The Temptation Of Torilla Part 9

"h.e.l.lo, Papa!" Beryl called out casually.

Torilla scrambled to her feet and kissed her uncle affectionately.

"It is very nice to see you again, Torilla," the Earl said with a note of genuine affection in his voice.

"It is lovely to be back, Uncle Hector."

"Surely by now your father is tired of burying himself in the wilds of nowhere?" the Earl suggested.

"He is working too hard, Uncle Hector."

"Then tell him to come back here. The Vicar of Wheathampstead is retiring soon. It is a good inc.u.mbency and I am quite prepared to add a few hundreds to the stipend if your father will take it on."

"That is very kind of you, Uncle Hector."

"Tell him it is his for the asking. I have missed you, Torilla, and you are a good influence on Beryl which is more than some people are."

He walked from the room as he spoke and Beryl made a little grimace.

"What does he mean by that?" Torilla asked.

"He hates most of my friends. He thinks they are fast and improper, which indeed they are, but they are certainly more amusing than the old fuddy-duddies Papa likes to entertain."

"Do you really a like all the people you a meet at Carlton House?" Torilla asked a little hesitantly.

Beryl smiled at her.

"Some of them are fantastic! You wonder where the Prince could find such extraordinary people. But the worst are the members of the aristocracy like the Marquis of Queensbury who is absolutely famous for his amorous indiscretions!"

She laughed at the expression on Torilla's face and added, "The wicked Barrymore brothers are horrors of the worst description, you would be appalled at the things they do."

"I think I would be a frightened of people like that."

"It will be amusing to see what effect they have on you," Beryl laughed. "You will meet them all when we go to London next week."

Torilla looked at her questioningly and Beryl went on, "I have just decided, Torilla, that I shall present you to the Beau Monde. It will not only be fun to see what you think of it, but also to watch what they think of you! I don't believe any of them have ever met anybody who is really good!"

"You make me embarra.s.sed," Torilla exclaimed.

"It is true," Beryl said. "You are good a you always were a while I am the opposite. I want to be bad. Not wicked, like the Barrymores, just bad enough to enjoy all the things I ought not to."

"You are not bad!" Torilla contradicted loyally. "And anyway, dearest, once you are married it will be very different."

Beryl did not answer and Torilla suddenly had the uncomfortable feeling that on the contrary perhaps it would be worse.

If the Marquis was as wicked as she thought him to be, would he not drive Beryl, who had always been impulsive, into doing things that she might afterwards regret?

Torilla suddenly felt very apprehensive, then she s.h.i.+ed away from her own thoughts.

Beryl talked a lot of nonsense, but undoubtedly she would continue to be just as sweet, kind and generous as before, although it was to be admitted, susceptible to flattery.

'And who could blame her?' Torilla wondered, 'when she is so beautiful a so amazingly beautiful.'

She remembered her mother saying once, "Beryl is like a picture by Rubens a all brilliant colours. You, my darling, are an exquisite watercolour that creeps into one's soul so that you find it difficult to think of any other painting as being so lovely."

Torilla thought at the time that her mother was only consoling her because Beryl attracted so much more attention than she did.

Now she thought that Beryl was, in fact, with her gaiety, her sparkle and her vivacity very like a brilliant breathtaking picture by a great master.

Then, as if she wished to change the subject, Torilla asked, "What shall we do with all these flowers? The lilies are perfect!"

She picked up a big bunch of them as she spoke and looked down at them, their fragrance seeming to have a mystical quality about them.

"You had better have those put in your bedroom if you like them so much," Beryl replied, "but throw the rest away. There are too many flowers in the house as it is."

"Oh, no! You must not do that!" Torilla exclaimed.

She had always thought of flowers as being alive and liable to suffer as much as human beings could, and she hated it when the servants forgot to water them or they were thrown away before they were dead.

"I will see to them," she said, knowing that Beryl was not listening.

There was the sound of voices in the hall and her cousin started to her feet.

"It is Gallen!" she exclaimed. "I thought he would come today! Oh, how exciting! Now you can see him."

She rushed across the room to pull open the door.

"Gallen! Gallen!"

Torilla heard her exclaim.

"How wonderful that you are here! I have been so looking forward to seeing you!"

A man's deep voice replied, but Torilla could not hear what he said.

Standing with the lilies in her arms she was steeling herself for the moment that made her whole body feel tense.

The horror the Marquis of Havingham evoked in her was like a live coal burning in her breast.

She hated him a she hated him so intensely that she thought if it was within her power she would strike him dead.

Last night, when she had gone to bed, she had prayed with a fervency she had never used before that something would prevent him from marrying Beryl.

How could she allow anyone she loved marry a man who would commit such crimes against human beings as the Marquis was committing against the miners and their families?

She had always pictured him as fat and gross with lines of debauchery under his eyes.

She had imagined him sitting at a table weighed down with food and drinking red wine, which was the colour of the blood of those who sweated for him in the darkness and dust of his filthy pit.

'How can any man be so b.e.s.t.i.a.l, so heartless?' she asked herself.

The miners of Barrowfield were not only overworked but also underpaid. She knew that the overseer, who she supposed had been appointed by the Marquis, also tricked them.

There were many ways in which the miners could suffer so that those in charge of them could line their pockets.

There were always wage deductions to pay for the candles and the powder they used. An overseer could, if he chose, make the men buy candles from him for one or two pennies above the market price.

This, Torilla had learnt from her father, was what happened in the Havingham mine.

Payment for broken tools reduced a man's wages and the overseer could demand a sum far in excess of the current market value of the goods.

The Vicar had been very explicit about the iniquity of this.

"They are charging a s.h.i.+lling for a shovel shaft," he had said furiously one day to Torilla, "and a shovel shaft costs sixpence here, although hitherto it has cost twopence."

"Can nothing be done?" Torilla had asked once again.

"Who cares if the men are cheated?" the Vicar had asked scathingly.

Certainly not the wealthy Marquis! He is a man with castles and houses, servants and racehorses and now he is taking an expensive wife.

She heard the voices in the hall drawing nearer to the door and she braced herself for a contact with the man she thought of as 'the devil'.

She tightened her hold on the great bunches of lilies which she still held in her arms and her eyes were wide and dark in her pale face as she waited.

Then she could not look, it was so frightening.

Beryl came in first.

"Here is Gallen, dearest Torilla, and now you can meet him!"

A man followed Beryl into the salon, his polished hessian boots reflecting the furniture and the chaos of paper, flowers and presents on the floor.

With an effort Torilla raised her eyes, then her heart turned a double-somersault in her breast.

She thought that the ceiling fell down on her head and the whole room whirled around her!

It was not the Marquis of Havingham who followed Beryl, but Sir Alexander Abdy!

CHAPTER FOUR.

Torilla walked in through the gates of the Park and saw the ground beneath the oak trees covered with a golden carpet of daffodils.

It was early in the morning because she had been to the seven o'clock Communion in the little village Church where she had been christened.

There were only half-a-dozen other people at the service and, when it was over, Torilla went to the Churchyard to stand beside her mother's grave under a yew-tree.

She looked down at the plain headstone and found it hard to believe that her mother, whom she had loved so deeply and who had always been so sweet and understanding, had left her.

Then she had told herself this was not true.

Her mother's spirit was alive and Torilla was convinced that, wherever she might be, her thoughts and love would always be with her father and herself.

'Help me, Mama, to do what I can for Beryl,' Torilla said in her heart. 'Knowing how he treats the people in Barrowfield how can I let her marry the Marquis?'

She did not include it in her prayers, but she knew, if she was honest, that her feelings about the Marquis were conflicting and confused.

How, when she knew him to be a monster of callousness and cruelty, could he also be the man who had evoked such a Divine rapture within herself that even to think of his kiss still made her quiver?

Ever since he arrived at The Hall, she had found it impossible to look at him or to meet his eyes.

When he entered the salon, she curtsied automatically without any conscious volition on her part and her heart had been beating so furiously in her breast that she had thought he must hear it.

Her eyelashes were very dark against her pale cheeks.

Then, as she rose, she heard him say, "Delightful to meet you, Miss Clifford!"

She told herself then that her feelings against him were no less vehement than before his arrival and yet there was an undoubted tremor in her voice as she answered politely, "Thank you a my Lord."

Beryl was quite unaware that there was any tension between the Marquis and her cousin.

"Come and look at our presents, Gallen," she had said pulling him by the arm. "They are quite nauseating and the only thing we can do is to give them away to other unfortunate couples in the future."

As she took the Marquis towards the untidy mess of presents, letters and paper, Torilla, still clenching the lilies against her, had escaped.

How could it be possible, she asked herself as she ran upstairs, that the Marquis was Sir Alexander Abdy, the man who, despite every resolution, she had dreamt about every night since she had last seen him and thought about a thousand times a day?

'I hate him! I hate him!' she told herself over and over again as if the mere words were a talisman that would erase the memory of that magical, inexpressibly wonderful kiss.

She had been very quiet at dinner that night, but neither Beryl nor her uncle noticed because they were so busy talking.

The Earl had plenty to relate about the congratulations he had received in London after The Gazette had published the announcement of his daughter's betrothal.

At the same time Beryl was quite determined that the Marquis's attention should not wander long from herself. She was looking extremely beautiful in a gown that matched the colour of her eyes and wearing a necklace of aquamarines which, set with diamonds, sparkled with every movement.

She made the Marquis laugh several times and Torilla thought that no man could fail to be in love with anyone so alluring. But she was so afraid of meeting the Marquis's eyes that she did not look at him.

Only as dinner was drawing to a close did the Marquis ask unexpectedly as Beryl was talking of the wedding, "What part is Miss Clifford to play in all these celebrations?"

It was a question that made Torilla start and the colour rose in her cheeks.

"Torilla is to be my only bridesmaid," Beryl replied. "I have not had time, Gallen, to tell you how much she means in my life. We were brought up together."