The Emperor (61 page)

They drank punch, and chatted, and exchanged news, and then Ottershaw interrupted them to tell Edward that
one of the tenants had arrived asking to see him. Edward
excused himself apologetically, and James took the oppor
tunity to say to Chetwyn, 'Come and see how my latest
project is getting on. My dear,' to Mary Ann, 'you'll excuse
us for a few moments, won't you?'

‘
I was just about to ask you to excuse me,' Mary Ann
said, getting to her feet. 'I have to discuss the arrangements
for the Christmas services with Father Aislaby.'

‘
I'll shew Chetwyn his room while we're up there,' James
said. 'Come along, old fellow.’

Upstairs, Chetwyn said, 'I suppose I am in my old room,
in the bachelor's wing?'

‘
Certainly, unless you want to sleep in state. So Lucy
would not come? You are being very lenient with her,
Chetwyn. I hear nothing but praise for you in the club.'

‘
My affairs are the common gossip then, even as far north
as this?' Chetwyn said bitterly.

‘
York ain't so far off the track, old fellow. But everyone
thinks you're doing the right thing. "Chetwyn's letting her
go her length", they say. With a headstrong mare like Lucy,
to do anything else would be making yourself ridiculous.
Even Mother couldn't govern her, you know.'

‘How much is known?' Chetwyn asked quietly.

‘
She's seen everywhere with young Weston,' James said
seriously. 'Balls, routs, ridottos. The latest
on-dit
is that they
went unaccompanied three times to Astley's Amphitheatre,
to see the female equestrienne.'

‘
Yes, that's true. Lucy was fascinated. I think she thought
she had missed her career. They went to a masquerade at
Putney, too. They do their best to be discreet, but as well try
to carry on a love-affair in a cage at the Royal Exchange.' He looked at James awkwardly. 'It is love, you see. That's
what makes it so shocking. One might laugh off a mere flirt.
You say Ned doesn't know?'

‘
Not a thing. Nor Mary Ann, as far as I know. They don't
go out much in the world.'‘Well, that's something to be thankful for.'

‘
Wales has invited Weston in his party to Belvoir, I take
it?'

‘
Yes. There are one or two other Admiralty staff going –
Admiral Scorton, Captain Montgomery and some others –
so that it won't look too obvious – except to those that know.’

James touched Chetwyn's arm gently. 'Don't take it too
hard,' he said. 'After all, it wasn't a love-match, was it? And Lucy's scandals don't last long. It will all be forgotten about
five minutes after it ends.’

Chetwyn gave no sign of having heard him. They were passing the Red Room, whose door was open to shew the
bed denuded of hangings, and the larger pieces of furniture
covered in hollands. 'Our first Christmas without her. It's
hard to believe she's gone,' he said abruptly. 'I still can't
stop feeling that she will come out of a room or round a
corner at any moment. As if she's somewhere near, but out
of sight.'

‘
Perhaps she is,' James said. ‘Morland Place without
Mother doesn't make sense, does it? And I doubt whether
she's able to feel easy about it, as things are.'

‘
All the changes?' Chetwyn said. 'Couldn't you have
stopped them?’

James gave him his most cynical smile. 'I? What has
Morland Place to do with me? Ned holds it in trust for
Fanny, and Mary Ann is the lady of the house. Neither you
nor I have command of our situations.' He looked around
him rather bleakly. 'The ranks are thinning, Chetwyn: now
Mary's gone, and Lucy's running away as hard as she can. Without Mother to care what we do, what is there to keep us together?' He paused and then answered himself. 'Only
the children, I suppose. You should try taking an interest in
yours, you know. Fanny gives me something to hope for.
Come and see what I'm making for her.’

He led Chetwyn to his own room in the bachelor's wing,
and opened the door onto a smell of wood-shavings, and a
muddle of carpenter's tools and paint-pots. An old table
had been set up as a work-bench, and on it, almost
completed, stood a wooden baby-house.

‘What do you think?' James said proudly.

‘
It's magnificent,' Chetwyn said, shaken out of his gloom
for a moment. 'I had no idea you were so good with your
hands, Jamie. Did you really make it all yourself?'

‘
Every inch. Fanny saw a baby-house in a shop in York
when Mary Ann took her shopping one day, and she's been
wanting one ever since. But I wanted her to have a better
one than any other child in the land, so I started to make
this. Besides, I like working with wood — it's soothing. Do
you recognize it? It's a replica of Shawes, perfect in every detail — or it will be when it's finished. Look?' He opened
the front of the house, which was hinged like a door. 'I've
even reproduced the
trompe l'oeil
paintings I did in the
great hall of the real Shawes.'

‘
It's exceedingly handsome,' Chetwyn conceded, 'Only
rather bare, don't you think?’

James laughed. 'True! I haven't got around to making
any furniture yet. Fan will have to be patient for that — or
rather, she'll have to wait, for a more impatient child I never
met. It will be a fine project to keep me busy for the next
few years. After all, one must have something to do.’

Chetwyn looked at him with some sympathy. 'That other
business — is it all over, Jamie?'

‘
Yes, all over,' James said quietly. 'One can struggle
against the current only so long. I shall be a respectable
country squire from now on, a polite husband and dutiful
father, help old Ned with the horses, take my mutton at the
club once a week to keep up with the news, and watch
Fanny grow up and take over her inheritance. When she
reaches her majority, my job will be over. I wonder what I'll
do then? I'll be no more use to anyone. Perhaps I'll just go
quietly into a decline.' He smiled to take the sting out of the
words, but Chetwyn didn't smile back. He looked unhappy,
and James tried to make a joke of it. 'Mother used to say, in
the days when she still made formal visits, that it was the
height of bad manners not to know when to leave.'

‘Yes,' said Chetwyn. 'I remember.’

James smiled at him. 'Cheer up, old fellow. Let's go back
downstairs and have another drink. We're going to have a
jolly Christmas, and get three parts foxed every day, and
forget all the troubles of the world. You and I are to
organize the Twelfth Night play, by the way. I think we
ought to give Little Polly the main part, to cheer her up,
poor thing, though how we are to square it with Fanny I
don't know. And the day after, we're holding a grand
Epiphany feast for the tenants and villagers — roasted ox and
jugglers, the usual sort of thing — so let's hope Ned is right
that it's too cold for snow.’

*

Everyone made a great effort, and the Christmas festivities went better than Chetwyn expected. Father Aislaby, for all
his aesthetic appearance, proved to have a talent for
thinking up extremely silly games, fit to make even the most
determinedly unhappy person break into giggles, and he
shewed great tact in organizing things without appearing to
do so.

The services in the chapel were extremely beautiful. At
Mary Ann's instigation and with Edward's approval, the old
custom of the boy's choir had been revived. Six boys of
around eight years old were brought to live at Morland
Place, to be educated by the chaplain and in return to sing in the chapel and serve the altar. When their voices broke, they
would go back to their parents with the benefit of a sound
education.

It was a scheme of mixed piety and benevolence which
did something to soothe Mary Ann's conscience after the
business of the mill children. Edward had most tactfully
refrained from discussing it with her, but she was perfectly
well aware that after Jemima's death, he had gone on
sending foundlings to Manchester, and the maid Betsey had
been sent away to a position Edward had found her in a
household in London.

The weather continued hard and cold, and the St
Stephen's day meet was not a great success, there being so little
scent that the Morland pack kept hunting rabbits by
sight; but there was no snow to postpone the villagers' feast
on the day after Epiphany. A cook pit was dug with the
greatest difficulty in the bone-hard ground, and the ox
roasted, though it was so cold that the bastings froze on one
side of the caracase while the other side was in the flames.

The cleaning of the moat had been finished, but its greater depth did not stop it freezing. Father Aislaby
arranged skating races for the young people, four circuits to
a race, with various handicaps, like having the knees tied
together with a scarf, or having to balance a tankard of ale
on the head. Edward organized an archery competition, and
James the ever-popular wrestling matches; and there were
all the usual booths, and the jugglers and fire-eaters and
stilt-walkers and the pieman and the man who swallowed
knives.

As the early dusk came on, torches were lit, and there
was dancing under the blue-bright stars to a variety of local
bands. The fire in the cook-pit burned up red and gold with the frost, and now roast pork supplemented the hot pasties,
and the chestnuts and potatoes roasted in the embers.
James, well wrapped up in coat and scarves and a
woodman's hat with ear-lappets, passed unrecognized
through the crowds, enjoying the innocent verve with which the village people enjoyed themselves. There were lamps in
all the windows of the house, and by their lights a number of
young people and children skated to the music of the bands.

He stopped to watch, as one young lad of twelve or so,
bright as a robin in a scarlet jacket and a woollen hat, darted
amongst the skaters, ducking in and out without ever once losing his own balance. He seemed intent on building up a
greater and greater speed, circling the moat with his head
forward and his hands behind him to compensate, and
James waited, much entertained, for the inevitable crash.

When it came, it produced more amusement than wrath,
for others had noted his flying passage, and eventually an
enormously stout young man deliberately put himself in the
way. The lad bounced off him unhurt as though he had
struck a mattress, and travelled backwards for a few yards
almost as fast as he had been going forwards, before landing
on his seat looking very surprised.

Everyone roared with laughter, and the boy grinned
good-naturedly; but a woman standing near James called
out anxiously, 'John, dear, are you all right? You aren't
hurt?’

James turned sharply to look at her, for he knew the
voice. Wrapped in a dark-blue cloak with a large, fur-edged
hood and an even larger muff, she had escaped his notice. Now as she started forward the hood fell a little back, and
her face was turned towards the light.

Somehow he had contrived not to set eyes on Mary Skel
with for years. She lived in York, but he rarely went into the
city, except to visit his tailor or to go to the club, neither of
which establishments she frequented, and he had not
happened to pass her in the street. He scanned her face, and
found no feeling in himself for her. Perhaps it was the way
the light caught her, but she looked suddenly old to him, her
face gaunt, her eyes deep set and lined. How old was she?
Not above forty, he thought, but she looked ten years more.
He saw nothing there of the Mary he had loved. Life must
have been hard for her, despite her husband's wealth.

And that, then, was his son, the bright boy in the robin's
jacket, flying amongst the slower skaters and laughing with
exhilaration. Lord, but he had grown! James remembered
with unabated pain the incident, so long ago, when old
Skelwith had come up to the house weeping, and demand
ing James's punishment for what he had done. Well, he had
been punished all right, not once but many times, and this
was a punishment that went on for ever. Mary Skelwith had
gone forward to the edge of the ice and was holding the
boy's arm while she brushed the crystals off his back and
admonished him for his carelessness. He was only a few feet
away, but when he looked at James, his eyes passed over
him with the indifference of a stranger.