Winsor, Kathleen (20 page)

They
had scarcely closed the door when Honour asked her: "Well, mem, what d'ye
think of him? A might spruce young fellow, I'd say."

But
Amber felt suddenly tired and discouraged; the tendency to gloom and moroseness
which had come with her pregnancy began to settle. Listlessly she shrugged her
shoulders. "He's no great matters to brag of."

And
all at once it washed down over her—the disappointment and loneliness, the
aching longing she had for Bruce, the hopelessness of her situation, and she
flung herself onto the bed and began to cry. She could feel her pregnancy
closing in on her, seeming to shut her into a room from which there was no
escape, and she was as terrified as though menaced by some looming monster.

Oh,
what'll I do. What'll I
do!
she thought wildly. It's growing and growing
and
growing
inside me! I can't stop it! It's going to get bigger and
bigger till I swell up like a stuffed toad and everyone will know— Oh! I wish I
was dead!

Amber
and Luke Channell were married in mid-October, three weeks after they had met,
in the old church of the parish where the Rose and Crown was located. As was
customary, Amber bought the wedding-ring and she got a very handsome one with
several little diamonds, for which she told the jeweller to send a bill. She
had discovered that it was possible to do business that way and now made a
practice of it, for her ignorance of money-values was otherwise a serious
handicap.

Amber
had not been at all eager to marry Luke. She considered him to be one of the
least attractive men she had ever known and nothing but the eternal nagging
awareness of pregnancy could have persuaded her to consider him for a husband.
He seemed to have just one redeeming quality, and that was a violent
infatuation for her.

But
by the next morning she knew that she had been cheated in that too.

His
obsequious adoring manner had vanished altogether and now instead he was
insolent, crude, and overbearing. His vulgarity shocked and disgusted her and
he would allow her neither privacy nor peace but set upon her at any hour of
the day or night. From the first day he was gone most of the time,
drank
incessantly, harangued her to send for the rest of her money, and displayed
almost without provocation a violent and destructive bad-temper.

Mr.
Goodman's financial affairs continued unsolved and he began to seem almost as
nebulous a figure as Amber's aunt, though both women made new excuses to each
other whenever the time limit of the old one had run out. As soon as Amber and
Luke were married the two apartments were flung together and presently Sally
was borrowing Amber's fans and gloves and jewels and even tried without success
to squeeze into her gowns. Amber began to feel that somehow she was caught
between these two, aunt and nephew, who seemed to have gained an advantage over
her—though she was at a loss to know just when or how it had happened.

Honour
remained as quiet and self-effacing as ever, though she became slovenly and
Amber had to tell her over and over again to wear her shoes in the house and
not to go out in a soiled apron. When Luke was at home she stared at him with a
sheepish longing that turned Amber sick; when he was drunk she held his head,
cleaned up his vomit, undressed him and put him to bed. Such tasks were routine
for a servant, but Honour performed them with a kind of fawning wife-like
devotion. Luke, however, showed her no gratitude, nagged at her persistently,
gave her a cuff or a kick whenever he was annoyed— which was often—and handled
her familiarly even before Amber.

When
they had been married scarcely two weeks Amber came into the room one day and
surprised Honour and Luke on the bed together. Stunned and disgusted Amber
stood there for a moment, mouth and eyes wide open, before she slammed the
door. Luke gave a startled jump and Honour, with a terrified shriek, scrambled
up and ran into Sally's room, whimpering as she went.

Luke
glared at her. "What in hell blew you in here?"

She
was on the verge of crying, not because she cared if he seduced the maid, but
because she was nervous and distraught. "How was I to know what you'd be
about!"

He
did not answer but got into his doublet, buckled on his sword and smacking his
hat onto his head slammed out of the room. Amber stood for a moment, glaring
after him, and then she went to find Honour. The girl was in Sally's room,
huddled in a far corner behind the bed, rocking and sobbing with her hands held
protectively over her head. A master or mistress had the right to beat unruly
servants and that was obviously what she expected.

"Stop
that!" cried Amber. "I'm not going to hurt you!" She tossed a
coin into her lap. "Here. And I'll give you another for every
piece-of-mutton he gets from you. Maybe he won't worry me so much then,"
she added in a mutter, and swirling her skirts about walked away.

But
her own loathing of Luke and his unpleasant personal
habits was by no
means the only source of Amber's trouble with her husband. Both he and his aunt
were spending a great deal of money—almost every day new packages arrived for
one or both of them—but they paid for nothing. She brought the subject up one
day when she was setting out on a shopping tour with Mrs. Goodman.

"When's
Luke going to get some money from home? If he so much as takes his dinner at a
tavern or goes to the play he asks me for some."

Sally
laughed and fanned herself industriously, looking out into the crowded street.
"See that yellow satin gown just across the way, sweetheart? I've a mind
to have one like it. Now what's that you were saying? Oh, yes—Luke's money.
Well, to tell you truly, sweetheart, we wanted to keep this from you, but since
you ask you may as well know: Luke's father is furious he married without his
leave. Poor Luke-—married for love and now it seems he may be cut off without
so much as a shilling. But then, my dear, with all
your
money no doubt
the two of you could shift well enough?" She gave Amber an ingratiating
grin, but her eyes were hard and searching.

Amber
stared at her, shocked. Luke cut off and the two of them to live on her five
hundred pounds! She had begun to learn already that five hundred was less than
the illimitable fortune she had at first imagined it to be, particularly when
spent at the reckless rate they three were going.

"Well,
now, why the devil
should
he be cut out of his father's will?" The
question was a sharp challenge, for she and Sally were by no means as polite as
they had once been and several times had come close to quarreling. "I
suppose I'm not a good enough match for 'im?"

"Oh,
Lord, sweetheart, I protest! I didn't say that, did I? But his father had
another girl in mind— Wait till he sees you. He'll come around then fast
enough, I warrant. And by the way, my dear, that thousand pound you sent for to
your aunt's lawyer—isn't it mighty long in coming?" Sally's voice was once
more silky, soothing, as when she asked Luke to curb his temper, not to tear up
the cards when he lost a hand, and to treat Honour more gently.

But
Amber stuck out her lower lip, refused to look at her, and answered sullenly.
"Maybe the lawyer won't send it at all—now I'm married!"

Little
by little her money was dribbling away. It went to Luke for pocket money, to
Mrs. Goodman, who always promised to repay the instant her husband returned
from France, or to a tradesman who came to the door dunning her for a bill two
or three months in arrears.

What'll
I do when it's gone? she would think desperately. And, overwhelmed with fear
and foreboding she would begin to cry again. She had cried more often in the
weeks since Lord Carlton had left than in all the rest of her life. If Luke
flew into a temper, if the laundress did not return her smocks in
time—the
slightest upset, the smallest inconvenience was now enough to start the tears.
Sometimes she wept dismally, mournfully, but other times the tears came in a
torrent, noisy and splashing as a summer storm. Life was no longer a gay and
buoyant challenge but had become empty and hopeless.

There
was nothing left to look forward to. This baby would be born and others would
follow in a succession down the years. Without money, with children to care
for, a brutal husband, hard work, her prettiness would soon be gone. And she
would grow old.

Sometimes
she woke at night feeling as if she were struggling in some growing living net.
She would sit up suddenly, so scared that she could not breathe. And then she
would remember Luke beside her, sprawled over three-fourths of the bed, and
hatred made her long to reach down and strangle him with her own hands. She
would sit there staring at him, thinking with pleasure of what it would be like
to stab him to death, to have him pinned there to the bed flopping helplessly.
She wondered if she could poison him—but she knew nothing of the process and
was afraid of being caught. A woman guilty of husband-murder was burnt alive.

So
far apparently none of them had guessed at her pregnancy, though it had now
passed the end of the fifth month. Her numerous starched petticoats and
full-gathered skirts helped to disguise her in the daytime and ever since her
stomach had begun to swell she had contrived to dress when no one was around or
to keep her back turned. The lights were always out at night because Honour
slept in the same room they did, on a little trundle-bed which was pushed under
the large one in the daytime. But nevertheless they were sure to find out soon,
and she knew she could never make them believe the child was Luke's. She had no
idea what she would do then.

From
time to time Amber had changed the hiding-place of her money, leaving out only
a few coins at one time, and she congratulated herself that the system was a
very clever one. One day she went to her cache; the wallet was gone.

She
had hung the strings of the leather bag over a nail hammered into the back of a
very heavy carved oak chest which stood against one wall and was never moved.
Now, with a little gasp, she got down onto her hands and knees to look underneath
it, reaching back to feel about in the thick rolls of dust, suddenly scared and
sick. She turned and shouted over her shoulder at Honour, who was in the next
room, and the girl came on the run, stopping suddenly when she saw Amber
glowering there beside the chest. Then she made a demure little curtsy and
opened her eyes wide.

"Yes,
mem?"

"Did
you move this chest?"

"Oh,
no, mem!" Her hands were holding to the sides of her skirts, as though for
moral support.

Amber
decided that she was lying, but thought it most likely
that whatever
her part in the theft had been she had been prompted by Luke. She got up
wearily, discouraged, but still less surprised than she would have expected to
be, and went to the door where a tailor stood waiting with his bill in his
hand. He was most courteous, however, when she told him that she had no money
in the house, and said that he would call again. Mr. Channell had been an
excellent customer and he had no wish to antagonize him.

Luke
came home late, too drunk to talk, so that Amber had no alternative but to
wait. When she woke the next morning, however, the room was empty and the door
into Sally's apartment closed, but she could hear low voices coming from it.
Quickly she slipped out of bed and ran to get into her clothes intending to
dress and then go in to talk to him before he left.

She
had just pulled the sheer linen smock over her head and settled it about her
when Luke opened the door. Quickly she reached for a petticoat. But he crossed
the room swiftly, grabbed her by one elbow and swung her about, jerking the
petticoat out of her hand and flinging it aside.

"Not
so quick there. I hope a husband may be permitted to look at his wife
sometimes?" He eyed her swollen belly. "You're mighty modest—"
he said slowly, his face unpleasant, "for a bitch who was three months
gone with child when she got married."

Amber
stared at him, unmoving, her eyes cold and hard. Suddenly all her worry and
indecision were gone. She felt only a bitter contemptuous hatred so strong it
blotted out every other sense and emotion.

"Is
that what you married me for, you lousy trull? To furnish a name for your
bastard—"

All
at once Amber struck him a hard, furious blow, with all the strength of her
body, across the side of his face and left ear. Before she could even move he
grabbed her by the hair, giving her head a vicious cracking jerk as his free
hand smashed across her jaw. Suddenly terrified, seeing murder in his face,
Amber screamed and Sally Goodman rushed into the room, shouting at him.

"Luke!
Luke! Oh, you fool! You'll spoil everything! Stop it!"

She
began to struggle with him as Amber cowered, not daring to fight back for fear
some blow or kick would kill the baby, trying to protect herself with her hands
and arms. But he struck at her again and again, his hands and fists hitting her
wherever he could, swearing between his teeth, his face livid and writhing with
rage. And then at last Sally succeeded in dragging him off and Amber crumpled
to the floor, retching violently, moaning and gasping and almost hysterical.