Kathleen Winsor - Forever Amber

For two acts Barbara remained seated. She smiled at Buckingham and other gentlemen down in the pit. She twisted her pearls and fiddled her fan and put her hands to her hair. She took out a mirror to examine her face, stuck on another patch, and then tossed the mirror back to Wilson. She was, very ostentatiously, bored. And all the while Charles seemed unaware that she was nearby; he did not trouble to glance at her even once.

At last she thought she could bear this no longer, and fixing a determined smile on her face she leaned across Catherine and touched his arm. “It’s a wretched performance, don’t you think. Sire?”

He glanced at her coldly. “No, I don’t think so. I’m enjoying it.”

Barbara’s eyes glittered and the blood rushed to her face, but in a moment she had recovered herself. All at once she stood up, smiling sweetly, and crossing behind the Queen went to force a place for herself between Charles and York. The two men gave her surprised and angry glances and turned instantly away while Barbara sat, her face impassive and motionless as stone, though humiliated rage was making her sweat. For a moment she thought that her heart would explode, so bursting-full of blood it seemed.

And then, out of the corners of her eyes, she looked at Charles and saw the ominous flicker of his jaw-muscles. She stared at him, longing violently to reach over and rake her nails across that dark smooth-shaven cheek until she drew blood—but at last with a determined effort she dragged her eyes away and forced them down to the stage once more. All she could see was a blur that shifted and rocked; there were faces, faces, faces, turned up and grinning, smirking, sneering at her—a whole sea of enemy faces. She felt that she hated each one of them, with a murderous savage hatred that turned her sick and trembling.

It seemed to her that the play went on for hours and that she would never be able to endure the next minute of sitting there —but at last it was over. She waited a moment, under the pretense of pulling on her gloves, still hoping that Charles would invite her to ride in his coach. But instead he went off with Harry Bennet to call on the Chancellor who was again sick in bed with his gout.

Barbara lifted her hood up over her head, put on her mask and with an impatient gesture to Wilson started out as fast as she could go—the people stepped back to make a path, for her name still had magic to part the waves. Outside she got into her coach, and though it blocked the traffic she kept it waiting while her coachman yelled and swore at whoever complained, telling them to be silent—my lady would go in her own good time. It was several minutes before Buckingham appeared.

But finally he came strolling out of the theatre with Sedley and Buckhurst, and she gestured her footman to open the door. Frantically she signalled to him, but he was talking to an orange-girl, a merry laughing young wench who chattered with the three great men, no more awed than if they had been porters or carmen. At last, completely exasperated, Barbara shouted at him:

“Buckingham!”

He glanced carelessly in her direction, waved, and turned back to continue his conversation. Barbara ripped her fan across. “Lightning blast him! I’ll cut off his ears for this!” But finally he took an orange from the girl, kissed her, and dropping his coin into her low-necked bodice strolled toward the coach, tossing the orange to a tattered little ragamuffin who begged him for it.

“Get out and take a hackney,” Barbara muttered hastily to Wilson, and as his Grace got in on one side the waiting-woman got out on the other.

“That little wench has the readiest wit in London,” he said, sitting down beside her and waving out the window at the girl, while Barbara glared at him with a look so malignant he should have wilted. “She was put out into the streets at six to sell herring and was a slavey in Mother Ross’s brothel at twelve. Hart keeps her now, but I say she belongs on the stage. Nell Gwynne’s her name and I’d be willing to bet—”

Barbara had not listened to him but was yelling at her coachman to drive off, though now the traffic was so snarled on every side of them that it was impossible to move at all.

“A pox on you and your damned orange-girls!” she cried furiously, turning from the coachman back to her cousin. “A fine service you’ve done me! I’ve never been so humiliated—and in plain view of all the world! What ’ve you been about this past week?”

Buckingham stiffened, all his natural pride and arrogance rising in resentment at her hectoring tone and manner. “D’you expect miracles? Pray remember, madame, it’s taken you some time to get so far out of his Majesty’s favour. Even I can’t put you back in all at once. You should have stayed in your own seat—you wouldn’t have been humiliated there. And henceforward, madame, please don’t shout at me on street-corners as though I were your footboy.”

“Why, you impertinent dog! I’ll have you—”

“You’ll what, madame?”

“I’ll make you sorry for this!”

“I beg your pardon, madame—but you’ll never make me sorry for anything again. Or have you forgotten already that I can undo you whenever I care to take the trouble? Don’t forget, madame, that only you and I know that you burned his Majesty’s letters.”

Barbara’s mouth fell open and for several seconds she sat staring at him with horror which turned slowly to writhing impotent rage. She was about to speak when he flung open the door and got out, gave her a careless wave of his gloved hand and climbed into the next coach. It was full of young women who sat in a billowing sea of silk and satin skirts, and they welcomed him with screams of delight and kisses as he sat down among them. While Barbara stared, her eyes burning purple in a white face, the coach started slowly and rolled off, but the Duke did not give her so much as a backward glance.

DANGERFIELD HOUSE WAS in the aristocratic old quarter of Blackfriars and had been built twenty years before on the site of a great fourteenth-century mansion. It formed a broad sprawling H, with courtyards both in front and in back, and was four stories high with a fifth half-story; the ground floor and the basement served for offices and warehouse. Made of red brick it was perfectly symmetrical with innumerable large square-paned glass windows, several gables cutting into the roof-line and a forest of chimney-tops. It stood on the corner of Shoemaker Row, facing Greed Lane, and was surrounded on every side by a tall iron picket-fence, guarded by massive gates where servants waited at all hours of the day or night.

Climbing out of the coach before the twin staircases which led to the main entrance on the second floor, Amber looked up at it with wide wondering eyes.

This house was something bigger, more imposing, more formidable than she had expected. Two hundred thousand pounds was an even greater amount of money than she had realized. Until now she had thought of Samuel Dangerfield merely as a kind simple old gentleman whom she had contrived to hoodwink, but now he took on something of the awe-inspiring quality of his home, and she began to feel a little nervous at the prospect of meeting his family. She wished that she felt as convinced as he did that they were going to welcome her with open arms-love her at sight.

And now, as they stood for a moment in the February drizzle while he gave instructions to the footmen regarding the disposal of their trunks and baggage, a third-story window was flung open and a woman appeared in it.

“Dad! At last you’re back! We were so worried—you’ve been gone so long! But did it help you? Are you feeling better?” She did not, or pretended not to notice that there was a woman with her father.

But Amber looked up at her curiously. That, she thought, must be Lettice.

She had heard a great deal about Lettice—as she had heard a great deal about all his children—but more, perhaps, of Lettice than any of the others. Lettice had been married for several years, but at her mother’s death she had returned to Dangerfield House with her husband and family to take charge of the housekeeping. Without intending to, Samuel had portrayed a prim energetic domineering woman, whom his wife was already prepared to dislike. And now Lettice was ignoring her, as though she were a lewd woman whom it was not necessary to notice.

“I’m feeling very well,” said Samuel, obviously annoyed by his daughter’s bad manners. “How is my new grandson?”

“Two weeks old yesterday and thriving! He’s the image of John!”

“Come down into the front drawing-room, Lettice,” Samuel said crisply. “ I want to see you—immediately.”

Lettice, after giving a quick stealthy glance at Amber, closed the window and disappeared and Amber and Samuel—with Nan and Tansy following—went up the staircase and into the house. The door was opened for them by a gigantic Negro in handsome blue livery and they stepped into a great entrance-hall out of which opened other rooms; a pair of broad curved staircases ran up either side of it to the railed-off hallway above.

Everywhere about them were the evidences of lush comfort and wealth: the beautifully laid floors, the carved oak furniture and tapestry-hung walls. And yet, somehow, the impression created was one of soberness, not frivolity. An almost ponderous conservatism marked each velvet footstool and carved cornice. It was possible to know at a glance that quiet and well-bred and moderate people lived in this house.

They walked off to the left into a drawing-room more than fifty feet long and Samuel saw immediately, to his regret, that he had made a careless mistake. For there, over the fireplace, hung a portrait of him and his first wife, painted some twenty years before; it had been there so long that he had forgotten it. But Amber, looking at the powerful prim unlovely face of the first Mrs. Dangerfield, understood immediately why it had been possible to induce Samuel to marry her—though she doubted whether his family would understand as well.