The new Warden of the Westmarch Quarter and the members of the Grand Closet had just left Meriel’s dining chamber. The room smelt of Meriel’s clay pipe, the Warden’s cigarillo and Juxon’s violet scent. It had been a long meeting, and now the Marquis got up from his chair and went to open one of the windows. He had not felt the need of fresh air before.
As the wind blew into the room, Juxon said, “You might very easily forbid Mr Thomazin to smoke, Marquis.”
“You mean that I might very easily give up my pipe,” said Meriel. “And also that I ought never to have appointed him Warden. Not to mention that I ought not to open the window and subject you to a draught.”
“Well, Marquis, you might take to smoking cigarillos like a gentleman of quality, and not a horrid clay pipe. Dear me, the truth is I ought never to have permitted you when a child to keep stable company.”
“It was stable company enabled me to find life tolerable.”
“Ah, my dear, you hurt me when you say that.”
Meriel sat down on the windowsill.
“Well, those minutes should be enough to keep you out of mischief this afternoon, Juxon,” he said, swinging one leg.
“And how shall you be keeping yourself out of mischief?”
“Oh, did I not tell you? Wychwood and I are riding out along the coast path — dining at the Green Garter.”
“Alone?”
“Alone. Have you any objection?”
“You know full well what my objection must be.”
Meriel sprang down from his seat. “Juxon, if my peculiarity, my deformity, is so obvious, why is it that Philander, whom you have allowed to be my intimate any time these ten years, has never wondered, never so much as wondered? To say nothing of my servants, what about them?” He hung over his Steward, gripping the side of the table. “Philander is a knowing fellow in his way, sir, more so than Wychwood. I tell you there can be no danger from him. Oh, what am I talking about, why should there be danger, danger of what?”
“Wychwood’s eyes may be opened more easily than those of men who have known you since a child.”
“Well, I tell you that I won’t be ruled by idiotic fears any longer, this is my private business and I mean to have him, have one friend at least besides Philander. And yourself, to be sure.”
“Thank you, Marquis.”
“Juxon, let’s not argue on this head just at present, there is something of real importance I wish to discuss with you before we have a nuncheon.”
Juxon smiled, and opened his mouth to speak, but the Marquis continued regardless, looking steadily at the other’s hairline. “It’s about this scheme of my mother’s to marry me to my cousin. Last night she all but ordered me to come up to scratch, said it was my duty, and so I’ve decided that — that the only thing to be done in the circumstances is to marry another lady — I think Maid Rosalba Ludbrook. You must know I cannot possibly marry Berinthia.” He drew breath. “Marriage with Maid Rosalba will be the greatest possible protection from further difficulties, and I’m telling you this because if I am to elope with her I may need your help. Do you understand?”
“What!” said Juxon when the Marquis had finished.
Meriel stood back. “Well? Will you not help me? Yes, I daresay it sounds as though I’ve run mad, but pray how else am I to escape from this damnable coil?”
“Simply, you must not offer for Lady Berinthia!”
“Oh, it’s as simple as that, is it? Didn’t you hear what I said? Do you not see that I must appear to be as other men?”
Juxon lowered his eyes, licked his lips, and thought quickly. “Her ladyship is the most meddlesome female in the whole of Westmarch,” he said at length in a normal voice, and raised his head to Meriel. “Of course you are quite right in saying that we are in a most shockingly awkward position.” He fiddled with one of his quills.
“Just so.”
“It is of all things the most unfortunate!” Juxon fretted. “But my dear Marquis, you are not bound to the lady and you must know you cannot possibly marry anyone. Maid Rosalba Ludbrook! That dowdy little Maid of Honour? I thought she was betrothed to Mr Marling? Marquis, what is this maggot you have in your head? What a notion! Of course, you are not in earnest. You don’t need a wife!”
“Juxon, listen to me and don’t talk like a fool. If I don’t — make a pretence of marriage now, my mother will try again and again to push me into the arms of some eligible female, and I tell you I cannot face the prospect.” He did not feel able to discuss the problem of Rosalba’s being engaged to another man. That was a complication so unjust that he refused to think of it at all. “The strain is already very great, you know.”
“I know, my dear. Believe me, I know.” Juxon was still thinking hard.
“If I were to marry Berinthia and refuse to share a bed with her, before very long some — some tale of my incapacity would be the talk of Castle West,” the Marquis went on slowly, red in the face. It was as though he were explaining things to himself as much as to Juxon. “She would not think to conceal it, think it reflected ill on her, oh no! As for bedding her, it’s out of the question, do what I will she would guess the truth at once.”
“I understand,” said Juxon slowly. “But have you discussed this …?”
“Now Rosalba — Maid Rosalba — is an innocent, don’t you see? She would never find me out.”
Juxon laid down his pen. “Not perhaps for a month — a year — five years — but you could not keep her from all knowledge of the world, Marquis, and at last she would find out.”
The Marquis realised that this objection was sensible. When Juxon made sensible objections, often it meant that he was on the point of giving way.
“No. Not if I have a proper care. I shall be able to make some pretence at consummation, enough to deceive her thoroughly. Besides — I wish to marry her.” Meriel scratched his chin and remembered more good arguments. Juxon, he saw, was embarrassed by his frankness. “She’s a nice bit of game and no one could think ill of me, as a man, for wanting her — though of course it will be scandalous to marry her. Juxon, you know it’s thought devilish queer that I have no mistress, I’m more than three-and-twenty. I need a woman.”
“Men suppose merely that you prefer your own sex,” said Juxon dryly, to show that he was displeased but not embarrassed by Meriel’s coarse praise of Maid Rosalba.
“My own sex! God help me!” He had suspected this, and he snorted with laughter.
“And will not own it even to yourself. Naturally, it is the greatest nonsense.”
“Oh, the devil,” said Meriel in a calmer voice. “Well, leaving that aside, or rather putting paid to such filthy nonsense, I fancy my credit won’t suffer overmuch if I marry to disoblige my mother. She has made herself odious to half the ton. I can think of several persons who would be delighted!”
“You have never given the appearance of being an undutiful son hitherto, Marquis. You must act in character.”
“I mean to marry Rosalba.”
“My dear Marquis, this is an addle-brained scheme and well you know it. You must live single. I pity you, Marquis, my heart bleeds for you, but indeed, you must! Is my affection, my sympathy, as nothing?” said Juxon. “Am I not a comfort in adversity?”
“And have the whole world speculate about my supposed unnatural tastes?” Meriel was walking round the room; he had found sitting still difficult all his life.
Disappointed that Meriel had not said he loved him as a father, Juxon said, “Marquis Valancourt never married, and so you will have a precedent, my dear.”
“His first heir was a brother whom he liked and besides him he had four nephews. I have Hugo and Florian, who’s a third cousin if you remember, and everyone knows that I detest the pair of them. Oh, I mean to act in character, very unnatural it would be in me not to try to cut them out!”
“Marquis, Marquis.”
“You see, you understand.”
“Yes. Yes. But the risk is too great, must be too great. Dear me, I wonder what your Maid Rosalba would think if she knew of your plans?” He paused, and Meriel searched for words. “Is it possible that in some fashion you have — er — fallen in love with this chit, Marquis?”
“She touches me,” said Meriel, taken aback, “poor little thing.”
“Ah, indeed! Indeed. A common enough case. Poor little thing!” sighed Juxon.
“What is a common enough case? Being a victim of one’s friends?”
“Marquis,” said Juxon, getting up himself, and going to rearrange a vase of forsythia which stood on a side-table, “do you mean to take Wychwood into your confidence about this matter, this afternoon?”
“Why do you ask?”
“I thought it possible that you might.”
“Juxon,” said Meriel, smiling, “you are by far more useful to me than Wychwood. If I have taken you into my confidence, what need have I of him and — and his likely indiscretions? If I can only win you over to my cause, sir! Come.”
The Marquis was disgusted with himself for pleasing Juxon with this gallant little lie. Meriel longed to be supremely honest, straightforward and sharp as a sword.
“Such manliness, such noble sensibility,” said Juxon, touching Meriel’s sleeve, “but my dear Marquis, of course it is impossible.”
*
The great gateway of Castle West faced south, and just beyond it lay the wealthy quarter of Castle-town. Against the north side of the thick castle wall there crouched a little, dirty slum full of Northmarcher immigrants, but this was fairly easy to ignore.
The Marquis and Knight Auriol left by main gate at half-past two, and rode through Castle-town at a strict trot. Meriel rode his favourite mare, Black Belinda, and Wychwood was mounted on a fine bay stallion of nineteen hands. Both wore short, buff-coloured riding coats, and wide hats with the brims turned up at the back.
Castle-town’s most fashionable shopping street, Dolphin Parade, ran alongside the eastern edge of a large public garden known as the Circus, which during the summer was full of carriages, saunterers, and people on horseback. As they came out of the Circus and entered the Parade, Meriel and Auriol caught sight of Maid Rosalba Ludbrook and Maid Dorinda Udall. The two girls, accompanied by one of the Marchioness’s footmen, had just emerged from the circulating library patronised by Saccharissa. Both were looking rather tired.
The Marquis slowed his horse to a walk. He cleared his throat, wondering whether to greet Rosalba, and Auriol, seeing her, looked at him curiously. If I am to marry her, she ought at least to know it! Meriel thought. But he felt unable even to bow to her as he had bowed to all the ladies in the Circus whom he hardly knew.
Rosalba, who had been looking the other way, turned her head and saw him. It was then that Meriel fully realised that the girl had fallen in love with him, though she did not blush or grow pale but only gaped. Till now he had imagined simply that she would prefer him to Mr Marling, and would in any case scarcely feel able to refuse the Marquis of Westmarch.
“I see you have been fulfilling my mother’s commissions, ma’am,” he said after a three seconds’ pause. “She’s a great novel reader, ain’t she? Maid Dorinda, your most obedient!”
Both women curtsied and smiled.
“Yes, Marquis,” said Rosalba.
Auriol greeted the ladies while Meriel looked on.
“We must not detain you,” said the Marquis, as soon as Maid Dorinda had made a remark about the clemency of the weather. He was feeling ludicrously trapped, bound to both Rosalba and Berinthia, and wanted only to be alone with a man. Auriol, looking at him, guessed a part of this. He glanced at Rosalba, whose face was now shiny and pink under her hat, and absent-mindedly dug with his heels at his horse’s flanks.
Bows were exchanged as soon as Wychwood had quietened his stallion, then the two men rode on. Meriel was convinced that Rosalba’s eyes were fixed on his back, but in fact, they were not. Auriol, riding a few paces behind him, did have his eyes upon him.
The brusque way in which the Marquis had broken up their polite little gathering had disturbed him: Westmarch, though he was a little stiff in company, had never struck him as ill-mannered or unkind before. As they cantered out through the triumphal arch which marked the eastern limit of the town, Auriol realised he did not merely like the Marquis. Unreasonably he almost loved young, innocent, friendly Westmarch, had a stronger feeling for him than he had ever had for any man; and though he did not wish him to make a girl who clearly adored him unhappy, he hoped that nothing would ever come of this clumsy flirtation with Rosalba.
Women could bring nothing but pain to a man of sensibility, he would tell Meriel that. Auriol’s face was as flushed as Rosalba’s had been by the time they reached the post-road, in spite of the sharp sea breeze.
Just before they left the road to make for the rutted track which ran along the cliff-top, Auriol slowed down his horse and looked back over his shoulder at Castle West. Meriel, still ahead, soon noticed the absence of cantering hooves behind him, stopped, and rode back quietly to join his friend.
The castle wall looked beige, not grey, in the butter yellow sunlight; and above it, the sky was hazy with smoke. Built high upon the spur of rock which edged the Westmarch fens, Castle West concealed the town on its southern flank from those who saw it from the north. It seemed to be a primitive fortress still, and only the minor blot of the north-side slum spoilt the impression it gave of ruling both the sea and the empty cornfields.
“All we see is yours,” said Auriol. His voice was thinner than usual, carried away by the wind.
“Nonsense,” said Meriel, though Wychwood’s remark was literally true.
The Longmaster fortunes were solidly based on the forty thousand acres of wheat-growing fields which three hundred years ago Meriel’s ancestor had drained and made fertile before seizing the Marquisate. Once Castle West had been an impregnable citadel, linked to dry land by a single causeway, surrounded not only by its wall and sea but by bird-filled reedy marshes.
All the land they could see belonged to him, but Meriel took Wychwood’s remark to be an amiable mockery, implying that his power was or ought to be limitless, and ought to make him magnificently happy.
“I don’t own the sea,” he said, “as I need scarcely tell you.” He did not want to survey his property now, in front of Wychwood, but Auriol, smiling, backed his horse on to the side of the road and, shading his eyes, looked over the flat land with its dykes and ditches and odd lines of elms and oaks. In the far distance, there was the thin white ribbon of the East Canal.
“No one could call it a picturesque landscape,” said Auriol.
“No, indeed! Hardly to be compared with your country,” said Meriel, slightly offended.
“Every man loves his own country best.”
“Ay, very true, though I have never thought this to be peculiarly my country, having been bred up at Longmaster Wood. I’ve no love for the fens, none at all.” He looked down at his horse’s ears.
“But they make for famous good partridge shooting and plentiful rents,” said Auriol, to cheer him up.
“To own the truth, partridge shooting is not my notion of good sport. I had liefer by far go out after wood-pigeons on my own — without so much as a loader. My father used always to say that if a man can shoot a wood-pigeon, he’s a good shot.”
“He was perfectly right.”
Meriel pulled at his horse’s bridle, smiled and said, “We ought to be on our way, I think sir. Come! There’s a village where I mean to leave the horses — near a vastly pretty little cove I should like you to see.”
As they turned their horses round, their legs brushed roughly together. Neither had realised their animals were so close.
The coast-path, which joined a string of fishing villages, ran more than a mile to the west of the main north road. It was too narrow and too rough for any vehicle but a farm-cart, lined with the long dead grass of last winter, with boulders, bushes and drifts of white sand blown up from the shore. Meriel and Auriol galloped along it. The noise of their riding drowned the screeches of the gulls, and the violent exercise prevented thought and conscious pleasure in being alone.
Some fifteen miles from Castle West, Meriel pointed down the cliff and turned back his head to shout, “There!”
They reined in their horses, and took a branching path. A grubby looking village of white-washed, shale-roofed houses, grouped round a tiny harbour, came into view. Meriel, with his loosened hair blowing all over his face, remembered that he must talk about his marriage to Rosalba. It was ridiculous, he told himself, to imagine that because of her, this would be his last pleasant bachelor excursion with Wychwood.
*
“If she were only disengaged!” said Meriel, and silence fell. Both listened to the slap of the sea on the cliff nearby, and the deep roar of its foaming away.
They were sitting together in the cove on a flat slab of black and weed-patched rock, and their feet were buried in the oozing sand. A light, chill wind was blowing, and the tide was advancing slowly towards them as they looked intently out, over water as calm as an ocean’s ever could be.
“But she is engaged, Westmarch! It’s preposterous, this notion of yours.”
To Auriol, Mr Marling seemed to be the main objection. As the Marquis reflected on this, Auriol said slowly: “You seem not even seriously to have considered that she is in fact betrothed.”
“Juxon seemed not to think that the chief objection, to be sure,” said Meriel, with a small unpleasant smile.
“Juxon? You have discussed this with your secretary?”
The Marquis looked him up and down. “You forget he was once my Governor, sir, and for all his faults he was — often proves himself useful to me. I had thought he might very likely help me contrive the match, might be acquainted with some obliging clerk.”
“Yes, indeed, but …”
“Oh, you are perfectly right, sir, I dislike him!”
“Westmarch,” said Auriol, “I don’t believe you have told me the whole truth about this.” He paused, then spoke with amazing roughness. “You of all men wishing to marry for love, I don’t believe it! Why do you not take your cousin? You know your duty, why consult me, as well as your precious Juxon? And if you consider Maid Rosalba’s betrothal no impediment, the scandal as nothing, your mother’s discomfiture as something desirable, why do you not, not go first to Lady Berinthia —”
“To Berinthia?”
“Confide in her that you have formed a lasting attachment, the world is beginning to look askance at marriages of convenience, after all, and I daresay she is a good enough girl at heart for all her Island-Palace ways! Besides, you would owe so much to her, at least, you’d spare her some degree of mortification, and females seem to like nothing so well as earnest confidences from men, so I’ve heard. Then make your arrangements, marry your Rosalba if you must. Why do you not? What is it? Do you indeed love Maid Rosalba as you say?”
“A thousand reasons. You are very much annoyed, Wychwood, ain’t you? I’m sorry for it.” He hesitated. “Indeed, I have not told you the whole truth yet.”
“Oh. Well — do not, unless you wish to,” said Auriol gently. He touched Meriel’s sleeve for a moment, withdrew his hand, looked away to the far end of the little beach.
The Marquis began to cry, quietly and with set features. “Oh, damn Juxon!”
“Is Juxon — forcing you for some reason of his own to make this atrocious match? Westmarch!” He saw the tears. Meriel swung round. “What?”
“I beg your pardon. But I don’t understand you.” He clenched one fist.
“No one can force me to do anything, anything at all sir, d’you hear?” Meriel thumped the rock, self-consciously.
“No. Though the Marchioness can put intolerable pressure upon you, I collect,” said Auriol. Don’t cry, don’t cry, he wanted to say.
“Pray how can you suppose Juxon is forcing me to marry Rosalba — as though such a thing were in his power — when I have told you precisely the opposite?” said Meriel more calmly. “He was against the match, do you not remember?”
“Westmarch, I don’t know, I ought never to have phrased it in just that way. But I have often wondered — especially now, you say you dislike him, yet you confide in him about an intimate matter — whether he perhaps has some hold over you. Forgive me if I am wrong, but as your friend —”
“Yes,” said Meriel softly, “he has, but then — well, I have some hold over him, sir. Indeed, the same hold.”
“I see,” murmured Auriol.
Meriel turned to him. “No, you do not. Try to guess. Try to guess what it could be!”
“How should I guess?” cried Auriol. “Is it some crime you’ve committed together? A crime of — what is this?”
“I love you and I want you, that is all I truly wished to say to you, ever, but did not dare,” said Meriel. He was breathing hard, his breath smelt of brandy from his hip flask. “To hell with Juxon and the whole rabble. It’s you.” So it’s done now, thought Meriel, how strange. “I do love you.”
Auriol’s mouth trembled. For weeks he had dreaded the possibility that he could be physically drawn towards a member of his own sex. Clearly that was what Meriel meant. Not even after the chance meeting with Maid Rosalba had he put the question crudely to himself: are you, are you, drawn to Meriel Longmaster. He had once wished sincerely that Meriel had a twin sister, but had thought that no doubt she would be as insipid as other women.
“Westmarch,” he whispered.
“Do you love me, in some fashion?” demanded Meriel, “Do you, do you sir?” He scrambled up and stood before him, feet sinking deep into the sand. “Say that you do.”
“Yes, yes I love you, but I am no sodomite, Westmarch. Good God!” For a single moment he had perceived the boy as a ravishing girl.
The Marquis gripped his shoulders and loomed over him, and Auriol felt faint with unnatural desire. “God bless you,” Meriel said, and smiled.
“Yes, I love you, but never in that way, God, no,” Auriol whispered, staring up into the other’s glittering, black-lashed, water-grey eyes. “You are my friend. I am not that way inclined! No, Westmarch, leave go of me!”
“My friend. Yes,” said Meriel very gently, touching Auriol’s cheek. He paused and swallowed and stood up straighter. “Do you know sir, you spoke of sodomites, but you need have no fears on that head.” Auriol listened, and Meriel at last removed his hands and vigorously rubbed them. “You said that Juxon had some hold over me and indeed, it’s true. You see as a man I cannot make a normal marriage, that’s why I thought of little Rosalba — Juxon is the only person in the world who knows, who knows that I am deformed, I am not a man, not a true man. I wish you might have cause to fear sodomy from me, indeed.”
There was another quick silence, unbroken even by a wave’s crash. “What do you mean — you are not a man?” said Auriol.
Now both were white-faced with tears in their eyes, but Meriel looked almost triumphant, like a young man drunk on tales of courage and gallantry imagining his own most glorious death.
“I cannot beget children. I am not properly formed. I — I’m not — in short, I am a woman, sir. So you see, you need have no fear, dammit.”
A whining seagull flew past their heads; out to sea a foghorn sounded.
“I am a woman,” said the Marquis, in a loud clear voice. “I am, it’s perfectly true.”