We Have a Rubens
AS AN UNDER-HOUSEMAID AT LULWORTH, Mabel Roe started her working day at five in the morning. It was still dark so she had to dress and wash herself by the light of last night’s candle. Her hands were red and chapped, her knuckles swollen from years of scrubbing. It was not so cold this morning that she had to break the ice on the handbasin, but Mabel could see her breath issuing in frosty plumes across the unforgiving air of the attic bedroom.
Usually Mabel would linger in bed for a precious five minutes before getting up. But Iris had gone home for her mother’s funeral, so there was no extra warmth in the bed to ward off the chill, no one to grumble with about the rigours of the day ahead. Still, Iris’s absence meant that Mabel could spend more time than usual in front of the tiny square of mirror above the chest of drawers, adjusting her cap to sit becomingly on her thin brown hair. On the chair lay the thick brown holland apron that she wore in the morning while she was doing the fires, but Mabel picked up the light cotton apron that she wore in the afternoons and tied that round her waist. She wanted to look her best.
Mabel had been startled the first time she found the Duke in his dressing gown, sitting on the window seat, looking out to sea. When he had been Lord Ivo he had never been an early riser, except when he was hunting, but things were different now. Her job was to get the fires lit in the bedrooms without waking the occupants. Under-housemaids like Mabel were not meant to have anything to do with the ‘family’. The housekeeper had told her that she must turn and face the wall if she met any of them in the corridor. To reveal that the Duke now woke with the lark would have given Mabel some status among her fellow housemaids, who discussed the family endlessly, but she had said nothing. This silent audience with the Duke was Mabel’s talisman, the antidote to her aching knees and stinging hands. It had made her nervous at first to go through the lengthy ritual of cleaning out the ashes of the night before, polishing the grate and laying the new fire with His Grace sitting there so still. Once she had dropped the poker on to the marble hearth; the noise had been calamitous, it felt like the loudest sound she had ever heard, but the Duke had hardly stirred.
He was there on the window seat this morning as usual. She wondered what he looked at so hard. There was nothing to see out there but the green hills leading down to the sea.
Mabel finished laying the fire, building a neat little pyramid of kindling that burst into obedient flame the moment she put a match to it. She gathered together all her tools – the stiff hearth brush, the tin of blacking, the matches – and put them back in her work box; she wiped her hands on her apron and stood up slowly, her knees cracking as she did.
The Duke said softly, ‘Thank you, Mabel.’
Mabel very nearly dropped the ash bucket. She scraped her knees together in something like a curtsy and mumbled, ‘Yer Grace.’ He had never spoken to her before, and yet he knew her name. She felt herself going scarlet and backed out of the room as speedily as she could. She stood in the corridor, her heart pounding and the palms of her hands clammy with sweat. She leant against the wall and closed her eyes. The Duke knew her name. She felt like a character in a Peg’s Paper story. He had noticed her; surely this was the start of something.
Her reverie was interrupted by Betty who was coming from the Cash girl’s bedroom.
‘What you doing, Mabel?’ she said in a fierce whisper. ‘Don’t you know the old Duchess is coming today and we’ve got to turn out those rooms this morning? If you don’t get on you’ll miss breakfast. This isn’t the time to be daydreaming, and how come you’re wearing your best apron and it’s covered all over with smuts?’
Mabel looked down at the black smears on the white cotton. They were, she knew, impossible to remove.
Cora decided that she would go down to breakfast that morning before meeting the Duke for her tour of the house. As she walked along the corridor that led from her bedroom to the staircase, she saw a maid with a crumpled and soiled apron running in the other direction. Cora was enough of her mother’s daughter to notice the dirty apron.
As she walked through Lulworth she was torn between her admiration of the pictures, the walnut furniture, the faded brocade curtains, objects which looked as if they had been always been there, and her awareness of a rank, musty smell that lingered here in the less frequented parts. Cora had grown up in a dust-free world that smelt of fresh flowers, furniture polish and wet varnish. Only rarely in her native country did she enter a building that was older than she was. But here she was surrounded by an unfamiliar odour, one she was too young and too American to recognise as a mixture of damp, decay and disappointment. She did notice the chill, though, and wondered that the Duke could bear to live in such a cold house.
He was not at breakfast. Cora ate alone and then decided that she would not wait on his whim; she would go to the stables and see Lincoln. She was walking down the immense flight of stone steps at the entrance of the house when she heard the Duke calling her name.
‘Miss Cash, don’t tell me you have forgotten our arrangement?’
The Duke had evidently been riding already, he was hatless and his cheeks were flushed from the cold.
‘Not at all. I thought you must have found other business to attend to when I didn’t see you at breakfast.’
‘I went for a ride. Early morning is the best time for it. It clears my head for the rest of the day.’
‘I envy you your freedom. I wish riding were such a carefree business for my sex. You can just jump on your horse and go. I, on the other hand, have to spend at least quarter of an hour being laced into my habit and then I have to find a groom to ride out with me, and in my experience no groom has ever wanted to ride at my pace.’
The Duke made her a bow. ‘Miss Cash, I accept the challenge. I will ride out with you and I promise not to baulk at your pace, however reckless. If we break our necks, at least we shall do so together.’
Cora bridled at the implied criticism, she knew she was an excellent horsewoman. ‘I assure you, Duke, I am not in the habit of falling off my horse. What happened the other day was completely out of character. Unfortunately the fall has destroyed my memory of the moments leading up to it, but I am sure that something quite untoward must have happened for me to lose control like that.’
‘Perhaps you saw a ghost. Lulworth is full of them: headless cavaliers, wailing monks, medieval chatelaines rattling their ghostly keys. You won’t find a housemaid who will go into the gallery after dark in case she bumps into the Grey Lady.’
‘The Grey Lady?’
‘One of my ancestors, Lady Eleanor Maltravers. It was in the Civil War. Our Civil War, we had one too…The Maltravers were Royalists of course, but Eleanor fell in love with a neighbour’s son who went to fight for Cromwell. When she was told that he had been killed at the battle of Marsden, she fell into such despair that she threw herself off the cliffs. Turned out that the boy she loved wasn’t dead after all so she can’t leave the house till she finds him.’
‘And why is she grey?’
‘Oh, because she started wearing grim Puritan clothes – to please her lover or to annoy her family, who’s to say?’ The Duke gave Cora a knowing smile that suggested she might know something about the latter situation.
Cora was wondering whether to smile back when two rangy grey dogs raced between them, yapping shrilly and jumping up on to Cora’s skirts, leaving a pattern of dirty brown paw marks.
‘Aloysius, Jerome, stop it at once.’ The Duke spoke with an authority completely unlike his usual quiet tone. The dogs subsided instantly. ‘I’m sorry about your skirt, Miss Cash. Would you like me to get a maid to sponge it down?’
Cora shook her head. ‘No indeed. I want my tour. But I am curious about your dogs’ names. Back home we call our dogs things like Spot or Fido. These must be very special animals to warrant such fancy names.’
The Duke leant down to one of the dogs and pulled its ears. ‘The Maltravers have been breeding Lulworth lurchers for God knows how many generations but I think I am the first duke to name them after medieval popes.’ He stood up and the dog ran lightly to the bottom of the steps. ‘And now, Miss Cash, you shall have your tour.’ He bowed to her and raised his hand in a mock flourish.
‘Lulworth was originally built as a hunting lodge for Edward the Third. The long gallery, the dining room and the music room where you found me yesterday,’ he gave her a half smile of recognition, ‘were part of this original building. In 1315 he gave it to my ancestor Guy Maltravers as a reward for his services in the Hundred Years War. The front of the house and the great hall were built by my namesake Ivo, the First Duke. He was a favourite of James the First, who made him a duke and gave him the monopoly on sealing wax so he was able to build all this. Ivo had very good taste, he got Inigo Jones to do the designs. They ran out of money – the Civil War was very bad for the Maltravers – but with the Restoration things improved, except for poor Eleanor, and they were able to finish it. After that things went downhill rather. The Maltravers stayed Catholic when the rest of the country went Protestant so they spent a lot of time down here, praying. The family has only become smart again since my mother married into it. She had no intention of being a dowdy duchess. She spent a fortune on the place, put in the new servants’ wing and built the station so that her smart friends could get here easily from London. Very energetic woman, my mother, she did more to Lulworth in the last twenty years than had been done in the last two hundred.’ The Duke’s voice trailed off. They were walking along a paved path that led up a small hill to the right of the house. At the top was an elegant white stone building. The Duke paused on the steps flanked by two weathered stone pillars.
‘And this is the chapel, which as Father Oliver will have no doubt told you is the oldest consecrated Catholic site in continuous use in England. This chapel was built by the Fifth Duke who had a French wife who was very devout. She didn’t like saying her prayers in the draughty medieval chapel, so she ordered her husband to build her something modern, and this is the result.’ Ivo held open the grey painted door for Cora. As she walked past him, her hand brushed against his. It was the tiniest contact, as fleeting as a moth’s wing brushing her cheek, but it sent a tremor through her arm. She gave a gasp and Ivo looked at her.
‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it? A French bonbon in deepest Dorset.’
Cora nodded. The chapel was perfectly proportioned. The main body was circular. A gallery ran round the top beneath a domed ceiling painted with voluptuous saints and attendant cherubs. The walls were white, and the woodwork a pale greyish-green picked out in gold. The pews were upholstered in the same shade of velvet. There were two padded armchairs in the front row, with coronets and the ducal W embroidered on the backs. The altar was covered with a green velvet cloth decorated with elaborate gold embroideries. An ivory prie-dieu hung between two gold candlesticks. The overall effect was rich but graceful – rather, thought Cora, like the Duke himself.
Cora had never been in a Catholic church before. Catholicism was something she associated with the Irish maids at home. On Sunday mornings they would be taken in a shiny-faced, giggling bevy to Mass at the local Catholic church. The Irish girls always looked so excited, as if they were going to a ball rather than to a place of worship. Cora, who found attending the Episcopal church on Sunday mornings an ordeal only mitigated by the knowledge that of all the exquisite examples of the milliner’s art on display, hers was undoubtedly the finest, had envied the maids their gleeful high spirits.
She tried not to stare as the Duke dipped his fingers into the stoup at the entrance of the church and knelt down and crossed himself. This automatic act of devotion surprised her. She wondered if he expected her to do likewise. But he got to his feet and walked towards her without constraint.
The Duke gestured towards the ducal chairs. ‘Embroidered by Duchess Mathilde herself. Must have been rather reassuring to sew your own coronet when all your friends were losing their titles and even their heads. Her mother was one of Marie Antoinette’s ladies-in-waiting. Her brother lost his head to La Guillotine.’ The Duke gave a theatrical shiver.
Cora noticed that in the alcove behind the altar there was a rectangular patch that glowed whitely against the faded paint that surrounded it. She guessed that a picture, quite a large one, had hung there until quite recently
The Duke noticed the direction of her gaze. ‘Yes, there should be a picture there. Rather a fine one actually, my father always said it was the finest Rubens in the country even if St Cecilia was a touch on the fleshy side.’ He voice trailed into silence as if he had forgotten his reason for being there. His hands absentmindedly picked at the gold tassel hanging from the ducal cushion.
‘We have a Rubens,’ said Cora brightly. ‘Mother bought it last year from Prince Pamphilij. She is very proud of it but I find it a little overpowering. But where is yours? I know Mother would love to compare them, although of course hers will be the superior.’ She smiled but the Duke did not smile back.
‘Not possible, I’m afraid. The Rubens was sold, along with a very pretty set of Fragonard panels that were part of Duchess Mathilde’s dowry. My mother had some royal guests to entertain and the house needed to be brought up to scratch. My father was quite cut up.’ He wrenched the tassel so hard that it broke off. ‘But now, fortunately, she has married into another Rubens. I’m sure she will be only too happy to tell Mrs Cash about it.’
Cora felt her face burn. She thought of the picture gallery in Sans Souci and the faded outlines of past glory that its magnificence represented. She tried to imagine what it must be like to have to give up something because you needed the money. She saw that the Duke, too, was flushed and instinctively she put her hand on his arm in mute apology – for her lack of tact, for her Rubens, for underestimating him.
‘You have every right now, Duke, to think of me as the worst kind of vulgar American, but I can tell you that while there is much – so much I don’t know, I am a quick study. I never make the same mistake twice.’
Ivo said nothing. For a moment Cora thought he was about to shake her hand away but then he took it in his own, turning her palm upwards.
‘What a crisp line of destiny you have.’ He traced the line that tapered round the mound of her thumb with his finger. Cora felt as if her whole being was concentrated under his fingertip. ‘You are going into an unblemished future, Cora. A bright, confident, American destiny. You will have no faded patches on your walls, no missing pictures. There is nothing you need to learn from me, unless of course you want to.’ He hesitated and then slowly raised his eyes to look at her. Cora felt she could not meet his gaze; she stared hard at the ducal W embroidered by a dead French duchess, but she could not ignore his hand on hers and the warmth she felt in the cold morning.
At last she turned to him and then quickly before she lost heart she said, ‘I would like to learn how to make you happy. I think I could, you know.’ Cora could feel her heart beating, her face scarlet. She had spoken before she had a chance to think and yet she knew this was what she wanted.
Ivo raised her hand to his lips and kissed the soft white skin of her wrist. ‘Is that really what you want, Cora? All this?’
This time she did not look away. ‘If this is what makes you happy, then yes.’
She spoke more loudly than she had realised, and the bright ring of her voice hit the clear chill air of the chapel. Ivo looked at her so intently that she felt transparent, that he could see through her, but she had nothing to hide. And when she thought she could bear it no longer, he put his hand behind her head and put his mouth on hers. His lips tasted of honey and tobacco. It was not a tentative kiss.
Cora smelt the musky scent of his neck and ran her fingers through his springy curls. She felt the length of his body pressing against her through her clothes. His arm was round her waist, his mouth moved down to kiss the inch of neck that escaped from the high collar of her morning dress. And then he pulled away from her abruptly.
‘But I am making an unwarranted assumption here.’
He stepped back, his eyes searching her face. Cora stood motionless. She saw the corner of his mouth twitch; was he going to laugh? Then he dropped on to his knees.
Ivo cleared his throat. ‘Cora, will you do me the honour of accepting my hand in marriage?’
Cora looked down at him. She saw that the tips of his ears were red. This had come before she was ready, everything he did seemed to take her by surprise. Surely there should be more of a courtship, a period of mutual discovery and delicious anticipation. She remembered the long summer in Newport when Teddy had seemed to hover about her consciousness. She remembered the words he had whispered in her ear the day she had fallen off her bicycle. He had seemed to understand her, but he had not made her free. At least Ivo was offering that. She wondered if she was giving in too quickly And yet, and yet…that kiss had been too urgent to be contained for long. She wanted the sequel as much as she regretted the lost dance of courtship. And by marrying the Duke, she would at once dispatch her mother and the lingering burden of guilt that she had carried since that evening in Newport.
Not that Cora’s thoughts were quite so cogent in the minute that she made the Duke wait, kneeling before her on the stone floor of the chapel; but those were the strands which swirled around in her head before resolving into the force that made her slowly but definitely reach out her hand to pull him to her.
‘Yes,’ she whispered into his coat. There were tears in her eyes. Tears for the speed of her surrender, tears for all the other futures there might have been. But then he kissed her again.
They only drew apart when the chapel bell started striking eleven. The noise was so loud and unexpected that they both laughed, as if guilty at having been caught out.
‘I suppose we should go back and speak to Mother.’ Cora dragged out the last word.
‘And will your mother approve?’
Cora smiled. ‘I think it will be the first time that she and I will agree about my future. But what about your mother? How will she feel about your marrying an American girl?’
‘Well that, my dear Cora, you are about to find out. She is coming here expressly to take charge of the situation. But we have forestalled her.’ Ivo took Cora’s arm formally and walked down the aisle with her out of the chapel. It was an oddly solemn moment until the lurchers, who had been waiting patiently on the steps, sensed the change of situation and began to bark and lick their hands.