back to them, said, without looking at either Hal or Jarvis, ‘Have you not rid us of him yet, Jarvis? Must I always repeat myself? Do as I say, lest I rid myself of you as well.’

  Hal tore himself from Jarvis’s detaining arm to run to his mother, shouting defiantly, ‘I don’t want to go with him. Say I needn’t.’

  His mother looked at him earnestly, her eyes, the only remnant of a once remarkable beauty, filling with tears. ‘It’s for the best for both of us, Hal. His last remaining son has died without an heir and, although your father was the youngest son, you are now the only heir and will one day be Lord Devenish yourself. We shall be looked after and never be poor again.’

  It was too much to take in. He had conceived an instant aversion to the old man who was strolling towards him brandishing his cane. Even to learn that, from being a poor brat who ran around the streets doing odd jobs and some minor thieving to keep himself and his mother, he was now to become one of the great men who ruled England, was of no comfort to him.

  He stared defiantly at his grandfather, unaware that the very sight of him was anathema to someone who had lost his gifted, last remaining son and his beautiful grandson in a carriage accident and was doomed to have the misbegotten brat of his worthless youngest son in their place.

  ‘You,’ he said cuttingly, ‘will be taught to behave as my heir should, if I have to beat you senseless daily,’ and he caught Hal by the shoulders and used his cane to begin to do exactly that.

  His mother screamed and Jarvis, daringly, caught the old man by the arm.

  ‘Not now, m’lord, not now. The boy is upset and his mother is dying. You may discipline him later.’

  His mother was dying. The man had said what Hal had been denying to himself for weeks. He ran to her and that dream ended—as it always did—as he collapsed sobbing at her feet before Jarvis dragged him away from the old man’s wrath and down to the waiting carriage…

  Devenish sat up in bed, sweating and trembling. His mother had died a month later in the comfort of Tresham Hall. Her rescuers had, ironically, come too late to save her. She had, without telling him, defied her late husband, and written to her husband’s father many times, telling him of their plight and asking him for help, but until his son and grandson had died so tragically, he had never answered her.

  Devenish’s father, Augustus, was a handsome wastrel who had seduced a parson’s daughter, made her pregnant, run off with her, and then, remarkably, had married her. Devenish never knew what belated chivalry had made Augustus act as he did, since she was by no means the first young woman he had ruined.

  He had been an officer in the cavalry, but had been cashiered for drinking on duty and cheating at cards. His father had hated him because in several generations he had been the only Devenish to be a black sheep. Consequently he also hated Augustus’s son for becoming his heir. Devenish later came to understand that in punishing him, the unwanted grandson, he was punishing the son whom he had never been able to control.

  Devenish cursed the frailty which made him occasionally relive his unhappy past in dreams. He knew that he was plagued by them only when he was troubled as he was now, not only over the problems at Tresham Magna, but also over his relationship with Drusilla Faulkner.

  He turned over and tried to sleep. Tomorrow he would visit the address which Rob had found for him and hope to learn something from Monsieur de Castellane—if he still lived there, that was.

  Morning found him in Piccadilly. He left his carriage there and walked on foot the rest of the way to St James’s Court. He had brought no servants with him other than the coachman and o
ne footman to hold the horses. He found Number 4 easily enough. It was a large house with a brass plate on the door. St James’s Academy for Young Gentlemen, it announced in tasteful lettering.

  He rapped a door-knocker in the shape of a laurel wreath and a stately butler opened the door. He could hear boys’ voices in the distance, and the sound of a piano being played, badly.

  ‘If Monsieur le Marquis de Castellane resides here I would like to speak with him.’

  The butler stared at him and said, ‘No one of that name here, sir,’ and then added, as though inspiration had struck him, ‘But the Academy’s Principal is Mr Castle—perhaps it’s him you seek, sir.’

  Mr. Castle. Yes, he could well be the man he was looking for.

  ‘Perhaps you would inform him that Lord Devenish would like to speak to him if he could spare the time.’

  On hearing his title the butler’s manner perked up amazingly.

  ‘Oh, indeed, m’lord, I’m sure he would wish to speak to you at once. Pray enter, and I shall inform him immediately of your arrival.’

  He ushered Devenish into a pretty little sitting room where a portrait of a handsome woman hung over the hearth, and pointed him at a large armchair. A few minutes later Devenish heard voices, the door opened, and a middle-aged man walked into the room.

  Despite the years which had passed since Devenish had last seen him, the man who entered, was plainly the Marquis de Castellane. As for de Castellane, he stared at Devenish and said, ‘Hal? Mon Dieu, who would have thought it? You were a midget when I last saw you. And now you are the m’lord of m’lords! What brings you here? And to the point, how did you find me?’

  His slight accent had disappeared along with much of his hair, but his friendly manner, which had comforted the friendless and neglected boy whom Devenish had once been, had not changed.

  ‘Oh, as you might guess, I have come to you for a favour. Is that not what we always require from our old acquaintances, when after years of neglect, we seek them out? But to excuse myself for never having approached you before, I was informed, years ago, that you were lost or dead. I only discovered in the last forty-eight hours that you are very much alive.’