The Emperor (17 page)

Marie was now quite herself again, and with Farleigh's help was happily making new dresses for Héloïse, having
seen with grim satisfaction the contents of the cloak-bag
removed and burnt. She sat near her mistress when she
could, watching her anxiously, and keeping a cautious eye
on Mrs James and her far more dangerous servant, the
sharp-eyed Dakers. It was from that quarter she expected
trouble, though quite what trouble she would have been
hard put to it to define.

 
James and Héloïse spoke little to each other, each
painfully aware of the dangers of the situation. He absented
himself from the house frequently, though he could never
stay away long. He wanted mostly to be near her, and often
sat silently across the room from her, pretending to be
absorbed in a book or a piece of work, but in reality simply looking at her covertly. When they did speak to each other,
it was with a painful formality, for it would have been fatally
easy to fall back into their old, easy familiarity. To give
licence to his staring at her, he got out his sketching book
and took her likeness, turning the page and beginning again as soon as he had finished a drawing; drawing her again and
again with a kind of unappeasable hunger.

As her strength returned to her, Molise wanted to be
more out of doors. She walked further afield with Jemima,
soon leaving Mrs James behind, who was sedentary by
nature; and it was the latter who finally suggested to James
that he should take Lady Henrietta out riding, so that she
could see what had changed about the estate.

‘I would be glad to accompany you, except that I am no
horsewoman,' she said to Héloïse, 'but as you do not leave
Morland land, I am sure there can be no objection to your
having no female companion. Mr James Morland is, after
all, your cousin.’

Héloïse experienced a moment of panic: though she
longed inexpressibly to be alone with James, she was afraid
of the outcome. 'You are most kind, Madame, but I have no
riding habit,' she said weakly, her accent growing stronger as
her self-possession left her.

‘
Never mind,' Jemima said, 'I am sure we can do some
thing for you with one of mine. Or I might find one of the
girls' habits put away, from when they were children. I think
you are about the same size that Lucy was when she was
twelve.’

Upstairs, Héloïse protested anxiously, ‘Maman, I do not
think - I had better not - surely it is not wise for me to go
alone with James?' Jemima patted her hand.

‘
My love, do you think I would encourage you to do what
is wrong, or what would harm you? I think that you and
James need a little time alone together to talk, where no-one
 
can overhear you. I have watched you both these last few
days, and I am very sure that unless you have that chance,
you will both feel all your lives that there is unfinished
business between you. There can be no harm in it, this once.
Take your time, and say what has to be said.’

An hour later they left Morland Place, James on Nez
Carré, and Héloïse on Goldfinch, the pony she was used to
ride before. As soon as they were clear of the house, James
put Nez Carré into a canter, and they rode fast and in
silence for some time, until Goldfinch began to blow. They
slowed to a walk and rode on, still without speaking, neither
of them with any idea where they were going, until James
found that they were at the edge of Marston Moor. Then he
led the way up onto Cromwell's Plump, stopped, and
jumped down.

‘
This will do as well as anywhere, don't you think?' he
said, coming to Goldfinch's side to help Héloïse down. She looked at him, frowning a little, wondering whether he had
forgotten that it was in this place years ago that they had
first spoken of marriage. But then he gave her a rather
crooked smile, and said, 'The horses just seemed to find
their way here, didn't they?’

He helped her down, and pulled off Nez Cané's saddle
blanket for her to sit on, as the grass was damp. She settled
herself upon it, and he sat down beside her, close, but not
touching.

It was a strange day, cool and still, the colourless sky a
high pale blanket of cloud, stretching featureless from
horizon to horizon. They were facing north, towards
Wilstrop Wood, whose bare trees were pink-brown and
wintry, their upper branches blurring into the sky, and even
from this distance loud with rooks. Nearer to hand, a
shepherd was folding a ewe-flock in the Moor Lane close; it
was so still that his cries to his dogs rose small and clear,
along with the tinkling of the bells, to where they sat. They
watched as one of his brindled hounds frisked up to him and
butted his hand with its muzzle, and was rebuked and sent
away with an outflung hand, and a ‘Gerraway back, you,
Dog!': a tiny, faraway drama that seemed both ant-sized and important.

 
Nez Carré gave a long, groaning sigh, and shifted his
weight from one side to the other, and took a negligent sideways snap at Goldfinch before settling to doze; and Héloïse
said, 'She seems very nice, your wife. Very English and
proper.'

‘
Very
comme it faut?'
James said mockingly. It had been
a phrase she often used. 'I don't particularly want you to
approve her, Marmoset. I care nothing about her.'

‘
Nice – that is a very English and proper word, too. Yes,
she is nice, I think. How did you come to meet her?'

‘
Chetwyn was thinking of marrying her: she is an heiress,
you see. But he married Lucy instead, and so she was –
available.’

She turned her head to look at him, and he met her gaze
without fear: the exchange so far had been so matter-of-fact
that they might have been discussing the characters in a
book they had both read. Now that she had gained a little
more flesh and colour, she looked much more like her old
self that he remembered; but the similarity was only skin-
deep. She was older and sadder, patient in a way he did not
like to see –
patiens,
the Latin word, with its dual sense of
suffering and bearing. But he did not feel separate from her,
now that they were alone together. They were one person
again; there was nothing he could not say to her; he could
make no room in his mind for any thought of being apart
from her.

She saw that curious happiness in him, and understood it,
wordlessly, because just then she felt it too. This was a
moment out of time, something that they would not be
called to account for, something separate from the stream of real life with its actions and consequences, guilt and respon
sibility.

‘Why did you marry her, James?' she asked.

‘
Why did you run away?' he countered. She shook her
head.

‘
No, I am not meaning to speak of blame; only
why?
Why marry a woman that you cared nothing about? Why
marry at all?'

‘
I thought you were gone for ever. I thought I would
never see you again.’

‘That is still not a reason,' she said.

‘
Morland Place needed an heir,' he said next. She
continued to look at him steadily, and at last he shrugged.
‘To spite you. To punish you. Yes, I think I did it to punish
you. You went away with your husband; you did not love
me enough.'

‘
What else could I have done? He
was
my husband.’

‘
That creature? What duty could you owe him?'

‘
The same I would have owed you, if we had been
married. Right is right for all, James, one cannot choose.’

‘
And what of love?'

‘
Ah, love,' she said. Her dark eyes were sad. 'The law we
live by takes no account of love.’

He smiled painfully. 'I love the way you pronounce
"law". Oh my darling, I do love you so much! It isn't fair –
it isn't fair!'

‘
Oh, as to that,' she shrugged, 'no-one ever promised it
would be.' She thought a moment, and then said, 'Me, I do
not think you married this nice girl to punish me. I think you
did it to punish yourself.’

He sighed, and took her hand, and she did not prevent
him. The narrow, small-fingered hand rested in his and grew
warm, and they were silent a while, their thoughts not
touching, but close.

‘
I am nineteen years old,' she said after a while, 'and I
have been twice an orphan and twice a widow, I have been
rich and I have been poor, I have been a governess and a
countess. This is a great deal for so few years, is it not?
Tiens,
think what I may do if I live to be eighty! And almost
I have been married twice – in my heart, my James,
quite
twice, because, Our Lord forgive me, I loved you like my
husband all the time I was with Vendenoir. Perhaps that is
why I am being punished,' she added musingly.

‘I don't believe that. I don't believe –' He didn't finish.

‘All our lives – that's what Maman said, that we must say
everything to each other now, or all our lives we would feel
we had been cheated. But that frightens me so much James
– those words! To be apart from you all the rest of my life –'
She shook her head in dread, and he looked at her with
alarm.

‘What do you mean to do? I know you – you are plotting something bad! What is it?'

‘
I must go away,' she said simply. 'I cannot live here at
Morland Place with you and your wife and child – ç
a se volt.
It is impossible.'

‘
But where do you think you can go?' he asked her
desperately.

‘
Oh, as to that, I am a rich woman, you know. Cousin Charles has my money safe for me in the Funds, Maman
told me, and a great deal of furniture that Papa sent from
France before he – before they –' She stopped and started
again. 'I am very interested to see what there is. I hope some
things from my own house in Paris. But at all events, I am sure there must be enough for me to live on, and so I shall
find a little house, and Marie and I will live there quietly and
be very –' She stopped again, and had to bite her treacher
ous lip to stop it quivering, and went on in a small voice, 'I
am quite determined I shall not cry. There is not the least
need.'

‘
Have you finished?' James asked. She nodded. 'Good, because you are talking the greatest nonsense! Go away –
find a little house – nonsense!'

‘
What else can you suggest?' she asked quietly. He
looked at her despairingly, holding her hand in both of his.
‘I don't know. Damn it, I don't know.'

‘
There is nothing else to do, James, you know it. I must go away. But we shall each know that the other is safe and
well, and perhaps, perhaps sometimes we might see each
other, at some party or public gathering where it is safe. It is
all we can do,
mon time.
It is all there is.’

James felt himself crying, and one part of his mind was
astonished, that it was so easy, and that it eased nothing. 'I
know,' he said. 'That's what's so unfair.’

*

Héloïse's return to London was very different from her
quitting of it. A letter from Jemima to Charles recounting
her arrival at Morland Place elicited a reply which spoke of
his great joy and relief at the news, assured her that her
financial affairs had been well looked after by him, and
invited her to come as soon as she liked to Chelmsford
House. He and Roberta were staying in London all winter.

Spain, alarmed at the conquest of Italy by the French
general Buonaparte, had joined the war on France's side,
and with Austria beaten to her knees, England was left
without an ally. The Mediterranean was virtually a French
lake; Ireland was in ferment, and it was feared that the
French were planning an invasion of England by way of her
convenient shores. With matters standing thus, Charles said,
it was impossible for him to leave the capital, even had
Roberta's delicate condition not made it wiser for them not
to travel.