The Sign of Love Read online

  Bettina was listening attentively as he went on,

  “I also need to have this house to come back to when I am in London. There is no question of my making any further economies.”

  “I can understand – that, Papa.”

  ‘Then you realise that I am not being unkind when I say that, much as I would like to, I cannot afford the expense of a daughter!”

  Bettina gave a little sigh.

  “I mean to be very economical and cost you practically nothing.”

  “Do you think I would want you to stay at home as a kind of drudge and not take your rightful place in Society?” Sir Charles asked almost angrily. “I am proud of you, Bettina, especially now I can see how pretty you have grown. Well dressed you could be a sensation! And, dammit, that is what I intend you to be.”

  “But how, Papa? How can we – do it?”

  Bettina had the idea that her father was feeling for his words and, after a while, he confessed,

  “When your mother died, I had to sell her jewellery to pay for the funeral, the doctors’ bills and various other things.”

  Bettina stiffened for a moment.

  She had half-hoped that the pearls her mother always wore, the turquoise and diamond earrings that she remembered ever since she was a child and the ring that went with them would one day be hers.

  “There was nothing else I could do,” Sir Charles was saying, “but I kept back one piece, a diamond star that she particularly asked that you should have.”

  “I love that star,” Bettina exclaimed. “When Mama wore it in her hair I always thought she looked like a Fairy on a Christmas tree.”

  “I sold it this morning!” Sir Charles informed her abruptly.

  “You – sold it – Papa?”

  “So that you could have the clothes you need to wear when you are the Duke’s guest.”

  For a moment Bettina wanted to tell him that he had no right to sell the jewel that her mother had left her, but, because she loved her father, she bit back the words.

  “I expect that was – what Mama would – have wanted you to do,” she said, “and I know she would wish you to be – proud of me.”

  She felt that her father relaxed as if he had actually been afraid that she would be angry with him.

  Then, as the sparkle came back into his eyes, he said,

  “There is no fear of my not being proud of you, but remember the person you want to admire you is Lord Eustace.”

  *

  Travelling in the Duke’s private train, which was carrying them to Southampton, Bettina thought that if she had dressed to please Lord Eustace she would have chosen a very different gown from the one she wore.

  During her years in France the pupils in Madame de Vesarie’s fashionable school had taught her a great deal about clothes and she was intelligent enough to adapt what was in vogue to suit her looks.

  The beauty of her fair hair, which was so pale as to look in some lights almost white, would have been eclipsed by the brilliant colours that were affected by the ladies in the Duke’s party.

  They wore scarlet, peacock blue or emerald green gowns with ostrich feathers to match in their small bonnets. Their bustles bristled with frills and the huge satin bows that they were weighted down with.

  There were frills round the hems of their skirts, round their necks and their wrists, which combined with the glitter of their expensive jewels, made the drawing room of the Duke’s special train look like an aviary of parakeets.

  In contrast Bettina’s travelling gown was of the blue of love-in-a-mist and so soft that it was a perfect foil for her pale hair.

  The ribbons of her bonnet encircled her small chin and made the translucence of her skin more obvious than it would have been otherwise.

  Because there had been so little time Bettina had been able to buy only a very few gowns for the trip and had been grateful that because she was so slim many that had been made merely for display fitted her with very little alteration.

  She found it impossible to buy any summer gowns that her father told her she would need when they reached Ismailia, but fortunately her mother had several that were all of pretty materials and the same gentle pastel colours that suited her.

  It was an excitement that she could not repress to know that, after many years in the dreary dull clothes she had worn at school, she was to blossom out like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis.

  She had known by the expression on her father’s face that she looked exactly as he had hoped she would and she would have been very stupid if she had not been aware when she saw her reflection in the mirror that she was indeed very attractive.

  At the same time as they drove towards the Station, she had slipped her hand nervously into her father's.

  “You are quite certain that I look all right, Papa?” she asked, “and you will help me not to make any social errors? I am sure that the Duke is very frightening and all your smart Society friends who love you will find me a terrible bore.”

  “They will do nothing of the sort,” Sir Charles said reassuringly, “but concentrate on Lord Eustace. He will feel like a fish out of water I am certain of that.”

  “Why does he not get on with his brother, the Duke, if, as you say, he is so charming?” Bettina asked.

  “The old Duke married for the second time when he was growing old,” Sir Charles answered. “For some unknown reason he chose a dull sanctimonious woman, who was given to good works and despised the social life that her husband had always enjoyed.”

  Bettina thought that would account for Lord Eustace’s preoccupation with the sufferings of the poor.

  “She was not bad-looking,” Sir Charles went on, “and came from a good family, but, when the Duke died, she refused to have anything to do with her stepson and she and her son, Eustace, lived on one of Alveston’s estates in the North.”

  “It sounds as if Lord Eustace never had a chance of having any fun,” Bettina commented.

  “He does not enjoy any fun himself and tries to make sure that nobody else does,” her father remarked.

  Then, as if he regretted his words, which might put Lord Eustace in a bad light, he added quickly,

  “All the same I understand that he is a good chap and serious-minded, which, of course, one should be these days if one is young and ambitious.”

  “Ambitious in what way, Papa?”

  “I suppose to make his mark, rather as Lord Shaftesbury has done, fighting for the underdog, taking up causes of injustice and all that sort of thing.”

  “It certainly sounds very creditable, Papa.”

  “It is. It is indeed,” Sir Charles averred. “You ask him to tell you what interests him, Bettina. That is always the quickest way to a man’s heart.”

  *

  When they joined the Duke’s private train, Bettina fancied that, when he saw her, there was a faint expression of pleasure on Lord Eustace’s face.

  “We meet again, Miss Charlwood,” he began.

  “But in very different circumstances, my Lord,” Bettina replied, curtseying.

  “Very different indeed.”

  She thought that he cast a disparaging glance at the other guests chattering and laughing around them.

  Bettina remembered what her father had told her and, when they had seated themselves in the comfortable armchairs and footmen wearing the Alveston livery were handing round drinks and delicious titbits to eat, she said,

  “I was so hoping, my Lord, that we could meet again and you would tell me about the work that interests you and that you spoke about when we were at Dover.”

  “I have brought several pamphlets with me that have already been published,” Lord Eustace replied, “and some I am in the process of writing. I shall be glad to read them to you, Miss Charlwood, and I am sure that we shall have plenty of time while we are at sea.”

  “That would be delightful.”

  But Bettina could not help wondering what the other members of the party would be doing.

 
; She hoped that no one, not even Lord Eustace, would stop her from looking at the scenery that they would pass in the Mediterranean and enjoying the sunshine and sea air.

  It was like having a very special dream come true, she thought, to be going to the Opening of the Suez Canal, which in France had occupied the minds of everyone for so long.

  Because Madame de Vesarie had been very interested in the de Lesseps family with whom she had an acquaintance, her pupils had heard every detail of Ferdinand de Lesseps’s desperate struggle to build a Canal through the Isthmus, which would join the two great seas.

  It was in fact, Bettina learnt, Napoleon Bonaparte who had first seriously thought it possible to change the geography of the world.

  Madame de Vesarie had described graphically how in 1798 Napoleon had stood above Suez on a shallow reach of marshy ground and found what he was looking for, which was the bed of the ancient Canal of the Pharaohs, which had not been used for over a thousand years.

  It was in the summer that Napoleon had invaded and occupied Egypt and was in possession of Cairo.

  “To destroy England,” he had declared previously, “we must gain command of Egypt.”

  It was Egypt that commanded the Mediterranean and the passage to India and Napoleon intended to strike at his English enemy not at home but through her Eastern Empire.

  But after the Battle of Waterloo the idea of a Suez Canal had been forgotten until Ferdinand de Lesseps had seen the practicability of it and decided, as Madame de Vesarie had told her girls so dramatically, to become ‘the Vasco da Gama of Suez’.

  The girls had listened entranced to the enormous difficulties that the French Vice-Consul in Egypt had encountered.

  First he had to enthuse Mohammed Ali, the Ruler of Egypt, with his idea, but fortunately he was an old man and his son, Prince Mohammed Said, soon succeeded him.

  Bettina had been fascinated by the story of why the Prince was already a friend of Ferdinand de Lesseps.

  When he was only eleven his father, anxious at the time to develop his Navy, was having him trained as a seaman. The boy was, however, enormously fat and, although he was made to jump over ropes, trot around the walls of Alexandria, to row and climb masts for two hours a day, he grew no slimmer.

  His father put him on a drastic diet, strictly limiting his meals and ordering him to be weighed each week, the result being transmitted to him in Cairo.

  It was really far too strict a regime for a growing boy who actually had some glandular trouble.

  Mohammed Said would visit de Lesseps every day. In the Consulate’s private quarters he would throw himself down, tired and famished, on a divan while the servants brought him plates of spaghetti and French pastries to relieve his hunger.

  Because Ferdinand de Lesseps was so kind, the young Prince became deeply attached to the older man who took him for rides in the desert and taught him fencing and other French activities and cultures.

  It was Prince Said who, as Viceroy of Egypt, was to support Ferdinand de Lesseps and finance him when in the year 1854 he began his great campaign to join the waters of the Mediterranean with those of the Red Sea.

  “Why did he have so many difficulties?” Bettina had asked when Madame de Vesarie paused for breath in her story.

  ‘The English were against him from the start and did everything they could to stop him from succeeding in his ambition,” Madame had replied sharply. “The British Prime Minister in particular, Lord Palmerston, was afraid of seeing the commercial and maritime relations of Great Britain upset by the opening of a new route to the East.”

  Madame’s voice sharpened further as she went on,

  “What is more, Lord Palmerston actually said that it was the greatest financial swindle ever imposed on the credibility and stupidity of the people of Great Britain.”

  “How short-sighted!” Bettina exclaimed.

  “The English often are,” Madame snapped.

  “If England went against him, how did he get started?” one of the other pupils asked.

  Madame smiled.

  “Monsieur de Lesseps remembered that Prince Said’s father, Mohammed Ali, had said many years before, ‘always keep this in mind, my young friend, if you have any important scheme on hand, depend upon yourself alone’.”

  “And did he?” someone asked.

  “He depended on himself even for raising the money he needed to start digging in the sand. He raised it by public subscription in stock for the Suez Canal Company and from the French public alone he received something over one hundred million francs or around four million pounds.”

  The pupils had clapped their hands.

  “They believed in him,” a pretty French girl cried.

  “Of course,” Madame answered. “We always trust and believe in our own people, especially when they are right.”

  Her elation, however, was modified by a little sigh.

  “Unfortunately the money was not enough, but, by the time Monsieur de Lesseps realised this, he had on the morning of 25th April 1859 picked up a shovel himself and dug into the sand beside the Bay of Pelusium.”

  “What happened then?” Bettina enquired.

  “He passed the shovel to his engineering staff and to each of the one hundred workmen standing by. One by one they each turned over a shovelful of sand and quietly and without much drama the Suez Canal was begun!”

  Madame did not tell the tale once but a hundred times and with the rest of the French Nation Bettina followed all the difficulties, the problems and the heartbreaks that occurred during the great undertaking of one idealist Frenchman.

  There were many setbacks. At one moment the digging stopped and all the Egyptian labourers were withdrawn.

  Then at last with the help of Napoleon III, the Emperor of France, the digging began again and this time it entered an entirely new phase.

  The primitive days of pick and shovel were over and during the next four years the professionals with heavy machinery moved in to complete the job.

  Unfortunately Prince Mohammed Said died and his throne was taken by his nephew Ismail Pasha, who became the Khedive of Egypt.

  This year on August 15th Bettina had read the huge triumphant headlines when the French newspapers announced that the Red Sea had flowed along the channel from Suez and poured into the Bitter Lakes to blend with the waters of the Mediterranean Sea.

  The two seas had been joined and East and West were one!

  She had been so interested and so thrilled with the whole project that now she felt as if it was somehow ordained that she should, by some magic that she had never anticipated, be present at the Opening Ceremony itself.

  She was so excited at the thought that it was hard that first evening at sea to listen to the chatter and gossip of the other ladies or even to attend to the grave tones of Lord Eustace. Apart from the fact that she was journeying towards Egypt, she knew that she had entered a world that was like a Fairyland after the austerity of the French school.

  Never had she known that such luxury and comfort was possible or that the creatures who inhabited such a world should be so beautiful, so elegant and so different in every way from anyone she had ever known except for her father.

  It was fascinating for Bettina to see him surrounded by his friends laughing at his jokes, patting him on the back, applauding, congratulating and encouraging him.

  Now she could understand, she thought, why he had no wish to relinquish this world in which he shone and she knew that he must stay in it whatever the cost to herself or in the past to her mother.

  She could understand now so many things that had been difficult to accept in the past, the first of them being her mother’s insistence that everything her father wore must be of the best.

  Only Bettina knew how often her mother economised personally so that her father could have new suits, new riding breeches, new boots, new shoes and innumerable white stocks, which appeared more immaculate and smarter in the hunting field than those worn by any other rider.

&
nbsp; It was almost, she told herself, as if her father was on a stage and he held the attention of the audience so that he could make them laugh or cry as he wished.

  ‘No wonder everyone wants Papa to be their guest,’ she told herself as the evening drew on and Sir Charles was undeniably ‘the life and soul of the party’.

  She expected the Duke to join them for dinner, which was served in another coach adjoining the drawing room with footmen waiting on them with professional dexterity despite the moving train.

  The menu consisted of such delicious food that Bettina thought that the chef must be a genius to produce such a meal in what must inevitably be cramped circumstances.

  There was no doubt that the Duke did everything in style. There were silver candelabra on the table, half a dozen different wines besides champagne and a corsage of orchids for every lady in the party.

  They were the first orchids that Bettina had ever received and, because they were white and star-shaped, she wondered if perhaps they had been especially chosen for her.

  Then she told herself that she was just being imaginative. It must be merely chance that she had received flowers that were particularly suitable while Lady Daisy Sheridan had huge mauve cattleyas, which toned with an elaborate gown sparkling with amethysts.

  “Where is Varien?” a guest asked Lady Daisy when she appeared. “Surely he is dining with us this evening? Or have you forbidden him to do so and intend keeping him all to yourself?”

  There was a spiteful note in the other woman’s voice that told Bettina that Lady Daisy had some special relationship with the Duke that she resented.

  “Varien is tired and wants to be alone this evening,” Lady Daisy replied.

  “Alone?” another beauty questioned. “That does not include you, of course, dearest?”

  There was some laughter at this, but Lady Daisy seemed quite unperturbed.

  “We should all retire early,” she suggested. “It is sure to be rough once we leave Harbour and anyway I loathe the sea!”

  But when Bettina did retire to her sleeping carriage she knew that the gentlemen at least had no intention of taking Lady Daisy’s advice.