Music from the Heart Read online

  “You will just have to remember that neither he nor I are complaining.”

  “I know, Mama, but she goes on and on almost as if Step-Papa picked you up from the gutter or you trapped him into marriage when he was least expecting it.”

  Lady Armstrong laughed again, remembering how Sir James had pleaded with her and begged her to marry him so humbly that now in retrospect it seemed almost incredible how abject he had been at the time.

  But she was growing fonder of him all the time that they were together and she prayed that for all their sakes that Muriel would get married soon.

  Then, as far as she was concerned, she could enjoy having a husband who adored her and who was prepared to give her all the money that she needed for herself and her daughter.

  But Sir James had his little meannesses and one of these was that he did not like to send his horses on long distances and he resented hiring conveyances when his stable was full.

  “Ilouka will leave for your sister’s early the day after tomorrow,” Lady Armstrong said. “If she starts early in the morning, she will only have to stay for one night on the way and you know I don’t like her staying at Posting inns even with a maid to look after her.”

  There was silence while both Sir James and his wife were thinking that Lord Denton was unlikely to arrive before teatime and by that time Ilouka would be far away.

  Lady Armstrong then asked pleadingly,

  “You will send her in a carriage, James?”

  “That is impossible,” Sir James replied. “I need all the coachmen and the grooms here to help with the Steeplechase and it is anyway too far for our best horses.”

  Lady Armstrong stiffened.

  Then she enquired,

  “Then how are you suggesting that Ilouka should travel to your sister’s house?”

  “She can go by stagecoach. After all, it will hardly be a new experience for her.”

  This was true, because before Lady Armstrong married Sir James, she had during her widowhood been obliged to dispose of her horses and she and Ilouka had therefore had no option but to travel by stagecoach.

  There was a little silence.

  Then Lady Armstrong said,

  “I suppose if she is with Hannah she will be all right.”

  “Of course she will be all right,” Sir James said sharply, “and very much safer than if she travelled by Post-chaise, which is the only other alternative.”

  “The stagecoaches are so slow and they don’t always stop at the best inns.”

  “I imagine, as it is a cross-country journey, there will not be much choice,” Sir James replied drily.

  Lady Armstrong was perturbed.

  At the same time she realised that her husband would have made up his mind and she thought that to plead with him to change it would be a mistake and might affect Ilouka.

  He had already said that she should have a Season in London and, although they were both well aware that it would be difficult because of Muriel, so far he had not renounced his intention of opening his London house to give a ball for both the girls.

  Lady Armstrong was certain that behind her back Muriel was trying by every means she could to have Ilouka excluded.

  And she was also confident that her husband would be too loyal to her to agree to what his daughter suggested.

  But it would be a silly mistake to upset him in any way at this particular moment and she could only pray more fervently than she was already that Muriel would marry Lord Denton and Ilouka could then enjoy a Season alone.

  Aloud she said,

  “I will see that Ilouka is ready and that Hannah goes with her. Will you order a carriage to convey them to the crossroads? And please ask whoever goes with them to see that she has a comfortable seat and to tip the guard so that he will look after her.”

  “You know I will do all that,” Sir James said.

  Then he put his hand on his wife’s shoulder,

  “I am sorry to send Ilouka away, my darling, if it upsets you. Denton is quite a catch and I would welcome him as a son-in-law.”

  The way he spoke said far more than the words he used and Lady Armstrong quickly put her hand over his as she said,

  “You know, dearest, that I want Muriel’s happiness just as I want yours.”

  Sir James bent his head to kiss her cheek and said no more, but Lady Armstrong knew by the expression in his eyes before he left the room how much he loved her.

  But she could not help worrying about Ilouka.

  Then she told herself that there was really nothing to worry about but that her daughter would be exceedingly bored on the long journey cross-country.

  The stagecoach would not be packed with dashing young men who might be beguiled by her beauty but with farmers’ wives journeying to a market town, commercial travellers intent on what they could sell and perhaps a few farm boys returning home after taking a horse to sell at a Fair or driving a herd of cows to a new purchaser.

  ‘And who could look after Ilouka more effectively than Hannah?’ she thought with a smile.

  Hannah had been their only maid after the Colonel’s death, because they had been unable to afford any more servants.

  She was a strict Presbyterian who thought the whole world was a wicked place filled with people who in her own words were ‘up to no good’.

  Even the many tradesmen who came to The Manor had been afraid of Hannah and Lady Armstrong knew that any man who even attempted to talk to Ilouka without an introduction would be annihilated by Hannah’s eyes before the first words had left his lips.

  “I am afraid it will be a rather long and boring journey for you, Hannah,” she said to the old maid in her sweet manner that every servant found irresistible.

  “Duty is duty, my Lady,” Hannah replied, “and the Good Lord never said anythin’ about it being a pleasure,”

  “I know Miss Ilouka will be quite safe with you,” Lady Armstrong went on.

  “You can be sure of that, my Lady.”

  “All the same,” Lady Armstrong continued as if she spoke to herself, “I wish the Master could have spared a coach to take you to Bedfordshire.”

  Hannah’s lips tightened making her look even more formidable.

  Now that she was nearing seventy, the lines on her face were deeply ingrained and when she was angry as an impertinent footman once said,

  “She looks like an old gargoyle!”

  Hannah had never really approved of Sir James from the first time he came courting her Mistress.

  But she definitely appreciated the comforts of their new home, but she deeply resented it if ‘her ladies’, as she thought of them in her mind, were insulted in any way.

  “I am not that sorry for myself having to travel in the stagecoach,” Ilouka said to her mother when they were alone, “but for all the other travellers who will have to put up with Hannah! I cannot tell you, Mama, how intimidating she can be.”

  “I have seen her,” Lady Armstrong replied laughing.

  The eyes of both mother and daughter twinkled at each other as they envisaged how Hannah, sitting bolt upright, would by her very presence seem to cast a gloom over the other occupants of the stagecoach.

  Those who might have been talking gaily and vociferously before would lapse into an uneasy silence and any man who dared to whistle beneath his breath would receive such a look of disapproval that he would hastily close his eyes and pretend to go to sleep.

  The cards that men whiled away a long journey with were frowned upon by Hannah to a point where a game lost its interest and the small children who otherwise might have been obstreperous hid their heads shyly against their mothers.

  “I shall be perfectly all right,” Ilouka insisted. “Don’t worry about me on the journey, Mama, but only when I reach Stone House, which is appropriately named.”

  Both mother and daughter laughed and then Lady Armstrong commented,

  “Oh, dear, I wish worthy people were not always so dismal and dreary about it. I know Agatha Adolphus do
es a great deal of good one way and another, but I am sure as soon as she has bestowed her charity on them it makes those who receive it just long to go out and do something totally wicked!”

  Ilouka put her arm round her mother’s neck and kissed her.

  “I really love you, Mama! You always understand and, if after I have stayed with Mrs. Adolphus, I do something really wicked you must not blame me.”

  Lady Armstrong gave a little cry.

  “Oh, Ilouka, I should not have said that and please, darling, just do all the things I should want you to do in your usual adorable manner. Then perhaps even Agatha Adolphus will not seem so formidable.”

  “She will!” Ilouka said lightly. “She is like the Rock of Gibraltar and nothing, neither tempest nor earthquake, will change her – and certainly I will not.”

  They laughed again but, when the next morning came and Ilouka was ready to leave, she held on tightly to her mother.

  “I love you, Mama!” she sighed. “I will hate being away from you.”

  “I shall miss you too, dearest, but there is nothing else either of us can do.”

  “Nothing,” Ilouka agreed.

  She would not upset her mother by telling her that last night when they had gone up to bed together Muriel had said to her,

  “Surely there must be some gentlemen in Bedfordshire and you ought to be able to get your hands on one of them.”

  Ilouka had not replied and Muriel had gone on spitefully,

  “You have certainly tried hard enough to encourage some idiots to propose to you and now when they do so you only have to say ‘yes’.”

  As if she goaded Ilouka into a reply, she retorted unwisely,

  “I do not wish to marry anybody until I can find somebody I can love.”

  “That sounds very high and mighty,” Muriel sneered, “and, of course, it will be very easy for you to fall in love with a man if he has lots of money like my father!”

  Ilouka stiffened and Muriel went on,

  “It was very convenient, was it not, your mother sitting wistfully on the doorstep, so to speak, and looking so pathetic in a cheap black gown because she could not afford anything better.”

  The angry spiteful note in Muriel’s voice seemed to be reflected in her face and Ilouka thought that when she spoke like that she looked ugly and it was unlikely that any man unless he was blind would want to marry her.

  Because she would not demean herself to answer anything so untrue or so unkind, she merely said as they reached her bedroom door,

  “Goodnight, Muriel. You may not believe this, but I want you to be happy and I hope and pray that Lord Denton will give it to you.”

  She did not wait for Muriel’s answer, which she was sure would be vindictive, but went into her own room and closed the door.

  Only when she was alone did she feel as if she was trembling, as she always did when she heard her mother being abused.

  After her father’s death, her mother had thought it impossible for any man ever to mean anything to her and she had said over and over again,

  “Your father and I were so happy, so ideally perfectly happy! All I want now is to die so that I can be with him.”

  Ilouka had looked at her in horror.

  “You must not say such things, Mama. It is very selfish. After all if you die I shall be all alone in the world and you know I could not live without you.”

  Mrs. Compton had put her arms round her daughter and held her close.

  “You are right, darling, I was being selfish. But I miss your Papa so much that I feel that the world has come to an end because he is no longer with me.”

  However, for her daughter’s sake, Mrs. Compton made a great effort.

  She cried herself to sleep every night when she was alone in her own room, but in the daytime she tried to smile and to take an interest in what Ilouka was doing. They went for long walks and talked of many things, both aware that, while they did not mention it, Colonel Compton’s name was uppermost in their minds.

  Then very gradually, as the first agony of grief passed and Sir James started to call, Mrs. Compton began to stop making excuses not to see him.

  “It will do you good, Mama, to talk to Sir James,” Ilouka would say. “Now tidy your hair and go down and make yourself pleasant to him.”

  “Oh, must I, Ilouka? I don’t want to,” Mrs. Compton would plead.

  “He has brought us a huge basket of peaches from his greenhouses and some grapes,” Ilouka would reply, “and even if you don’t eat them, Mama, Hannah and I would find them a pleasant change from semolina pudding.”

  Because she felt too exhausted to argue, Mrs. Compton would then do as her daughter suggested.

  It was impossible to explain to Muriel that her mother had no wish to trap anybody or to put them in her beloved husband’s place.

  But now, as Ilouka knew, they were happy, very happy, except for Muriel.

  ‘I would go and stay with the Devil himself,’ she thought, ‘if it gave Muriel the chance to marry and go away!’

  Even so she faced the fact that even if Muriel got engaged it might be the conventional long engagement.

  This would mean that she would have to stay in hiding until the ring was actually on Muriel’s finger and her fiancé could not change his mind at the last moment.

  It was true that Ilouka had never made the slightest effort to attract any man’s attention, but it was also true that she had not had much opportunity.

  Nevertheless her father’s friends had looked at her with astonishment when they came to The Manor and even when she was a schoolgirl with her long hair flowing over her shoulders she had heard the compliments that her mother received about her.

  But, she had known that, while the men at any age looked at her with a certain glint in their eyes, the women on the other hand stiffened and looked down their noses as if they thought that her very appearance was somewhat reprehensible,

  “I suppose I do look a little theatrical, Mama,” she had said once.

  Her mother had laughed.

  “Nonsense! You are thinking about that stupid remark of your father’s that you could go on the stage because you dance so well. Red hair is always supposed to be very theatrical, but actually, darling, you look very much a lady and a very aristocratic one at that.”

  “Like my great-grandmother?”

  “Exactly! We only have the one miniature of her, but your father’s father had a full-size portrait, although I don’t know what happened to it.”

  “I never knew that before. Where can it be?”

  “At your grandfather’s house and, when your father was away with the Regiment, your grandfather died and the house was sold and he never knew what happened to the contents.”

  “How disappointing!” Ilouka said. “I would love to have seen it.”

  “I expect it was very like the miniature we have and the artist might in fact have been painting you.”

  The miniature was rather faded and, although there was a distinct resemblance, Ilouka thought that she would have loved to see something of her great-grandmother, which would have brought her more vividly to life than her imagination could do.

  However, it was only now, when she was eighteen, that Ilouka fully blossomed into what her mother knew was a beauty who would take the Social world by storm.

  She had always been told how much the gentlemen of St. James’s appreciated a beautiful woman and, although she was her own child, she thought that it would be impossible to find anyone so lovely or so unusual as Ilouka.

  Looking at her now in her travelling clothes, which were simple enough but to which she gave a style and an elegance that could not be bought, she thought it was a terrible waste to send Ilouka off to dismal isolation in Bedfordshire.

  She kissed her again and said,

  “I will let you know the very moment you can come home. Take care of yourself, my precious one.”

  “I promise to do so, Mama.”

  Ilouka gave her a beguilin
g smile and went down the doorsteps to where her stepfather’s carriage was waiting.

  Looking at the coachman on the box wearing his cockaded top hat and the two horses with their silver harnesses. Lady Armstrong could not help wishing that her husband had been generous enough to send Ilouka all the way in it.

  But they both had so much to thank him for that it would be stupid to resent his small meannesses. There were not many of them, but as her first husband had said laughingly,

  “Every man has a little of the miser and the spendthrift in him. Unfortunately, as far as I am concerned, the balance is not very even and tips overwhelmingly towards the spendthrift.”

  His wife had laughed.

  “Darling, I have never known you to be miserly about anything,” she had said.

  “Only about the time I spend apart from you,” the Colonel had replied. “Then I grudge every minute and every second we are not together.”

  He had kissed her and they forgot what they were talking about.

  Now, as the carriage carrying Ilouka drove away and Lady Armstrong waved until it was out of sight, she prayed,

  ‘Please, God, let Ilouka find the love that her father gave to me and that I had for him.’

  It was a prayer that came from the very depths of her heart and she knew that nothing she could wish for her daughter was more important than that she should find true love, which made everything else in the world vanish into insignificance.

  Chapter Two

  The stagecoach carrying Ilouka and Hannah was slow and uncomfortable.

  It was a very old vehicle, as they had expected, because it was not on one of the main highways where the quicker-moving and better-sprung one plied for hire.

  But on the twisting country lanes there was no choice and the coach that went by once a day carried passengers from one village to another so that in most cases it stopped practically every mile.

  Ilouka, who was always interested in people, talked to the fat farmers’ wives who carried baskets of baby chicks or to their young daughters who were travelling to nearby towns to go into service for the first time.

  Hannah made it obvious that she disapproved of her conversing so familiarly, but Ilouka paid no attention to her or to the way she sat stiff and unbending, replying in monosyllables to anybody who addressed her.