The Dream and the Glory Page 2

  “And quite right!” the Earl interposed.

  “The Order,” Captain Stanton continued, “provided the basic facilities on the island for vessels of many nationalities apart from their own. In return all the booty was sold in Malta and the Order took ten per cent of the proceeds.”

  “It sounds very commercial,” the Earl commented doubtfully.

  “The Knights of St. John are heroes not saints!” his cousin replied and now there was no mistaking the laughter in his voice.

  Cordelia glanced at him quickly.

  She fervently hoped that he would not tease David or indeed argue with him about his determination to be a Knight.

  They had gone over the whole idea so often, they had endured a great deal of opposition from their relatives, but nothing and nobody, she knew, would divert her brother from his intended course.

  ‘I could not bear to have it discussed all over again,’ she thought to herself. ‘Besides it upsets David.’

  “Now things are very different,” Mark Stanton was saying. “French ships trading in the Levant are immune from attack by the Knights of St. John even if they are carrying Turkish goods. The Turks make every effort to acquire French passports.”

  “But you still sail along the African coast?” the Earl asked quickly.

  “We do,” his cousin agreed, “and we never cease in our efforts to rescue Christian slaves.”

  “Are there still thousands in Algiers and Tangier?” Cordelia asked.

  “I am afraid so,” Mark Stanton replied. “But you will find an enormous number of slaves in Malta as well.”

  Cordelia looked startled and he added,

  “Malta was at one time one of the biggest slave markets in Europe. Two hundred slaves or more are still captured almost every year. The Sultan buys back a large number of them at one hundred louis a time! ”

  “I am not interested in slaves,” the Earl interrupted, “although I understand that they are part of the booty. But tell me about your ship. How can you be the Captain of one that belongs to the Order if you are not yourself a Knight?”

  “The ship I am commanding at the moment is the private property of Baron Ludwig von Wütenstein of the Anglo-Bavarian League, which I imagine you yourself are joining?”

  “Yes, of course!” the Earl exclaimed.

  “The Baron is only twenty-one,” Captain Stanton went on. “As I expect you know already, David, a Knight cannot be in command of a ship until he is twenty-four and has done four ‘caravans’.”

  There was no need to explain to Cordelia, who had heard her brother talk of it so often, that a ‘caravan’ was a cruise in the galleys lasting at least six months.

  These ‘caravans’ ensured that every Knight had experience of practical Naval matters and had resulted in the Knights of Malta being recognised as the finest and most experienced Naval Captains in the world.

  A Knight was not only a valiant fighter, dauntless and with a spirit of adventure that commanded admiration wherever he went, he was also so knowledgeable at sea that the Knights were greatly in demand as instructors.

  “My ship, the St. Jude,” Mark Stanton was explaining, “belongs to the Baron and as the Order is at the moment short of vessels they welcome Knights who will provide their own.”

  “Perhaps that is something I can do later,” the Earl suggested with glowing eyes.

  “I see no reason why not if you can afford it,” his cousin answered.

  “It is certainly an idea and one that did not occur to me before,” the Earl said. “When can I see your ship?”

  “Any time you wish,” Mark Stanton replied. “But, as I have only just arrived here, I would like, if you will allow me, to talk to you both for a little while before we go to the dockyard.”

  “Yes, of course,” David replied, while Cordelia with a smile explained,

  “David dislikes Naples and is longing to reach Malta. He grudges every moment that we must spend in this beautiful City.”

  “And you?” Mark Stanton asked.

  “It’s so lovely that I feel at times I must be dreaming!”

  He sipped his wine before he said reflectively,

  “When I want to think of somewhere lovely and peaceful I remember Stanton Park.”

  The Earl rose to his feet.

  “I will go and get ready so that when you are prepared to show me your ship I shall not keep you waiting.”

  “I am in no hurry,” Mark Stanton answered.

  The Earl, however, moved quickly across the polished floor with its magnificent Persian rugs and Cordelia said with a smile,

  “I am so glad you have come. David has been eating his heart out for fear that he would not reach Malta in the next few days.”

  Mark Stanton was still for a moment and then he said slowly,

  “Have you really thought this over sensibly? David is not yet of age, is he wise to give up his English way of life?”

  “I beg of you not to argue with him,” Cordelia replied. “This has always been his vision and his dream and nothing you or anyone else can say could dissuade him from the conviction that he has been called to the service of God in this special way.”

  Mark Stanton did not answer and after a moment she went on,

  “I cannot tell you how nervous I was that he might not be accepted. It would have been a blow that he would never have recovered from.”

  “I see no reason why he should not have been accepted.”

  “We certainly have the requisite eight quarterings to prove our Nobility and the Stantons are a Catholic family. But I am sure that one of our relatives who lives in Rome was trying to persuade His Holiness the Pope to refuse David’s application. In fact he more or less said so when he was in England.”

  “Have you any idea why he should do that?”

  “He thought that David was too young to know his own mind and that he would doubtless fall in love and regret that he could not be married. I think he also resented so much of the Stanton fortune going to Malta.”

  “I should have thought that those were all strong and valid arguments,” Mark Stanton remarked.

  “It is not your place to try to interfere!” Cordelia retorted.

  Even as she spoke she knew that it sounded rude, but she had a feeling that she must protect her brother from this large somehow overwhelming cousin.

  She did not know why she felt that way, except that she remembered Mark had always upset her when she was a child.

  He had teased her and since he was so much older she had been a little afraid of him. What was more, she admitted to herself, she had been jealous.

  David, two years her senior, had been a close companion and she had imagined that he was happy in her company when he was home from school.

  The moment Mark appeared, however, he had run after him, fagged for him and found his company infinitely preferable to that of his small sister.

  “I think I have every right to try to stop David doing this,” Mark said. “In fact I am the one person who should do it.”

  “Why should you think that?” Cordelia asked and now there was no doubt of the hostility in her voice.

  “Quite simply because I am his heir!”

  Cordelia looked at her cousin in a startled fashion.

  “Are you? I did not realise that?”

  “Unless David marries and has a son,” he replied, “I shall on his death inherit the title. A very unlikely contingency, seeing that I am eight years older than he is.”

  He paused and then went on,

  “At the same time, although undoubtedly I would be defrauding my son, if I ever have one, I consider that I should point out to David the disadvantages of his becoming a Knight of St. John.”

  Cordelia rose to her feet.

  “I beg of you to do nothing of the sort. David has suffered quite enough criticism and opposition and interference by people who quite frankly should mind their own business!”

  “Which, of course, includes me?”

  “We
did not expect to find you here,” Cordelia pointed out. “It is just by chance that you should have come into Naples at this moment and be the Captain of a ship that is proceeding to Malta. All I can beg you is that you will carry us as if we were ordinary passengers and not relatives.”

  “You know that is impossible,” he replied. “Quite frankly, Cordelia, I am delighted to have such distinguished passengers and, may I say, one such lovely relative.”

  “And yet you intend to harass David and make him unhappy?”

  Mark Stanton rose slowly to his feet. There was, Cordelia thought, an athletic litheness about him that she would not have expected in such a big man.

  “Let’s talk about this coolly and sensibly,” he suggested. “Does David believe that he will be able to withstand the temptations of the flesh for the rest of his life?”

  He was being cynical, Cordelia thought, and she replied hotly,

  “Some men can find something better to do than to pursue, as the Neapolitans do, every pretty face they see!”

  “Most Englishmen as it happens are more discriminating,” Mark Stanton smiled.

  She knew that he was laughing at her and hated him for it.

  She remembered how he teased her for having a freckled nose when she was a child and how there was always something about him that had made her feel small, insignificant and unsure of herself.

  “You are to leave David alone,” she asserted angrily.

  She knew even as she spoke that it was the wrong approach.

  Young though she was and ignorant of the world, she knew instantly that to give orders to a man of Captain Stanton’s calibre was to get nowhere.

  But there was something about him that made her angry as it always had and now because she felt that she was making no impression on him she stamped her foot.

  “Oh, do go away!” she cried. “The last thing either David or I require at this moment is a fault-finding relative. Forget you have come here and let’s find another ship.”

  “You are not very complimentary, Cordelia,” Mark Stanton said. “At the same time I cannot help feeling that your anger comes not so much from anything I have said but simply because your common sense, or do you call it your conscience, tells you that I am right?”

  “It tells me nothing of the sort!” Cordelia snapped. “I want David to be happy. I know that is possible only if he is true to his ideals and he dedicates himself, as he wishes to do, to his faith.”

  To her surprise Mark Stanton did not reply immediately.

  Instead he walked across the salon to stand with his back to her, contemplating a portrait of Lady Hamilton painted by Madame Le Brun when she first came to Naples.

  In her favourite ‘attitude’ of Bacchante she looked very lovely and there was something very young and vulnerable about her that reminded him of Cordelia.

  Watching him Cordelia felt somehow helpless and ineffective. He was so sure of himself, so determined and, she thought, ruthless.

  He turned from the picture to walk back to her.

  “We have talked a great deal about David,” he said. “Now tell me a little about yourself.”

  “What do you want to know?” Cordelia asked and there was no disguising the hostility in her voice.

  “Let me put it quite clearly. If David is to become a Knight of St. John, what will you do? As things are in the Mediterranean at the moment it may not even be easy for you to get back to England.”

  “What do you mean by that exactly?”

  “There is an obstacle who you may have heard of called Napoleon Bonaparte,” Mark Stanton replied sarcastically.

  “I understood his fleet is shut up in Toulon and blockaded by the British.”

  “And I hope they will remain there, but it is still a long and arduous journey from here to England.”

  “I-I may not – return to England.”

  “You mean that there is someone here you might marry?”

  “No – no, of course – not!” she said quickly.

  “I cannot believe that Lady Hamilton has asked you to be her guest indefinitely.”

  He did not add, although he thought it, that Emma Hamilton would find a young and very beautiful woman an unwelcome rival for any length of time.

  “No – there is no one I would – marry!” Cordelia murmured.

  ‘Then what are your plans?”

  “They are my own!”

  “I think, as your nearest relative, in fact your only relative in this part of the world, that I have a right to be told them.”

  She wanted to refuse and he was aware of the conflict within her before she said, almost as if she was goaded into a reply,

  “David has suggested that I – enter the Convent of St. Romanica.”

  “He has suggested what?”

  The question seemed to vibrate around the salon almost like a pistol shot.

  “I am – considering it,” Cordelia said with dignity.

  “Have the Stantons all gone crazy?” Mark Stanton expostulated.

  Now there was no doubt that he had been jolted out of the calm cynical amusement that he had regarded his cousins with since he first arrived.

  “It’s bad enough,” he went on, “that David should take vows he may bitterly regret later in his life, but that you should enter a Convent at eighteen, having seen nothing of the world and looking as you do, is sheer unprecedented madness.”

  There was so much anger in his tone that however much she tried to tell herself that it was nothing to do with him, Cordelia felt afraid.

  “I have said I am – considering it,” she said in a very small voice. “It is what David – wants.”

  “There is something in the Stanton character,” Mark Stanton said, “that makes them want to convert or proselytise others to their own way of thinking.”

  The anger abated in his voice a little as he went on,

  “We have a joint great-uncle or grandfather, I cannot remember which, who was a drunkard and invariably pestered his friends to get drunk with him. Another who was a gambler who infected the young men with his vice when they first arrived in White’s Club to such an extent that the majority of them were bankrupt within a few months.”

  “The examples you quote are hardly comparable,” Cordelia reflected coldly.

  “On the contrary it is just the same idea. David wants to be a monk so you should become a nun. David wants to dedicate his life to some high and noble ideal, you must do likewise regardless of whether it is a wholehearted desire on your part to segregate yourself from the world.”

  Cordelia did not answer and after a moment he said angrily,

  “Good God, child, you have the whole of your life before you, a life that should be full and interesting, a life in which you will meet many men who will fall in love with you and whom you may love in return.”

  Cordelia made a gesture as if she repudiated such an idea, but she did not speak and he carried on,

  “Can you really contemplate an existence of being shut up behind high walls, of living permanently and exclusively in the company of your own sex, a number of whom I am prepared to swear are not saintly but aggressively feminine?”

  Cordelia drew a deep breath.

  “What I do or do not decide, Mark, it is for me to make the decision and nothing you can do or say can stop me.”

  There was a moment’s silence and then Mark Stanton said slowly,

  “I am not so sure about that.”

  “What do you – mean?”

  “I am thinking,” he answered, “that I may be only your second or is it your third cousin? Nevertheless, we are away from England, out of reach of older and nearer members of the family. I should imagine that in a Court of Law I would have a good claim to be appointed as your Guardian.”

  “David is my Guardian since Papa died,” Cordelia retorted sharply.

  “But David will be a Knight and, unless I am mistaken, he will not be twenty-one for some months?”

  “I don’t know what you are
contemplating,” Cordelia said, “but whatever it is, will you please forget it? I will not acknowledge you as my Guardian or as one who has the least authority over me.”

  She felt that he was not impressed and continued angrily,

  “I shall do as I wish to do and what I consider best for myself. Anything you say either to me or to David will be just a waste of breath!”

  Mark Stanton did not answer and again Cordelia stamped her foot.

  “I hate you, Mark! I have always hated you! Go away and leave us alone! I was happy – very happy until you came here.”

  She turned her face away so that he should not see that there were tears in her eyes. Then, although she had not heard him move, suddenly he was behind her and his hands were on her shoulders turning her round to face him.

  “I am sorry, Cordelia,” he said quietly. “I can see that I have gone about this the wrong way. Will you forgive me?”

  She was so astonished at his change of attitude and by the beguiling note in his voice that she stared at him wide-eyed.

  Then he smiled. It was a smile, although she did not know it, that a great number of women had found irresistible. And then he lifted her hand to his lips.

  “Forgive me, Cordelia,” he said again and kissed it.

  She stood looking at him bewildered and taken off her guard because this was the last thing she had expected.

  “Suppose you go and find David?” he suggested. “Then I will take you to see my ship. I will not be in the least surprised if David galvanises the indolent Neapolitans into working a great deal faster than they intend to do.”

  He was still holding her hand. Cordelia looked into his eyes and found it difficult to know what to say.

  She was still seething with the anger that he had aroused in her and yet she found it hard, when he was so near to her, to go on raging at him.

  Finally she pulled her fingers from his and hurried towards the door.

  Only as she went towards her own bedroom was she conscious that the warm pressure of his mouth still lingered on her skin.

  *

  The salon was bright with lights. They even shone amongst the flowers on the terrace and the noise and laughter of voices seemed to ripple out from the windows into the soft velvet of the night.