The Marquis of Westmarch (28 page)

Silence lasted five minutes, and both succeeded in not shedding tears.

“The honeymoon is over, I think,” Auriol said, wishing that she, not he, had been the one to break this third silence. But he could have said nothing more apposite, more just, and that was a comfort to him.

“What shall we do now?” she coldly replied.

“What do you wish to do?”

Meriel got up and walked round the room. Lying in bed, Auriol envied her her freedom.

“Everything sickens me,” she said. “This room, all it means, it sickens me. Look at that portrait of Marquis Valancourt.” She gestured towards an evil-looking ancestor whose hand, Auriol saw, was on the shoulder of a blonde child bride. Meriel was indeed very nervous, he thought.

“I can understand that.”

“I want to know one thing. You said the honeymoon — Wychwood, after all that’s happened, do you think that you could still wish me to m-make love to you? One day?”

He said, “Do you wish to make love to me? Now, at this moment? No, I don’t mean that, but — later?” His expression was even more intense than hers, her question had taken him quite by surprise.

“Now! No! But I
shall
do — that I know, as certainly as I know that one day I shall die.”

“You love me?”

“More than anything. I never was so thankful for anything in my life as I was for your recovery, after all I’d done. You know that. I am no hand at pretty speeches!”

“Oh, you have done very well, in the past.” Meriel was incapable of making love to him without shouting out imaginative words of passion, and she did not moan and sigh with pleasure, she screamed with it. That was one reason, he remembered, for their always having to meet out of doors when they wanted to strip off each other’s clothes.

“Yes,” he said after a pause. “Yes, one day I shall want you to make love to me again. And I shall also want sometimes — sometimes — to throw you down, and
make
love
to you, as I did that day on the cliff, you remember? When I held you down for a moment. Our last meeting — in that sense.”

“That was a battle,” said Meriel.

“But such a delightful one!”

“It’s very well for you,” she said, examining her hands. “But — I think I never denied that my
body
enjoyed it, I only wished — perhaps foolishly — it had not.” In fact, they had never discussed that episode at all, till now. Quite loudly, Meriel went on, “I think, sir, that in future, we ought to, um, lie more often side by side — that I think will be best — but as to where, what we are going to do —”

“Well?” said Auriol. “Well?” Oh yes, he thought, yes, I shall be your equal.

She continued to pace. “If you wish to carry out our first plan, to marry me, I shall tell everyone that as soon as you are fit to travel I shall be going with you to Wychwood. We’ll do it, and finish the business there. It won’t be difficult now, because there’s no Juxon to put a spoke in our wheel.” She waited for him to speak.

“Yes — we’ll do it,” he said.

“It will be a simple matter I’m persuaded. If people are surprised at my going to stay with you — having nearly killed you — it won’t signify. In any case, they will think it all of a piece with my putting you in my own bed,” she told him.

“Mm, yes, your own bed.”

“More than big enough for two, ain’t it?”

“It is indeed.”

“We’ll be married, sir.”

“We shall. Do you dread it?”

Meriel went at last to sit down in an armchair.

“No,” she said. “Before, you know, I was forever either dreading it or thinking it would be beyond anything great. Perfection or perdition!” That phrase made her smile, it was so articulate, so true. “I know that it will be neither. It will be damnably difficult, we’ll both find it devilish — but it is right, and if you still wish it — No, I don’t dread it. I think I have courage enough to do it now, and believe me, I shall always be yours, sir.”

“I think that in the end, we’ll be happier than most,” said Auriol.

“Yes, very likely.”

In five or ten years, he thought, they would be friends. Probably they would be seeking their pleasure elsewhere by then — but not before. They were still capable of becoming blood-engorged at the sight of each other; there was quite enough exclusive lust between them to tide them over the first year or two at Wychwood. More than enough: he could not feel it at present, when there was such a pain in his pus-filled shoulder, but he knew it would be there, in his groin and his hands and his head.

“My wife,” he said. My God, he thought, remember Clorinda — how extraordinary that in all these months I never directly compared them before.

She coloured up, and frowned. “Yes. There is not the faintest chance any longer of my entertaining doubts, so don’t tease yourself on that head! I needed to shoot you to know my own mind for more than an hour together — ironic, ain’t it? We’ll do it, so soon as you are sufficiently recovered, and in comfort, too, in my own post-chaise. Now, do you occupy yourself with considering just how and when we are going to inform your servants, and find a suitable clerk to marry us — it’s your country we shall be living in, not mine, and I shan’t have the least notion as to how to go on!” Meriel got up, and smiled at him. Do you remember, she thought, how in the early days we used to be forever discussing the difference between my country and yours, feeling we could not discuss the difference between ourselves?

“Marquis, it is always a pleasure to obey you.”

She bowed to him. “Why, my dear, so I trust!”

Auriol had a vision of a female Meriel very similar to Philander Grindal’s except that he pictured no children. He saw a swan-bosomed fighter in diamonds, who was a terror to every man in the room but himself. No, he decided, hardly that. One day she would not lack for dishonourable suitors. There would be men eager to try the most unusual woman of her generation, and ready to suppose they could hoodwink her husband. But he could count on her fidelity for a good five years, and her affection for ever, and so the matter was settled.

*

“To be sure I am excessively thankful for it!” said the Marchioness,
waggling her hand at Meriel, who did not see it. Crossly she turned back to her companion. “Three nights did I lie awake, knowing that if the man were to die, dear Berinthia’s wedding would have to be
postponed,
for it would have been the height of impropriety, you know, for Meriel to be helping join their hands over the table if he
had
died! And after what lapse of time, pray,
would
it have been proper? What precedent is there which would enable me to decide?”

“Very true, my love,” said her younger sister Aspasia, Meriel’s aunt, who had come to Castle West for the wedding. “But what cause did he give Westmarch? What provocation
could
he have given him? One so far above him in every way — every feeling must be offended!”

“I have not the least notion. I trust I have too much female reserve to be enquiring into such matters, and of course no one troubles himself to inform me — if anyone knows, that is. And I fancy Philander Grindal does. Such a scold as I gave him! But let us not be talking of poor dear Meriel’s follies at such a moment as this. Dear Berinthia, how very becomingly she looks.”

“Yes — such difficulties as you said you had in arranging this match, how very gratifying it must be! Do but tell me, sister, about that horrid Mr Juxon. Did he turn out a thief?”

Hugo and Berinthia had that morning been married in the Chapel by the Prelate of Castle-town, and their wedding-breakfast was being held in the Marchioness’s long gilded drawing-room. Beyond its doors, across the domed hallway, were Meriel’s silent rooms where Auriol still lay. It was because of him that this breakfast was not being held there.

Meriel, appearing for the last time in public as Marquis of Westmarch, had played her part in the chapel-ceremony with unusual grace and calm. Now she was chatting with one of Berinthia’s bridesmaids, casting occasional glances at the cool and splendidly dressed new-married couple, who were still receiving polite congratulations from their guests. Standing silent with his wine-glass in front of one of the windows, Philander Grindal watched the Marquis as closely as he dared. He did not want even his wife to guess that Meriel was his chief object of interest at this important party. He looked at her, and could only think over and over again that she was so obviously not a man,
that any moment now, surely, someone would see through her disguise. If they saw him watching her, they would certainly do so.

Meriel ate a little ham, and surveyed the room. This was not only her last formal appearance in the world, but her first since the duel, and she fancied that she could see the world of fashion with new eyes, Auriol’s eyes. She almost felt that she too could write a little satire on the lines of his
Adventures
in
the
Polite
World,
now that she was neither excited nor miserable.

She thought back over the past, trying to remember individual parties she had attended this summer, and succeeded in recalling Saccharissa’s musical evening, the first party of the season, at which she had been in a great taking over her mother’s expectation that she would marry Berinthia. Auriol had flirted with Berinthia, and she had not quite liked it, grateful though she had been to him. Maid Rosalba Ludbrook had looked very pretty, and young. Then there had been the great summer ball, at which Juxon had confessed his love for her.

Meriel saw her mother, sitting on her sofa talking to one of Berinthia’s brothers, and narrowed her eyes. Saccharissa was dressed in yellow brocade, with pearl-grey stockings on her little legs and rouge on her face, and at this distance she looked like a wizened canary. Perhaps it was her ridiculously wide sleeves gave that impression; they were like wings. Well, thought Meriel, I shall never see you again — how very odd to think that I came out into the world from your inside, between your legs. I wonder what it was like in there, upon my word I do — her lips formed these words silently — no, you will never be able to reproach me for not being all you desired.

“My lord,” said Dianeme behind her.

Meriel jumped, and focusing, said: “Well, ma’am, it’s some time since I last saw you.” She noticed that Dianeme’s belly was now quite vast; she might have balanced her glass on it. Quickly she lifted her eyes to the woman’s good-natured, handsome, sweating face.

“So it is. Not a word more shall I say on the subject, but my lord, only let me tell you how very much — relieved I was to hear that Knight Auriol is himself again.” She lowered her voice. “We all thought he’d had notice to quit. Judging from Philander’s talk,
about the journey back I mean, I can only think he must have a constitution of iron.”

“Thank you. Yes, I know he must have, he lost several pints of blood, I thought I was in hell,” said Meriel casually. “Oh, I see Questor Winyard over there, I must exchange a few words with him — I ought to mingle as much as possible today, don’t you think? Come with me.”

“Yes, my lord, I do.” They walked through the crowd, and people made way for them.

Meriel had caught sight not only of Lord Questor Winyard, but of Hugo and Berinthia, and Rosalba Ludbrook Marling, all of whom were standing very near him talking to various people. She wanted them all to hear what she had to say to Dianeme.

“Yes,” she said, reaching the scattered group, “I didn’t deserve such a piece of good fortune as having him survive. Did I?” She smiled.

Philander, unwilling despite his fears to have Meriel out of his sight, followed her as discreetly as he could. It was almost as though he thought of himself as her protector in Wychwood’s absence, and yet he knew she would never need any protector. Perhaps he was protecting others from her. He found a lady seated a couple of yards to the left of the place where Meriel and Dianeme had stopped, greeted her and listened to Meriel.

“I should say you
did
deserve it, my lord!” said Dianeme, puffing rather with the effort of crossing the room at speed.

“The thing is,” Meriel continued (people round about were beginning to take notice of her, she was still a person of enormous importance at Castle West), “that now he
is
going to live, he wants to quit this place as soon as may be. Fagged to death with town-life, leaving other matters aside. He leased out his own house you know, for six months, but the tenant’s gone now and so he wishes to go back for a while. I shall be taking him down the day after tomorrow in my chaise, and staying there — well, a matter of a few weeks, I suppose.” She looked steadily down at Dianeme. “I may be thankful that the Submission of Accounts is completed, there’s nothing to keep me here — wouldn’t do for me to be seen to be avoiding my responsibilities just at this present! I am in deep disgrace as you may imagine — devilish prosy the Senior Member has become, which don’t surprise me, to be sure.”

Philander stopped pretending not to listen to the Marquis’s conversation.

“A few weeks?” he said, startling everyone. Oh, it must be, he thought — it must be, she
must
be meaning to remain there with him. Forever. He nearly said aloud: Meriel, marry him, it’s the best thing you could do.

Meriel seemed to notice nothing odd about his joining in the conversation.

“I don’t know yet for just how long. Why, Cousin Berinthia, you look to be quite shocked — and so do you, Maid —
Mistress
Rosalba! Well, I’m sorry for it.”

Rosalba, whose first pregnancy was making her nauseous, turned a white face up to Meriel’s steady one. Meriel saw it as though through a cold sheet of protective glass: as she was able nowadays to see everything at Castle West for quite long stretches of time. Sometimes the glass fell down — it did so now. Meriel remembered how she had, in fact, felt a kind of love for Rosalba, a tender pity, an aesthetic appreciation, an indignation at her lot, and had tried to persuade herself that it was carnal desire. It had seemed to her that she ought to desire a woman, not a man: her supposed duty had been a torture to her in those days.

She had actually been very much distressed over this girl, and over Berinthia, and it suddenly seemed to her that it might be possible for her to become distressed over them, or over people like them again. They were ghosts already, but they still had the power to make her feel ill. Oh no, she thought, making herself concentrate on the whole scene before her: the familiar gilt walls, the food, the wine, the chatter, the innumerable people whom she disliked and who had never mattered and to whom she was saying goodbye.