The Victory (87 page)

‘
My wife and son,' he said. 'Last month, in Manchester, of
a fever. She had been visiting the sick, and took the boy with her, God knows why. They took ill and died the same night.’

She did not speak; her eyes were wide with apprehension.
It was impossible that she, intelligent as she was, did not draw
the same conclusion from the news as he had, but she
betrayed no faint glimmer of pleasure that he was now free to
marry her. James had heard from Marie, how Héloïse had
danced around the room when her husband was dead, how
she had refused to mourn him. But that was different, of
course, he had been an evil man, and only her fierce sense of
honour had made her take care of him in his illness. The fear
of being glad that Mary Ann was dead must be so strong in
her that it quite extinguished any spark of happiness she
might have in his presence. Well, he thought grimly, whatever
pleasure I have ever brought her, there has always been pain
mixed in with it.

‘I thought you might have heard already,' he said.

‘
No,' she said, and had to moisten her lips before she could
continue. 'No, I had not heard — I suppose — James, what
can I say?'

‘
Don't say anything. I won't play the hypocrite with you.
You know how I felt about her. There was a time when I
might have been glad of her death — thank God, that was a long time ago! But still, when I first heard, I felt guilty and
remorseful. Well, I've gone through that, and there's no need
to trouble you with it. It was one of the reasons I did not come
to you at once.'

‘
One of the reasons?' she said. He was surprised at how
upset she seemed. Even her lips were pale. He had not
expected it to be so great a shock.

‘
Of course, I thought of you at once — that was natural.
But I wanted to do everything properly this time, to make
sure we got it right. Marmoset, when you sent me away
before, I didn't entirely understand — well, you know that.
Left to myself I should not have gone, and though I don't
think we should ever have stopped loving each other, I think I
see now that we would not have been happy.' He frowned
with the effort of putting it all into words. 'I always came to.
you before like a noisy, heedless child, demanding what I wanted as if I had a right to it, and leaving you to pay the price. If you had not sent me back that time, I would have
stayed that child. I would never have grown up.'

‘
Oh James,' she began, and he waited, but she didn't seem
to be able to go on.

‘
I'm different now,' he resumed with a little, crooked smile.
‘You see, I don't come to you demanding: in fact, I'm as
nervous as a colt. I come, not as an equal, because I know I
can never be your equal, but at least as one who is free to ask,
who has something to offer you, in exchange for all your great
goodness. I am a widower, Marmoset. I love you with every
living part of me, and I am come to ask you to marry me.’

He hardly knew what he expected her reaction to be, but
he had not expected that little, fluttering movement of the
hands, or the tears. He took her in his arms at last, not to kiss
or caress, but to comfort.

‘
My dear, what is it?' he asked gently as she wept into his
waistcoat. The words came in fits and starts, and painfully.

‘
Oh James, first my husband came back, and we could not
marry, and then when he died, I came to find you, and you
had married. It was as if God were against us, so that it
should never be. I gave up hope at last, and I tried to stop
loving you, but I could not.'

‘
I'm glad of that, at any rate,' he said gently, stroking the
back of her neck while she clung to him with little hooked
hands like a bird's claws. She lifted a hot, wet face at last to
look up at him in distress.

‘
But you don't understand! Now your wife has died, and
Charles — the Duc, you know — has been asking me for so
long to marry him, and only last week I gave him my answer.’

It was James's turn to feel shock. He had not imagined this,
blind idiot that he was! He had never thought there could be
anyone else for her.

‘You — you've accepted him? Dear God, Héloïse!’

The fingers gripped harder. 'No, no, I refused him! But
James, I almost said yes! Just think what might have
happened!’

And suddenly he was laughing, so violently that she
thought at first he was ill. 'Oh Marmoset, you
fool!'
he
crowed. He doubled over with laughter, almost choking with
it, while she watched him at first with puzzlement and then
with disapproval.

‘
James, stop it at once! Have you gone mad? Oh, do stop, it
is not funny at all!’

And at last he drew a long, gasping breath, and straigh
tened up, and took her into his arms, and looked down, wet-
eyed and shaking, into her adored face. 'My dear love, never,
never, never, will I let you go again! Once I have married you,
I won't let you out of my sight.’

She looked demure. 'I have not said I will have you, yet.’

He kissed her forehead and folded her in against him. 'I
don't propose to give you the chance to refuse me. To think you almost accepted that block of a duke!'

‘
He is not a block!' she said indignantly, pulling back from
him. 'He is a charming young man, handsome and clever and —'
He silenced the rest of the sentence by kissing her, and
when she could speak again it was with a joyful smile.

‘
We must go and tell the children, and Flon and the
servants,' she said happily.

‘
I think they will have guessed already,' James said with a
glance at the windows.

‘
Oh, were they watching? The villains! But they will be so
pleased, James.'

‘
I certainly hope so; but I give you fair warning, that if
anyone disapproves, they had better keep it to themselves. I
don't propose to change my plans for anyone this time.’

 
‘
And what are the plans?' she asked. 'When shall we
marry?'

‘
In my heart,' he said, 'this very instant; but publicly, I feel
I ought to wait a little while, at least until I have completed
three months' mourning.’

She nodded. 'Yes, that is proper. It ought to be more, but I
am so afraid' — with a little, anxious frown — 'that some
thing will happen to prevent us.'

‘I know,' he said. ‘So am I.' And he placed his arm over her
shoulder, and she wound hers round his waist, and they
walked towards the house to tell the news.

‘Monsieur Barnard will be so glad to go home,' she said.

*

It was well after dark when James reached Morland Place, but
there was enough moon for Nez Cané to find his way over
such familiar ground. It was well that he could pick his own
ground, for James had too much to think about to do it for
him. His mind was crowded with the images of the day, of the
joy and clamour of the little house. It was so different from
Morland Place, where everyone went alone about his own
business, and the servants were remote, well-schooled figures
who served but did not intrude. At Plaisir everyone knew
where everyone else was, what they were doing, how they felt,
all they hoped and feared and thought. When Nan got a splin
ter from the logbasket, she howled at the top of her voice, and everyone else came running to expostulate, examine, and
comfort. Bernard the cook flung saucepans about the kitchen
in a rage, Stephen quarrelled with Alice about some point of
etiquette, Marie sang at the top of her voice because it was
her day off tomorrow, the children ran in and out, and every
one a hundred times a day went to find Moïse. The only
silent creature in the house was Kithra, but his hard, wet nose
and his lashing tail more than made up for his lack of bark in
making his presence felt. They lived on top of each other like
puppies in a basket, and there was no room to be ignorant of
or indifferent about each others' concerns.

It had all left James feeling rather bemused; and of course,
there had been the children to get used to. It was almost an
insult calling Mathilde a child; for she was evidently quite a
sophisticated young lady. She had been full of her experiences
in Brighton, where the genial attention of so many young
officers had begun to place her passion for the Duc in a
proper perspective in her mind. Héloïse had warned James
that she had not told Mathilde about his offer of marriage.
Since her disappointed lover had gone back to London before
Mathilde had arrived at Plaisir, there seemed no reason to
upset her by mentioning it; but James, having listened four
times to a description of the perfections of a Major Ashton of
the Ninth, thought that Héloïse's delicacy came a little after
the event.

The children were very disturbing to James. Thomas, to his
eyes, had already a great look of Weston about him, and
brought home strongly to James's mind the whole tragedy of
his sister's sad life. Lucy's love for Weston had been as strong
as his for Héloïse, but even he could hardly begin to guess at
what she must be suffering from her appalling loss. His own
emotions, tangled as they had always been, from his child
hood loneliness, his youthful passion for Mary Skelwith, his
growing understanding and love for his mother, ripening at
last into what he felt for Héloïse, gave him little insight into
the feelings of a single-minded creature like Lucy. She loved
with a simple, unquestioning directness like an animal, and
like an animal would be unable to rationalise her loss.

All this went through his mind when he saw Thomas; but
Sophie dazzled him into wordless humility. Thomas might be
a symbol of many things, but Sophie was a real, human child,
bones and flesh and skin that smelled like fresh wood-
shavings, a missing tooth and a smile like sudden sunshine,
arms like twigs and scarred elbows, overflowing with high
spirits and a geniality too large for her small frame,
constantly spilling over into hugs. She hugged her mother and
Thomas and the dog, she hugged the servants and the
handsome china baby that the Duc had bought for her; she even, perilously, hugged Monsieur Barnard, and he would
smile sidelong at her, and annoint her forehead with whatever
was on the wooden spoon he happened to be holding at the
time.

She would have hugged James, too, but for her perfectly
natural shyness, for if he had to get used to the fact of her being his daughter, she had to get used to having a father.
They treated each other with a certain grave formality at the moment, through which willingness to like each other shone
so patently that it needed only the right occasion for affection
to begin. James could never have enough of looking at her,
and had to be careful not to stare unless her attention were
occupied elsewhere. Héloïse said she looked like him, but he
could not see it. Certainly she had his soft, reddish-dark hair,
and there was something of him in the shape of her face,
which was broader than her mother's and more regularly
featured. But James could only see that the warm olive skin
and the great dark eyes were her mother's; and that most of
all, Sophie looked like Sophie.