Like most young men who went abroad he had brought back his quota of French oaths, and every other word was “Mor-blew” or “Mor-dee.” He told her that the Louvre was much larger than Whitehall, that in Venice the prostitutes walked the streets with their naked breasts on display, and that the Germans drank even more than the English. When he left he invited Amber and his aunt to be his guest at the Mulberry Gardens the next evening and she accepted the invitation with a smiling curtsy.
They had scarcely closed the door when Honour asked her: “Well, mem, what d’ye think of him? A mighty spruce young fellow, I’d say.”
But Amber felt suddenly tired and discouraged; the tendency to gloom and moroseness which had come with her pregnancy began to settle. Listlessly she shrugged her shoulders. “He’s no great matters to brag of.”
And all at once it washed down over her—the disappointment and loneliness, the aching longing she had for Bruce, the hopelessness of her situation, and she flung herself onto the bed and began to cry. She could feel her pregnancy closing in on her, seeming to shut her into a room from which there was no escape, and she was as terrified as though menaced by some looming monster.
Oh, what’ll I do! What’ll I do! she thought wildly. It’s growing and growing and growing inside me! I can’t stop it! It’s going to get bigger and bigger till I swell up like a stuffed toad and everyone will know—Oh! I wish I was dead!
CHAPTER EIGHT
AMBER AND LUKE CHANNELL were married in mid-October, three weeks after they had met, in the old church of the parish where the Rose and Crown was located. As was customary, Amber bought the wedding-ring and she got a very handsome one with several little diamonds, for which she told the jeweller to send a bill. She had discovered that it was possible to do business that way and now made a practice of it, for her ignorance of money-values was otherwise a serious handicap.
Amber had not been at all eager to marry Luke. She considered him to be one of the least attractive men she had ever known and nothing but the eternal nagging awareness of pregnancy could have persuaded her to consider him for a husband. He seemed to have just one redeeming quality, and that was a violent infatuation for her.
But by the next morning she knew that she had been cheated in that too.
His obsequious adoring manner had vanished altogether and now instead he was insolent, crude, and overbearing. His vulgarity shocked and disgusted her and he would allow her neither privacy nor peace but set upon her at any hour of the day or night. From the first day he was gone most of the time, drank incessantly, harangued her to send for the rest of her money, and displayed almost without provocation a violent and destructive bad-temper.
Mr. Goodman’s financial affairs continued unsolved and he began to seem almost as nebulous a figure as Amber’s aunt, though both women made new excuses to each other whenever the time limit of the old one had run out. As soon as Amber and Luke were married the two apartments were flung together and presently Sally was borrowing Amber’s fans and gloves and jewels and even tried without success to squeeze into her gowns. Amber began to feel that somehow she was caught between these two, aunt and nephew, who seemed to have gained an advantage over her—though she was at a loss to know just when or how it had happened.
Honour remained as quiet and self-effacing as ever, though she became slovenly and Amber had to tell her over and over again to wear her shoes in the house and not to go out in a soiled apron. When Luke was at home she stared at him with a sheepish longing that turned Amber sick; when he was drunk she held his head, cleaned up his vomit, undressed him and put him to bed. Such tasks were routine for a servant, but Honour performed them with a kind of fawning wife-like devotion. Luke, however, showed her no gratitude, nagged at her persistently, gave her a cuff or a kick whenever he was annoyed —which was often—and handled her familiarly even before Amber.
When they had been married scarcely two weeks Amber came into the room one day and surprised Honour and Luke on the bed together. Stunned and disgusted Amber stood there for a moment, mouth and eyes wide open, before she slammed the door. Luke gave a startled jump and Honour, with a terrified shriek, scrambled up and ran into Sally’s room, whimpering as she went.
Luke glared at her. “What in hell blew you in here?”
She was on the verge of crying, not because she cared if he seduced the maid, but because she was nervous and distraught. “How was I to know what you’d be about!”
He did not answer but got into his doublet, buckled on his sword and smacking his hat onto his head slammed out of the room. Amber stood for a moment, glaring after him, and then she went to find Honour. The girl was in Sally’s room, huddled in a far corner behind the bed, rocking and sobbing with her hands held protectively over her head. A master or mistress had the right to beat unruly servants and that was obviously what she expected.
“Stop that!” cried Amber. “I’m not going to hurt you!” She tossed a coin into her lap. “Here. And I’ll give you another for every piece-of-mutton he gets from you. Maybe he won’t worry me so much then,” she added in a mutter, and swirling her skirts about walked away.
But her own loathing of Luke and his unpleasant personal habits was by no means the only source of Amber’s trouble with her husband. Both he and his aunt were spending a great deal of money—almost every day new packages arrived for one or both of them—but they paid for nothing. She brought the subject up one day when she was setting out on a shopping tour with Mrs. Goodman.
“When’s Luke going to get some money from home? If he so much as takes his dinner at a tavern or goes to the play he asks me for some.”
Sally laughed and fanned herself industriously, looking out into the crowded street. “See that yellow satin gown just across the way, sweetheart? I’ve a mind to have one like it. Now what’s that you were saying? Oh, yes—Luke’s money. Well, to tell you truly, sweetheart, we wanted to keep this from you, but since you ask you may as well know: Luke’s father is furious he married without his leave. Poor Luke—married for love and now it seems he may be cut off without so much as a shilling. But then, my dear, with all your money no doubt the two of you could shift well enough?” She gave Amber an ingratiating grin, but her eyes were hard and searching.
Amber stared at her, shocked. Luke cut off and the two of them to live on her five hundred pounds! She had begun to learn already that five hundred was less than the illimitable fortune she had at first imagined it to be, particularly when spent at the reckless rate they three were going.
“Well, now, why the devil should he be cut out of his father’s will?” The question was a sharp challenge, for she and Sally were by means as polite as they had once been and several times had come close to quarrelling. “I suppose I’m not a good enough match for ’im?”
“Oh, Lord, sweetheart, I protest! I didn’t say that, did I? But his father had another girl in mind—Wait till he sees you. He’ll come around then fast enough, I warrant. And by the way, my dear, that thousand pound you sent for to your aunt’s lawyer—isn’t it mighty long in coming?” Sally’s voice was once more silky, soothing, as when she asked Luke to curb his temper, not to tear up the cards when he lost a hand, or to treat Honour more gently.
But Amber stuck out her lower lip, refused to look at her, and answered sullenly. “Maybe the lawyer won’t send it at all —now I’m married!”
Little by little her money was dribbling away. It went to Luke for pocket-money, to Mrs. Goodman, who always promised to repay the instant her husband returned from France, or to a tradesman who came to the door dunning her for a bill two or three months in arrears.