Love and the Loathsome Leopard Read online

  She went from the room and Richard smiled almost cheekily at Lord Cheriton.

  “She will marry him in the end, whatever she says,” he remarked, “and when she does, he says, he will send me to Oxford.”

  Lord Cheriton was just about to reply when Wivina came back into the room.

  The next course was strawberries from the garden with the thick cream which Richard had bought from the farm.

  There was a big bowl of them and Lord Cheriton helped himself liberally before he sat down again at the table.

  As if he felt there was something a little uncomfortable in his sister’s silence, Richard said to Lord Cheriton,

  “Nickolls has been telling me about the battles you fought in and how brave you were. He says that both you and he belonged to one of Wellington’s Commands, which was called the ‘Loathsome Leopards’.”

  Wivina gave a little cry and looking at Lord Cheriton, she exclaimed,

  “Now I know what was worrying me!”

  “What was that?” he asked.

  She blushed as if she had spoken without thinking, then replied:

  “You might – think it rude.”

  “If you are referring to the fact that I look like a leopard,” Lord Cheriton replied, “may I say I am well aware of the resemblance and I am in fact rather proud of it!”

  “Of course you are!” Richard said enthusiastically. “Nickolls says the ‘Loathsome Leopards’ were the bravest soldiers in the whole of the Duke’s Army and that the French were terrified of you.”

  “It is certainly true that they were frightened of us,” Lord Cheriton admitted, “and we did very well at Salamanca.”

  “I want to hear all about it!” Richard cried.

  “If you find me a map, I will try to explain to you exactly what happened.”

  “We have no map here, not a good one anyway,” Richard replied, “but the Vicar has one. I will borrow it from him tomorrow and, when I come back after my lessons, you can show me exactly how you defeated the French.”

  “That is something I shall be delighted to do,” Lord Cheriton replied, “if I am still here.”

  “You must be! You must. I shall never have an opportunity again of talking to a soldier who was actually in that battle.”

  “I feel you will meet a great many soldiers in the future, who fought not only in that battle but a large number of others,” Lord Cheriton replied. “Unfortunately, now that there is peace, they will be out of a job.”

  “But they will not come here,” Richard said, “they will not be allowed to. So promise you will stay until I can get hold of a map.”

  “I think the answer to that depends on your sister,” Lord Cheriton replied, “but may I say that I am very comfortable, and it is a treat to sleep in a house instead of a tent and, let me add, to enjoy a well cooked meal.”

  “Then that settles it!” Richard cried. “You must stay, of course you must. Tell him so, Wivina!”

  Lord Cheriton saw the worry and apprehension in her eyes but he had the feeling it was not on her own account that she wished him to go.

  “I am glad you are comfortable, Captain Bradleigh,” she said in a low voice.

  She rose and added:

  “I think I should withdraw and leave you gentlemen alone.”

  Lord Cheriton rose to his feet and after a second Richard followed his example. Then after Wivina had left the room and he had closed the door behind her, Lord Cheriton sat down again at the table.

  There was a little claret left and he gave some to Richard and the greater part to himself, thinking that Wivina would not wish her brother to drink heavily.

  “Your sister is a very remarkable young woman!” he said aloud.

  “She gets upset and frightened over things,” Richard replied, “but I suppose all women are the same.”

  “That is why it is important for you to look after her and protect her,” Lord Cheriton remarked.

  Richard looked surprised.

  “I imagine, now that your father is dead,” Lord Cheriton went on, “that you are the head of the family. It is therefore up to you to take care of your sister and above all not to force her into marriage unless she is in love with the man in question.”

  “If she does not marry Farlow, what will happen to us?” Richard asked almost sulkily.

  “If you are thinking of his sending you to Oxford,” Lord Cheriton said, “I am sure that you are quite capable of getting there on your own.”

  “How can I possibly do that?”

  “You could win a scholarship.”

  “The Vicar has spoken of that, but I would have to journey to Oxford and I have no money.”

  Richard paused and then he said,

  “I suppose I could borrow it from Farlow, in which case I might as well let him pay the fee and have done with it.”

  “From all I have heard you saying about this man Farlow, you have no particular liking for him,” Lord Cheriton said slowly. “I hardly think it wise or in fact decent to accept his money or anything else.”

  Richard looked startled.

  “You see,” Lord. Cheriton went on, “one never gets anything for nothing in this world. One always has to pay sooner or later. Quite frankly, I should have thought that to make your sister sacrifice herself by marrying a man she dislikes, and of whom she is afraid, is a very high price to pay for your own personal gratification.”

  He had meant to startle Richard and he succeeded.

  He had learnt in dealing with men that to be brutally frank was one way of jolting them into looking at the truth honestly and without clarification.

  “I did not think of it like that,” Richard said after a moment.

  “Well, think of it now!”Lord Cheriton said sternly.

  “We have no money, except for a pittance, just enough to buy food for ourselves and for the people in the house.”

  “I realise that,” Lord Cheriton said. “But I think I may be able to help you.”.

  He paused and then he said,

  “Where you are concerned, I think I could arrange for you to sit for a scholarship for Oxford.”

  “You could?”

  Richard sounded almost incredulous and Lord Cheriton explained,

  “I was not at University myself, but I have friends who will help you solve your problem, if not your sister’s.”

  He was thinking as he spoke that both his father and his grandfather had been at Christ Church College. It should therefore be easy for him to arrange for Richard to sit for a scholarship, and, if he failed, he could get him accepted as a Commoner.

  He was beginning to understand the stranglehold that Jeffrey Farlow had not only on these two children, for they were little more, but on the whole neighbourhood, and yet he had the feeling he was not the prime mover of the smuggling gang.

  He undoubtedly benefitted from the cargoes, and perhaps arranged the sales of them and was the middle-man between the actual smugglers and the merchants who handled the goods that were brought duty-free so easily into the country.

  But Lord Cheriton was almost certain that the head of the large gang was someone else, someone he had not seen, whose name had not as yet been mentioned.

  Before he left London, the Prime Minister had arranged for the Commissioner of Customs to give him a list of the names of smugglers known along the South Coast of England.

  There was a fair number of them and Lord Cheriton had committed the names to memory and then destroyed the list.

  He was well aware that to carry any incriminating documents of any sort upon his person would be to sign his own Death Warrant.

  The claret was finished and as he rose from the table he said,

  “What we have discussed together here, Richard, is completely in confidence. I do not wish you to speak of it to your sister or to anyone else. And may I say that I am trusting you as a gentleman?”

  Richard looked at him a little uncertainly, then asked,

  “Are you thinking that you might be able to
help us and perhaps – other people as well?”

  He spoke hesitatingly, but Lord Cheriton knew the boy had been quick-witted enough to realise that he was not entirely the simple soldier he professed to be.

  “We will speak about this another time,” he replied. “In the meanwhile, study hard, and bring me that map tomorrow morning.”

  “I will do that,” Richard said eagerly. “And may I ride one of your horses?”

  “You have my permission, but you had better speak to Nickolls about it.”

  “Thank you, sir. I will go and tell him now,” Richard said eagerly.

  He hobbled off and Lord Cheriton went into the salon.

  The sun was sinking in a blaze of glory behind the trees and high overhead the first evening star was twinkling in the translucence of the sky.

  Wivina was outside on the terrace, leaning on the old grey stone balustrade which was covered with moss, and staring out over the lake which was full of mysterious shadows now that the light from the sun had gone.

  Lord Cheriton went to stand beside her.

  She did not turn her head or move, but he was aware that she was tinglingly conscious of his presence.

  After a moment she said in a worried little voice,

  “You should not – stay here. You must leave – early tomorrow morning.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “I cannot – explain, but it might be – dangerous for you to remain.”

  “What about you?”

  “There is – nowhere else for Richard and me to go.”

  “Are you sure of that?”

  “Quite sure. Do you suppose I have not thought about it?”

  “Suppose I tell you that I am not afraid and want to stay?”

  “But – you must not do that – you don’t understand – they will not allow you to – remain here.”

  “Who are ‘they’?”

  “I – I cannot tell you – I cannot explain – go – please go – forget you ever – came here.”

  “I think that would be impossible,” Lord Cheriton said, “and what is more, speaking as a leopard, I am not afraid.”

  “Even a leopard can be captured and – killed.”

  There was a little pause before the last word.

  “But the war is over,” Lord Cheriton said.

  “Not all wars – they go on – forever – and there is no – end to them.”

  “That is what we felt in the long years that we were fighting Napoleon, and yet finally he has been defeated.”

  “That is true.”

  “Supposing we had given up and let him conquer England as he had conquered most of the Continent? Have you any idea what suffering there would have been?”

  “Oh, I know – I know!” Wivina said. “I have thought of everything that you are saying now – but the French were an enemy that you could see – it was all straightforward, a fight against a foreign power, against a tyrant who was hated by everyone except the men of his own nationality.”

  She paused, then she said with a little sob in her voice,

  “But when it is brother against brother – father against son – then it is different.”

  “And yet we must still fight against what is wrong and evil,” Lord Cheriton said quietly.

  For the first time she looked up at him.

  “Now you are speaking like Papa.”

  Even as she said the words, she shivered and then said almost beneath her breath,

  “He tried to be – brave – he was brave!”

  “And they killed him!” Lord Cheriton said very quietly.

  “H-how did you know – why do you say that?”

  There was a note of abject fear behind the words. Then almost frantically she cried,

  “It was an accident – I was told it was an accident! But Papa was always so insistent that we should never go near the very edge of the cliffs, so why – why should he have gone there? It was somewhere he never went at night.”

  She sounded so desperate that Lord Cheriton put his hand on hers where it rested on the edge of the stone balustrade.

  He felt her fingers tremble beneath his, then her breath seemed a little less hurried and the tumult of her feelings seemed to subside.

  “I am – sorry,” she said after a moment.

  “What for?” Lord Cheriton asked. “You loved your father, and he died because he spoke his mind and denounced those who are wrong and evil.”

  He sensed that this was the truth and he heard Wivina draw in her breath before she replied,

  “Now you understand why you must go away.”

  “I understand only that I must stay,” Lord Cheriton answered. “I think both you and Richard need me and perhaps so do a number of other people as well”

  “What can you do?” she asked. “One man, even a leopard, against – ”

  She turned round suddenly.

  “You are brave and I admire you for it, but Papa was brave too, and I could not bear to find your – body where we found – his.”

  Her eyes looked up into his as she spoke with so deep a passion and emotion in her voice that her words seemed to vibrate on the air between them.

  Then they were both very still.

  Slowly, almost like the dawn coming up the sky, the colour rose in Wivina’s cheeks as Lord Cheriton lifted her hand and raised it to his lips.

  “Thank you, Wivina.”

  Again he felt her fingers trembling in his, and he knew that something had happened between them, something strange, but for the moment he was afraid to explain even to himself what it was.

  As if she felt the same, Wivina turned and walked from the terrace back into the salon.

  She lit the candles one by one and Lord Cheriton sitting down in a chair watched her.

  He was thinking as he did so how little he knew about young women, yet even so he was certain that Wivina was different from her contemporaries.

  It was not only her beauty and her grace and he had a feeling that while she might be young in years, she was old in many other ways.

  She had suffered the loss of her father and mother, she had tried to look after her brother, and she had endured a terror which enveloped their lives – all must have left a mark.

  Yet when the candles were lit and she came to sit not on the chair opposite him but on the hearthrug at his feet, he thought how young and helpless she was to cope with the difficulties and problems that confronted her.

  “Tell me about yourself,” she said after a moment.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “So many things that I cannot put into words,” she answered. “Not like Richard, about your experiences in war, but what you think and what you want of life.”

  She paused, and then as Lord Cheriton did not speak, she said,

  “When I first saw you, I thought there was something hard and perhaps cruel about you. Then when we talked together I realised it was a reserve which you wear like an armour so that people should not encroach too closely on what you do not wish them to know.”

  Lord Cheriton looked at her in astonishment, before he realised she was speaking not of his work but of him as a man.

  He thought that of all the women he had ever known, none had ever sensed that his harshness and ruthlessness stemmed from a reserve he had assumed ever since running away from home at the age of fourteen.

  “I think,” Wivina was saying in her soft voice, “perhaps you restrain your affection for people and life because you are afraid of being hurt.”

  It was so true that Lord Cheriton drew in his breath, as Wivina continued,

  “I can understand your feeling like that, because it is what I feel myself. Loving Papa and losing him was so agonising that in a way I wished I had not loved him so much.”

  She looked up at Lord Cheriton and looked away again as she went on,

  “You will think it is foolish of me to love this house, since because I love it so much I am vulnerable. Perhaps I should go away and live somewher
e else, simply because every day I remain here it will hurt me more when I have to leave.”

  She spoke seriously, then she gave a little laugh.

  “I am not expressing myself at all well and you will think I am very foolish.”

  “I think you have expressed yourself extremely well and you are not in the least foolish. I am only surprised, Wivina, that you should be so perceptive.”

  “About – you?”

  “About me, and about yourself. Most people flutter like butterflies on the surface of life. They don’t think deeply, nor do they wish to do so.”

  “To think deeply and to feel deeply is to risk being hurt.”

  That was what had happened to him, Lord Cheriton thought, but he had never expected a woman, least of all a young girl, to understand or to feel the same.

  Aloud he said,

  “Because our minds move in the same way, I think it important, Wivina, that we should try to help each other. And if we are to do that we must talk frankly and without pretence.”

  There was a little pause before she said in little above a whisper,

  “I would like to do that, but I am afraid – and we have only just met.”

  “But you are wise enough to know that time has very little to do with such things,” Lord Cheriton replied. “You may be with a man or a woman for years and know as little about them as when you first met.”

  “That is true,” Wivina conceded, “but with other people you are aware that they are – cruel and evil – and they are reaching out towards you – and you want to run away – but your feet will not carry you.”

  She was trembling as she spoke and she bent her head so that her words were almost inaudible.

  Then as he bent towards her to reply, the door of the salon was suddenly flung open and someone came hurriedly into the room.

  Both Lord Cheriton and Wivina looked up startled from where they sat at the hearth, and for a moment it was difficult to see who stood there in the shadows, although they both knew who it was.

  Jeffrey Farlow came towards them and Lord Cheriton knew that Wivina was suddenly rigid, her eyes watching the man as if she was a small animal mesmerised by the stealthy approach of a tiger.

  Jeffrey Farlow reached the hearthrug, and now, seeing him full-face for the first time, Lord Cheriton realised that he was as evil-looking as he had thought when he saw him through the crack in the door.