Joan Wolf (5 page)

If Jessica was unsettled by what had occurred that surprising night Linton was scarcely less so. He had known as soon as he had seen Jessica that he wanted her. Her cool assurance had misled him; he had never dreamed but that she was experienced in the ways of love. He should have remembered that she was an actress, he thought. But she could not disguise her inexperience when he had kissed her.

Philip Romney knew women and he recognized the innocence of that tentative kiss. He recognized too that it had only made her more desirable to him. It shouldn’t have. He had spoken the truth when he said that virgins did not interest him. But Jessica did, and more than ever after what had happened between them last evening. It had been intense and tender, sweet and lingering. He had been very gentle, aware of her innocence and careful not to offend it. It had been, he thought with a wry smile as he sat over a solitary breakfast the next morning, rather like a wedding night.

He went to considerable trouble to make arrangements to take her to
Macbeth
for Kean’s opening performance. The boxes had been sold out for over a week but he managed to procure one from Mr. Martin Wellingford at Brooks’ in the afternoon. Mr. Wellingford, a rather nondescript young man who was anxious to make his way in society, was very pleased to do a favor for the Earl of Linton. Linton made a mental note to include the young man in some upcoming scheme of his own, thanked him warmly, and sent off a note to Montpelier Square, telling Jessica he would call for her that evening in order to take her to Drury Lane.

The theatre was packed when Jessica and Linton arrived. There was an electric feeling about the crowd, as if it knew it was present at a momentous occasion. Jessica’s appearance in the box with Linton helped to raise the excitement to fever pitch. There was scarcely a person present who had not seen her Juliet and all were well aware that the resounding hit she had made in that part was one of the stimuli for Kean’s tackling Macbeth at this particular moment.

“How does it feel to be on the other side of the curtain?” Linton asked, his mouth close to her ear.

She smiled faintly. “A lot less nerve-wracking. But I have seen Kean before. In fact it was he who gave me the idea of acting.”

“Really?” He sounded interested. ‘Where did you see him? He only made his mark in London last spring.”

Too late Jessica realized her mistake. She continued to look at the stage and shrugged a little. “Oh, I scarcely remember; it was a while ago.”

He didn’t pursue the subject, but his eyes rested speculatively upon her averted head, so beautifully and proudly set on its long neck. She had acted in Ireland, or so the Covent Garden management had given out. Linton didn’t think Kean had played in Ireland before the previous summer. Jessica was aware of his scrutiny and felt herself beginning to tense up. She was grateful when the lights began to dim.

The crowd sat in breathless silence through the opening scenes, but when Edmund Kean made his entrance the pit rose and cheered and the women in the boxes waved their handkerchiefs. It was some moments before his harsh voice could be heard above the thunder of appreciation.

At the intermission Linton turned to Jessica. “He dominates the play,” he said to her.

There was a faintly ironic look in her eyes. “He certainly does. Lady Macbeth is cast quite into the shade.”

He grinned. “I believe you’d like
to do Lady Macbeth yourself!”

The comers of her mouth curled. “I?” she said demurely. Before he could answer the door to their box opened and Lord George Litcham and Mr. John Mowbray entered.

“Philip, you dog, do you know what an uproar you have caused by bringing Miss O’Neill? The whole house is agog at the spectacle of two great actors confronting each other across the curtain, as it were.”

Lord George turned to Jessica. “How do you do, Miss O’Neill, and how do you like Kean this evening?”

Jessica hesitated, her eyes going to Linton. He met her gaze and realized she was looking to him for guidance. He cut in and said easily, “Miss O’Neill was telling me how much she admired Mr. Kean’s performance before you burst in so enthusiastically, George. And that, I should say, was the general consensus of opinion in the house. He is very powerful.”

“Yes, he is,” said Jessica composedly. “Are you enjoying the play, Mr. Mowbray?”

“Very much. Miss O’Neill,” responded that gentleman courteously, but before he could continue the conversation the door opened to admit two more gentlemen. Both Jessica and Linton were quietly friendly, but all the visitors were aware of a distance that surprised them a trifle.

Linton’s purpose was to protect Jessica from the overfamiliarity that her now public relationship with him would invite. She herself did not know how to behave. She would see what he would do—so their briefly locking eyes had told him—and she would act accordingly. And he had been swift to set a tone of impeccable courtesy and respect. After a slightly stilted beginning Jessica’s own breeding asserted itself. She had been born and reared a lady; she simply behaved in the way that was natural to her.

After his friends had departed, Linton looked at her with approval. She was dressed in a new gown of wine-dark Italian crape that set off her brilliant coloring. Its neckline was more deeply cut than any she had worn before, but many great ladies in the audience wore gowns even more revealing. She had her mother’s diamonds in her ears, but her throat was bare. He smiled at her faintly, his lids half hiding his very blue eyes. It was a smile whose intimacy rather took her breath away. She didn’t know whether to be glad or sorry when the curtain rose for the next act.

They went to the Piazza for supper after the play. When they were seated in one of the charming booths and were each sipping a glass of wine Jessica said curiously, “Tell me what you do at Staplehurst, my lord. I gather from Lord George that you spend most of the year in the country.”

“What do I do to amuse myself?” he asked smilingly.

She looked a little startled. That was not what she had meant. Jessica, who had worked very hard at Winchcombe all her life, was not a person who thought very much about amusement. “I suppose so,” she replied a little uncertainly.

His eyes narrowed a little as he watched her face, then he said truthfully, “I farm.”

She looked interested. “Do you? Do you have an experimental farm like Lord Cochrane?”

He put down his glass of wine and regarded her thoughtfully. He had not expected her to know the name of Lord Cochrane. “No, although I find Lord Cochrane’s work extremely interesting. My work is more administrative, I’m afraid.”

“Do you own a great deal of land?”

“I do. And I am happy to say that the people who work for me now are the people who have farmed Staplehurst land for hundreds of years. Not one family has been forced off my land.”

She was surprised by the note of suppressed passion in his voice. “What do you mean?”

He sighed. “I mean that a great change is coming in this country, Jessica. It has already begun, in fact. Today most Englishmen still work on the land or in trades connected to agriculture. That will not be true twenty years from now. Country populations are already moving into the cities to work in industrial factories. The whole face of agriculture is changing. It has become more efficient, more scientific, more centralized. That can be very beneficial, but it also has its drawbacks.”

“Drawbacks? How can greater efficiency be a drawback?”

“Because the small independent farmer is no longer efficient. He can’t compete. In many cases his farm has been bought by a larger, wealthier landowner. Many of the old smallholders have become landless agricultural laborers. The commons have been enclosed and so cottagers have nowhere to graze a cow or find fuel. We are in a state of transition from an agricultural to an industrial economy and at Staplehurst I am fighting what could be called a holding action.”

She was listening to him intently. “At least you are employing a large number of people.”

“I am,” he replied a trifle grimly, “but unless something is done politically to stabilize the economy the efforts of a few well-intentioned landowners like myself will go for naught.”

“Most of the big landlords seem to be pressing for another Corn Law,” she said neutrally.

His eyes began to get very blue. “What we do
not
need is to hinder the import of cheap foreign corn. There will be famine if we do it. With 250,000 demobilized soldiers and sailors thrown on the labor market there will be disaster. Wages will be down for those who can get jobs. For those who cannot the Poor Relief will be the only answer. And neither those with jobs at below-subsistence wages or those on Poor Relief will be able to afford corn if it is stabilized at 80 shillings a quarter.”

“I have never been much in favor of the Poor Relief,” Jessica remarked. “Not, at least, when it is used to supplement wages. It may assist the worker temporarily, but in the long run it benefits the employer, who is relieved of the necessity of paying a living wage. And the small parish taxpayer is forced to subsidize, via the poor rate, the payroll of the big farmer and manufacturer.”

“Good for you, Jess,” he said strongly. “When I think of the number of people I have tried to impress that fact upon I could weep.”

The faint bitterness was back in his voice, and Jessica’s eyes fixed themselves thoughtfully upon his face. Under Linton’s serene, gentle exterior there evidently lurked the soul of a reformer. “You surprise me,” she said frankly.

“Not half as much as you surprise me,” he returned. “You are really interested in all this aren’t you?”

“Yes.” She looked very serious. “I can imagine how it would feel to be thrown upon the world with nothing behind you, no land, no job, no government to help you out.” At the bleak look that touched her face he felt a sudden stab of fierce protectiveness.

“You can always come to me,” he said.

“Thank you, my lord,” she replied with an effort at lightness. “I shall remember that.”

Chapter Seven

So every sweet with sour is tempered still,

That maketh it be coveted the more;

For easy things, that may be got at will,

Most sorts of men do set but little store.

—
EDMUND
SPENCER

Jessica and Linton had not been unobserved at the Piazza. Lord George Litcham and Mr. John Mowbray were seated at no very great distance, and they had been joined by Bertram Romney, one of Linton’s cousins. “I wonder what Philip is being so serious about,” Lord George commented as he watched his friend with speculative eyes.

“It don’t look like a jolly little coze, does it?” replied Mr. Mowbray. As they watched, Jessica said something and Linton replied, the set of his mouth very determined.

“I know that look of Philip’s,” Mr. Romney said. “I believe he must be talking about the economy.”

“To
Miss O’Neill?”
Mr. Mowbray sounded incredulous.

“She doesn’t look bored,” returned Lord George. All three men looked surreptitiously at Jessica’s absorbed face.

“No, she doesn’t,” agreed Mr. Mowbray.

Jessica and Linton rose to leave, and on their way out passed by Lord George’s table. Linton nodded at them in a friendly if abstracted way as he followed behind Jessica. He didn’t pause to chat, but took Jessica’s elbow in a firm grasp and steered her past the remaining booths and out the door.

“He was in rather a hurry to leave,” said Mr. Romney.

“You would be too if you were going home with Jessica O’Neill,” said Lord George. And, upon an instant’s reflection, Mr. Romney agreed.

* * * *

Jessica was performing the following two evenings, and the evening after that Linton took her to a very exclusive gaming club in St. James’s Square. “My cousin Bertram is very enthusiastic about it,” Linton told Jessica. “To own the truth I’d like to see the lay of the land. Bertram is only twenty-four and not very shrewd. The place may be perfectly honest; in fact Crosly and Abermarch assure me the play is fair, but I’ll feel better if I take a look myself.  Do you care to accompany me?”

Jessica’s large gray eyes looked luminous.
“To a
gaming hell? I should love to go.”

He smiled a little. “I shouldn’t exactly call it a hell. And why do you want to go?”

“I’d love to see the place where all that money changes hands; where fortunes are lost and men blow their brains out.”

He laughed at her. “No one blows their brains out in the club, Jess. Very bad ton to do that. One waits until one is decently home.”

“Too bad,” she said cryptically.

“Too bad?”

“Yes. I should love to see some stupid ass who had bankrupted himself and his family blow his brains out right in front of me.” The memory of Sir Thomas was still raw in her memory and he winced a little at the note of contempt in her voice.

“Not everyone who gambles bankrupts himself.”

“I suppose not. Do
you
gamble, my lord?”

“I have been known to upon occasion,” he answered with sonorous gravity.

The comers of her mouth quirked with amusement “I bet you win, too, you wretch.”

“Upon occasion,” he repeated serenely, and Jessica laughed.

* * * *

Mr. Romney had been startled when his cousin had informed him he was bringing Jessica. “But why, Philip?” he had said. “We’re going with Litcham and Harry Crosley. She’ll be the only woman.”

“I have no intention of staying until the small hours, Bertram, and we will meet you there,” Linton replied imperturbably. “I am taking Miss O’Neill because she hopes to see someone blow his brains out.”

“I beg your pardon?” said Mr. Romney, unsure if he had heard correctly.

“No need to do that,” Linton assured him kindly. “We’ll see you this evening, Bertram.” He began to move away.

“But aren’t you dining with us?” Mr. Romney called after him.

“No,” came the definite reply.

Bertram was right to be puzzled, Linton thought as he walked down the front steps of Brooks’. Whenever he had joined a party like this in the past they had always commenced with a comfortable dinner and gone on to their destination, a good-humored, high-spirited, all-male group. He was breaking with tradition by taking Jessica. Why?