The Marquis of Westmarch (27 page)

“The reason for that is simple.”

Her own trembling, trembling which she had suppressed for minutes together, filled her with shame. Her attention was split between her shaking hand and Auriol’s figure, though she kept her eyes exclusively on him. Auriol trod down the field towards her as she stood there, alone.

“Though it’s not at all what you supposed. It is that he is
not
a man, he is a w —”

Meriel fired. Auriol meant to abolish her, have her dragged back to Castle West a female prisoner. And so she emptied her gun.

She screamed “No! No! No!” in the highest voice of embattled hysteria, then realised as her last cry died away that she had, in fact, shot and silenced him. She was safe. She saw him keel over: the wheat covered him, and then she saw nothing.

Meriel crouched like an animal in her own patch of corn, quietly panting, unable for several moments to pay any attention to what was going on around her. At last, half unwillingly, she began to listen and to hear. Auriol’s groans did not reach her, but she heard the sound of scuffling, curses and commands: they made her think.

But he could not have taken such a most terrible revenge? said her mind. Far worse than killing me, oh, I nearly died — how can I
know,
for sure?

Not until then did it fully occur to her that Wychwood, not herself, might be dead now, dead for ever. She had aimed at his heart, but only to silence him, not to kill him, she knew. Meriel raised a head like a horrified child’s: she was a very good shot.

Philander Grindal was standing over her. Thinking that he could be of no use to the doctor, he had gone over to Meriel straight away.

“My God he’s not dead he’s not dead?” she managed to say.

“Westmarch, what the devil possessed you? I heard Blandy
saying you’d got him in the shoulder! What were those heroics of his — what
is
this? What was it — Meriel?”

It took her a couple of seconds to reply “Oh, nothing in the world! He’s not dead? Shoulder, you said?”

“I daresay he may die yet, Westmarch, I do not know.”

Her eyes were roving. “Don’t ask questions.”

“Here, take this!” said Grindal, pushing an open bottle of smelling-salts into her hand.

In surprise, Meriel paused, looking down at them, then she snatched the bottle, and ran as best she could through the wheat to the gradually looming bulk of prostrated Auriol.

Philander watched her, with a strange expression on his face. He could not yet believe he had seen what he thought he had. He licked his lips, trying to remember just how she had lifted her face, then spoken, then taken his vinaigrette.

“Doctor, I’ve not killed him, he’ll live?” Meriel burst out as soon as she was within speaking distance.

Blood, she saw, was welling up from Auriol’s shoulder, where the flesh was not only pierced, but torn. There was a dark stain on his brown coat, and his ripped-off shirt was streaked and dappled with clean red. His eyelids were flickering. At present, he was alive, and she meant him to remain so.

Meriel covered her face with her hands, unafraid now of losing consciousness, while Blandy struggled to help the irritated doctor, and Philander made his slow way down the field.

‘An Essay Upon the True Distinction of the Sexes, Containing the Astonishing Histories of Marmion B —, Corn-chandler, and Mistress Columbina G —’ lay open on Philander’s lap. To avoid his wife and all other questioners, he had spent yesterday searching the booksellers’ shops of Castle-town, and had found this second-hand pamphlet, which he had already read twice since he bought it. It was vague in parts, but it provided information enough to allow him to cobble together the whole history of Meriel’s life, enough to make him feel as knowing and inventive as a god.

On the other hand, the mere fact of understanding Meriel’s real secret made Philander feel alienated from the whole of Castle West: he wondered what Meriel’s own life and feelings could have been. They did not bear thinking of, but when Castle West was speculating as to why the Marquis had shot his greatest friend in a duel and the Steward had run off the very same day, they must be thought of. He had to decide what to do next, and that decision must depend a great deal upon his considered opinion of the nature of Meriel.

Well, he admired her, and found her terrifying. Philander started to pace round the room with his hands behind his back in an exaggeratedly masculine way. He could hear his wife, seated next door in the drawing-room, talking with perfect ignorance about the two dramas, thinking she knew more than most people and was being discreet, which, he supposed, was true.

Philander admired Meriel’s determination, her strength, and her courage, and found her willingness to deceive the world quite understandable, when he remembered the life she had led as a boy, the life he had shared (extraordinary to think of it) and the
future for which she had been bred. Juxon’s part in the deception was obvious, and he thought it vile. Juxon deserved to be brought back to Castle West and publicly flogged, but Meriel, wrong though she had been, deserved sympathy. Philander presumed that Juxon had used outright blackmail to have himself made Steward.

He could even understand Meriel’s willingness to fight a duel with Wychwood, and her shooting him on outraged impulse when he began to speak in that way — to tell the truth about her without permission when she had a gun in her hand. Philander did not know whether Auriol’s action had been villainous, or merely foolish, but clearly Meriel repented of hers, as was right. She was attempting to nurse her lover now.

Auriol was lying, half-alive, in her state bed, where she had insisted he be put as soon as they reached Castle West. Yesterday, the day after the duel, Philander had gone to see her, and had been touched by the scene in the crimson bedchamber, though he had thought it mad.

Meriel’s nursing consisted of coldly watching the two real nurses, refusing to leave the room, trying to get rid of them, and trying to extract assurances that Auriol would survive. It had been very obvious to Philander that she was the man’s mistress, it had seemed to him that she was no longer even trying to conceal the fact, she cried so much. At one moment, he had wanted to urge her to be careful.

And yet it was her great and charming love for Auriol that frightened and almost disgusted Grindal. If she had kept herself chaste, had concentrated on being Marquis of Westmarch, he would have felt nothing but admiration for Meriel — and a little jealousy, because she was so very successful a man, and so tall. Because she had not, he could not.

Philander had a good imagination, as well as knowledge of Meriel, and he had formed a tolerably accurate picture of her behaviour in love. It was a little exaggerated. He could see her making protestations, treating male rejections as a form of coy desire, could imagine her kissing, embracing, enclosing. How such a man as Wychwood could enjoy being treated as a pretty girl, he wondered very much. (Being ill-treated by a woman was quite another matter.)

Ordinary women of Meriel’s temperament entered Female Colleges, and made love to other, gentler women; they did not inflict themselves on men, they could not be so presumptuous as that. If Meriel had fallen in love with Maid Rosalba Ludbrook as at one time he had thought, Philander would have been able to understand it. Even if her impulses had been sadistic, and directed towards men as well as women, he might, knowing her whole story, have understood. But a woman’s desire simply to love a man, to give and not receive, and yet make open demands and expect to have them met, was a far worse perversion than either of those things. To express such desires would, in an ordinary girl, be an attempt to undermine the foundations of society, of sexual sanity, of true distinction as the essay’s title said.

Let women, thought Philander, demand and be given the right to liberty and property, if only the nature of true love might remain unchanged! Of course Meriel could never influence other women. It was her clitoral deformity that had affected her passions; without it she must have been incapable of them. She was not a danger.

Convention and intelligence fought inside Philander. To escape from difficult thought, he made himself blush by trying to imagine Meriel mewing helplessly and delightfully in a powerful embrace (something his wife never did, but then she was his equal in size). It was impossible: Meriel was Westmarch, his boyhood companion still, in spite of everything. He wondered whether her lover appreciated that.

Yes, Auriol Wychwood’s openhanded blow had been no assertion of protective authority, but a woman’s slap, a little rebellious protest against Westmarch’s power. He had seen that in the man’s face at the time, he thought now, and without understanding then, had still thought there was something ghastly about it.

Of course, Wychwood had not been deprived of all his virility, extraordinary though that was; his attempt to expose Meriel and reveal himself on the duelling-field showed that. Quite what he had intended to do after, if Meriel had not shot him, Philander could not guess. One answer was that he had meant to abduct her, take her away in Blandy’s phaeton, marry her, and live with her in seclusion far away — but Philander dismissed that solution
as fantastic. No man could possibly dare try and do such a thing to Meriel.

In which case Wychwood must have wanted simply to expose her and then see what he, and Blandy, and the doctor would do: perhaps he thought the three of them would dare to force her back to Castle West and inform Hugo of her condition. Philander could appreciate Auriol’s need for revenge, but he thought his particular way of achieving it rather shameful, evidence of a mind and heart twisted and passion-engulfed. Philander disapproved of all violence, scandal, romance, cruelty, histrionics and passion. His courtship and marriage of Dianeme had satisfied all the taste he had ever had for such things; he found them repellent now.

He sat down in his chair again and began to bite his nails, a habit he had abandoned when he was still a boy at Longmaster Wood, before Marquis Elphinstone died. Realising that he was doing it, he stopped, and took snuff. He told himself that his being shocked by the female Meriel was no reason for his condemning Wychwood’s taste and inclination. He, Philander, was a reasonable, tolerant, full-grown man.

Into his mind there came suddenly an image of Knight Auriol Wychwood and Lady Merelinda Longmaster Wychwood as they might have appeared when announced by some footman at a ball. He could see them, a vast, handsome, happy couple, smiling over the heads of an entire assembly as they entered arm in arm. Meriel, heavier than she was at present by at least a stone, would be wearing black. There would be diamonds crowning her, diamonds lying on her warm bosom as pale as the moon … Philander raised a head as proud as hers, and thought how perfectly such a Meriel would contrast with her husband’s black-haired broad-shouldered person, and yet match it in vitality. The pair of them might breed up a race of giants, bright-eyed, highly coloured and exhausting, and the runt of the litter would be a slim dark girl five foot ten inches in height.

*

Dust-motes were moving in the white-wine sunlight of late afternoon that sloped down in a column over the foot of the bed. Meriel and Auriol were alone together in the crimson bedchamber, watching them, in silence.

At last Auriol said, “Why have you not been with me before now?”

“I was,” said Meriel, “I was until your recovery seemed certain.”

“Then you thought it best to leave me?”

“Yes. It’s a devilish awkward situation, ours.”

“Very true.”

“I’ve been obliged to talk to everyone — my mother, and Hugo, and the Senior Member. I’m nearly mad with talking,” she said. Five days had passed since the duel in the corn.

“Were they very much shocked?”

“Do you suppose they could not be! But your surviving makes the thing tolerable, of course. The Senior Member even was forced to own —”

“I am glad to hear it. Ought I to be moved now that I am convalescent?”

The Marquis fidgeted. “I see no reason for it, unless you wish to do so. My mother of course says that it is most improper for you to be here, I collect the whole of Castle West is talking about it. But that can’t signify. Besides, Dr Moxon says your wound is not healing quite as it should — something about proud flesh — and so I fancy you had best not be moved till you are perfectly restored — is it paining you, Wychwood?”

“Yes, a trifle.”

Silence dropped upon them again. Auriol opened the conversation a second time, still watching the movement of dust in the light. Meriel’s face was in shadow, so was his.

“And what are Juxon’s plans for my future now?”

Meriel stared at him. “My God, have you indeed not been told? Did I not tell you?”

“No.”

“But he’s gone.”

“Gone?”

“Run for it, sir. Indeed, it’s so, I promise you!” She rushed on, gazing at his set face all the while, yet oddly, he thought, as though she were seeing through it to the other side of his head. But her expression was certainly happy. “Oh, Wychwood, he left a billet, which was handed to me — clearing your name entirely. Vastly obliging of him! And it was clear enough he thought we
had eloped together — that’s why he left, he’d played out his little comedy and lost, you see. So he thought. Hired chaise, false direction, everything! It’s the greatest piece of good fortune ever I had — one of the men I dismissed from your door thought it proper to inform him of my taking you — and this was the result of that. You may be sure I rewarded him, the man that is — I was so overjoyed I gave him fifty crowns, as soon as I discovered just how it was, he all but went off in a swoon, sir. Oh, damn it, did I indeed not tell you?”

Auriol, after a moment, made her repeat the story in coherent detail. She did so, smiling and looking rather embarrassed by her own pleasure in the telling. When her explanation was over, she stopped, and slowly a grave look settled on her face. Her eyes fell, and he guessed that she was very nervous.

“You were
overjoyed
to learn that he had run off into the blue?” said Auriol. “Meriel? My dear, answer me.” For the first time in their interview, he took hold of the edge of her sleeve.

“To be sure I was. Wychwood, don’t you understand what it means? Whatever we decide to do, whatever comes to pass, you know —”

He slackened his grip, for to hold on to her increased the pain in his shoulder. “Yes. But I had thought — well Meriel, how was I to know but that you wished me to die? That you might be relying upon Juxon now in some way or other. I thought at moments. You did shoot me — it might have been no aberration, no temporary disorder of the nerves, for all I knew to the contrary, till now.”

“Oh, my God.”

“I’m sorry.” So Juxon has gone, thought Auriol. Vanished, and he never came once to see me. Poor coward. How I did long to talk with him, all that time.

“If I had wished you to
die
,” Meriel whispered then, “would I have had you laid down on my own bed, so that you might not be intolerably cramped in that bunk of yours in Medlar Court? In defiance of opinion? Would I have sat beside you every moment till you were safe? Well?”

“No. No. Meriel.”

Her shoulders drooped. “You are in no condition to be listening to reproaches, forgive me. Yes, I shot you. But Wychwood, why the devil did you not wait till I had fired to speak your piece? Whatever
was your intention. I was intending to shoot wide, what in God’s name did you suppose, sir?”

“Oh, Meriel, I was mad. So were you.”

“Yes. Listen to me, you never must take me by surprise, d’you hear?” She took a breath and looked away again. “Now — pray tell me, only this: was it your intention then to abduct me from the field — take me into Southmarch, knowing that unless you did so I should have been forced to go back with the others? As I told Grindal when I challenged you? Or did you mean rather to —”

“Rather to?”

“I can’t remember just how it was,” she said, looking straight at his eyes, “but I think that when I shot you, I had some notion of your meaning simply to disgrace me. Not to marry me out of hand. I thought you might force me back to Castle West and confront me with Hugo. Some such thing. I thought you wanted revenge. I had to stop it.”

“Indeed, so I should hope! Meriel you
cannot
have thought such a thing.”

“But I did. I did. Try to understand — my mind was so much overset —”

“All I understood was that you were in no case to be coming back here with them, I never meant to allow you to waste more time. All I could think of was to tell them the truth, thinking they would be too much, too much put out of countenance, astonished, to prevent me from carrying you off! It never occurred to me that —” He stopped.

“I wish I had let you do it.”

“So do I. More than that, I wish I had never struck you.”

“Pray,” said Meriel, “had you provided yourself with a gown for me to wear at my wedding? Because I could scarcely have been married in this rig — in what I had on then, rather.”

“No,” said Auriol. “I had not. I meant to buy a made-up gown for you in Middle Lynn, supposing I could have found one to fit such a maypole as you are.”

Utter desperation enveloped them after this awkward exchange. Two huge obstacles had stood in the way of their being reconciled: Auriol’s ignorance of the removal of Juxon, and both their doubts as to the other’s feelings and intentions. These obstacles had been struck down, quickly and simply, and yet their
mutual adoration had not been instantly restored to them as they thought it might have been. They were still uncertain. The blow and the shot continued to separate them, and always would, they thought: in other words, they were no longer lovers.