For a moment Roger was silent. A mission to Spain could only mean that the Prime Minister was sending him to Madrid. It would take him a fortnight or three weeks to get there. Isabella’s baby was due to be born in little over a month. The Condesa Fernanunez had said that after Isabella’s lying-in the Sidonia y Ulloas would be certain to spend some months in Madrid making their court to the new King and Queen. So if he went there it was a virtual certainty that he would see Isabella again within six or seven weeks.
“I am sorry, sir,” he said. “But I cannot go to Spain.”
“Cannot!” Mr. Pitt repeated, raising his eyebrows in astonishment. “That, Mr. Brook, is a word which I do not permit those I employ to use to me.”
“Nevertheless,” said Roger, “much as I regret to have to do so, I fear I must use it now. I am extremely sorry, but I cannot go to Spain.”
“Why?” asked the Prime Minister coldly. “Have you committed some crime which would make you non persona grata at the Court of Madrid?”
“No, sir. It is a purely personal matter. I will willingly go anywhere else that you may choose to send me, but not to Madrid.”
“But I do not wish to send you anywhere else. I have special work of urgent importance that I wish you to undertake for me in the Spanish capital.”
“Then, greatly as it distresses me to refuse you, sir, I fear you must find someone else to do it.”
The Prime Minister’s long, thin face paled slightly, and he said with extreme hauteur: “Mr. Brook, your personal affairs cannot be allowed to interfere with the business of the State. Either you will accept the orders that I give you or find another master.”
Roger’s face went whiter than Mr. Pitt’s. He had been shocked into an abruptness that he did not intend. “I—I pray you, sir, reconsider this matter,” he faltered. “I now have excellent contacts in Paris, and have good reason to believe that I am serving you well there. I beg you to send somebody else to Spain and allow me to return to France.”
“On the contrary,” replied Mr. Pitt sharply, “I am by no means satisfied with your activities in Paris. In my opinion you have become involved with the wrong type of people. On the one hand you have entered on what may be termed a conspiracy with the Austrian Ambassador to forward the reactionary projects of the Queen in opposition to the new democratic Government; and that is contrary to the interests of this country. On the other you have entered into an alliance with Monsieur de Talleyrand-Périgord. Having met him when I was in France I have a great admiration for his intellectual gifts; but he has proved himself to be an iconoclast of the most dangerous description, and as he is completely unscrupulous it is certain that he will use you for his own ends.
“Lastly, there is this story of yours about a rapprochement between Monsieur de Mirabeau and the Queen. One might as well try to mix oil and water, and I do not believe there is one grain of truth in it. Except upon purely general matters the information you have been sending is in complete contradiction to that furnished by the British Embassy, and I can only conclude that you are being made a fool of by de Périgord and your other friends.”
Utterly flabbergasted, Roger stared at him in dismay. Then he burst out angrily: “ ’Tis the British Embassy that is being fooled, not I; as time will show.”
“You must pardon me if I doubt that. In any case, I have decided to send another man to Paris. But in the past you have shown much courage and initiative, and I had hopes that you would recover them by a change of scene. Are you, or are you not, prepared to receive my instructions for this mission to Madrid?”
“No!” declared Roger firmly. “I am not.”
The Prime Minister stood up. “Very well then, Mr. Brook. It only remains for me to thank you for your endeavours in the past, and to wish you success in some other career. This evening I will have a word with His Grace of Leeds and request him to have your accounts looked into. If you will wait upon His Grace some time next week he will see to it that you receive any monies that may be due to you.”
Five minutes later Roger found himself in the street. He was utterly bewildered at the course events had taken, and wondered now if he had acted like a fool in refusing the mission to Spain. But, almost at once, he decided that he had been right to do so. Both Isabella and he had suffered too much from their affaire for it to be anything but madness to renew it, and that would have been inevitable if he had given way to Mr. Pitt and gone to the Court of Madrid. She would soon have her child about which to build her life, and for the past two months the vision of her had ceased to obsess him; so of two evils he felt sure he had chosen the lesser. Yet the price he had had to pay filled him with dismay. He could hardly realise it yet, but he was now, as his father the Admiral would have said, “on the beach”. No, worse! For him there was no chance at all of another ship; he was a man without a future.
Mr. Pitt, meanwhile, was much annoyed at Roger’s refusal of his mission, as he had counted on him for it. In less than three years Roger had been instrumental in checking two serious foreign aggressions that threatened to lead to war, and the Prime Minister had felt that his peculiar flair for such situations might help in arresting another.
Having become Prime Minister at the age of twenty-four, Mr. Pitt naturally did not share the common belief that a man must reach middle-age before he could be entrusted with discretionary powers in matters of high policy. There had been no British Ambassador at Madrid since the previous June, so, until a new one could be appointed, he had intended to send Roger there with Letters of Marque which would have given him wide scope for his talents, and he felt aggrieved both at the upsetting of his own plans and that his young protégé should have missed such an excellent chance to distinguish himself. On the other hand, as he knew much more about Mr. Brook’s private affairs than that young man supposed, he was not altogether sorry that his insubordination had offered the opportunity to give him a sharp lesson.
It was not that he wished to reduce Roger to a cautious, hum-drum collector of information; as to have attempted it would have deprived him of the use of his most valuable assets—imagination and initiative—but he did want him to develop a greater sense of responsibility regarding his work.
Mr. Pitt had no personal animus against Madame Marie Antoinette, but since her removal to the Tuileries he had had no confirmation of Roger’s story that her life was in danger, and he saw no reason why he should pay him to further her intrigues.
In the matter of de Périgord he had been much influenced by the opinion of his old preceptor and friend Bishop Tomline, and he recalled the positive horror that had shaken the poor Bishop when he had learned of de Périgord’s bill to rob the Church of all its property in France. As a fiscal measure there might be sound arguments for such a step; but for an ordained priest to propose it had seemed to both of them a perfidy which put him for ever outside the pale. As for the story of his midnight visit to the Comte d’Artois, there was no possibility of checking that, as His Highness had taken refuge with his wife’s relatives at the Court of Turin, but Mr. Pitt did not believe it for one moment.
The intelligence about de Mirabeau sounded even more improbable. Billy Pitt was of aristocratic descent only on his mother’s side, but the truly noble mentality of his great father, and a very unusual upbringing, had combined to make him the most fastidious of aristocrats; and he regarded de Mirabeau as a renegade to his order. According to British Embassy reports the King and Queen of France continued to hold receptions in the Tuileries, to transact business and be advised by the same Ministers as they had had while at Versailles; so, as yet, Mr. Pitt had no true appreciation of their situation. In consequence, to anyone of his haughty nature it was inconceivable that Madame Marie Antoinette could have brought herself to have dealings with any demagogue, let alone one having de Mirabeau’s debauched and venal history.
The Prime Minister had always regarded Roger as rather a shrewd young man, so he was somewhat surprised that he should have allowed himself to be taken in to such an extent; and could only account for it by the supposition that outside interests had prevented him giving his full mind to his proper duties. In any case, he had for some time been of the opinion that Roger’s talents could be used to better advantage at a Court than in a democratic society; and William Grenville, Mr. Pitt’s trusted friend, had suggested that one William Augustus Miles should be sent to Paris to replace him. Mr. Miles had got on very well with the Dutch burghers while acting as a secret diplomatic agent in Holland, so no doubt he would prove equally successful in winning the confidence of the bourgeois politicians from whom the new governing class in France were mainly drawn. He might not have the debonair charm of Mr. Brook, but he was much better qualified to operate in the Paris of the new régime.
Nevertheless, the long-sighted Mr. Pitt had no intention of denying himself Roger’s services permanently. He considered that the young man had more than proved his value in the past and believed that, given the right opportunities, he might do so many times again. In the meantime it would do him a lot of good, and make him more cautious in the future about cultivating contacts of such dubious value, if he were left to cool his heels for a little with no prospect of employment. In due course a chastened Mr. Brook would, no doubt, be very happy at being given another chance to exercise his wits and courage to better purpose.
Mr. Pitt emptied the remaining contents of the decanter of Port into his glass, and having no British Ambassador in Madrid to instruct, began to draft a letter to the Spanish Ambassador in London, to the effect that an insult having been done to the British Flag in distant Nootka Sound, he could not even consider any discussion of the reasons alleged by the Spaniards for their act until the wrong had been acknowledged and full reparation for it made.
Roger, knowing nothing of Mr. Pitt’s intentions, walked slowly across the Green Park to Amesbury House. There he found his baggage just being delivered from the coach station, and was roused a fraction from his half-stunned state by the welcome news that his friend Lord Edward Fitz-Deverel was in residence.
“Droopy Ned”, as his lordship had been nicknamed at school from the permanent stoop that afflicted his tall, frail figure, spent most of his life cultivating three hobbies: the collection of antique jewellery, experimenting with Eastern drugs, and studying ancient religions. That day he was devoting to the last of these, and on going up to his rooms Roger found him employed in carefully unwinding the hundreds of yards of bandage that encased an Egyptian mummy. On a table beside him there were already over a dozen little amulets that he had found among the successive layers of wrappings, and his long delicate hands were trembling with excitement as he picked out another.
Seeing his friend’s absorption in his task, Roger restrained his impatience to begin talking about his woes; and, when they had greeted one another, sat down to watch the completion of the business. At length the brown parchment-covered body of a short, slender woman was revealed. Her mummy was in an excellent state of preservation, having a cavity only below the left ribs where the flesh had gone to powder, and when Droopy tapped it on the chest it gave out a hollow note. He remarked that his agent had had to pay an Arab merchant two hundred guineas for it; and that owing to the superstitious fears of sailors at having a corpse on board he had had to pay a Greek captain a further hundred to smuggle it to England for him disguised as a bale of carpets; but he was well satisfied with his purchase. Only then did Roger announce the shattering result of his interview with Mr. Pitt.
Immediately, Droopy was all concern, and they set about discussing Roger’s future. Financially he had had an excellent nine months, as with the money Madame Marie Antoinette had given him, the balance of the sum he had received from Isabella, his accumulated allowance from his father and what was due to him from the Foreign Office, he reckoned that he had the better part of fourteen hundred pounds to his credit. So after they had been talking for a while, he said:
“Fortunately I am well in funds, so in no situation where I must take the first thing that offers from immediate necessity to earn my living. The things that distress me most are the breaking of my association with Mr. Pitt, and the unlikelihood of ever obtaining another opening which would afford me both the means and opportunity to continue my travels.”
Droopy scratched his long nose and said thoughtfully: “It would not surprise me greatly if after a while Mr. Pitt sends for you again. Should you prove right in your contention that the information you have sent from Paris is better founded than that supplied by the British Embassy, the fact will emerge in due course. ’Tis even probable that the Prime Minister repudiated your beliefs simply because they do not fit in with his own preconceptions. I doubt if in recent weeks he can have followed events in France at all closely, as such time as he would devote to foreign affairs must have been occupied with the far more serious developments in Belgium.”
“More serious!” Roger exclaimed. “Oh come, Ned!”
“Egad, man, they are so regarded in England. The fall of the Bastille and the attack by the mob on Versailles are now half a year old. The general opinion here is that the most dangerous phase of the French Revolution is over, and that in a few more months the nation will settle down under a Liberal Constitution. But the troubles in Belgium came to a head only just before Christmas, and their outcome still lies in the balance.”
“I had heard that there have been riots in the Low Countries in favour of a Republic, but have been too occupied to acquaint myself with the details. Have the Belgians also established a democratic form of government?”
Droopy’s wide mouth opened in a grin. “You are indeed out of touch with what we look on here as the burning question of the moment. I had best give you the gist of it. The revolution in Belgium has been of an entirely different character from that in France, and has sprung from a diametrically opposite cause. For a long time past the Emperor Joseph II has been endeavouring to introduce a great variety of reforms in the Austrian Netherlands; but the people appear to prefer their own time-honoured way of life, that has existed almost unchanged since the Middle Ages. The root of the trouble lies in the Emperor’s Germanic passion for uniformity. Each Province formed a miniature State differing in its constitution and administration from the others. He wished to do away with all these inconsistencies so that everyone should enjoy the same degree of liberty. He wanted all the priests to be educated in one central Seminary at Louvain; and he wanted the Kermesses—as the great Fairs are called—of all the different towns to be held on the same day.”
Blinking his weak blue eyes, Droopy went on: “The edicts from distant Vienna ordering these innovations met with increasing resistance, until last November the Estates of Brabant and Hainault defied the Emperor and refused to vote further taxes. On Joseph resorting to disciplinary measures the normally pacific burghers took up arms against him. In December they threw off the Austrian yoke and proclaimed their country as the Republic of the United States of Belgium. At the moment the Emperor is still in negotiation with his rebellious Netherlanders, but he is known to be mobilising an army for their suppression. Meanwhile they are endeavouring to secure armed support against him from the Prussians and the Dutch.”
Roger knew that it had for long been a cardinal factor in British Foreign policy that the Low Countries, and particularly the great port of Antwerp, should remain in the hands of a power incapable of using them for offensive purposes; so he felt that Droopy’s guess—that Mr. Pitt had recently been concentrating his interest on events in Belgium to the exclusion of those in France—was very probably right. But, if it were so, that still did not alter the fact that he had been dismissed for refusing to go to Spain; and the problem now uppermost in his mind was whether to start seeking some new permanent career right away or first to take things easy for a while at Lymington.
Knowing his friend’s highly strung nature, Droopy was much against his going to the country, as he feared that there he would brood over his dismissal. He urged that, while there was no hurry to settle on anything, Roger ought to remain in London, as only in it was he likely to meet people in a situation to offer him some post suitable to his talents, and that if he could first collect a few ideas to think over he would later enjoy a visit to his home much more.
In consequence, instead of staying at Amesbury House for only a few nights, Roger remained on; and, in the company of the foppish, short-sighted, but extremely astute Droopy, once more entered the idle round of pleasure that made up the life of London society.
In the latter half of February fresh impetus was given to interest in the Belgian situation by the arrival of the news of the Emperor Joseph’s death; and few vigorous, intelligent, Liberal-minded Monarchs have died in such sad circumstances. He had started out with high hopes of consolidating his vast, scattered dominions and bringing liberty to all his subjects. Diplomatic defeats had prevented him from achieving the former and the backwardness of the peoples he governed prevented the latter. At the time of his death Belgium had declared her independence; the nobles of Hungary had forced him to cancel all his reforms with the single exception of the abolition of serfdom; he was at war with Turkey in the south; his only ally, Catherine II of Russia, was in no situation to help him; and the Turks had just concluded an alliance with the Prussians, who, in conjunction with the Poles, were now massing an army with the intention of invading Austria from the north. So it looked as if the whole Habsburg Empire was about to fall into ruins.
He was succeeded by his younger brother, Leopold of Tuscany; and Roger wondered if even the outstanding abilities of the equally Liberal-minded but much more cautious Grand Duke would prove up to pulling the Empire out of the mess it was in. He wondered, too, if the beautiful Donna Livia had accompanied Leopold to Vienna; and recalled his brief affaire with her as one of the most amusing and delightful adventures of its kind that fortune had ever sent him.
Early in March his memories of another titian-haired lady with whom he had dallied, although in a more discreet manner, were revived with much greater directness. At a ball at Chandos House he ran into Amanda Godfrey.
Somehow he had never associated her with London, so he was all the more struck by seeing her for the first time in such a setting and dressed in the height of fashion. Her tall figure and graceful carriage lent themselves well to fuller petticoats and a higher headdress than she ever wore in the country; yet she retained her natural, imperturbable manner, which made her even more outstanding among the affected young women who were flirting their fans and sniffing their salts near by.
Roger at once asked her for a dance, and she said with her usual vagueness that she had no idea if she had any left, but would be enchanted if he cared to snatch her sometime during the evening; so snatch her he did, and to avoid possible trouble with other claimants to her company they sat out three dances running in an alcove off the refreshment-room.
After they had been talking for some twenty minutes she said: “Roger, my dear, you are mightily improved since we last met, and I am happy indeed to find you so much more like the man you were a twelvemonth back.”
“That is easy to explain,” he laughed. “I am no longer in love. Except, of course, in being newly smitten with your fair self.”
“You foolish fellow,” she smiled languidly. “But I am glad to hear it. That you are no longer in love, I mean. ’Tis a plaguey wearing business.”
He sighed. “There is certainly no other to compare with it for depriving a man of his normal faculties, and reducing him to a morose, hag-ridden shadow of himself.”
“Or a woman either. I pray God that I may never again be afflicted with the disease in virulent form.”
“So you, too, have known that agony?”
She nodded. “I thought I would ne’er recover when first we met, but your gallant attentions over that Christmas did much to help me. They were flattering without being serious enough to cause me any perturbation, so the very tonic needed to restore my amour propre.”
“I am glad,” said Roger seriously, “that I should have been even the unconscious means of assisting your recovery.”
“I would that I could have done as much for you,” she replied, “but your amour propre needed no restoring.”
“Your kindness in allowing me the status of a favoured beau last summer, while knowing that my heart was set elsewhere, was truly generous, and helped me mightily.”
“Nay; not in the healing of your wound.” She shook her head, then went on thoughtfully: “I had been near desperate with love for a man who would have none of me. He thought me a fool. Mayhap he is right in that, for I know well that at times I both say and do the most plaguey stupid things. ’Twas my hard lot to have to play gooseberry to a cousin of mine while he courted and married her. She has a bookish cleverness that I shall ever lack; but a mean, petty mind; and that made it all the harder.
“Then there came Christmas at Lymington, and yourself. I knew full well that your intentions were not serious; but you were the handsomest beau in the district, so well enough to flirt with. And it was, I think, the very fact that you were not obsessed with my physical attractions that made you talk to me the more. I mean, apart from the usual persiflage of gallantry. You would not recall it, but you asked my opinion upon a hundred matters, ignored my vagueness about things that are of little account, and showed a genuine interest in all I had to say. On one occasion you said to me: ‘ ’Tis the combination of such femininity with so clear and deep a mind as yours, Amanda, that enables great courtesans to rule Empires.’ Oh, Roger, had you been the ugliest man on earth I could have kissed you for that!”
He placed a hand gently over hers. “My dear, I vow to you I meant it.”
She smiled. “The way you said it at the time convinced me of that; and although clever I shall never be, no one will ever again make me believe that at bottom I am a fool. But your case last summer was very different. You were in love with a woman who returned your love, but debarred by circumstances from attaining your mutual desires. Consciously or unconsciously I could do nothing to aid you in such a pass. Yet I find you now recovered. Tell me; how have you managed to free yourself from the grip of this ghastly malady that is praised by poets with such stupendous unreason?”
“I hardly know myself,” Roger confessed. “In part, perhaps, ’tis because when I was last abroad I met the lady of my love again, under unexpected and most favourable conditions. Yet since we were little more than a week together ’tis no case of having satiated our passion, on either side. I moved heaven and earth in an attempt to persuade her to fly with me, but she would not; and her refusal was no slight upon her love, as she considered herself tied from the fact that in a few weeks now she is to bear her husband a child.”
“You could rejoin her later; visit her from time to time and seize such opportunities as offer to renew your transports.”
“Nay. What kind of a life would that be? ’Tis better, far, that she should build a new life round her child; and that I should consider myself free to marry.”
“If you marry—even had you been able to marry her—do you believe that you would remain faithful to a wife?”
Roger laughed. “You have me there! I fear ’tis most unlikely.”
“I am glad you have the honesty to admit it,” Amanda smiled, “for all I have ever learnt of men has led me to believe that ’tis against nature in them to be monogamous. Granted then that you would be unfaithful to a wife, why should you not marry if you have a mind to it, and still at intervals indulge your passion for your Spanish mistress, rather than for some other?”
“Your logic is unanswerable,” Roger replied, after a moment. “But recently my circumstances have changed, and in future ’tis probable that my work will lie here in London. Were I to marry, ’tis hardly likely that my wife would be agreeable to my going gallivanting alone on the Continent.”
“Then she would be a ninny,” Amanda declared serenely. “A wife whose husband deceives her only when he is abroad should count herself lucky. At least she is spared the sweet innuendoes of her friends when his latest affaire becomes common knowledge in her own circle. I only pray that I may be sent a husband who betakes himself once or twice a year to foreign parts and confines his infidelities to his absences from England.”
Roger sighed. “How wise you are, my dear Amanda. Yet even had I the good fortune to marry a wife so clear-sighted as yourself I believe it would be a great mistake to follow the course you propose. The nature of my Spanish love is so intense that I feel sure she would consider herself desperately aggrieved did I marry another. And though I am in no situation to marry at the moment I have recently felt more than once that I would like to settle down in a home of my own. So ’tis best for both her and me that we should not meet again.”
“If you now feel that, you are cured.”
“Yes; for I no longer think of her with any frequency, and am able once more to regard life as a joyous adventure.”
“Think you that you are now inoculated of the fell disease?”
“I trust so. It went so deep that ’tis unlikely a similar madness will seize upon me for some other woman, at least for some years to come.”
“I feel that, too; for my love also was most desperate while it lasted, and I’ll not willingly surrender the freedom of my mind again. In that I intend to model myself on Georgina Etheredge; though I am not of a temperament ever to become quite so reckless a wanton as her hot, half-gipsy blood has made her. She has reduced love to a fine art. Whenever she finds herself becoming too deeply attached to a man she dismisses him and takes another.”
Roger glanced up in surprise. “I did not know you knew Georgina.”
“I met her first when she was married to Humphrey Etheredge, then again on her return to England last October. I stayed with her for a while at Stillwaters and found her positively enchanting.”
“She is my oldest and dearest friend.”
“I know it; and you had written to her most gloomily from Lymington last summer, mentioning me in your letter. ’Twas the discovery that we were both worried on your account which formed a special bond between us; for the ravishing Georgina is not normally given to making women friends.”
“I have not seen her now for close on a year; and ’twas a sad blow to me to learn on my return from France last month that she had gone abroad again.”
“She and her father left early in December to spend the worst months of the year in Italy; but they should be back soon, as she told me that she could not bear the thought of missing another spring at Stillwaters.”
Roger nodded. “ ’Tis a heavenly place. When Georgina returns we must arrange a visit to her.”
For the third time since they had been sitting there the violins struck up, so Amanda said: “Roger, my dear, we must dally no longer, or the number of my irate disappointed partners will be greater than even my notoriously poor memory will excuse.”
As he escorted her back to the ballroom he asked if he might call upon her, and she replied: “Do so by all means. I am as usual with my Aunt Marsham in Smith Square; but let it be within the next two days, as we leave on Thursday to stay with friends at Wolverstone Hall in Suffolk.”
On the Wednesday Roger had himself carried in a sedan down to Westminster, and took a dish of tea with Amanda and Lady Marsham. The latter had mothered Amanda ever since she had been orphaned as a child of four, and Roger had met her on numerous occasions when she was staying with her brother, Sir Harry Burrard, at Walhampton. There was a striking family resemblance between Amanda and her aunt. Age had increased Lady Marsham’s figure to august proportions, but she was still a very handsome woman of fine carriage, and she had the same effortless charm of manner. In her vague way she at first took Roger for someone else, but welcomed him none the less heartily when her mistake was discovered.
Nevertheless the visit was not an altogether satisfactory one, as the two ladies were in the midst of packing. Their mutual untidiness had turned Lady Marsham’s boudoir, in which they took tea, into a scene of indescribable confusion, and frequent interruptions by the servants to hunt there for articles that had been mislaid played havoc with all attempts to carry on an intelligent conversation.
It was perhaps Amanda’s departure for the country that subconsciously decided Roger to pay a visit to his mother. His own enquiries and those of Droopy Ned had so far not produced any suitable opening, and while he was anxious not to waste longer than necessary before starting a new career, he had funds enough to keep him as a modish bachelor for two or three years; so there would have been little sense in his jumping into a blind alley simply to salve his conscience.
On arriving at Lymington he found, to his distress, that his mother was far from well. Lady Marie had for some months been suffering from pains in her inside, and although the doctors had failed to diagnose the cause of the trouble they feared a tumour. She had not taken to her bed, but tiredness now brought on the pain, and having always led a very active life she naturally found it hard to have to limit herself in the time that she could now spend in her stillroom and garden.
Roger had meant to spend only a few nights at Lymington but, in the circumstances, he prolonged his visit to a fortnight; and, seeing his solicitousness for her, she took occasion one evening to speak to him more seriously than she had done for a long time past.
She disclosed how worried she had been about him in the summer, so he told her about his affaire with Isabella; and also that it was unlikely that he would be going abroad again, as his work for the Government had been terminated. With her usual tact she refrained from telling him that she had guessed him to be involved in some foreign entanglement, or remarking how pleased she was to hear that he was now free of it; but she expressed considerable concern about his future, and discussed various possibilities with him. However, the trouble—as had been the case with Roger on his first return from France two and a half years before—was that the combination of qualities he possessed did not particularly fit him for any career outside the fighting services.
It was not until he kissed her good night that she said quietly: “I do not wish to alarm you, Roger; and when next you write to your father in no circumstances are you to put ideas into the dear man’s head. But I do not think I shall live to make old bones.”
He knew that she was confirming his own half-formed fears, that her illness was serious; so in a swift effort to comfort her he kissed her again and pressed her very tightly in his arms. She smiled up at him, patted his cheek and murmured:
“Don’t worry, my lamb. I feel sure God will spare me to you for a year or two yet. But before I go I would like to see you happily settled, if that be possible. Mind, I would not for the world have my wish over-weigh your own judgment in any case where you feel an inclination, yet have doubts. I mean only that should you find the right girl, I beg you not to hesitate on account of your present lack of employment, or the smallness of your income. A man of your parts cannot fail to climb high, so ’tis but a matter of finding a good ladder; and I can vouch for it that in the meantime your father would see to it that you did not lack for money.”
When, a few minutes later, Roger reached his own room, his thoughts turned to Amanda. If he married her, how overjoyed his mother would be! But would Amanda be willing to marry him? In view of their conversation a fortnight back he thought she probably would. Neither of them had any illusions left about unreasoning passion; both had been burnt by it too badly. She did not wish to experience that kind of love again; nor did he. Both of them wanted something more gentle but more enduring. Georgina held a special place in his life that no one else could ever fill; but, Georgina apart, he liked Amanda as a person better than any other woman he had ever met. Mentally they had been attracted to one another from the beginning; quite early in their game of make-believe they had toyed with passion just enough to know that each was capable of raising in the other swift desire, and between them, like two sturdy trees, there had grown up trust and genuine affection.
Before he went to sleep, Roger decided that if Amanda felt the same way about him as he did about her, they would have a far better prospect of enjoying many years of happiness together than the great majority of couples that got married. Yet he refrained from committing himself to any definite course of action. Amanda was due back from Suffolk at the end of the month. He would take an early opportunity to see her again and unostentatiously reclaim his position as one of her beaux. After that he would leave the development of matters on the knees of the gods and to Amanda.
But, as always happened when a fresh line of thought came to him, his mind gripped, exploited and would not let it go; so by the time he arrived in London, on the night of March 20th, he was looking forward to Amanda’s return with the utmost eagerness, and was highly conscious that in the next few weeks life might hold a new excitement and a new meaning for him.
Then, on the morning of the 22nd, a letter was delivered to him at Amesbury House. He saw by the franking that it came from Portugal; next second he recognised the careful, angular writing as Isabella’s.
With unsteady hands he opened it, and with his eyes jumping from line to line swiftly took in its contents. The paragraphs were not many but every one of them aroused his deepest emotions.
She loved him more than all the world. She was desperately unhappy. She believed her life to be in danger. Would he endeavour to reach Madrid by mid-April and snatch her from hell to the paradise of his protection?