The Talisman Ring Page 4

  Downstairs Sir Tristram had just reached the same conclusion. Since, sooner or later, he would have to marry someone, and since he had determined never again to commit the folly of falling in love, his bride might as well be Eustacie as another. She seemed to be tiresomely volatile, but no sillier than any other young woman of his acquaintance. She was of good birth (though he thought her French blood to be deplored), and in spite of the fact that if he had a preference it was for fair women, he was bound to admit that she was very pretty. He could have wished she were older, but it was possible that Sylvester, whose experience was undoubtedly wide, knew what he was talking about when he said that her extreme youth was in her favour. In fact, one must resign oneself.

  Upon the following morning the betrothed couple met at the breakfast-table and took fresh stock of each other. Sir Tristram, whose mulberry evening-dress had not met with Eustacie’s approval, had had the unwitting tact to put on a riding-suit, in which severe garb he looked his best; and Eustacie, who had decided that, if she must marry her cousin, it was only proper that he should be stimulated to admiration of her charms, had arrayed herself in a bergère gown of charming colour and design. Each at first glance felt moderately pleased with the other, a complacent mood which lasted for perhaps ten minutes, at the end of which time Sir Tristram was contemplating with grim misgiving the prospect of encountering vivacity at the breakfast-table for the rest of his life, and Eustacie was wondering whether her betrothed was capable of uttering anything but the most damping of monosyllables.

  During the course of the morning, Sir Tristram was sent for to Sylvester’s bedroom. He found his great-uncle propped up very high in bed, and alarmingly brisk, and learned from him that his nuptials would be celebrated upon the following day. When he reminded Sylvester that marriages could not be performed thus out of hand, Sylvester flourished a special licence before his eyes, and said that he was not so moribund that he could not still manage his affairs. Sir Tristram, who liked being driven as little as most men, found this instance of his great-uncle’s forethought so annoying that he left him somewhat abruptly, and went away to cool his temper with a gallop over the Downs. When he returned it was some time later, and he found the doctor’s horse being walked up and down before the Court, and the household in a state of hushed expectancy. Sylvester, having managed his affairs to his own satisfaction, drunk two glasses of Madeira, and thrown his snuff-box at his valet for daring to remonstrate with him, had seemed suddenly to collapse. He had sunk into a deep swoon from which he had been with difficulty brought round, and the doctor, summoned post-haste, had announced that the end could not now be distant more than a few hours.

  Regaining consciousness, Sylvester had, in a painful but determined whisper, declined the offices of a clergyman, recommended the doctor to go to hell, forbidden the servants to open his doors to his nephew Basil, announced his intention of dying without a pack of women weeping over him, and demanded the instant attendance of his nephew Tristram.

  Sir Tristram, hearing these details from the butler, stayed only to cast his hat and coat on a chair, and went quickly up the stairs to the Great Chamber.

  Both the valet and the doctor were in the room, the valet looking genuinely grieved and the doctor very sour. Sylvester was lying flat in the huge bed with his eyes shut, but when Tristram stepped softly on to the dais, he opened them at once, and whispered: ‘Damn you, you have kept me waiting!’

  ‘I beg your pardon, sir.’

  ‘I did not mean to die until to-morrow,’ said Sylvester, labouring for breath. ‘Damme, I’ve a mind to make a push to last the night if only to spite that snivelling leech!…Tristram!’

  ‘Sir?’

  Sylvester grasped his wrist with thin, enfeebled fingers. ‘You’ll marry that child?’

  ‘I will, Sylvester: don’t tease yourself !’

  ‘Always meant Ludovic to have her…damned young scoundrel! Often wondered. Do you think he was telling the truth – after all?’

  Shield was silent. Sylvester’s pale lips twisted. ‘Oh, you don’t, eh? Well, you can give him my ring if ever you see him again – and tell him not to pledge it! Take it: I’ve done with it.’ He slid the great ruby from his finger as he spoke, and dropped it into Shield’s hand. ‘That Madeira was a mistake. I ought to have kept to the Burgundy. You can go now. Don’t let there be any mawkish sentiment over my death!’

  ‘Very well, sir,’ said Shield. He bent, kissed Sylvester’s hand, and without more ado turned and went out of the room.

  Sylvester died an hour later. The doctor who brought the news to Shield, and to Beau Lavenham, both waiting in the library, said that he had only spoken once more before the end.

  ‘Indeed, and what did he say?’ inquired the Beau.

  ‘He made a remark, sir – I may say, a gross remark! – derogatory to my calling!’ said the doctor. ‘I shall not repeat it!’

  Both cousins burst out laughing. The doctor cast a look of shocked dislike at them and went away, disgusted but not surprised by their behaviour. A wild, godless family, he thought. They were not even profitable patients, these Lavenhams: he was glad to be rid of them.

  ‘I suppose we shall never know what it was that he said,’ remarked the Beau. ‘I am afraid it may have been a trifle lewd.’

  ‘I should think probably very lewd,’ agreed Shield.

  ‘But how right, how fitting that Sylvester should die with a lewd jest on his lips!’ said the Beau. He patted his ruffles. ‘Do you still mean to be married to-morrow?’

  ‘No, that must be postponed,’ Shield answered.

  ‘I expect you are wise. Yet one cannot help suspecting that Sylvester would enjoy the slightly macabre flavour of a bridal presided over by his mortal remains.’

  ‘Possibly, but I never shared Sylvester’s tastes,’ said Shield.

  The Beau laughed gently, and bent to pick up his hat and cane from the chair on which he had laid them. ‘Well, I do not think I envy you the next few days, Tristram,’ he said. ‘If I can be of assistance to you, do by all means call upon me! I shall remain at the Dower House for some little time yet.’

  ‘Thank you, but I don’t anticipate the need. I rely on Pickering. The charge of the estate would be better borne by him than by me. God knows what is to be done, with the succession in this accursed muddle!’

  ‘There is one thing which ought to be done,’ said the Beau. ‘Some effort should be made to find Ludovic.’

  ‘A good deal easier said than done!’ replied Sir Tristram. ‘He could not set foot in England if he were found, either. If he stayed in France he may have lost his head for all we know. It would be extremely like him to embroil himself in a revolution which was no concern of his.’

  ‘Well,’ said the Beau softly, ‘I do not want to appear unfeeling, but if Ludovic has lost his head, it would be of some slight interest to me to hear of it.’

  ‘Naturally. Your position is most uncertain.’

  ‘Oh, I am not repining,’ smiled the Beau. ‘But I still think you ought – as trustee – to find Ludovic.’

  During the next few days, however, Sir Tristram had enough to occupy him without adding a search for the heir to his duties. Upon the arrival of the lawyer, Sylvester’s will was read, a document complicated enough to try the temper of a more patient man than Shield. A thousand and one things had to be done, and in addition to the duties attendant upon the death of Sylvester there was the problem of Eustacie to worry her betrothed.

  She accepted her bereavement and the postponement of her wedding-day with perfect fortitude, but when Sir Tristram asked her to name some lady living in the neighbourhood in whose charge she could for the present remain, she declared herself quite unable to do so. She had no acquaintance in Sussex, Sylvester having quarrelled with one half of the county and ignored the other half. ‘Besides,’ she said, ‘I do not wish to be put in charge
of a chaperon. I shall stay here.’

  Sir Tristram, feeling that Sylvester had in his time created enough scandal in Sussex, was strongly averse from giving the gossips anything further to wag their tongues over. Betrothed or not, his and Eustacie’s sojourn under the same roof was an irregularity which every virtuous dame who thought the Lavenhams a godless family would be swift to pounce upon. He said: ‘Well, it is confoundedly awkward, but I don’t see what I can do about it. I suppose I shall have to let you stay.’

  ‘I shall stay because I wish to,’ said Eustacie, bristling. ‘I do not have to do what you say yet!’

  ‘Don’t be silly!’ said Sir Tristram, harassed, and therefore irritable.

  ‘I am not silly. It is you who have a habit which I find much more silly of telling me what I must do and what I must not do. I am quite tired of being bien élevée, and I think I will now arrange my own affairs.’

  ‘You are a great deal too young to manage your own affairs, I am afraid.’

  ‘That we shall see.’

  ‘We shall, indeed. Have you thought to order your mourning clothes? That must be done, you know.’

  ‘I do not know it,’ said Eustacie. ‘Grandpère said I was not to mourn for him, and I shall not.’

  ‘That may be, but this is a censorious world, my child, and it will be thought very odd if you don’t accord Sylvester’s memory that mark of respect.’

  ‘Well, I shan’t,’ said Eustacie simply.

  Sir Tristram looked her over in frowning silence.

  ‘You look very cross,’ said Eustacie.

  ‘I am not cross,’ said Sir Tristram in a somewhat brittle voice, ‘but I think you should know that while I am prepared to allow you all the freedom possible, I shall expect my wife to pay some slight heed to my wishes.’

  Eustacie considered this dispassionately. ‘Well, I do not think I shall,’ she said. ‘You seem to me to have very stupid wishes – quite absurd, in fact.’

  ‘This argument is singularly pointless,’ said Sir Tristram, quelling a strong desire to box her ears. ‘Perhaps my mother will know better how to persuade you.’

  Eustacie picked up her ears at that. ‘I did not know you had a mother! Where is she?’

  ‘She is in Bath. When the funeral is over I am going to take you to her, and put you in her care until we can be married.’

  ‘As to that, it is not yet decided. Describe to me your mother! Is she like you?’

  ‘No, not at all.’

  ‘Tant mieux! What, then, is she like?’

  ‘Well,’ said Sir Tristram lamely, ‘I don’t think I know how to describe her. She will be very kind to you, I know.’

  ‘But what does she do?’ demanded Eustacie. ‘Does she amuse herself at Bath? Is she gay?’

  ‘Hardly. She does not enjoy good health, you see.’

  ‘Oh!’ Eustacie digested this. ‘No parties?’

  ‘I believe she enjoys card-parties.’

  Eustacie grimaced expressively. ‘Me, I know those card-parties. I think she plays Whist, and perhaps Commerce.’

  ‘I dare say she does. I know of no reason why she should not,’ said Shield rather stiffly.

  ‘There is not any reason, but I do not play Whist or Commerce, and I find such parties quite abominable.’

  ‘That need not concern you, for whatever Sylvester’s views may have been, I feel sure that my mother will agree that it would be improper for you to go out in public immediately after his death.’

  ‘But if I am not to go to any parties, what then am I to do in Bath?’

  ‘Well, I suppose you will have to reconcile yourself to a period of quiet.’

  ‘Quiet?’ gasped Eustacie. ‘More quiet? No, and no, and no!’

  He could not help laughing, but said: ‘Is it so terrible?’

  ‘Yes, it is!’ said Eustacie. ‘First I have to live in Sussex, and now I am to go to Bath – to play backgammon! And after that you will take me to Berkshire, where I expect I shall die.’

  ‘I hope not!’ said Shield.

  ‘Yes, but I think I shall,’ said Eustacie, propping her chin in her hands and gazing mournfully into the fire. ‘After all, I have had a very unhappy life without any adventures, and it would not be wonderful if I went into a decline. Only nothing that is interesting ever happens to me,’ she added bitterly, ‘so I dare say I shall just die in child-bed, which is a thing anyone can do.’

  Sir Tristram flushed uncomfortably. ‘Really, Eustacie!’ he protested.

  Eustacie was too much absorbed in the contemplation of her dark destiny to pay any heed to him. ‘I shall present to you an heir,’ she said, ‘and then I shall die.’ The picture suddenly appealed to her; she continued in a more cheerful tone: ‘Everyone will say that I was very young to die, and they will fetch you from the gaming-hell where you –’

  ‘Fetch me from where?’ interrupted Sir Tristram, momentarily led away by this flight of imagination.

  ‘From the gaming-hell,’ repeated Eustacie impatiently. ‘Or perhaps the Cock-Pit. It does not signify; it is quite unimportant! But I think you will feel great remorse when it is told to you that I am dying, and you will spring up and fling yourself on your horse, and ride ventre à terre to come to my death-bed. And then I shall forgive you, and –’

  ‘What in heaven’s name are you talking about?’ demanded Sir Tristram. ‘Why should you forgive me? Why should – What is this nonsense?’

  Eustacie, thus rudely awakened from her pleasant dream, sighed and abandoned it. ‘It is just what I thought might happen,’ she explained.

  Sir Tristram said severely: ‘It seems to me that you indulge your fancy a deal too freely. Let me assure you that I don’t frequent gaming-hells or cock-pits! Nor,’ he added, with a flicker of humour, ‘am I very much in the habit of flinging myself upon my horses.’

  ‘No, and you do not ride ventre à terre. It does not need that you should tell me so. I know!’

  ‘Well, only on the hunting-field,’ said Sir Tristram.

  ‘Do you think you might if I were on my death-bed?’ asked Eustacie hopefully.

  ‘Certainly not. If you were on your death-bed it is hardly likely that I should be from home. I wish you would put this notion of dying out of your head. Why should you die?’

  ‘But I have told you!’ said Eustacie, brightening at this sign of interest. ‘I shall –’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Sir Tristram hastily. ‘You need not tell me again. There will time enough to discuss such matters when we are married.’

  ‘But I thought it was because you must have an heir that you want to marry me?’ said Eustacie practically. ‘Grandpère explained it to me, and you yourself said –’

  ‘Eustacie,’ interposed Sir Tristram, ‘if you must talk in this extremely frank vein, I’ll listen, but I do beg of you not to say such things to anyone but me! It will give people a very odd idea of you.’

  ‘Grandpère,’ said Eustacie, with the air of one quoting a major prophet, ‘told me not to mind what I said, but on no account to be a simpering little innocente.’

  ‘It sounds to me exactly the kind of advice Sylvester would give you,’ said Shield.

  ‘And you sound to me exactly the kind of person I do not at all wish to have for my husband!’ retorted Eustacie. ‘It will be better, I think, if we do not marry!’

  ‘Possibly!’ said Sir Tristram, nettled. ‘But I gave my word to Sylvester that I would marry you, and marry you I will!’

  ‘You will not, because I shall instantly run away!’

  ‘Don’t be a fool!’ said Sir Tristram unwisely, and walked out of the room, leaving her simmering with indignation.

  Her wrath did not last long, for by the time she had taken a vow to put her threat into execution, all the adventurous possibilities of s
uch a resolve struck her so forcibly that Sir Tristram’s iniquities were quite ousted from her mind. She spent a pleasurable hour in thinking out a number of plans for her future. These were varied, but all of them impracticable, a circumstance which her common sense regretfully acknowledged. She was forced in the end to take her handmaiden into her confidence, having abandoned such attractive schemes as masquerading in male attire, or taking London by storm by enacting an unspecified tragic rôle at Drury Lane. It was a pity, but if one had the misfortune to be a person of Quality one could not become an actress; and although the notion of masquerading as a man appealed strongly to her, she was quite unable to carry her imagination farther than the first chapter of this exciting story. One would naturally leap into the saddle and ride off somewhere, but she could not decide where, or what to do.

  Lucy, at first scandalized by the idea of a young lady setting out into the world alone, was not a difficult person to inspire. The portrait drawn for her edification of a shrinking damsel condemned to espouse a tyrant of callous instincts and brutal manners profoundly affected her mind, and by the time Eustacie had graphically described her almost inevitable demise in child-bed, she was ready to lend her support to any plan her mistress might see fit to adopt. Her own brain, though appreciative, was not fertile, but upon being adjured to think of some means whereby a lady could evade a distasteful marriage and arrange her own life, she had the happy notion of suggesting a perusal of the advertisements in the Morning Post.

  Together mistress and maid pored over the columns of this useful periodical. It was not, at first glance, very helpful, for most of its advertisements appeared to be of Well-matched Carriage Horses, or Superb Residences to be Hired for a Short Term. Further study, however, enlarged the horizon. A lady domiciled in Brook Street required a Governess with a knowledge of Astronomy, Botany, Water-Colour Painting, and the French Tongue to instruct her daughters. Dismissing the first three requirements as irrelevancies, Eustacie triumphantly pointed to the last, and said that here was the very thing.