The Emperor (38 page)

‘You are very clever, James,' she said. 'It all looks very nice.’

But her voice was listless, and her eyes kept straying from
the page and wandering across the garden. The marigolds
still blazed, but there were green and curling seed-heads interspersed with the flowers. She shivered a little, though the wind was still just then, and James put aside his sketching book and captured her hand, and stroked its fingers thoughtfully.

‘
What is it, my darling?' he asked, but his voice was dull
with foreknowledge.

‘I had a visitor yesterday,' she said neutrally.

‘I didn't know — why didn't you call me?'

‘It was while you were working on your cabinet with
Stephen. I didn't want to disturb you,' she said. 'He didn't
stay long. It was — it was the priest, James — or, no, I think you do not call them priests, do you? It was the rector of the
parish, from the little church in the village.’

James looked at her in dismay. 'Oh, my darling, I'm so sorry. What did he say to upset you? I've a mind to go and see him, and — '

‘Oh, no, James, he did not say anything I did not know for myself.’

There was a long silence. James was still, like a threatened animal, and her hand rested in his like a small flame, vibrantly alive, hard to hold. A late butterfly, slow-moving
as they were at that time of year, fluttered down like a scrap of coloured silk blown by the wind, and rested gratefully on
the warm gravel of the path, spreading its wings and closing
them with a flick. Its white bands were vivid against
iridescent purple.

‘It is an emperor,' Héloïse said. 'You see how well you
have taught me, James? I remember everything that you
have told me.'

‘You have taught me so much more,' James began, and then stopped.

‘Their lives are so short,' she said, watching the silken wings. 'Short and frail, but beautiful. They are fortunate, to dance in the sunlight, and not know that they will die tomorrow.’

James lifted her hand and kissed it, unable to speak.
There was a terrible pain in his throat, for he knew what she
was going to say.

‘We have been very happy, haven't we, my James? And though we did wrong, I can't regret it, not one instant of it.' He shook his head, holding her hand tightly. She turned to look at him, but it was too much for both of them, and she
turned her head away again. 'What we have had, no-one can
take from us; but you must go back.’

A little wind lifted the fine hair at the nape of her neck, and the butterfly, disturbed, fluttered up and away into the trees.

‘
We can't be together any more. We should not have
done what we did, but perhaps God has let us have these
few weeks in the sunshine to make us strong, so that —’

Now she faltered, and James found his voice.

‘I can't leave you. Don't tell me to. Why should you let some meddling fool of a priest upset you? He isn't even of your church.'

‘
Oh, my love, it isn't that. Though everyone is against us,
if I knew within me that I was right, I would face the whole world, and care nothing. But no happiness can come from doing wrong, my James — I learnt that long ago. I can't go
on shutting myself out from God, and that is what I must
do, to be with you.'

‘It isn't fair!' he cried.

‘
No, perhaps not. I don't know. I only know God sees us,
and only He knows all of the pattern. We have to believe He
knows best. Oh, my darling, if only I thought you under
stood that, I could bear to part from you.’

She turned to him, and he put his arms round her, and
she rested her head on his shoulder, and he stroked her hair:
soft, black, lustrous hair, full of life. She was the life of him;
without her he was nothing, a dry and hollow shell, to be crushed, to be blown away as dust on a little wind.

‘I love you,' he said, which was all he could find in him. ‘What will you do, if I go?'

‘I don't know,
mon âme.
Just — go on. All we can do is try to obey God's law, and trust that if we do, He will be merciful.'

‘I don't have your faith,' he said bitterly; and then he remembered saying the same thing to his mother, after his
father had died. She had spoken with this same strength
and, under the sorrow, serenity. They were alike, his mother
and Héloïse, made of the same strong, shining stuff: was
that why he had loved her? Father Ramsay had once said to
him, in his childhood, that all love is ultimately love of God.
Deep in him, a closed door opened a crack.

Héloïse felt the change in him. 'What is it?' she asked. She lifted her head and looked at him, a long, clear look.
She loved him; she called him
mon âme:
how could she live without her soul?

‘
A little, I begin to understand,' he said. 'I don't accept it.
My heart will break, and yours too, but I think —’

She nodded, and rested her hot forehead against him, struggling against the tears. Oh God, she prayed inwardly, give me the strength to do what is right. 'I love you, my James. Nothing can ever change that, and if we are apart in body, we shall not be apart in our souls, so long as we do what we know is right.’

But that is no comfort, James thought. The shadows
lengthened across the garden, reaching to their feet, but still
they sat, leaning together, their arms around each other;
until with the sun's westering the little breeze returned, cool
and night-scented, ruffling their hair, and making Héloïse shiver. James kissed the crown of her head, and coaxed her to her feet like an invalid; where she grew weak, he must find strength for both of them.

‘It's late,' he said. 'We must go in.'

 
James left the road to skirt York, and came back to Morland
Place through the fields. It was a pleasant day, cool, sunny,
autumnal; but the two men rode in silence, and when
Durban glanced from time to time at his master's face he found it set and grim.

They came at last to the top of the home paddock, where
Jemima's mare kinked her tail and wrinkled her muzzle, and
squealed warning at the two ridden horses. Finding herself ignored, she turned with bared teeth on the two carriage geldings turned out with her and drove them down the field
to relieve her feelings, and then came flying back to the
fence to goggle and snort.

She was very fresh, Durban thought: the mistress
couldn't have been out much lately. He was about to hazard a remark to James, but thought better of it when he saw the
preoccupied look on James's brow. Nez Carré also had
better things to think about than excitable mares: he had just
caught the smell of home. He cocked his long ears forward and knuckered deep down, putting in an extra dancing step
or two. Forest joined in as they came to the bend of the
track, and James drew rein and looked down towards his home.

He had so often looked on it as a prison, and his wife a gaoler, and had never paused to consider the impropriety of allowing such thoughts. The way one felt, he had assumed,
was beyond one's control. But it was not true, of course — it
had never been true. The whole of life was a lesson in self-government, in which one grew more and more proficient,
unless one was a criminal or a lunatic. He had been a little
of both in his time; but he saw now how his crimes and his
lunacies had been wilful, how it had always been possible to
do right, and how he had always known that. His long hours of conversation spent with Father Ramsay as a child had not
left him untouched; but he had chosen wickedness, quite
 
deliberately, because good had not seemed to him sufficiently challenging.

‘Fool!' he apostrophized himself aloud, and Nez Carré
grunted in reply. It was the greatest challenge of all, the
more so because the rewards were so often intangible. But he thought of his life to come, and for a moment faltered,
lost heart for the struggle. I can't, he thought despairingly; it
was too great an effort.

Nez Cane, bored with waiting, pretended he had an itch and needed to get his head down to his knee to rub it, so as
to loosen the reins, and then used the freedom of his head to
edge forward a step or two. It was an old trick of his, transparent as air, and James suddenly found himself smiling. Horses were so simple, he thought, like children: simple
desires, simple loves, and a transparent wickedness,
innocent as milk. Love bubbled up in him, for horses, for children, for home and for his child. Fanny! He had missed
her, and the flattering way her face lit up when he came into
the nursery. Life could be worth living: at least, he would make it so.

He glanced sideways at his patient servant, and felt love
for him, too. I'm so lucky, he thought in surprise. It had
never occurred to him before. Durban turned to look at
him, and was amazed to see his master smiling, and stared for a moment in astonishment before he was able to govern himself.

‘Sir?' he inquired politely.

‘
I was just thinking it's good to be home,' James said, and
Nez Cane took this for permission, and started forward, whickering eagerly.

*

Their appearance on the track alerted the gatekeeper, who raised the alarm in the house, so that when the two horses
came in under the barbican, Hoskins was waiting by the
block with two lads, and Oxhey was at the great door with
Jemima beside him. James's eyes' went straight to his
mother, and he thought in sudden shock,
why, she's old.
She seemed to have shrunk since he went away, and though her carriage was as upright as ever, she seemed to be hunching her thin shoulders like a bird against the cold.

Her eyes met and held his, and there was no smile in
them, only weariness. He remembered with sudden, sharp
regret how she had been in his childhood, energetic,
sensible, happy, always smiling, so much in love with his
father that the house had seemed to hum with it, as if it were
the engine that drove the household. He wanted to cry out
to her, don't you realize, Mother, it was you who did this to
me, to all of us! You gave us an impossible standard to
meet, and knowing we could only fall short took the heart out of us.

He dismounted and went up the steps and stood before
her. She looked at him searchingly, but did not speak or
move, and he realized that she did not know what his
coming portended.

‘Forgive me,' he said.

After a moment she nodded, but there was still no smile or embrace for him. There was no change in her expression
as she stepped back to admit him. 'Come with me,' she said.
‘Oxhey, see we're not disturbed.’

To the steward's room he followed her rigid back, and there she turned to him, looking both fragile and defensive. ‘Well, Mother,' he said.

‘Jamie,' she said, 'why have you come?’

He looked surprised. 'Good God, Mother, isn't that what everyone's been telling me to do? I've seen the error of my
ways, and returned to the fold. Aren't you glad?' She went
on looking at him searchingly, and he said more gently, 'I
am truly sorry to have caused you pain. I have come to try
to make amends.'

‘
Oh, my dear,' Jemima said, some of the brittleness
leaving her. 'Of course I'm glad you've come hack. I knew –
I hoped – that you'd do the right thing in the end. It's just
that – '

‘Yes, Mama?' he prompted her.

‘The thing is, Jamie, that it isn't just what you do that matters; it's the spirit in which you do it. If you have come
hack with the intention of behaving in exactly the same way
as before, if you mean to make us all suffer because you
have been forced to give up Héloïse, well, if that were so, it would almost be better for you to go away again.'

‘Almost,' he said wryly.

‘Yes,' she said frankly, 'because there is some virtue in doing the right thing, even without a meek heart.'

‘You needn't worry,' James said. 'My heart is as meek as
you could wish. I know how I have been at fault, and I mean
to do better from now on, and to make you happy, if I can.'

‘Your wife, too,' Jemima said anxiously.

‘
My wife most of all,' he said sadly. The last of her resist
ance left her, and she held out her arms to him.

‘Oh, my dear,' she said. 'I have missed you – dearest of
my children! I shouldn't say that, but I can't help it. Oh
Jamie, I so wanted you to be happy. I wish things could have
been different.'

‘Now, Mother, no repining. That's all over. I have come to the right way of thinking. Just at the moment it seems obvious, but I know there will be times when I shall have doubts. Then I shall need help.'