The du Mauriers, page 3
He would be sharp indeed who bettered Mary Anne! She had all the low cunning of her sex, all the base qualities. Greedy, avaricious, faithless, and a liar, she had passed from petty triumph to petty triumph, using her lovers as a purse to prosperity, and yet—and yet—Lord Chichester looked at her again—the white throat, the curve of her chin, the loose, rather petulant mouth—and he shrugged his shoulders and forgave her everything.
‘What are your plans?’ he said abruptly.
She turned to him with vague, untroubled eyes, fingering the bracelet on her wrist. ‘Plans?’ she echoed. ‘I never make any plans beyond to-morrow. Have you ever known me live otherwise? I have taken your advice about quitting the country. Ellen and I leave for France on Saturday. Beyond that—who knows? The future can take care of itself.’
The child, who had been watching her intently, seized upon her words.
‘Are we to go from England?’
Her mother made a pretence of emotion, and, drawing her towards her, covered her with kisses. ‘My poor baby, they are hounding you from home. We must be outlaws in a foreign land; friendless and unwanted. We shall wander from country to country, seeking a shelter for our weary heads, no one to—’
‘With a thousand pounds in the bank, beside your nest-egg from Folkestone, and all your jewels and your plate intact,’ interrupted Chichester, ‘you will live like a queen if you can keep from gambling. You have not forgotten the terms of the contract?’
‘Am I likely to?’
‘You are capable of committing any atrocity, Mary Anne, if you should think it worth your while. Give me the contract and I will read it to you again.’
‘Then Ellen must leave the room.’
‘Nonsense. Ellen shall stay. Her future is concerned in this.’
The mother made a gesture of indifference, and, rising to her feet, she went to one of the boxes in the corner of the room and fumbled in it for a moment, returning presently with a sheet of parchment.
Lord Chichester took it from her. ‘You understand,’ he said, ‘that this is only a copy. The original is in the possession of the Duke.’
She nodded, watching him with amusement, her tongue in her cheek.
He frowned, seeing no occasion for levity, and began to read:
‘In consideration of the terms proposed and agreed to, I, Mary Anne Clarke, promise to deliver up every Letter, Paper, Memorandum, and Writing, in my power or custody respecting the Duke of York, or any of the Royal Family, and particularly all Letters, Memorandums, and other writings written or signed by the Duke. I also promise to procure all the Letters not in my custody, entrusted by me to others, and deliver them to the Duke’s friend.
‘I also agree that I will, when required, make a solemn declaration on oath that I have delivered up All the letters and writings from the Duke to me, and that I know of no others. I further promise not to write, print, or publish any Article respecting the connection between me and the Duke, or any Anecdote, either written or verbal, that may have come to my knowledge from the Duke. I further consent that in failure of my complying with the several stipulations above stated, the Annuity agreed to be paid to myself for my Life, and to my Daughter after my decease, shall become absolutely forfeited. I will deliver up all Letters, but the Manuscripts and all that is printed thereof shall be burnt before any Person appointed for that purpose. I also promise to keep no copy or copies of the Duke of York’s Letters, or of any Manuscripts. Dated this first day of April, 1809.
‘(Signed) MARY ANNE CLARKE.’
‘So you see, my dear Ellen,’ continued Lord Chichester, folding the paper and returning it to her mother, ‘that your entire future depends upon your mother keeping her bond. Do you understand?’
The child nodded her head gravely. Her mouth was set hard, and her eyes were cold. She looked tired, and old beyond her years.
‘If my mother has quarrelled with the Duke, why does he pay us money?’ she asked. ‘How are we of any interest to him? Why does he keep George at school? Surely it is very generous of him to concern himself at all?’
Lord Chichester considered her, a ghost of a smile on his lips. An imp of malice stole into his brain, and brewed mischief.
‘Go and look at yourself in the mirror,’ he said.
The child obeyed him without humour, stung with curiosity, and, walking to the one cracked mirror that had not been sold, she considered her small person with interest.
‘Do you see no resemblance?’ said Lord Chichester, fluttering an eyelid at her mother.
Ellen observed once again her high cheek-bones, her prominent beak of a nose, her firm narrow mouth, and a sudden understanding of Lord Chichester’s words came to her in a flash. She was stunned for a moment, doubtful and perplexed, and then a little seed of excitement took root in her childish, unformed mind. She hovered an instant in a world of fantasy, her thoughts broody with historical tales. A giddy procession of the Kings and Queens of England swam past her in a riot of silver and gold.
Then she straightened her round shoulders, lifted her pointed chin, and without another word walked proudly from the room.
Lord Chichester tapped his snuff-box and sighed.
‘How disgraceful of me!’ he said. ‘She will wander through life believing she has royal blood in her veins, and it will poison her existence. The germ will linger until the third or fourth generation…. Did you see the expression in her eyes? Heigho! Pride is the besetting sin of mankind! Indulge my curiosity for once. Who was her father?’
Mary Anne yawned prodigiously, and, stretching her arms above her head, she ran her fingers through her loose brown curls. For a moment she looked supremely innocent, like a tousled, sleepy child. Then she wrinkled up her nose and laughed—that soft, intimate, rather vulgar laugh that was infectious and irresistible because it was part of her.
‘So many people at Brighton,’ she murmured. ‘Such a poor memory for faces.’
3
The sea at Dover was whipped with a white foam, and the packet-boat rocked uneasily at her berth beside the wharf. The little knot of passengers stood huddled together on the quay, postponing as long as possible the moment of departure. The chalk cliffs of England leant with supreme security against the grey menace of the sky. Gulls darted to the sleek harbour water with fretful cries. Already in the wet air there was a flavour of fish, and stale food, and that indescribable boat smell, pitchy and sour, that assails the sensitive nostrils of those who must embark against their will.
Outside the harbour the green Channel seas lurched tipsily, racing one another and tumbling in horrible confusion to the far horizon. Even the most confident of travellers knew what to expect when the ship, straining from the wharf, made her first curtsy to the sea. She would lift for an instant, slowly and with dignity, hovering for a fraction in time on the crest of a hill; then sink, fearfully and crookedly, with an immense shudder from stem to stern, groaning and hissing like a breathless dame. Farewells were being said; hands were clasped, and final messages screamed into heedless ears.
Ellen, in her best pelisse and fur-trimmed bonnet, leaned over the rail to watch the confusion on the lower deck. The poorer passengers, like animals in a pen, turned this way and that in wretched endeavour to stake claims for space. Some, resigned to the inevitable, were hunched already against the bulwarks, handkerchief to mouth, with loose eyes turned in pale anguish to the heaving seas. Children were crying, and women yapped hysterically to quieten them, pressing fruit and cake in their unwilling mouths. Men shouted for no reason, packages were lost, and the very tumult of chatter and discussion added to the disorder. The deck where Ellen stood was comparatively quiet, and the few better-class passengers were seated, well muffled and veiled, smelling-salts or books in hand according to the strength of their stomachs.
Ellen’s mother, with her usual audacity, had taken possession of a small cabin, either by smiles or bribery, and this compartment was now littered with her possessions—capes, furs, packages, and trunks—and the lap-dog thrown in among them all, groomed and scented, the saliva running from his jaws.
Fladgate, the lawyer, who had journeyed from London to see them safely embarked, glanced at the packages with disapproving eye. Such style of travelling made unnecessary expense, and augured ill for the future. It was obvious to him that his client had no intention of living within her income. For the last time he began a little lecture on the need for caution, urging economy, figures in proof of his argument tripping off his tongue, while Mary Anne listened to him patiently, a smile on her lips, her eyes wandering over his shoulder towards a fellow-passenger who stood near by, complacent and conscious of her gaze, his curly-brimmed hat pulled low over his eyes.
She looked very lovely, and ridiculously over-dressed, while the spot of rouge on her cheek just matched in tone the satin bow on her cape and the tinted feather that curled upwards from her bonnet.
What a contrast she made, thought Ellen, to the drab, soberclad Frenchwoman on the lower deck, with her tired, lined face and her worn hands, the black stuff gown, the grey woollen shawl. This woman, with a brood of children, had at last succeeded in making a place for herself in a corner of the deck, and, having settled a small boy and a little wailing girl on the lap of their elder sister, turned now to her eldest son, and with tears in her eyes prepared to say farewell. Catching a broken word or two in French, Ellen could gather that the son would remain behind, sending word as often as he could of his health and prospects, while his mother—a widow perhaps, and alone—returned to make a place for him in France. Seeing her tears, the boy also lost his courage, and, great fellow that he was—of eighteen perhaps, or more—he blubbered and hung his head like a little child, crying, ‘Maman, maman,’ and reaching for her hands. As Ellen watched them, she felt a pang of discomfort for their sorrow, and a sting of envy, too, at their affection; for here was this lad in the arms of his mother, and George was at school, careless and indifferent, having sent a laconic message of farewell which Mary Anne had kissed in a frenzy of emotion and then laid aside.
‘As soon as we are settled you shall come to us, Robert,’ said the woman, and these were the words that her mother should have given George, and had not, thought Ellen; and, because she was without brothers and sisters, she lingered still by the rail, sharing the trouble of this poor French family on the lower deck. The woman smiled now through her tears, and straightened her shawl. ‘We’re going home, Robert, you must remember that. Home after nineteen years. Back where we belong. Back to our own people.’ And the boy smiled pitifully at this, spreading out his hands. ‘Your home, maman, not ours. How can it be ours when we have never seen it?’ At which she shook her head, her mouth a thin line of obstinacy. ‘When you come, you will understand. It will be so simple and natural to be French again. You can’t go against your blood, Robert. I know what I mean. I have lived too long now in an alien land. It becomes a poison.’
She kissed him again, and then pushed him from her, and he turned away, his mouth working. He reached out his hands to his brothers and sisters, blabbing last messages that had no meaning in words. ‘Good-bye, Jacques. You are the eldest now. You must take care of them all’: this to his brother, younger by a year or so, pale-faced and anxious, who glanced over his shoulder to the lifting sea, and whose thin boyish shoulders looked inadequate to bear responsibility.
‘Louise, dearest sister, you will write often, very often?’; and the girl promised him, throwing her arms round his neck, her long, fair hair brushing his cheek. What a gentle, lovely face, thought Ellen, and how good, how tender; she would never be angry. Then Robert bent to the little boy on her lap, and the small girl. ‘Be good, Guillaume. Remember your prayers, Adelaide.’ And the children set up a wail at this, rubbing their eyes with their fists, unnerving him again, so that he must slip away from them now, unobserved, and make his way to the quayside.
‘But where is Louis-Mathurin? He is not with us,’ cried the mother suddenly, a note of panic in her voice, and at once there was a disturbance, and confusion, and heads turning this way and that, and above the mother’s voice the sharp, anxious tones of the girl Louise: ‘Louis-Mathurin, where have you gone?’
Ellen leant forward on the rail, at one with this anxiety for the lost child. As she did so she heard a little laugh behind her—that particular laugh of her mother when she was gratified—and, turning her head, she saw her standing there, a faint smile on her lips, and a tall, dark stranger by her side. ‘What are you doing, Ellen, watching these common people? You will catch fleas on your pelisse, leaning so close to the dirty rail. Come and make your curtsy to this gentleman, who has so kindly asked us to dine with him.’
The stranger fawned down at her, and patted her head with a large jewelled hand. ‘How are you, little maid?’
Ellen regarded him sullenly, and, turning her back, caught at her mother’s sleeve. ‘Those poor French people—look, they have lost one of their children. Perhaps he has fallen from the ship.’
The stranger laughed, and pressed forward with her to the rail.
‘Such confusion always on the lower deck, and nowadays, with these émigrés returning home, it is worse than ever. Such a crowd of them this winter; month by month they flutter back, hoping to pick up the lost threads of their property. That woman below is a Breton, I should say, by her accent. Look at her flat features and her chestnut hair. They are all the same.’
‘And you, sir, what part of France has a claim upon you?’
Mary Anne’s tone was provocative; her voice had a certain challenge.
The stranger smiled down at her. ‘I come from the Midi,’ he murmured, ‘where feelings are strong and warm, and men and women have large appetites for pleasure.’
Ellen turned away from them impatiently, and went to the rail once again. Her mother’s friends were all the same—affected and insincere, their conversation a continual mockery of people and things. The poor family on the lower deck had no claim upon their sympathy.
And then suddenly she saw him—the lost boy for whom they had been looking—standing precariously on the ship’s side, one foot dangling in the air, his right hand clasping a rope. He was a boy of about her own age, scarcely taller than herself, with round face and snub nose, and curling chestnut hair. His face was upturned to the sky, his light blue eyes followed a darting gull; and as he swung between sea and sky, oblivious of the crowd below, he sang to himself, his boy’s voice, sweet and true, rising in the air effortless and free like the flight of the bird he was watching.
‘Louis, come down at once, you will fall,’ called his mother; but he continued swaying on his one foot, searching the windswept sky, losing himself in song. Ellen watched him, fascinated, and even her mother paused an instant in her flirtation with the stranger, and listened, her mouth curling in a smile. ‘That boy sings like an angel…’ she said, and then suddenly he stopped, conscious of the gaze of the crowd, and, flushing all over his face, he slid to the deck below. The charm was broken. He was no more than a little snub-nosed boy with impudent blue eyes.
‘Come, Ellen,’ said her mother, ‘we are going below to dine. Let us leave the émigrés to their bread and cheese.’
The ship plunged heavily in the short Channel seas, and a stinging rain mingled with the spray, irritating and cold, chilling the hands and feet.
Dinner was not a success. Faces paled perceptibly, the chatter of voices dwindled, and the dark stranger, who had offered wine so gallantly, fell to abrupt silence when he had emptied his glass. His very smile was strained, and he coughed uneasily. Finally he murmured an excuse and disappeared. Mary Anne wrinkled up her nose and laughed. The motion of the ship worried her not at all. She carved at her steak with relish, the blood running upon the plate, and, piercing a lob of fat with her fork, she offered it to her dog, who licked his chops and swallowed the fat in one. Ellen tossed in her berth, her knees tucked to her chin, and pictured her poor, deserted bedroom in Westbourne Place. When Mary Anne had dined, she wrapped herself in her cloak and stepped out upon the deck. The rain and the wind found the stray curls beneath her bonnet and blew them about her face. She walked to the rail where her daughter had stood before dinner and looked down upon the émigrés.
The French family were seasick. The woman, her hands folded in prayer, rocked sideways with the ship, a rosary strung between her fingers. Now and again she moaned, as the ship rose to its dizzy height and sank again.
The fair-haired daughter held the younger children on her lap, and the lanky Jacques lay prostrate on the deck. Even the singing angel had lost his voice, and watched the seas with a look of anguish in his pale eyes.
‘Poor fellow,’ laughed Mary Anne, ‘you had not known there was such a gulf between England and France’; and, opening her purse, she threw a coin down to him on the deck.
The boy stared up at her in surprise; and, when she nodded and smiled at him, pointing to the coin, he flushed in pride and shame, and turned away his head. Mary Anne laughed again, and would have called to him, but a sailor, shouting above her head, caused her to look beyond—and away there yonder, over the bows of the vessel, she saw the first dark smudge of France.
