Kathleen Winsor - Forever Amber

Twelfth Night marked the end of the celebrations. It was late in the evening that Samuel suffered another severe stroke, his first since the previous July.

Dr. de Forest, who was sent for immediately, asked Amber in private if Samuel had obeyed his earlier advice and she reluctantly admitted that for some time past he had not. But she defended herself, insisting that she had tried to persuade him but that he had refused to listen and had said it was ridiculous to think a man of sixty-one too old for love, and swore he felt more vigorous than he had in years.

“I don’t know what else I can do, Dr. de Forest,” she finished, giving the responsibility back to him.

“Then, madame,” he said gravely, “I doubt that your husband will live out the year.”

Amber turned about wearily and left the room. If she was ever to get rich Samuel must die, and yet she shrank from the thought of being his murderess, even indirectly. She had developed a genuine, if superficial, love for the handsome, kind and generous-spirited old man she had tricked into marriage.

In the anteroom to the bedchamber she came upon Lettice and Sam, and Lettice was in her brother’s arms, crying mournfully. “Oh, Sam! If only it had happened any night but this one! Twelfth Night—that means he’ll die before the year is out, I know it does!” Twelfth Night was the night of prophecy.

Sam patted her shoulders and talked to her quietly. “You mustn’t think that, Lettice. It’s only a foolish superstition. Don’t you remember that last year Aunt Ellen had the ague on Twelfth Day? And she’s been merry as a grig all year.” He caught sight of Amber, pausing in the doorway, but Lettice did not.

“Oh, but it’s different with Dad! It’s that terrible woman! She’s killing him!”

Sam tried to shush her beneath his breath, as Amber came on into the room. Lettice spun around, stared at her for a moment as though undecided whether to apologize or speak her mind. And then suddenly she cried out:

“Yes, you’re the one I meant! It’s all your fault! He’s been worse since you came!”

“Hush, Lettice!” whispered Sam.

“I won’t hush! He’s my father and I love him and we’re going to see him die before his time because this brazen creature makes him think he’s five-and-twenty again!” Her eyes swept over Amber with loathing and contempt; Samuel’s announcement of his wife’s pregnancy had been a serious shock to her, as though it were the final proof of her father’s infidelity to their dead mother. “What kind of woman are you? Have you no heart in you at all? To hurry an old man into his grave so that you can inherit his money!”

“Lettice—” pleaded Sam.

Amber’s own sense of guilt stopped her tongue. She had no stomach for a quarrel with his daughter when Samuel lay in the room beyond, perhaps dying. She answered with unwonted gentleness.

“That isn’t true, Lettice. There’s a great difference in our ages, I know. But I’ve tried to make him happy, and I think I have. He was sick before I came, you know that.”

Lettice, avoiding her eyes, made a gesture with one hand. Nothing could ever make her like this woman whom she distrusted for a hundred reasons, but she could still try to show her at least a surface respect for her father’s sake. “I’m sorry. I said too much. I’m half distracted with worry.”

Amber walked by, toward the bedroom, and as she passed gave Lettice’s hand a quick grasp with her own. “I am too, Lettice.” Lettice looked at her swiftly, a questioning puzzled look, but she could not help herself; the woman’s smallest gesture would always seem false-hearted to her.

Samuel refused to make his annual trip to Tunbridge Wells that January because his wife’s advanced pregnancy would not allow her to accompany him. But he did rest a great deal. More and more he stayed in his own apartments with her, while the eldest sons took over the business. She read to him and sang songs and played her guitar, and with gaiety and affection tried to soothe her own conscience.

It was customary for men with financial responsibilities to check over and settle their accounts at the end of the year, but because of his stroke Samuel postponed doing so until early in February. And then he worked on them for several days. He had his wealth in goldsmiths’ bills, stock in the East India Company—of which he was one of the directors—assignments upon rents, mortgages, shares in privateering fleets and other similar ventures, cargoes in Cadiz and Lisbon and Venice, jewels and gold-bullion and cash.

“Why don’t you let Sam and Bob do that?” Amber asked him one day, as she sat on the floor playing a game of cat’s-cradle with Tansy.

Samuel was at his writing-table, dressed in an East Indian robe which Bruce had given him, and there was a many-branched candlestick lighted above his head, for though midday it was dark as twilight. “I want to be sure myself that my affairs are in order—then if anything should happen to me—”

“You mustn’t talk like that, Samuel.” Amber got to her feet, dropping the cradle, and with a pat on the head for Tansy she walked over to where he sat. “You’re the picture of good health.” She gave him a light kiss and bent over, one arm about his shoulders. “Heavens! What’s all that? I couldn’t puzzle it out to save my bacon. My senses seem to run a-wool-gathering at the sight of a number!” She could, in fact, not do much more than read them.

“I’m arranging everything so that you won’t need to worry about it. If the baby’s a boy I’m going to leave him ten thousand pound to start in a business for himself—I think that’s better than for him to try to go in with his half-brothers—and if it’s a girl I’ll leave her five thousand for a marriage portion. How do you want your share? In money or property?”

“Oh, Samuel, I don’t know! Let’s not even think about it!”

He smiled at her fondly. “Nonsense, my dear. Of course we shall think about it. A man with any money at all must have a will, no matter what his age. Tell me—which would you prefer?”

“Well—then I suppose it would be best for me to have it in gold—so I won’t get cheated by some sharp rook.”

“I haven’t that much cash on hand, but in a few weeks’ time I think it can be arranged. I’ll put it with Shadrac Newbold.”

He died very quietly one evening early in April, just after he had gone upstairs to rest from a somewhat strenuous day.

In a great black mourning-bed, Samuel Dangerfield’s body lay at home in state. Two thousand doles of three farthings each were distributed to the poor, with biscuits and burnt ale. His young widow—much pitied because it was so near the time of her confinement—received visitors in her own room; she was pale and wore the plainest black gown, with a heavy black veil trailing from her head almost to the floor. Every chair, every table and mirror and picture in the entire apartment had been shrouded in black crape, every window was shut and covered, and only a few dim candles burned—Death was in the house.

The guests were served cold meats, biscuits and wine, and at last the funeral procession set out. The night was dark and cold and windy and the torches streamed out like banners. They moved very slowly, with a solemn stumping tread. A man ringing a bell led them through the streets and he was followed by the hearse, drawn by six black horses with black plumes on their heads. Men in black mounted on black horses rode beside it, and there followed a train of almost thirty closed black coaches carrying all members of the immediate family. After that there came on foot and in their official livery the members of the guilds to which he had belonged and other mourners in a straggling line almost two miles long.

Amber could not go to sleep that night in her black room alone but insisted that Nan sleep with her and that a torchère be left burning beside the bed. She was not as glad to be a rich woman as she had expected she would be, and she was not as sorrowful at Samuel’s death as she thought she should be. She was merely apathetic. Her sole wish now was that her pains would begin so that she could bear this child and be freed of the burden which grew more intolerable with each hour.

THE ANTEROOM WAS crowded. Young men stood about in groups of two and three and four, leaning on the window-sills to look down into the courtyard where a violent mid-March wind racked the trees, bending them almost double. They wore feather-loaded hats and thigh-length cloaks, with their swords tilting out at an angle in back; lace ruffles fell over their fingers and flared out from their knees and clusters of ribbon loops hung at their shoulders and elbows and hips. Several of them were yawning and sleepy-eyed.

“Oh, my God,” groaned one, with a weary sigh. “To bed at three and up at six! If only Old Rowley would find the woman could keep him abed in the mornings—”

“Never mind. When we’re at sea we can sleep as long as we like. Have you got your commission yet? I’m all but promised a captaincy.”

The other laughed. “If you’re a captain I should be rear-admiral. At least I know port from starboard.”

“Do you? Which is which?”

“Port’s right, and starboard’s left.”

“You’re wrong. It’s the other way around.”

“Well—it won’t make much difference, this way or that. There never was a man so plagued by sea-sickness as I. If I so much as take a pair of oars from Charing Cross to the Privy Stairs I’m sure to puke twice on the way.”

“I’m a fresh-water sailor myself. But for all of that I’m mighty damned glad the war’s begun. A man can live just so long on actresses and orange-girls, and then the diet begins to pall. Curse my tripes, but I’ll welcome the change—salt air and waves and fast gun-fire. By God, there’s the life for a man! Besides, my last whore begins to grow troublesome.”