Court of Foxes (3 page)

‘And talking about that, Gilda, there’s more news of you tonight. You wear always a white dress—’

‘Having no other,’ said Gilda.

‘—and wear no jewels—’

‘Having none either,’ said Sam; and quoted, ‘But being in no need of adornment.’

‘—though you are reported to have an Aladdin’s Cave of them.’

‘Reported by me,’ said little Jake. ‘
I
told the man that, the first that came and peeped through the window.’

‘Did you, indeed, little brother? Then you excelled yourself.’

‘Well, and next time I excel myself, George, shall I not at least be allowed to keep my bribe?’

‘No, you shall not, my pocket Shylock. Every penny we get we need, to finance this adventure; our uncle’s legacy is fast running out. And any complaints,’ said George, raising a silencing hand, ‘and it’s back with you to the dame school in Chipping Camden, where you ought to be anyway.’

‘Yes, well, Master George, and it’s back to the Cotswolds with you as well,’ said his mother, ‘if just once more you give Gilda the giggles as she makes her appearance. What on earth were you up to?’ Her sweet round face was contorted with mirth at the memory of it. ‘I thought she would explode; and you know how I catch the infection, there we were, perched in the box in the sight of all, with faces forced to sweet tranquillity yet quivering like two jellies.’

‘It was mother’s curtsey,’ said Gilda. ‘She comes backing away from the door after someone leaves a bouquet, bobbing and bouncing — if you could see yourself, Mother dearest — nid-nod, nid-nod, and with your posterior pushed out till it nearly fills the room and knocks over the flowers. George and I had to stuff our hands into our mouths when the old Duke came, to prevent his hearing us in the corridor outside… “Yes, my lord, no, my lord, I will see that my lady receives the flowers, my lord…” ’ She scrambled to her feet and bowed her way backwards across the room in a wild caricature of the waiting woman’s servility, head bobbing, bottom out-thrust, an imaginary bunch of flowers clutched to her bosom, ‘Yes, my lord, no, my lord, compliments and thanks, my lord…’ and collapsed at last, spent with laughter, in a heap at her mother’s feet.

Could Brown Eyes, could Bright Eyes, but have seen their lovely Lady of Melancholy now!

It was midnight. Above the chimney pots outside their snug-drawn curtains, the moon dreamed softly over London; in the cobbled street below, the feet of a watchman stumped in rhythm with the tap of his stick, horse hooves clip-cloppetted past with a rattle and ring of following wheels, gay voices cried out goodnights. Within, the family laughed and yawned and stretched and said they must get to bed, and yet lingered, gossiping in the candlelight, the little boy half asleep with his head in his sister’s lap. ‘And now, Gilda dearest, the white roses — you
will
let me have them again for tomorrow night?’

‘Oh, Bess, out of all I get — surely I may keep a few pitiful roses?’

‘But you’ll
have
them, love — won’t you? I only want the loan of them to sell to him over again. I promise you,’ said Bess, ‘none but Brown Eyes shall buy them for you!’ Mrs Brown looked over at her warningly but she did not catch the glance and Marigelda was gazing with careful indifference into the fire. ‘He came rushing out of the theatre — I was just closing down the stall — crying out, “White roses, I must have white roses!” as though there were a conflagration under way, that nothing but a shower of white roses would extinguish—’

‘Let us hope they may not rather start a conflagration,’ said George, looking somewhat anxiously down at his sister’s face. She had fallen into an abstraction and he stirred her, none too gently, with a brotherly toe. ‘Come, sweetheart, wake up! We come to a serious matter; this is no time for falling asleep — any more than for falling in love.’

‘Love doesn’t enter into this adventure; anyway, not on our side,’ said Rufus; but he too looked troubled. He remembered the unobtrusive tact with which ‘Dear Dai of Carmarthen’ had intervened that evening to break up the supposed quarrel between himself and his brother; and thought that few women if put to the test would be proof against the integrity, the barely perceptible strength and purpose beneath the quiet charm. But — a mere minnow of a second son among so many available far greater fish! — and rumoured to be going abroad, anyway, and furthermore, Sam had learned that evening, to have his heart already engaged elsewhere. ‘Lord Tregaron was in the house tonight,’ he said on a more positive note; and prayed that no one would blurt out the relationship. ‘We are wondering whether he may not be the one we are looking for. Very rich, Gilda my love, young, handsome, well-born — you should see the size of the arms on the family equippage!’

‘I daresay I shouldn’t spend much time in the family equippage,’ said Gilda. She added: ‘And in only one pair of the family arms.’ The pun restored to her much of her customary easy sweet humour and to oblige them she shelved for the moment the memory of the white roses. ‘Who is this Tregaron?’

‘An earl, my pet; and the largest landowner in Wales.’

‘Too wet,’ said Gilda, shrugging off Wales and Tregaron.

‘What’s that to you? You don’t suppose, little idiot, that he’ll set you up in a bijou residence in Carmarthen? A condition of course will be that you reside in Mayfair.’

‘Is he married?’

‘Affianced, to an Honourable Miss Harrington; I forget her other name. But what of it? — the marriages are arranged, in these great families and it hasn’t prevented his looking very lovingly indeed upon another lady.’ She made a doubtful
moue
and he hastened on with distracting details. ‘A charming fellow, Gilda, it seems; a man of fashion of course and a wit but at the same time serious, well read, much travelled. His father died while he was in his minority; the mother, however, is still living and there is a sister.’

‘You’re a mine of information,’ said James. ‘How do you know all this? Before this evening we’d never even considered him. He hadn’t been in town.’

‘By the simple expedient of enquiring. That’s the best of being some poor hick from the country, as I heard myself called tonight: one may confess ignorance in matters that the real gentleman of the
ton
would automatically know.’

‘Yes, but by the same token, you were unwise, Rufus, in the quarrel scene, to mention Gloucestershire. I’d already given myself out as coming from the Cotswolds.’

‘I was taken unaware and Gloucestershire was all I knew.’

‘And he then nearly blurted out his true name!’ said Sam.

‘But changed the word Brown at the last moment to B-Bredon — and was obliged to pretend an impediment in the speech for the rest of the evening.’ He went off into chuckles of the ever-ready family laughter.

‘Ight or ong, it was the only thing I could do,’ said Rufus.

‘Good heavens, I’d forgotten!’ cried Gilda. A famous cocotte had recently started into fashion a delicious difficulty with initial ‘r’s’; she began to recite her lesson in a droning recitative. ‘Eally your Oyal Highness, I must eserve the ight to efuse, eally your Oyal Highness, I must eserve the ight to efuse…’

‘So we must all remember for the future, Rufus,’ said George, ‘when you’re being gentleman as opposed to third footman, that your name is Bredon and that you stutter.’

(‘I eget I must epel Lord Ichard’s equest, I eget I must epel Lord Ichard’s equest…’)

‘It shows the importance of rehearsing every detail in advance,’ said James. ‘We can’t afford to make mistakes. Time’s short. When the London season closes we shall no longer have a — a display case for Gilda; and not even Bessie’s flower-stall to bring in a little extra.’

‘And we are not eally ich,’ said Bess, out-chanting Gilda.

‘No indeed; all this hire of house, furniture, dress, uniforms, the carriage, has been heavier than we dreamed. We said we’d put our all into this adventure, and already we’ve very nearly done so.’

‘What we’ve sown we shall reap,’ said Sam, reassuringly, ‘when Gilda is placed to advantage.’

‘To your advantage you mean,’ said Gilda, without rancour.

‘To the advantage of all. You are the sacrificial goat, my pretty sister, but the rest of us have invested all we had to offer, on your chances — each his share of the old man’s unexpected legacy, each his work, his hopes, his prospects—’

‘Such as they were in Aston-sub-Edge,’ admitted James, reasonably.

‘Oh, I don’t complain,’ said Gilda. ‘I think the life of a well-placed courtesan will be delightful. Only I sometimes wish that it might begin. I grow weary of that wretched little penned-in box and all those tedious plays. Bess might have had my part with pleasure.’

‘I wouldn’t exchange,’ said Bess. ‘Why, even when Gilda has made us all rich, I believe I shall keep on my flower-stall. I meet all the gay blades that she may not even lift her eyes to.’

‘All those I reject you may have,’ said Gilda grandly, ‘with my compliments.’

‘Including Brown Eyes?’

The white lids dropped for a moment, concealing her true expression; but, ‘Just for that,’ said Gilda, lightly, ‘you shall not re-sell the white roses.’ She added thoughtfully: ‘I begin to see light. It is Brown Eyes that is but a mere honourable?’

‘And Tregaron an earl. And what is an hon. to an earl?’ said Mrs Brown, warmly, ‘even if he have brown eyes — which I think not so very remarkable.’

‘In days gone by, my dear mother, it would seem that brown eyes alone were enough; and not even a baronet!’

‘And where did that land me? Wife of a poor schoolmaster in a remote Cotswold village, far from my dear, naughty London and all I had known. Your father, poor dear man,’ said Mrs Brown, sighing, ‘would insist upon “rescuing” me; and he thought he was doing me such a favour, that I hadn’t the heart to undeceive him.’ Mrs Brown’s now much vaunted long-ago transgressions had, in fact, been largely of a vicarious nature; she had been employed (very briefly and all unaware) as seamstress to a famous courtesan of the day, and only in retrospective dreams had come to identify herself with her lady. ‘But he was an excellent husband, my dears, I’ve no wish to decry him—’

‘And with a most obliging memory, it seems, as regards his wife’s past?’

‘Thank your stars, unregenerates as you are,’ said their mother, ‘that he isn’t here to see what’s in train as regards his daughter’s future!’ Not but what, she added, there seemed to her little difference between a woman who married with no thought of love, for a home, money and children, and one who obtained the same without ceremony. And anyway — without family or fortune to bring her into the best society, that was all a girl could do.

‘Ight or ong,’ said Gilda. But really it was too wearisome. ‘I refuse, Mother, any longer to have a difficulty with my r’s. He must take me as I am.’

‘And so he shall!’ Mrs Brown took the lovely face between her hands — but carefully, not to disturb the high-piled hair — and said lovingly: ‘Mistress of the Earl of Tregaron. No one could wish more for her!’ — and what was more, genuinely believed it.

All the same the Unattainable Lady slept uneasily that night, her dreams full of white roses.

She carried them when, next evening, she came into her box and stood for a moment in her white dress — no jewels! — looking down, cool, calm, as ever divinely remote, into the auditorium. If bright dark eyes looked back at her, she did not observe them; she was looking for a lighter brown and the brown eyes were not to be discovered. All about the rose and gold of the house, candles flickered, winking down upon jewelled throats and wrists, upon jewelled fingers passing jewelled snuff-boxes, fluttering jewelled fans, pure side out, naughty side in… In their boxes, the courtesans laughed and flirted, competing with each other for attention, winking across slyly at gentlemen who had their ladies not been present would doubtless have been among their visitors; it was the fashion to move about ceaselessly, calling at this box or that, regardless of the play going forward. But no Brown Eyes! The wagering was in full flood again, from the gallery rough voices challenged, ‘A tizzy on the Markiss!’ ‘Two to one on the sprig in the yeller weskit!’, in the harlots’ boxes shrill laughter urged, ‘Send her a posy, Charlie, she’ll not resist
you
!’ Even the great ladies exchanged furtive signals from behind their fans, backing their favourites. But among the bustle and the chatter — no Brown Eyes! He will send in the first interval, she thought.

But he did not. Roses of every colour — she had secretly begged her sister to sell white to no one else that evening, so that she might be sure of the source if his bouquet came; violets and lilies, forget-me-nots, love-lies-bleeding, all pregnant with significance — but no white roses. ‘He will send in the second interval,’ she prayed.

Within the little room, Mrs Brown and James were listing the names attached to the bouquets as footman George handed them in. ‘Here, Mother, she might carry this one — Lord Firth.’

‘Never mind old Firth. Has Tregaron sent yet?’

‘Not so far; therefore let us meanwhile encourage the possibles. Lord Firth is an earl.’

‘And near seventy,’ said Mrs Brown, locating him in
Debrett.
‘Away with him!’ Her finger moved on down the page. ‘Here’s a Baron Proburn.’

‘A hundred years old and supports three permanent mopsies already.’

‘Oh, heavens!’ She went on leafing through the book. ‘Here is a Lord Flute, Viscount, who has sent.’

‘No good, he owes money everywhere.’ James laughed. ‘Probably to us, for that matter, for this very bouquet.’

‘It’s been paid for often enough already,’ said Gilda, sitting idly by. ‘It’s done duty three times to my certain knowledge — I recognise this canker mark on the rose.’ There came a light triple knock on the door and she raised her head sharply. ‘The signal! Someone in the corridor who carries his own bouquet.’

‘Quick, then, the champagne!’ James put a finger to his mouth and counterfeited the pop of a cork coming out of its bottle — night after night the same bottle did duty, ostentatiously carried in with the silver tray and single glass; night after night removed almost secretly since it had not in fact been opened. He sprang to attention behind her chair; Mrs Brown all deference presided over the bottle. George opened the door just sufficiently for the scene to be apparent to anyone outside in the corridor and handed in a vast bunch of red roses. Mrs Brown deserted her post and came forward, nid-nodding, to receive it. ‘What name shall I say to milady?’