by Karleen Koen
"I do not understand," Barbara was protesting.
Roger closed his eyes. Be gentle, he told himself. Stay calm. She does not understand. She has not been in London. She does not know. She is, in many ways, a child still. He took her hands, which he was holding, and held them to his lips.
"I have to go back to London. If there were any way I could stay, I would. But I cannot. Please try to understand."
She stared at him. He saw the mutinous expression creeping across her face.
"Goddamn it, Barbara," he burst out, unable to control himself, "I am in trouble! I stand to lose everything. Do you understand that? I thought to offer you a fine home and security, and I find myself standing on the brink of nothing!"
Her mouth trembled. "At least stay the night—"
"I cannot! I have to go back. You must accept it."
He walked away from her, taking the chance, just as he always had done, gambling on his luck to support him. She either loved him, or she did not. The choice was hers.
He was atop his horse before she came running, calling his name and running. Everyone in the churchyard stared at her. Even Diana was momentarily silenced. The pain in his chest eased somewhat. His magic girl, who made him feel young again. She did love him. He did have her. It was only a question of time, which he did not possess anymore. But again, his luck would support him, as it always had. With her by his side, life might assume different proportions, less frightening, less final. He looked down at her.
She stood holding on to his stirrup, her head bowed like a child. Barbara, he thought. My dearest. He bent down and lifted her chin. Her eyes, Richard's eyes, glittered with tears.
"Kiss me," he said. "Kiss me," he said again. "And come to Devane House."
She put her mouth on his, and the tenderness of his mouth, the pain, the need, the longing of the kiss shook her.
"I love you," she whispered against his lips.
He smiled at her, his eyes crinkling in the corners. She put her hand on his face. He pulled himself back up in the saddle. He was as handsome as a god, as handsome as her memories, as handsome as her dreams, all that she had ever loved, she thought, staring up at him. Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life. You, Roger, are my heart. And you always have been.
"I will be waiting," he said, and he spurred his horse, and then he was galloping away with Montrose, leaving her in the churchyard among the tombs and leaning gravestones and dying flowers.
On the church porch, Tony and Mary stood together, watching.
"Did Charles see?" asked Tony.
"I do not know. He saw enough. He thinks them reconciled."
"They are."
Mary looked at her brother. "Tony…"
His face was closed. Some people thought it his stupid look, but Mary knew better. He was thinking, thinking things that no one would imagine.
"Do you want to back down?" he asked her. "There is time."
"No," she said. And then, in a low voice, "She cannot marry him. And I can." She looked at her brother again. "And you?"
"Rabelais says he that has patience may compass anything."
"Did Rabelais know Roger?"
Tony smiled. "No."
* * *
"Come, Grandmama, just a bite more."
Barbara was feeding her grandmother hot soup, and the Duchess was being difficult, the emotional toll of the day expressing itself in her querulous complaints: she was not hungry, the soup was too hot, she was tired.
The funeral had taken the strength from them all. Annie set listlessly in her chair by the bed and did not fuss at her mistress to hush and eat. Diana sat quietly by the fire. For a while this evening, she had wept and moaned, but no one had paid any attention to her, and now she just sat, staring into the fire, picking at a thread in her gown. Dulcinea and the dogs snuggled in a heap at the Duchess's feet.
"Nell Ashford wants your recipe for pepper posset," said Annie.
"Who is ill?"
"Just another bite," said Barbara. "Please."
"Two of her children."
"Which two?"
Annie did not know.
The Duchess looked at Barbara. "You will be going back." It was not a question.
"Who?" said Diana, lifting her head. Her face was swollen grotesquely. No one would recognize the beautiful Diana Alderley this evening. "Who is going back? Where?"
"You are an irritating old woman, Grandmama. I thought you too grief–stricken to notice anything."
"I am not blind. That was quite a scene you and Roger played in the churchyard today. It eclipsed even talk about South Sea."
"You?" said Diana, focusing swollen, narrowed violet eyes on her daughter. "And where are you going?"
"Will you order a memorial tablet in London?" said the Duchess. "Have them put on it, 'The night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee…'" Her voice, clear and thin in the silence of the room, trailed off. A tear trickled down her cheek and lost itself in the wrinkles.
"Oh, Grandmama," said Barbara, kissing her hand and holding it against her cheek.
"You are not—" Diana turned to her mother. "Tell me she is not returning to London? Why? Why on earth—" Her face changed. "Roger!" she said. She looked at Barbara accusingly. "You are going back to him!"
"It is hardly a sudden thing," said the Duchess dryly.
Barbara was silent.
Diana stood up. "He killed your brother!"
"Mother, that is not true. I will not allow you to say it again."
"Well, he might as well have! Do not be a fool—"
"All summer long," Barbara said, her temper rising, "you told me to return to him. All summer long you told me to have my cake and eat it too. Use them both, you said. Enjoy Devane House. Enjoy what Roger can give you. Do not be a fool, you said then, too."
"It was different this summer. Roger was a wealthy man. Things have changed. You have not been in London, Barbara. The directors go in fear of their lives. Did you notice the way people stared at him today? He is a marked man. A man on the verge of disgrace. If you had any sense, you would stay right here and—"
Barbara stood up abruptly, spilling soup on her gown. She kissed her grandmother's cheek. "Day after tomorrow," she said. "I will leave then. Shall I come and sit with you tonight, before you sleep?"
Diana was silent until the door closed behind Barbara. Then she said bitterly, "Well, I am singularly blessed in my children. She is a headstrong, impulsive, wrongheaded fool."
"Not children." The Duchess spoke softly from her bed. "Child. You are singularly blessed in your child. All the others are dead."
Diana caught her breath, her mouth trembling suddenly.
"Harry killed himself," the Duchess continued. "With a razor. Across his throat. You were away. Away from town."
Diana began to cry, not prettily, as she was capable of doing, but in a noisy, ugly, gulping way. Annie, sitting beside the Duchess, smiled sourly.
"Why are you s–so cruel to me?" Diana wept. "I loved him. I–I love her. She is a–all I have left."
"I know."
There was silence but for Diana's sobbing and the crackling of the logs in the fireplace.
"How old I am," said the Duchess to herself softly. "How tired…"
"I am here," said Annie, bending over her.
Diana stood by the edge of the bed. She looked like a large, sullen, repentant child. "I–I am here, too, Mother," she said. "'if you want me."
The Duchess patted the bed, and Diana sat down on it. She looked at her mother, so tiny, so frail, against her mass of pillows. To Annie's surprise, she put her head against her mother's breast and began to weep again.
"I know," the Duchess said, stroking her hair. "I know."
* * *
The carriage waited in the courtyard, Thérèse inside, trunks strapped to the back and top, while Barbara and her grandmother took a final, short walk together. It was cold, morning cold, and the Duchess was
very weak, but she insisted. They walked along the terrace and stood looking at the duke's desolate rose garden. Weeder women were on their hands and knees, pulling up weeds between the rosebushes, while the gardeners were shoveling a covering of crushed leaves and dirt on the stem bulb from which the spring's new rose canes would develop. Behind the rose gardens, smoke from burning piles of leaves spiraled into the autumn sky.
"I should gather the rose hips. Send Jane some rose–hip fever water if the posset does not work," the Duchess said.
"It will work. Your concoctions always work. I will write to you every week. I promise. Give Hyacinthe plenty to do. Tell him I shall write to him also."
(Barbara had decided that Hyacinthe should stay at Tamworth for the time being. He had cried at the idea of being left, but she promised to send for him as soon as she could and told him he must look after her grandmother and that he could sleep in the stables with his new friends. And she left him the copy of Robinson Crusoe to keep. She whispered that she was also leaving Harry and Charlotte for him to look after, but that he was not to tell her grandmother until she was long gone. And then, after the telling, he was to run and hide, and by dark, the duchess would be too tired and too worried and too glad to see him to do anything at all. That was how I always handled her, Barbara told him, which made him smile through his tears.)
"Will you go straight to Devane House?"
"I do not know, Grandmama. More than likely."
"London is not a pleasant place these days, I am told. Promise me you will be careful. Your coachman has his pistol, has he not? Loaded?"
"Yes."
"I have two things to say—"
"Only two?"
"Never mind. I want to say them before I forget. The first is about forgiveness. It is never done well in little bits and dabs. Do it all at once and never look back, or do not do it at all. Those are your grandfather's words, not mine. And the second is about change. Change is an easy thing to decide and a difficult thing to do. It is the day–to–day struggle of it that defeats people. Do not despair if old ways look good to you. Despair only if you fall into them too often."
Barbara put her arms around her grandmother. How small she was. How thin and frail. How much of her zest was buried with Harry. How much of them all was buried with Harry. "Take care of yourself," she said gently.
They walked back to the courtyard arm in arm. I hate to leave this place, thought Barbara. Annie and Tim and Perryman and her mother waited by the carriage, and Annie frowned as she saw the fatigue on the Duchess's face.
Barbara embraced her mother. Diana looked sharply older; there were hollows in her cheeks and dark circles under her eyes. She is grieving, thought Barbara, genuinely grieving. Harry would laugh if I told him.
"You are a fool," Diana said,
"Good–bye to you, too, Mother."
She climbed into the carriage, and it lurched forward. The Duchess staggered back as she watched it rattle down the avenue, and both Annie and Tim clasped an elbow, and she did not say anything, but leaned into their combined strengths.
They saw Hyacinthe burst from behind one of the limes and run after the carriage, Harry and Charlotte following, yapping furiously. And behind the dogs came a fluffy white ball of fur, Dulcinea. The carriage stopped, and Barbara and Thérèse both climbed out to embrace Hyacinthe while the dogs leapt and howled around them, and Dulcinea skulked nearby.
"She forgot the dogs," said the Duchess.
Hyacinthe stepped back, wiping his face, and Barbara and Thérèse climbed back in—it looked as if Thérèse was crying now—and away the carriage lurched again, and after it ran the dogs, but they ran halfheartedly because Hyacinthe stood in the middle of the avenue. He darted back behind the limes, and those on the terrace saw him running toward the woods, the dogs following him and Dulcinea following the dogs.
"She has left those dogs," the Duchess said. She sighed. "Tim, you watch over that boy in the next few days. I do not want him sick from grief. Inform those stableboys I will cane the first of them that dares to tease him."
"Time for bed," said Tim, taking her arm firmly.
"I choose my own bedtime!" snapped the Duchess.
Tim jumped back as abruptly as if a pet dog had just bitten his nose.
Diana laughed.
The Duchess scowled at her. "Give me your arm, Diana. I am tired," she said. "It is my bedtime."
* * *
Philippe stood a moment before the windows of his town house which overlooked the back garden. Everything was ready. His trunk was packed; the notes were written; his butler had precise instructions as to the rest of the books and furniture and clothing. His carriage waited outside. He had only to walk out of this room and down the stairs and out into the morning and proceed away from here. An hour or so on to Gravesend, one of the villages along the Thames closer to the sea than London, where ships loaded and unloaded passengers. There a ship was taking him back to France.
The only regret he felt, oddly enough, was that of leaving Abigail. The note he had written her would not ease her hurt, he knew; but in time, she would forget him and remember him only with fondness and a delicious sense of escaped danger. She would have been a good mistress, well–bred, discreet, in control of her emotions, enthusiastic in bed once he taught her how to be, but he had not the strength for a mistress. Not yet. He must heal first from Roger, and that would be a long time's mending.
Roger.
Abigail had described the scene outside the church in vivid detail. He had been able to picture it in his mind: Roger, dashing, mysterious, faintly scandalous again because of South Sea, atop his restless stallion, his young, grieving wife running across the churchyard, her black gown belling around her long legs, calling his name, the words exchanged that no one heard, making them all the more intriguing and sweet, the kiss. Yes, he could see it all. The reconciliation was, in effect, achieved. It was only a matter of time before it became a physical reconciliation also. He knew Roger, knew his single–minded charm in pursuit of an elusive woman. He had watched him often enough in France in those early years, admiring the technique, the charm, the flattery, the knowledge of dazzling good looks used so ruthlessly, but so charmingly. Always the charm. That fatal charm.
How did the English King James version of the Bible express it? There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not: the way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid. The way of Roger, with any maiden, was amazing indeed. If only the maiden were not Barbara. As he had listened to Abigail, his choices showed startlingly clear before him. He could leave, now, with his pride and dignity intact, or he could stay, pretend it did not matter, and see it played out to the end.
He was almost tempted by the last, for the ending of it all was in question. Roger was too besotted to see it, too lost in this final grasp of lost youth. There was no doubt of his ability to bring Barbara back to his bed and to satisfy her once there. There was, however, some doubt as to how long she would stay. The innocent child of France was gone, and in her place was a woman—both innocent and knowing. She had stubbornness and tenacity, yet there were devils within Roger's nature which might be subdued but were never vanquished. They might prove more stubborn even than she. And, as a playwright might say, there were other twists to the plot. Lord Charles, for one. And, amusingly enough, young Tamworth for another. A quiet young man, a grave young man, an extremely determined young man. Even Abigail, as clever as she was, underestimated him. Yes, there were interesting twists to the plot, if one had the heart to stay and see it played out. He had not. He had no more heart. Sometimes, at night, as he lay unable to sleep, he felt as if he had nothing inside. Nothing but dark emptiness. Sentimental, foolish, unmanly, perhaps. But real nonetheless.
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of soun
d and fury, signifying nothing. English at its best and most lyric. Shakespeare expressed the realities of life very well, without the gleam and dazzle of the French language, perhaps, but very well, very well indeed, for an Englishman.
The note to Abigail was written. As was another to Carlyle—asking that he write if there were any news of Roger that Carlyle felt he might wish to know. And finally, there was the last gesture, worthy of a soldier and a prince. To another soldier, a soldier fighting the final battle, a battle which might defeat him, he was leaving two bags of gold. They would go anonymously to Roger's banker. A gift from the gods, a forestalling of the inevitable, though with Roger's luck, he might pull through this financial crisis. But not as he had been, never again could he acquire the splendor of wealth he had once possessed. Yet, who knew what tale the idiot would tell next? Roger might rise, like the phoenix of legend. Rise from the ashes and win, with his young wife by his side, the powerful Tamworth family his allies, the King of England his friend. But no children. Here, at last, was some small satisfaction. Barbara clearly was barren. There would be no Montgeoffrys to give them joy.