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Cornelia followed the slow progress up to her father’s chamber. Her mother seemed more in control of herself now, but Cornelia wished to be on hand should her mother need her.
She was ashamed. She should have noticed her mother’s anxiety. Indeed, she had noticed it, but she had brushed it aside in her own preoccupation, not conceiving that Mistress Brent could have any serious worries. She had known of her father’s extravagance. The arguments between husband and wife had been noisily conducted at times. Everyone in the house had known of them. But Cornelia had barely listened. All her life her father had provided substantially for his family. She was too accustomed to comfort even to have suspected that the solid foundation of their lives might ever give way beneath them.
Standing in the main chamber, dominated by the great bed, she watched Andrew’s face as he bent over her father. What was he thinking? She tried to guess by the expression on his fine-drawn features, but he had already assumed the professional mask with which he protected himself and his patients.
He turned away from the bed and drew Mistress Brent towards the door. ‘There is nothing to be done at the moment,’ he said quietly. ‘He will not be conscious for a while. Is something worrying him? I heard of the loss of the Eagle— he was heavily involved with her? He must be reassured, in which case. You must lie to him if necessar
y.’ A gentle smile warmed his face. ‘Can you do that? Lie convincingly?’
Mistress Brent returned the smile reluctantly. Apart from her anxiety for her husband, she was also thinking that, if Andrew did not exist, Cornelia would have accepted Sir Rendel, and the hostility she felt could not be excluded from her eyes.
Andrew frowned, watching her. ‘I will have to bleed him,’ he went on. ‘It is best to do that while he is unconscious. Will you heat some water?’
Mistress Brent, relieved to have some task to perform, nodded and went out of the room. Andrew looked across the room at Cornelia. Her hazel eyes were enormous in her white face.
‘Has your father been under some strain recently? What brought about his collapse?’
She told him simply, as she had always told him everything in their earlier years. He walked to the window and stared out, his back to her, while she faltered through her story.
When she was silent there was a long pause. She listened to the sound of Andrew’s breathing. All her life lay in the hollow of his hand. Her whole being was concentrated upon him. Her eyes traced the stoop of his shoulders, the lift of his neck, the shape of his skull under his sunny hair. The light, falling duskily through the lattice, showed her a few white hairs among the gold. He is past thirty, she thought. Her heart ached with tenderness and concern.
Then he turned and smiled, a pale, cold movement of the mouth, which did not reach his eyes.
‘What will you do now?’ he asked.
She knew that he already knew the answer to his own question. ‘I shall do as my father wishes,’ she answered, in a tone as calm as his own, betraying nothing of the pain which twisted like a snake deep inside her.
If he had only shown some regret, some sorrow, given her a crumb of comfort to take with her into the darkness of the future.
Her eyes searched his face, saw the hollows at the side of his throat, the weary droop of his mouth, the bluish shadows beneath his eyes. A pulse beat at his temple. She stared at it.
He slowly flushed under her scrutiny. His voice came, stiff and reluctant, as though dragged up from the deepest part of himself. ‘Yes, you must marry Sir Rendel as your father wishes. It is your duty.’
She turned without answering and walked out of the room.
She heard her own footsteps on the wooden stair, the creak of a board, the rustle of her skirts. They were the sounds of despair. She listened to the sound of herself walking out of Andrew’s life.
Below stairs the maids banged doors, whispered, ran to and fro. Her mother came upstairs with a bowl of hot water steaming in her hands. Cornelia passed her, sightless as a blind beggar, moving slowly and carefully, as one moves when every step means a stab of agony.
The Alderman awoke during the night. Andrew had bled him and he was very weak, his mind wandering. He did not know his wife. Mistress Brent watched his glazed eyes and looked back down an endless tunnel to the day of their marriage. She wanted to speak to him. He had so nearly gone for ever. She had a sense of urgency, a need to communicate, but he closed his eyes again, and the heavy sound of his breathing went on in the quiet room.
Andrew came and went softly, his black gown noiseless as a bat’s wing at night. Cornelia saw him, passed him. They neither spoke nor looked at each other.
Sir Rendel came at eleven the next morning. She received him alone, in the parlour. He walked quietly into the room, the ribbons fluttering at his knee, a cane in his hand, and bowed to her, his hat over his heart. He was sombre, magnificent, in black and pink.
She looked at him, hands folded demurely at her waist, and felt nothing. She seemed to exist in another world, removed from feeling of any kind, frozen in the realisation that she would never marry Andrew.
‘I have come for my answer,’ he said coolly. His grey eyes were penetrating. His mouth closed in a thin line while he waited for her to speak.
‘I will marry you, sir,’ she said.
The words were easy to speak now. They meant nothing. She had achieved that, at least. There was a comfort and a dignity in being so remote, placed above the pain which had first struck her yesterday.
He stared at her without replying for a moment.
Then, with a savage gesture, he threw his hat and cane into a chair and walked across the room. ‘What is it?’ he asked abruptly. ‘What have they said to you?’
She was surprised and vaguely annoyed. She felt as though, having written a scene for him, he was refusing to play it by her rules. As her irritation pricked, she was suddenly afraid. She did not want to be forced back into facing life. It hurt too much. She looked at him with dislike. It was typical of him that he should somehow make her come down from the pinnacle of self-sacrifice on which she had isolated herself. From their first meeting he had been jabbing and prodding at her, making her say and do what she would never normally consider.
