The Marquis of Westmarch (14 page)

“I would to God you had been a girl,” repeated Saccharissa.

“No, ma’am, you don’t,” said Meriel, as the chairmen at last came in.

For a moment both contemplated irony in silence, and Berinthia and Hugo thought how remarkably alike they looked. Then the Marchioness’s servants coughed, and she was eased into her chair, and Meriel, helping, was particularly tender and grave. Her heart beat fast. She was still not wholly secure.

Meriel turned to Hugo when the Marchioness and her retinue had gone. She said, “Poor Mamma!” Her words did not sound natural.

“Indeed,” replied her cousin.

Meriel sat down in Berinthia’s place on the window-seat. “Tell me now what it was you were hinting at, Hugo. Not but what I have some ideas.”

“Ah. Shall I be entirely frank?”

“If you please,” said Meriel.

Hugo examined his snuffbox with care. “Westmarch, I do not know whether your friendship with Knight Auriol is really such as — precludes your taking pleasure in the company of females, but your own — shall we say womanishness, is beginning to cause remark.”

It took Meriel a few sickly seconds to understand that Hugo did not suspect her of being a woman, but of being a male homosexual.

“It — my friendship is not. You may rest assured on that head at least,” she managed to say.

He smiled. “No one could be so Gothic as to have the least objection to the
fact
if it were, coz — except perhaps Mistress Musidora. But I advise you to say nothing about this vow of yours, whatever the truth of the matter. It does sound so very unlikely, you see. You would be thought a hypocrite, Westmarch. You would be despised for trying to make excuses. Surely you would not wish to appear cowardly and ill-bred, or to
confirm
vulgar suspicion?”

Longmaster stood up and went to lounge by the door. As he toyed with his lorgnette and regarded Meriel, he could not resist adding, “And cousin — vastly grateful as I must be to you for not thinking it your duty to beget an heir — don’t you think you could marry and make some fortunate female your wife in name only? To preserve the proprieties.”

The new love-bloom had gone from Meriel’s face: she was stiff, cold and wary, her old self. “You go beyond the line, Hugo,” she said.

“My dear Westmarch!”

She jumped down from her seat, walked across the room and brought her hand down flat on a chair-back, trying to control herself. Longmaster thought that perhaps the trouble was Knight Auriol did not share Westmarch’s tastes.

“Is Wychwood indeed suspected of sodomy?” Meriel said. “Whatever my own case, what possible evidence could be
brought against him? He’s had women in love with him since his wife died to my certain knowledge — all of them women of the first consideration — the Conybeares’ sister even, good God!”

“Exactly so! Though, as doubtless you know, he had the reputation of an imp — a
virtuous
man. But even you must know that a determined brewer of scandal-broth needs very little evidence indeed. The evidence of a man’s seeming chastity, for instance.”

Meriel faced him and said, “
You
are the most determined brewer of scandal-broth, Hugo. Get out! We’ll abide by your plan, very well, since Berinthia seems to prefer it, poor girl, but if
one
word
about your lies reaches my ears I’ll — God damn you! I don’t know what tales you’ve been putting about, trying to damage Wychwood’s reputation, and I don’t care, but I’ll be damned if I’ll endure any more of your insolence, and your hatred, yes! What a waste you have made of your life. Go on, get out!” Wychwood was her darling, chaste till she seduced him, and she would not have his enchanting chastity held against him in Hugo’s crude worldly way.

“But I do not choose to
get
out
,” said Hugo, the side of his mouth twitching violently at ‘what a waste you have made of your life’. He hated the sudden echo of the quarrel they had had in the winter and which Meriel had won, over his desire to be Warden of Westmarch Quarter. It had taken place in this same room, with dark snow outside, he remembered. “Nor do I see why I should. I have done what was in my power to serve you, by taking that chit off your hands,
your
lovely bride, cousin, and I sought merely to give you the benefit of my advice.”

“You’ve given me enough,” said Meriel, and reached for the bell pull.

Before she could ring, Esmond came into the room, and said, gazing placidly at the angry cousins, “My lord Marquis, Knight Auriol is in the Gilt Saloon.” He bowed out.

Hugo laughed, unpleasantly, then was a little ashamed of himself.

“You’re ridiculous, cousin,” Meriel said, and Hugo looked at her. To his astonishment she was smiling again, confident once more. “I consider your suspicion a fine jest, I promise you — you’ll never know why, but I do!”

“You have not yet offered your felicitations on my engagement,” said Hugo, curiously.

“Why, I do felicitate you. She’s a fine girl, and I hope you will make her a better husband than I should have done. She deserves one.”

“Oh, I imagine I shall do that, Westmarch!”

Good-humouredly enough, they parted. Meriel escorted Longmaster to the dining room and seeing one of the footmen there, said, with a glance at Hugo, “Pray tell Knight Auriol to join me in my closet directly. Goodbye, cousin!”

The Marquis walked quickly back to her closet, threw open the window, and waited impatiently for Auriol to arrive. When he came she hugged him tightly, and he buried his nose in her hair and drank in the smell of her while she felt him. They had not been alone together for four days, but though they could be sure of remaining undisturbed in the closet, it would not be safe to make use of her bed.

After a couple of kisses, Meriel told him to sit down, and then gave him the gist of the family conversation and of Longmaster’s remarks, which did not please him. She wondered slightly at his grim expression, for this being suspected of homosexuality was a great protection against real danger, and Auriol had never seemed to be especially prejudiced against homosexual men.

“I was pretty much diverted,” Meriel said, “but I see you are not.”

“Oh, how can I object?” Auriol snapped. “No, I am not diverted. Don’t tell me it is an excellent thing in the circumstances, because I know it, but I cannot like it. Oh, damn it. It’s not for myself I’m distressed, Meriel, but for you — I know it should not be so, but it is! I cannot endure people to think you something — other than what you are, to see you as something lesser — and yet it’s unavoidable.”

She was glad that he did not think she should be thought something lesser. “
I
was angry with him only because I disliked the thought of such untruths being spread about
you
.”

He pulled a face. “Well, if we neither of us mind for ourselves but only for the other — still, I hope that one day I shall have it in my power to make your cousin deuced uncomfortable, Meriel, and so I tell you.”

She patted him and went to look out of the window. “I have it in my power, I suppose. Pity I cannot cut him out of the succession. He was surprised, I know —” She thought for a moment, and then said in a low and ugly voice, “I daresay he secretly suspects me of being incurably impotent, thinks that the reason, thought he was paying me a vast compliment in talking in that foul style about the pair of us. Because it’s better to be sodomite than impotent, after all! No, only impotence could prevent my trying for an heir, sodomite or no.”

“Meriel,” said Auriol, getting up and putting an arm round her shoulders. “Don’t be distressed. My love.”

“Ah.”

“This is a vile place,” Auriol told her: even though he was now looking out over a most beloved spot, Meriel’s tiny private garden, which she insisted be left to itself to grow wild. A month ago they had enjoyed their first wholly successful session of lovemaking, the first unspoilt by clumsiness or pride or indecision, behind the elder bushes.

“I know. But we’ve been very happy, have we not? I could never have imagined being happy at Castle West.”

“Yes, it’s very odd. Only I wish very much we might be more in each other’s company. Meriel, if everyone supposes already there’s more between us than friendship, why do we not give them some reason for their suspicions? We may as well make the best of it we can.”

“What?” she said.

He explained. “Should we not go to Longmaster Wood? Only for a short while, to be sure. Meriel,” he said, seeing objections on her lips, “you might contrive it if you wished, I know, and if we have been happy here, surrounded by all we both dislike, how much happier should we be there, where you belong?” And I, too, he thought.

After a moment, Meriel smiled and squeezed his hand. “Little one. Very well. Directly after the Midsummer Ball. I can deny you nothing, after all. I’ll never deny you anything.”

“Oh, won’t you!”

Grinning shyly at each other in the happiness of conspiracy, and in the knowledge that they were the most unusual people in the world, they embraced under the portrait of Meriel’s father.
For the first time since he learned to love Meriel, Auriol did not feel ill at ease in its presence. He looked at it, swaying the Marquis in his arms, and noticed that the daylight on the varnish quite obscured the face.

Meriel might still not like to think of herself as a female, but at least she no longer tortured herself with the idiot belief that her sex had been imposed as a punishment for treating Elphinstone with arrogance only just before his death. Meriel had forgiven herself, and so she should have done, long ago, said Auriol to himself. He did not like to think of the thoroughly charmless, thoughtless, domineering and conventional young man Elphinstone would have made of Meriel had she indeed been a boy, and had no accident killed him in time.

Once a year, on the night of the Midsummer Ball, Meriel was publicly elected to the Marquisate of Westmarch by the Members of the Grand Closet, the senior officers of the Western Guard, and the chief place-holders of Castle West. In theory, her office was not hereditary, though the last man to have voted against the reigning Longmaster had been executed for high treason, two hundred and fifty years before. She was certain of holding her own.

Every year since her father’s death, Meriel’s fantasy had been that at least one of the electors who called out her name would look at her, and see she had no right to hold an honourable position. Every single person at Castle West, watching from a gallery, would know at the same moment that she was not Elphinstone’s heir. Until now, election day had been the most detested of all days in the year to Meriel; while to Juxon, it had always been the year’s high point.

As Steward of Castle West, it fell to Juxon to orchestrate the Marquis’s re-election. Juxon’s office was an ancient one, which had declined sharply in importance over the past century; but though he was little more than the overlord of the castle servants in everyday life, he still had a ceremonial part to play. He had the casting vote at the annual re-election, took precedence directly after the Colonel of the Guard, escorted Meriel on all state occasions, and enjoyed odd rights and privileges which were relics of the time when Castle West had been a rude fenland citadel, and the Steward its absolute ruler. Juxon loved his office, and declared he would not abandon it for any modern one.

Auriol now had a place at Castle West, for Meriel had appointed him Keeper of the Muniment Room at a stipend of seven hundred crowns a year, but it was not sufficiently important to give him the
right to vote for her. On the night of the ceremony, he watched from a balcony with the other ball-guests, and though he was wedged in at the back between two young women who chattered, his height gave him a good view of the proceedings down below.

The Moon Gallery in which both election and ball were held occupied one whole side of Marquis’s Court, and was considered to be the most beautiful room at Castle West. It was a high unfurnished chamber, floored with pale marble, painted white, and lined on each side with seven long windows. The spectators’ balcony where Auriol now sat ran round the whole hall, beneath a domed ceiling patterned with shining crescent moons. Illumination came only from chandeliers, hung so low that their candles were reflected in the windows’ naked glass: they were of silver, each wrought in the shape of eight branches of a rowan tree, with lights grouped to remind the admirer of flowers.

The greater number of the Marquis’s guests paid very little attention to the ceremony, which began with the assembling of the electors in a semi-circle opposite the main doors. They whispered and smiled and adjusted each other’s dresses, as in a loud high voice, Juxon read out a proclamation couched in archaic language. It contained many references to the Marquis’s duty of maintaining the glories of a revolutionary government under God which had passed away a long time ago, and had little of importance to say about the Marquises who had effectively abolished it. A few spectators, Auriol noticed, took a degree of pleasure in the spectacle down on the floor. No one mocked, but the occasion was not thought to be a grave one, like a Marquis’s funeral. Comparing Westmarch’s brief acknowledgement of its origins with the up-to-date formalities of the Island Palace, Auriol was impressed. He thought each elector bore himself with amiable dignity, Juxon in his daring pink hair excepted.

He knew that the officers of state intended to pay real homage to Meriel and all she was supposed to stand for in a few minutes’ time. Yet later in the evening they would be calling her ‘Westmarch’, and making ribald remarks when she sat down at the gaming-table or led Berinthia Winyard out to dance. This easy variety, which was her freedom, made her position tolerable to Meriel; but constantly treated at one moment as the liege-lord of all, and the next as something very little different from her
fellows, she must, thought Auriol, have enough to confuse her in her life without a change of sex. He had not considered the matter in this way before, he had only been charmed by the effects of inconsistency on Castle West and on Meriel, effects which he saw for a moment as chaotic, threatening.

Juxon came to the end of his proclamation, and the talk on the balcony died down. It was not considered well-bred to chatter after this point in the proceedings.

“Gentlemen of Westmarch,” said the Lord Steward, “whom will you have?”

The forty-two called out, “Meriel Longmaster!” and Auriol was surprised at the leaping of his own heart at the sound of her name, at the sharp and marvellous reminder that he knew and loved her for what she was.

The Marquis, unaccompanied, threw open the great doors of the Moon Gallery and walked in. Her appearance caused a stir.

“My love, the
oddest
thing!” murmured a lady next to Auriol, who looked at her, though she was addressing her sister and not him.

Meriel was well known for her parsimonious attitude to dress, and since she reached her present height had worn the same old though beautiful black and silver coat at every re-election and first-rate ball. Now she was dressed in white, in the height of fashion. Her satin coat, strikingly embroidered with wreaths of black pineapples, fell from wide-padded shoulders in voluminous folds. It swept the ground at the back like a woman’s gown, and the heavy turned-back cuffs of its sleeves were over a yard in circumference. Underneath she wore a plain white tunic and knee breeches, a lace-edged cravat, and black silk boots. Auriol wanted to laugh and declare his love for her at the sight of the boots: he thought he might have guessed that if she tried to be modish, Meriel would calmly spoil the effect with one outlandish article. She ought to have bought a pair of white high-heeled shoes, but no doubt she would have thought such a discomfort an unforgivable extravagance.

He wished she had told him that she meant to change her lifetime’s habits at this ball; he thought he would have preferred her loving confidence to this agreeable surprise. But he was very pleased, and thought her impossibly noble and beautiful, and
longed to be the first of those who would shortly kiss her hand. Under this desire there was a more disturbing wish: to go down and lead her out to dance, the Marchioness of Westmarch.

It had never occurred to Meriel that as a woman, she ought to have as much right to occupy her place in the Grand Closet as she now had as a man. In Auriol’s opinion, her tragedy had awakened an intelligence which might otherwise have remained undisturbed, but one thing which the revelation of her true sex had not led her to question even for a moment was the doctrine of the intrinsic unfitness of all women. It occurred to Auriol now that she should have that right, and the novelty and truth and thought of Meriel’s happiness in such a world made him blush. She ought not to accept that she was an impostor committing a sin. She ought not to believe that all females were poisonous, diseased. She ought to receive men’s homage in a ball dress and tiara, and he would tell her so.

“Meriel Longmaster,” said Juxon, speaking into her gently smiling face as she stood before him with her hand on the hilt of an ancient iron sword, “The Members of the Grand Closet, the Officers of the Guard, the Officers of the Household and the Prelate of Castle-town do beg that you will consent to serve this your twelfth year as Lord Marquis of Westmarch, Protector of the People.”

“I consent,” said Meriel, wondering what it would have been like to say she did not. “Gentlemen of Westmarch, I swear before the God of us all that I shall uphold the Revolution Constitution!” She looked up at the balcony, saw Auriol, and not thinking, did not even try to repress a radiant, teasing smile.

She went through the rest of the ceremony, the hand-kissings and bows and receiving back of her seal-ring from Juxon’s hands, with an appropriate expression of solemn boredom on her face.

An hour after Meriel had opened the ball, she and Auriol were seated on either side of a pretty little heiress, intoxicating each other by flirting with her.

“He is a monstrous deceiver, ma’am,” said Meriel. “He is no more able to perform creditably in a ballroom than an elephant. I beg you will not be wasting yourself on him.”

“An elephant, eh?” said Auriol to Meriel, and would have pressed her foot with his had the girl not been between them.
“That, you see Maid Belvidera, is my reward for months of selfless devotion to my noble friend’s interest.”

“The fact is, ma’am, he is a toad-eater.”

“Oh, I am very sure he is not!” said the lady, quite indignantly.

Meriel laughed, delighted to see that Maid Belvidera preferred Auriol to herself.

“The next set is forming,” said Auriol, getting up and extending a masterful hand to the girl. “Now, Westmarch, use your superior consequence and insist on dancing with Maid Belvidera, and I shall have a mind to send you a message in the morning.”

Meriel made a large and graceful gesture. “I protest, I am by far too great a coward to risk such a shocking thing. He is the devil of a fellow with his pistols, ma’am. You see how he thinks nothing of forcing my hand.”

“A little more quickness, Westmarch, and you would have had the honour of leading Maid Belvidera out, not I.”

“He is an insufferably insolent creature,” sighed the Marquis.

“I do not see,” said the girl, “how a man may be both a toadeater and insufferably insolent, Marquis.” She blushed and looked innocent.

“Two sides of one coin, ma’am. I retire from the lists disconsolate, but I shall claim you later in the evening.” She rose, kissed Maid Belvidera’s hand, smiled up at Auriol, and watched him lead the girl away and take his place in the column of dancers.

Turning round, she caught sight of Maid Belvidera’s mother, Mistress Corinna, who was seated some feet away. The woman’s expression was of mixed hope and petulance: hope because the Marquis had flirted with her daughter, petulance because only Auriol had taken her into the set. Meriel thought she must have seen the fond look she had had on her face when watching the couple, and presumed it was intended for her daughter. Yes, thought Meriel, if I have to be at Castle West, I prefer to be the most important man in the place, because it’s an excellent game.

Mistress Corinna looked in the Marquis’s direction again; their eyes met, and she gave Meriel a carefully controlled smile of deep obligation. Meriel thought it her duty to walk over to her.

“I must congratulate you on your daughter, ma’am. She is a most charming girl, she’s taken very well, has she not?”

“Why, so I hope, Marquis.”

“To be sure she has, Mistress Corinna, and no one could wonder at it,” said Dianeme Sandeman Grindal, putting her head round Meriel’s outsize shoulder at that moment, and looking openly mischievous. “What a shocking flirt you are, my lord!”

The Marquis’s bland acceptance of this interruption forced Mistress Corinna to look delighted.

“So there you are, Dianeme, I haven’t been able to come within reach of you all evening, it’s you who are the shocking flirt,” said Meriel. “Impertinent, too. Devilish fetching, that comb in your hair.”

“Well, to own the truth I think it makes me look like a quiz, though it’s becoming to some, I don’t deny, but one must be in the mode, ain’t that so ma’am?”

“Indeed, Mistress Dianeme, in the proper mode.”

“And you look as fine as fivepence yourself, Westmarch.”

Mistress Corinna’s attention was distracted at that moment, and Dianeme and Meriel bowed and walked off arm in arm in search of wine and ratafia.

“Ain’t you vastly obliged to me for rescuing you, my lord? She’d have kept you by her side all evening if she could. Lord, I was fit to bust my stay-laces when I saw how she looked when I came up! How quickly she did put on a smiling face, to be sure.”

“You’re a minx, Dianeme.”

“Ay, very true, I wonder why you bear with me?”

This was a serious question, and it took Meriel aback, for Dianeme had never asked it before. Seeing that they were surrounded by people deep in their own conversations, trying to make themselves heard, Meriel said, “Well, you were a novelty, ma’am, singular, and you always will be, to me. I am not likely to meet anyone — who talks in your style, with just your candour, ever again.” For a second or two she felt depressed. “And if that was what attracted me to you when Philander brought you here, that and your being shunned by the ton, it was your good heart made me stay your friend. Surely you know all this? And the fact that you seemed to like me from the first and I had no need to pretend with you.”

Dianeme patted Meriel’s arm, and said, squinting across the crowded floor at the dancers, “What a fine figure of a man Knight Auriol is — but there’s no doubt he don’t look his best in a
ballroom, not at all events when he’s got a little squab of a girl for his partner.”

“Very true, I’ve often told him he’s an elephant. Come, here’s your ratafia!”

“Mr Grindal says it’s low, a taste for ratafia.”

“Only outmoded. My mother will drink nothing else, as you know. D’you wish me to dance with you?”

“Well, of course I do! My reputation would be ruined if you didn’t give me one dance at least. They’d think you had tired of me, my lord, cast me off, out into the cold with you, hussy!”

“Dianeme, you’re incorrigible.”

Dianeme was amazed by the Marquis’s mildness, a good-humour which amounted to utter indifference. She had expected him to be either coldly unpleasant or, just possibly, vastly amused. She had had to summon up real courage to make her joke and see the result, and she wondered what, in Meriel’s opinion, constituted going beyond the line.

Before the next dance began, Dianeme asked after Berinthia. Meriel had confided in the Grindals about Berinthia’s marriage to Hugo, giving no reason but that she had arranged the business because she did not want to marry her cousin herself. Both Philander and Dianeme had thought Meriel chilly, changed for the worse, though they approved the plan. “Is your mother reconciled?”