The Marquis of Westmarch (20 page)

Dianeme, who was looking amused, inclined her head. “Good day to you, Knight Auriol sir.”

“Are you surprised at my coming? Indeed, I did not conceal from the Marquis that I think this a shocking affair. But it was of no use to cavil, and so you see me — prepared to enjoy his victory,” said Juxon in the most amiable way, smiling from under an enormous flat hat. He did not know what Meriel might have told Auriol about his attitude to this race. “I am very much obliged to Mistress Dianeme, as you see.”

“And you will be on hand should any accident occur, for I know Westmarch don’t like to be attended by any other physician than yourself,” Auriol replied, smiling back.

“Do not, I beg of you, mention such a distressing possibility! This heat quite knocks one up — I hope we may see them again soon. Dear me! How vastly exciting it is, to be sure!”

Dianeme leant over the side of the carriage and beckoned to Auriol over her huge pregnant stomach. “Don’t be telling his lordship, Knight Auriol, but I’ve put my blunt on Longmaster, much as I hated to do it, for I do think he’s the more likely to win. The dibs ain’t in tune you see, for I lost a deal more at play than I generally like, last week, and I only hope to make a recovery now so that Mr Grindal need never discover it.”

Auriol laughed. “I hope he loses, if only so that you may be well served for your disloyalty, ma’am, I confess.”

She sighed. “Very likely I shall be. What a world it is! I’m sunk below reproach.”

“I am not a betting man,” Juxon told them. “I am by no means addicted to sporting pursuits.”

They lapsed once more into silence, having nothing else to say. Auriol thought how lonely the Circus looked. Beyond the edge of the crowd, it was perfectly empty and quiet, with a heat-haze wafting above grass tawny with drought. He longed for Meriel. It must be strange for her, to be racing her cousin without spectators as she was at present, in constant danger of disaster. Auriol had ridden round the park half an hour earlier, and seen that almost no one had turned up to watch from the middle of the course. News of the afternoon’s event must have reached few of the townsfolk and interested still fewer. He considered that they ought all to be cheering her on, and not leaving her alone in this cold way.

Hugo Longmaster was driving hard now, exerting himself as Meriel had been exerting herself from the first. She thought she heard the dinning hooves coming closer, but could not be sure because she was straining so hard at once to control her horses and to force them on, and could scarcely distinguish her noise from his. Her greys’ flanks were rippled with sweat. One kept tossing his head to the side in a way that maddened her. They were more than half-way round the Circus, there were a few straggling, cheering watchers, and they were coming up to a short avenue of cedar trees. Only through the trees, thought Meriel. Just to keep ahead through the trees.

Scarlet-faced, breathing harshly like his horses and like Meriel, Hugo chased her into the avenue. He found the dust which Meriel kicked up intolerable, he wanted her to know what it was to have
dust in her face. It seemed to take an age to draw near her, to drive alongside her. Perhaps her horses were better than his. He could tell that she was having hellish difficulty in managing them, she was a fool to try. He used the whip on his chestnuts’ backs, but not too hard, though the expression on his face was so terrible. Hugo was intensely controlled, in spite of all, in spite of the unjust fact of his cousin’s existence.

They were coming into sight of the main crowd by the gate, but they were merely beetling dots to the spectators as yet. Lorgnettes were raised again. The crowd’s opinion of their behaviour mattered nothing to them now. There was a roaring in Meriel’s ears which would prevent her hearing any noise they made. Only to that phaeton, she thought. Let me only keep ahead till then.

For four hundred yards they were racing neck and neck, and to them, it was almost as though they were not moving at all. They could only look ahead at their own horses, it was as though they were blinkered. When at last the issue was decided, and Longmaster ground ahead, both became aware once more of pain and of choking heat, neither of which had they thought of when they were forcing along side by side in hateful hope.

Meriel’s previous, unthinking desire to keep ahead seemed a piece of childish folly, when at last she saw his chestnuts really inching forward to disgrace her in Auriol’s eyes. She thought her heart must explode, and her sand-dry mouth wasted energy by croaking aloud: “Go on, go on, go
on
brutes, on!” She could see the flowers on Hugo’s hat, and the tight, scared demeanour of his groom. The greys were not winning, but they were pulling her arms out of their sockets to no purpose at all.

Meriel and Longmaster did not hear the crowd’s shouts as, slipping on their boxes, half-blind with sweat, they began the last quarter-mile. Those by the gate could see them clearly now.

Auriol knew then for certain that if Meriel lost, it would all be useless. To kidnap her would be useless. She would never marry him if she lost this race, and it was so bitter, because now he did not want her to win only so that he might gain her, but for her own sake, the sake of triumph, as well. He adored her and forgave her and was proud of her, his Marquis. He found himself calling in a whisper, “Meriel, Mer — iel!”

But she was going to lose, he could see that, Longmaster was feet ahead and she had spent her greys in the first lap like a fool.

“He’ll lose a wheel!” someone yelled next to Auriol. “God damn it, he’s losing a wheel!”

“No!” cried Auriol. “No!”

People groaned. Within a few moments, the whole gathering quietened. The curricles and horses made a horrible noise. With difficulty, Auriol realised that it was Longmaster’s wheel which was coming off, not Meriel’s. Longmaster’s left wheel. But Longmaster, a hundred yards from the finish, was not slowing down. He seemed to be coming faster and faster, Meriel was barely closing in. She was gaining a little, a little. Someone raised a shout:

“Westmarch! Westmarch!”

Longmaster’s wheel shook on its axle like a spinning coin.

“Long — master!”

Twenty yards to the finish. Hugo was two, three feet ahead.

Ten yards.

Hugo heard the wheel crack, felt a sickening swing, and toppled as his horses fell screaming to the ground. There were screams from women too. The last thing he saw was Meriel pounding through the finish; he did not see her faint in triumph just as she slowed down and received too-loud congratulations.

When the Marquis fainted away, Leoline Usher was hanging on to the side of the curricle. As soon as he realised what had happened, he scrambled up on to the box, pushed her aside, took the reins and brought the horses to a final standstill; then he ordered her groom to get down and hold them. By that time, Juxon had leapt from Dianeme’s barouche and was fighting his way through the crowd. Usher turned his attention to Meriel, and began methodically to unbutton her coat and loosen her neckcloth. He was not seriously worried, but he liked to appear cool-headed and competent in the world’s eyes.

Auriol’s height gave him a perfect view of what had happened. Without thinking, he kicked his horse, rammed into a man in front of him, and then was forced to make a sensible apology. Turning his eyes back to the curricle, shivering inwardly, he thought he saw Usher withdrawing his hand in horror from Meriel’s breast.

It did not happen, it was only Auriol’s fantasy. Juxon clambered into the curricle and shoved the sturdy Usher away as vigorously as a boy. The carriage rocked on its wheels.

“Damn it, sir, look what you’re about!” shouted Usher.

“You are a fool, sir, if you suppose s-he can be dead, or some such thing! I am his physician, am I not? Should I not know?” In despair he added, “Has no one any salts!”

The blood receded in waves from Auriol’s head, and he sat quite still, with his mouth open, watching. To know that she was safe in Juxon’s hands filled him not only with relief but with a kind of cross disappointment. He had been living under such strain these past few weeks, that he had often caught himself finding a curious release in imagining disasters which might
happen to Meriel, disasters in which he might at last prove himself, and which would at least provide him with a different kind of pain. He had imagined her dying in this race. If her death had come to pass, he would not have been required to prove himself.

He gave a sob. Rage such as he had never known took hold of him. If he had been able to reach Meriel then, he would have pulled her out of her curricle and brought her back to life by hitting her in the face as hard as he could, over and over again.

“I’ve some brandy, sir,” said Meriel’s groom with a cough.

“Then do you give it here!”

“P’raps Mr Longmaster’s in the worse case, sir,” suggested Glasbrook.

“Don’t be a fool, man! Whose servant are you?”

“Well, he do look to be in queer stirrups, to be sure,” said the groom idly, to irritate Juxon, as he pulled out a flask from his pocket and handed it over. He and Usher exchanged glances and walked over towards the other curricle.

Hugo, surrounded by sympathisers, was up and inspecting one of his horses’ broken knees. The side of his curricle had been smashed to splinters in the fall, and there was blood from his forehead on his yellow silk coat, but though he was trembling, he was dignified. The spectators did not know at which ruined contestant to look, and many were already debating the dramas amongst themselves, unable to choose between them. One lady, however, rode through to Meriel’s curricle, and quietly gave Juxon her vinaigrette. He thanked her and stuck it under Meriel’s nostrils.

She was beginning to revive when her mother’s carriage came bouncing up.

“Mr Juxon, tell me only that my son is not dead, I
command
you! Oh, my God, how could even he have been such a fool!”

“Of course he is not dead, my lady! Marquis. Marquis!”

“Wychwood — Juxon?” whispered Meriel. Her face was salty white and she could not even try to sit up.

“I am here, Marquis,” said Juxon, quite calmly now he saw she was indeed alive. “Pray drink this.”

“Oh Meriel, my dear son,” said the Marchioness, swallowing as she clutched Berinthia’s steady hand. “Say something rational, I beg of you!”

“Damnation,” said Meriel.

“You have been remarkably foolish, Marquis,” Juxon told her.

“I think you forget yourself, Juxon,” said the Marchioness to this.

Meriel raised her head a little, and saw Philander Grindal. He had been nearby all the time, unlike Auriol, who was only now making his way through the crowd.

“You won, you know,” Philander said gently, thinking he understood Westmarch’s greatest anxiety. “You won.”

“Oh no,” said Meriel. “No. He would have won — if —” She pushed Juxon’s smelling-bottle feebly aside, and blinked at her friend. “Can’t.”

“Yes, don’t try to talk. You were gaining, Meriel, I promise you, you’d have won in any event — by a hair’s breadth, but you’d have won.”

“No. Oh, God.”

Juxon said, “It is imperative that the Marquis be taken back to Castle West directly. Marquis, if you are feeling more the thing, I wonder can you walk with assistance as far as my landaulet? It is just beyond the gate.”

Auriol arrived at that moment. “Surely that’s unnecessary, sir?” he said. “Let me put myself at the Marquis’s disposal. I can very well drive him back in this curricle — it would surely be foolish in him to attempt a walk, even a short one.” He was always conscious of using ‘he’ for Meriel when he met Juxon in public.

“You are too good, Knight Auriol.” For once, Juxon wished that he were able to drive a carriage.

“Wychwood,” said Meriel.

“Yes, Westmarch?”

“Philander says I won.”

“So you did.” He nearly picked up her hand and squeezed it. His extraordinary anger had vanished, taking away with it all the irritations of the past three weeks. It had been replaced by a delight in her being alive and a victor as pure, he thought, as the sunlight above. “With your permission, Marquis, I’ll drive you back to Castle West.”

“I want to lie down,” Meriel told him in a high voice.

“Then lie down on the floor if you can, you’ll be cooler,” he smiled, and remembered that in public like this, he could not help her to lower herself and stretch out in peace at his feet. Those round them were already looking a little puzzled, and Berinthia Winyard’s eyes were narrowed to slits.

“I am sure, Knight Auriol, that my son must be vastly obliged to you, but —” said the Marchioness, and stopped as Berinthia drew her attention to the bloodstained Hugo, who was now approaching.

“You are not a physician, sir, and therefore I must insist that — if this curricle will bear us all — I come with you,” Juxon said, holding on tightly with one hand to the front of the carriage. “Your plan is, I think, otherwise a sensible one.”

“Certainly, Mr Juxon.”

Meriel did not lie down on the floor of the curricle. The three of them crammed into the seat, and she allowed Juxon’s arm to support her head while Auriol drove efficiently out of the park to the sound of subdued praise of Westmarch’s driving. Even Hugo, whose manners could be excellent, joined in.

Meriel sat between large Auriol and little Juxon, and realised herself that she represented the exact medium between their two sizes. They all of them felt extremely conspicuous, sitting there together in a row, and odd, unpleasant thoughts jostled in their heads as they rattled under the trees and over the cobblestones and up into Castle West.

“I wonder will Mr Juxon dare give the Marquis a scold for — for his imprudence?” said Rosalba Ludbrook Marling to her husband. She wiped a tear from her eye, though she had spoken with perfect cheerfulness. Meriel’s faint had distressed her more than she would have thought possible: she was, perhaps, regretting her own mis-spent youth. “They treat him quite as a child, do you not think?”

*

The clock ticked heavily on the wall. Meriel lay on the alcove bed in her closet, while Juxon sat beside her, holding a cup to catch the blood that dripped from her left foot. The room was in bright shadow, for shutters had been closed against the direct light that penetrated their louvres and striped the wall opposite in slowly shifting bars.

Juxon had insisted on bleeding the Marquis, because contrary to her own expectation, she had not recovered quickly from her faint. When they arrived in her closet, she had been too weak even to tell him angrily that she would feel worse if he bled her, and that none of the cuppings he had given her over the years had done her the least bit of good.

Auriol had retired to his own lodging. As the Marquis’s friend, he had no excuse for staying with her after he had driven her back to the castle, not when she had her physician in attendance. As her acknowledged lover, or her husband, he might have carried her in his arms all the way from the stables to her closet. They both knew it, and thought about it, apart. The Marquis wished she did not want to be carried.

“A little more brandy, Marquis, and I daresay you will find yourself perfectly restored,” said Juxon. His tone was cool. “I wish to have speech with you.”

Meriel closed her eyes and opened them upon her father’s dark portrait. “Give me the brandy,” she said, for she could guess what was coming, and thought it would be cowardly to insist he wait until she was better. Her mind at least was well enough, she could think even though she could not move.

I won the race, she thought, remembering, and I was right: he was indeed glad and proud of me, he did truly want me to win.

“You swooned, Marquis, when you came through the finish,” Juxon told her as he poured out a measure of brandy.

“I know, sir.”

“When you swooned, Mr Usher thought it necessary to climb up beside you, into your curricle, and assure himself that you were not dead. I was but just in time to prevent him putting his hand straight on your — your breast, Marquis.”

“Were you?” she said, briefly biting her lip.

“He would have discovered that you are not a man. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Juxon, I do!” His information was new to her, and frightening, but she looked at him and thought how ugly he was, with his close-together eyes and the mole on the side of his long twitching nose, and compared him with Auriol, and said, “And if he had discovered it I should not have cared. I wish you will be a little less busy in future, Juxon.”

Juxon took snuff. “I fancy you are not quite yourself yet.”

“Oh, I think I am. I should not have cared so very much. It would have been little worse than a nuisance, to me, for I don’t mean to carry on in this way, not for very much longer.”

He was surprised. “My dear, in what way will you carry on no longer?”

Meriel struggled up on her pillows. She was aware of the sharp throbbing in her foot where Juxon’s scalpel had cut it. Juxon, seeing how restless she was, thought he would soon have to give her a few drops of laudanum as a composer.

“I daresay I did not mean precisely what I said, about not caring for Usher’s finding out. But you may as well know, sir, that I do intend to let it be generally known presently that I am not in fact a man. I ought to give you warning, indeed, should have done so before, for I don’t want you to suffer.” She started to cry, quite gently and silently, and there was a little smile on her lips. “No. I am very sure now, and I must tell you. I am going to elope with Wychwood, Juxon — I am going to marry him in Southmarch and I fancy that when we have told the whole story, we shall be left in peace once the inevitable talk has died down. Yes, I am going to do it.” She had quite decided, and now she did indeed feel perfectly restored as Juxon had said she would: full of health and energy, but for the light pain in her foot.

Juxon stood in silence, clutching his lorgnette. At last he said, “I see that you have taken a far worse touch of the sun than I had supposed, Marquis. I am sorry for it, but you will very soon recover. Do you lie down again, my dear.”

She twitched in some annoyance. “Oh, sir, it ain’t a touch of the sun. I’m in earnest, I promise you, can’t you tell?”

“Yes, my dear, indeed. It is but to be expected that you should think so.”

“Good God, Juxon, what’s your meaning? You don’t — are you telling me I am mad?”

“Sunstroke is by no means the same thing as madness. These phantasies, Marquis, might have disturbed you almost at any time, and I am excessively relieved to know that only under the influence of — of —” He swallowed, and took three paces to the other end of the little room, then turned back and tried to smile at her. “Of the sun, and of an accident, that they can possess you.”
He had often worried that she would go mad, but not lately, not for months.

Meriel thought for a moment, then sat fully upright, concentrated, and said, “Listen to me, sir, and pray talk no more nonsense. You must believe that I meant what I said. Wychwood knows I am a woman, he loves me, and he wants to marry me, and I am going to marry him.” She paused. “I don’t say I would not prefer to remain Marquis, and to keep him as my lover, if it were possible, but it seems to me that as it will not always be possible, in the end flight with him and marriage will be the least unpleasant alternative before me — for I don’t mean to lose him, Juxon, I’d rather die.”

It was Meriel’s bearing rather than her words which made Juxon understand her. She had never spoken with less brusqueness and coldness, with more simplicity and honesty and calm. At present, she was the person she would have been if she had not had to fight continuously against other people for eleven years of her youth, had never had to deceive as it was against her nature to do.

How extraordinary, she thought, that I should be able at last to know my own mind. To feel in my heart what I understood before only with my reason, at this particular moment. Yes, I’ll marry him.

“In fact, I don’t think I should wish to be Marquis. Juxon, did you not know that it was never that which truly mattered to me? The Marquisate. It was being a
man
mattered, being — being myself. But I’ll still be myself with him,” she finished.

The clock struck the half-hour. Juxon said, “Am I to understand — that Wychwood is aware — of your peculiar condition?”

“Why of course, have you not been listening?” She added, “What a very prosy way you do have of expressing yourself, Juxon!”

He took a step towards her. “How did he discover it? Tell me, pray Marquis! How long ago was this?”

She saw that his face was looking whiter, and more skeletal, than usual, and she pitied him.