Philippa Carr - Lament for a Lost Lover

“Harriet Main,” she repeated softly. And I guessed she was thinking of how Harriet had wantonly taken Charles Condey from her and then refused him.

“I am going to change things at Eversleigh, Charlotte,” I said. “We shall have balls and banquets. I think we should. And then you will …”

“Yes—” she said.

“Perhaps you’ll find out that there are other men in the world besides Charles Condey.”

“Oh, I always knew that,” she replied, smiling at me.

I’ll do it, I told myself. I’ll bring her out. I’ll find a husband for her. I’ll stop her brooding on the past. I had freed myself from it. So should she.

Yes, that was how I felt during the months that followed. I was free from the ghost of the past. Edwin had never really loved me. A bitter revelation, but it was proving helpful. I could not let my resentment against him smoulder. I was someone else’s wife now.

And Carleton. What can I say except that he carried me along on the waves of passion like a frail craft on hitherto uncharted seas? I began to wait to be alone with him, to long for him, to give myself up to him entirely.

I understood so much of what my mother had told me. I knew how she had fought against such a passion. I understood her story as I had never been able to before. She came to Eversleigh for the wedding celebration with my father and the rest of the family. Lucas could not come because his wife was having a baby.

My parents were delighted. I could see they liked Carleton. My mother told me confidentially that she could clearly understand the attraction, and she was sure I should be even happier in my second marriage than I had been in my first. I realized then that, although she had considered Edwin a suitable husband, she had felt he was so young and not quite as serious as she would like the husband of her darling daughter to be.

Carleton talked a great deal with my father. They discussed the state of the country—my father from the military angle, Carleton from that of politics. They were clearly interested in each other.

After they had returned to Far Flamstead, my mother wrote frequently and they were all delighted at the prospect of the birth of my child.

Happy days they were. Uncle Toby was beside himself with delight.

“There is nothing pleases me so much as to see young people happily married. There is nothing like marriage. Married bliss—ah, it should be the dream of us all.” He became maudlin when he had drunk too much wine, talking of all he had missed. And now he was forced to go and watch pretty women on the stage and try to live vicariously the adventures they portrayed there. If he had married he might have had sons and daughters by now. Ah, it was sad. Life had passed him by.

He was constantly going to London. Carleton said there was not a play in London that he had not seen. He was either at the King’s House or the Duke of York’s. He was an honoured patron there and well known in the green rooms.

“Poor Uncle Toby,” said Carleton. “He’s trying to catch up with youth.”

Christmas came and went, and with the New Year I began to be more and more aware of my child. Sally Nullens was joyous. Nothing could delight her more than the prospect of having a baby in the house. “The boys are growing out of babyhood,” she said. “My word, they’re a handful. It will be pleasant to have a little one.”

Carleton was the devoted husband. He was beside himself with joy, and I realized how frustrated he must have felt during all the years when he was married to Barbary. I knew he was thinking of a son. I kept reminding him that our child might well be a girl.

He said it wouldn’t matter. We should have boys in time.

“Pray allow me to deliver this one first,” I retorted.

Indeed, they were happy days. We bantered our way through them, always taunting each other, and there were nights tender more than passionate now that my pregnancy was advancing.

I was no longer mourning for Edwin. I realized that I had kept that grief alive. Someone had said that the wise drown their sorrows, and it is only the foolish who teach them to swim. I thought that was apt. I had nourished my grief, I had brooded on it; I had built a shrine to Edwin in my heart—and I had worshipped a false God. Feet of clay indeed!

I was longing for my baby to be born.

She was born on the seventh of July, and I called her Priscilla. Carleton tried to pretend that he was not disappointed by the sex of the child, but he was; but to me she was perfect, and from the moment I saw her I would not have exchanged her for any other.

Priscilla. My Priscilla. I was taken right back to the days when I had first held Edwin in my arms. How dearly I had loved him; he had been more than my own child; he had been the consolation for the loss of his father. Priscilla I loved none the less. I loved her because she was a girl. She would be more completely mine. If Carleton was disappointed in her sex, I was not.

Great events might be happening away from Eversleigh. I could not think seriously about them; my life was centred round my child. When I heard that the Dutch fleet had sailed up the Medway as far as Chatham and had made themselves masters of Sheerness, I said how dreadful it was, but I was not thinking much about it. The Loyal London, the Great James and the Royal Oak were burned by the enemy and fortifications were blown up. I shuddered, but my thoughts were all for my child.

“We had never been so disgraced,” cried Lord Eversleigh, and I knew how deeply shocked my parents would be by the news.

But I could only think that Priscilla was gaining weight, that already she knew me and would stop whimpering if I took her. Already she would smile at me. I delighted in her.

The boys came to see her, and were amazed at her little hands and feet.

“She’ll never be able to run fast with little feet like that,” declared Leigh.

“Silly,” said Edwin. “She’ll grow big, won’t she, Mama? We were little like that once.”

“I was never as little,” boasted Leigh.

“Oh, yes, you were, I saw you,” I told him. I could never look at him without thinking of Edwin and Harriet together. I wondered when he had been conceived. It was before Edwin had been, because he was the elder.

I had to stop thinking of that because it was affecting my attitude to Leigh. It was not his fault that his parents had both deceived me so blatantly.

Uncle Toby was always making excuses to come to the nursery. He was enchanted by Priscilla.

“You lucky man,” he said to Carleton. “I’d give a lot to have a child like that.” Then he would talk sadly of his misspent youth and how different everything would have been if he had settled down and become a family man.

“It’s never too late,” said Carleton. “Shall we find a bride for him, Arabella?”

“We’ll have a house party,” I said. “We’ll invite as many eligible ladies as we can muster …”

And I thought: Someone for Charlotte. Poor Charlotte, she seemed to have grown even more unhappy of late. It was almost as though she had been affected by my marriage. I suppose it was seeing me with the children.

There was great jubilation when peace was declared with the French, the Danes and the Dutch, but Carleton told me that people were beginning to murmur against the King for concluding a peace which it was said was dishonourable.

“The country’s honeymoon with Charles is long over,” he said. “They are now murmuring … not so much against him as against his mistresses.”

“Which is somewhat unfair of them.”

“Alas, dear Arabella, the world often is unfair.”

I agreed it was, and we talked about Uncle Toby and the possibility of his finding a wife.

“We really must bestir ourselves,” I said.

As it happened there was no need for us to do that.

That September Uncle Toby went to London for a brief visit and it became a long one.

He wrote back to us that he was enjoying life in London. He was at the playhouse most days. He had seen Nell Gwyn as Alice Piers in The Black Prince, and better still in Dryden’s comedy An Evening’s Love as Donna Jacintha. He wrote lyrically of the charms of Nelly and how the rumours were that the King’s attentions were now fixed on her and poor Moll Davis was nowhere in the running.

“It appears he is enjoying the London scene,” said Carleton. “That will compensate him for all he has missed as a family man.”

Then quite suddenly came a letter which was addressed to Lord Eversleigh. We were all shown it and read it again and again. Carleton laughed immoderately.

“I never thought he would have gone as far as that,” he declared.

“What will happen now?” demanded Lord Eversleigh.

“What is natural!” said Carleton. “He will return here with the lady.”

The fact was that Uncle Toby had married a wife. According to him she was the most beautiful of women; she was attractive, amusing; everything he had wanted in a wife. He was the happiest man alive and he was going to share that happiness with his family.

The day after we received this letter he would be with us, for he was following close on the heels of his messenger.

The whole household waited eagerly.

True to his word Uncle Toby arrived with his bride. As they came through the gates we were all there waiting.

I stared. I thought I was dreaming. It could not possibly be so. But it was. Uncle Toby’s bride was Harriet Main.

MATILDA’S IMMEDIATE REACTION HAD been alarm. For a few moments she could only stare at her unbelievingly when Toby presented her. I was sure she felt as I did that she was dreaming.

“Oh, I know you’ve already met Harriet,” Uncle Toby announced. “She has told me all about it, have you not, my love?”

“I said we should have no secrets,” she answered softly.

“And the devil of a job I had getting her to accept me,” went on Uncle Toby. “I thought I never should get her to agree.”

I felt my lips turning up at the corners cynically. I had no doubt that it had been her idea from the first and that her reluctance would have been as false as she was.

She lowered her eyes and succeeded in looking modest, but I knew, of course, what a good actress she was.

“Oh, Arabella,” she said, “How happy I am to see you again. I have thought of you so much. And you are married again … to Carleton. Dear Toby has been telling me.”

“It was their married bliss that made me see what I was missing,” said the doting old man. Poor Uncle Toby! He had no idea of the kind of woman he had married.

Matilda had recovered her composure. She could never for long fail in her duties as the perfect hostess.

“Well, Toby, I have had the blue room made ready for you.”

“Thank you, Matilda. It’s what I was hoping.”

“Shall I take Harriet up?” I asked.

Matilda looked relieved. “That would be very pleasant,” said Harriet.

I was very much aware of her eyes on me as she followed me up the stairs. I threw open the door of the blue room. It was pleasant, as all the rooms at Eversleigh nowadays, and so called because of the colour of its furnishing. Harriet studied the four-poster with blue hanging, the blue curtains, and blue carpets.

“Very nice,” she said. She sat on the bed and looked up at me smiling. “This is fun,” she said.

As I did not smile with her, her expression changed to one of concern.

“Oh, Arabella, you are not still holding out against me, are you? I had to leave Leigh with you. How could I take him with me? I knew you would be the perfect mother to him … far better than I ever could.”

“I know who his father was.”

She was wrinkling her brows and preparing to look innocent.

“Charles …” she began.

“No,” I said, “not Charles Condey. You contented yourself merely with taking him away from Charlotte. I know his father was Edwin.”

She turned a shade paler. Then her lips curled. “He told you, of course. Your new husband.”

“Yes, he told me.”

“Just what I should expect of him.”

“It was right that I should know after having been deceived by you for so long.”

“I can explain …”

“No, you can’t. There was a letter of yours on Edwin when he was killed. It was bloodstained, but not too much so to prevent my being able to read what you had written to him. It explained everything. I know about the meetings in the arbour and how you were caught there and shot by the Puritan fanatic.”