“Circumstances worked in your favour. Peterkin and Frances with the Mission was one thing.”
“Cresswell had the same advantage. After all, Frances is his daughter. I took advantage of what was offered.”
“It must have been a god-send.”
“It was good. I have made it beneficial.”
“The money you gave to the Mission was accompanied by blazing publicity, I noticed.”
“Exactly.”
“And now Matthew?”
“Matthew is going into Parliament. I shall support him.”
“Another gift from Heaven?”
“He is married to my daughter. It will be seen that I am a supporter of good causes.”
“And when he is in Parliament?”
“I shall advise him, of course. He is a very amenable young man.”
“He will be your slave.”
“Oh come. Slavery is abolished now, you know. Let us say I may become his mentor. In five years’ time … seven at most … I shall not be so very old. Perhaps then I can do what I’ve always wanted to. Be in Parliament myself. That is the ultimate power. To make the laws of the land, to build one’s country into the greatest in the world.”
“I see you are building the foundation of your future-career which has been disturbed. You have had to start building again. But you are still determined to succeed.”
“I am being very frank with you, Annora.”
“I wonder why.”
“Because you have been astute enough to see the way I am going. I am telling you this because I want you to see what can be done. I daresay you have had moments when you thought you would never be happy again. But you can and you will. But you won’t do it if you sit nursing your sorrows. Get rid of them. Start again. Those who succeed in life are the ones who can pick themselves up and start again when they fall down. The longer you remain on the ground the harder it will be to get up. That’s what I’m telling you, Annora.”
“It is very kind of you to take so much trouble over me.”
“I am expiating my sins towards your mother. She would agree that I owed it to her. She was a very courageous woman. Oh, I was very fond of Jessica. And here you are … her daughter. Remember what I have told you. Think of how far I have come since those days when the papers blared forth evidence of my villainies. I’m living it down, just as Lord Melbourne lived down his past. Did you know that man figured in two divorce cases? He had a mad wife who blatantly flaunted her relationship with the poet Lord Byron. Their story was one of the scandals of the age. Yet what happened to Lord Melbourne? He became Prime Minister and is now the Queen’s most devoted and dearest friend. What Melbourne did, what I can do, you can do, Annora.”
He stretched his hand across the table and took mine.
I said: “Thank you, Uncle Peter. You have helped me a lot. Should I go back to Cornwall?”
“I like your being here, of course, but you have to go back, don’t you? You have to see that man again. I think you’re hankering after him. I should find out. Then if he’ll still have you, marry him. Do you still want him?”
“I think of him … often.”
“You can’t get him out of your thoughts. I’ve seen you look at Helena and Matthew … wistfully.”
“It seems as if it might work out for them now.”
“It does indeed. Helena is not of an adventurous nature. She takes after her mother. She wants a cosy life. She is ready to step in line. This rather stresses what I have been telling you. I know the story. I know that John Milward is the baby’s father; but Matthew came along and he did his good deed. He married Helena to make life easier for her. He is a very agreeable young man. And now you see everything is going to turn out well for him … for them both. When he gets into Parliament, when he plays his part in bringing about Prison Reform he will have justified himself. His confidence will rise. I see a life of good works ahead of him for, mark my words, when he has done with Prison Reform, there will be something else. Helena will stand beside him, helped by her mother and me. She will provide the right setting for the rising politician. There will be little ones joining Jonnie in the nursery and Helena will realize that the best thing that happened to her was being jilted by John Milward and marrying Matthew purely for convenience in the first place.”
I couldn’t help laughing. “I don’t think it is going to be quite as simple as that.”
He looked at me earnestly. “But it will … if they make it so. You see what I’m getting at. Now this young man in Cornwall—you’ve known him all your life. I remember hearing that as a child you were his devoted slave. And then you grew up and were in love with him. Yes, you are. Don’t think you can deceive me. And you turn him down on some whim … just because, my dear, you are immersed in your tragedy and not making the effort to grow away from it. You allow yourself to suspect he is marrying you for your possessions. He wants Cador. So? He would be a foolish young man if he did not. Of course, he wants Cador; and for that very reason he will make a good thing of it. If he didn’t want Cador I should have a very poor opinion of him. How could he help you manage it satisfactorily if he didn’t feel delighted in having a share in it?”
“You have a certain way of reasoning …”
“I have a realistic way of reasoning. You want to feel that he would marry you if you were a little match seller. But you are not a match seller and if you were it is hardly likely that you would have met this young man. No. He wants to marry you. He loves you but that need not stop his loving Cador as well. Get rid of those romantic notions. Look at life as it really is … as I always have. And you see me as I am. I have ridden the storms, haven’t I? That is what you have to do in life, believe me.”
If it were only Cador that stood between us he might be right. But my thoughts went back to that Midsummer’s Eve.
I said: “When I was a child, I thought Rolf the most wonderful person on earth … at least one of them. He shared that honour with my father. Red-letter days were when he came to Cador which he did often with his father. Then something happened. It was Midsummer’s Eve in Cornwall. They celebrate it there with old customs going back to pre-Christian days. There was a woman who lived in the woods. People said she was a witch. On Midsummer’s Eve they burned down her house. There was one there … the leader in a kind of Druid’s robe. I believe it was Rolf because I had seen that robe in his house. It changed everything between us. It occurred to me that I did not know him at all. I felt I could not trust anyone any more, not even Rolf. And early in the morning of the day which was to have been our wedding day, I realized that it was Cador he wanted … and I just could not marry him.”
“Did you talk to him about it?”
“On the ship when we were coming home we had talked. He said he wasn’t there. He was in Bodmin.”
“Well?”
“I couldn’t quite believe him. Oh, I did at the time … but later I had so many doubts. And then I thought that he was marrying me for Cador.”
“And all because of that escapade.”
“Escapade! It was such cruelty as I had never seen before. If my father had been there he would have put a stop to it.”
“Let’s suppose the worst: that he lied about this. He was young. Young men have high spirits. Perhaps they drink a little too much. They do foolish things. They do things they regret afterwards. You must understand this. You have to forgive the sins of youth.”