Love and the Loathsome Leopard Read online

  It was the first time in his life that he had fallen in love and he knew that the wonder he had found was what all men sought and that he was privileged to know such happiness.

  There was no question of his asking if Wivina was the right person for him, for he knew he had spoken the truth when he said they had been part of each other all through the centuries.

  He thought now that of all the women he had ever known, and there had been quite a number of them, none had ever been anything but a passing fancy, a passion that had been extinguished almost as soon as it had arisen.

  They had appealed only to his body, never to his mind and imagination.

  He knew that Wivina, because she was the other half of himself, was everything that the woman he loved should be.

  Together they would be complete – one person – as man and woman were meant to be and as had been immortalised in literature and in the masterpieces of art which existed all through the centuries.

  ‘I love her! God, how I love her!’ he thought as he entered his bed-room.

  Then having lit a candle he stood thinking of what he must do.

  Because he had always had an iron control over himself and because he could concentrate on what he was doing to the exclusion of all else, for a moment he put Wivina into a shrine within his soul and closed the door.

  Now he had to think of the position they were both in, and he knew, without Wivina telling him, that it was perilously dangerous.

  Chapter Four

  In her own room Wivina sat for a moment waiting to hear Lord Cheriton walk along the passage.

  Then she put her hands to her breast as if to quell the tumult there.

  She could hardly believe that what had happened downstairs had not been a figment of her imagination, but her whole body pulsated and throbbed with the wonder of it.

  She knew that this was love as she had always thought it would be, as she had dreamt since she was a girl that it would come to her.

  Once her mother had said to her,

  “When you are grown up, Wivina, I am praying that you will find a man who will be like Papa and with whom you will be as happy as I have been.”

  “Did you love Papa the moment you saw him?” Wivina had asked curiously.

  “Papa said that when I came into the room, it was as if I had a light round me, and he knew that I was someone he would love from that moment until Eternity.

  “And you, Mama?”

  “I thought him very handsome and very charming, but it took me a short while to realise why my heart seemed to leap when he appeared and why it was impossible for me to take my eyes from his.”

  Her mother had smiled tenderly and then she said,

  “There was never in the whole world a more fortunate woman than I have been.”

  “But you have been very poor, Mama.”

  “I have been richer than any Indian Nabob,” her mother replied.

  She laughed gently as she added,

  “I admit that sometimes it has been hard to make ends meet, and you, my dearest, have had to go without pretty gowns. But nothing has really mattered except that your Papa and I should be together and our home be filled with love.”

  Wivina had learnt later that her mother could have made what was called a ‘brilliant match,’ but she had given her heart to a poor Curate and nothing that her parents could say could make her change her mind.

  “What I want for you, Wivina,” her mother had continued, “is for you to find a man who is not only strong enough to look after you and protect you, but brave enough to do what is right regardless of what other people may say.”

  Perhaps her mother had been aware then of the menacing forces that were spoiling the peace and contentment of the country people and bringing in a reign of terror which had all the forces of evil behind it.

  Only her father, Wivina thought, had been strong enough to denounce the smugglers and their wickedness and refuse to have anything to do with the contraband goods that flooded into the village.

  Once Wivina had run into his study to blurt out,

  “Papa, there is a big bundle that looks like tea on the doorstep and a keg which I am sure contains brandy.”

  She had seen her father’s face draw into grim lines that made him look suddenly very severe.

  “Leave them where they are, Wivina,” he had said. “You are not to touch them, do you understand? Just leave them.”

  “But, Papa – ” Wivina had expostulated.

  “Do as I say,” he ordered.

  The next morning they had gone.

  Perhaps it was that which had brought Jeffrey Farlow for the first time to the Vicarage.

  Wivina had opened the door to him.

  She was only sixteen at the time and her fair hair curled round her head and her eyes were very blue as she looked at him in surprise.

  He had not looked smart as he was now, dressed up to appear like a gentleman, but there had been a swagger and a self-confidence about him that she had felt instinctively were a pretence.

  “I want to see your Pa,” he said familiarly.

  “I will find out if he is free to see you,” Wivina answered.

  Something within her had shrunk from the expression in his eyes as he looked at her, and she had run away, leaving him on the doorstep.

  “There is a man to see you, Papa,” she told her father, who was writing in his study.

  “Who is it?” the Vicar asked.

  He hated to be disturbed when he was composing his sermon for Sunday.

  “It is someone called Jeffrey Farlow, Papa. I have heard of him in the village and seen him driving a smart gig.”

  “Jeffrey Farlow!”

  The Vicar had almost ejaculated the words, then after a moment’s pause he said,

  “Go upstairs to your bedroom, Wivina, and stay there until I send for you. I will deal with this man myself.”

  Wivina had hurried to obey him, slipping up the back stairs so that she would not encounter Jeffrey Farlow again.

  She had, however, peeped over the banisters, curious to see how her father would greet the man who was whispered about by the servants and local shopkeepers.

  She saw that he had not waited on the doorstep where she had left him, but with what seemed to her to be extraordinary impertinence had come into the hall.

  “You wish to see me, Farlow?” she heard her father say.

  “Yes, Vicar, I’ve a great deal to say to you.”

  “I am busy at the moment.”

  “Not too busy to hear me.”

  There was a pause, then the Vicar said,

  “Very well. Come into my study.”

  Wivina had realised that the two men had been there a long time, but, when at last her father was alone, she had gone to him.

  She had found him looking pale and rather shaken.

  “What is it, Papa?” she asked. “What did that man want?”

  “He wanted me to do what is wrong, Wivina, to condone what is wicked, which is something I will never do!”

  “How could he ask such a thing?” Wivina exclaimed.

  “There are two things in which I believe and in which I have complete faith,” the Vicar said, as if he was speaking more to himself than to her, “the first is God, the second is my country and by those I will either stand or fall.”

  Wivina had not understood at the time, but she had known from that moment that Jeffrey Farlow and the men who followed him were the avowed enemies of her father.

  Gradually the villagers became afraid even to go to Church.

  They would shuffle into the pews looking over their shoulders to see if someone was watching them, and unless they were on the point of death, they seldom sent for the Vicar as they had done in the past.

  It had happened slowly but insidiously, and while Wivina had seen the hurt in her father’s eyes, he seemed to her to carry himself even more proudly and to speak from the pulpit even more forcefully.

  Then one morning, and she could hardl
y bear to think of it, one of the village boys had run to tell her that her father’s body had been found below the cliffs.

  “An accident,” she had been told, but she had known the truth, and she hated Jeffrey Farlow with a violence that frightened even herself.

  Living alone, it was difficult for her to avoid him, but when she and Richard had moved to Larks Hall because they had nowhere else to go, she had found that Mrs. Briggs, old Pender, and Rouse were only too eager to accept whatever he might choose to give them.

  She tried to expostulate with them, but she knew it only made them deceitful, hiding the contraband goods from her since they had no intention of refusing them in obedience to her instructions.

  “It is understandable,” she told herself.

  How could they stand up to Jeffrey Farlow? For if they did, they knew the same fate awaited them that had destroyed her father.

  When Jeffrey Farlow told her he intended to marry her, she could not at first believe that he was serious.

  It was not only gross presumption on his part, but also her hatred for him made it hard to believe he could contemplate anything so fantastic.

  She knew he had been involved in the murder of her father, even if he had not actually committed the crime himself.

  He would not listen to her refusals, merely telling her first that he was building a house to which he would take her once it was completed, and then trying to enlist Richard on his side with promises of sending him to Oxford and giving him horses to ride.

  Wivina felt that all the time he was encroaching on her, drawing relentlessly nearer and nearer – and there was no escape.

  She knew that rather than marry him she must die, and perhaps that would not be too hard or too frightening, as her father and mother would be waiting for her in the next world.

  At the same time, she knew that her father would consider it a sin for her to kill herself, since to him life was sacred – a gift from God.

  ‘What can I do, Papa? Help me – help me,’ she prayed night after night in the darkness and found no answer.

  But she knew now that he had not failed her and was ashamed at the weakness of her faith and the fact that she had despaired so easily.

  Her prayers had been answered, and strangely, inexplicably, a Knight in shining armour had come to destroy the dragon that menaced her and to bring her what she had always wanted – love.

  “Oh, leopard, leopard!” she whispered as she moved across the bedroom to pull back the curtains and feel the cool night air come through the open casements onto her flushed cheeks.

  He had kissed her and she had known at the touch of his lips that she was his.

  She belonged to him completely and absolutely not only with her body but with her soul.

  “I love him!” she whispered.

  Then she began to pray for his safety and for themselves that they could keep the happiness that she knew was a gift from God.

  *

  In the next room, Lord Cheriton, having lit the candles, was changing from the clothes he had worn at dinner.

  When he put on his shirt, he did not take one of the fresh cravats from the drawer where Nickolls had laid them.

  Instead he drew out a dark blue silk handkerchief and tied it round his neck.

  He took a perfunctory glance at himself in the mirror to see that there was nothing bright or distinctive about his attire.

  Then without taking a hat with him, he opened the door of his bedroom very quietly and walked on tiptoe along the passage and down the stairs.

  He had no wish for Wivina to be aware that he was going out, in case it should worry her.

  Knowing the house so well, he did not leave by the front door but by one at the side that opened onto an untidy, overgrown part of the garden where there were lilac and syringa bushes.

  By now the stars were coming out in the sky, but there was no moon and little wind, and he knew that it was exactly the type of weather the smugglers needed to cross the Channel.

  A moonlit night could be dangerous and even the most experienced smuggler could be subject to seasickness.

  Besides, in a rough sea the crossing always took longer.

  Lord Cheriton calculated that there would be a moon next week, so he was quite certain that Farlow would make every effort to pack as many crossings into this week as possible.

  It might be exhausting for those who had to row or sail the boats, but the gains were so enormous that, if a man was too weak to stand the pace, there would always be others to take his place.

  Lord Cheriton had soon passed through the garden and was finding his way through the thick trees that protected Larks Hall on the South from the blustery winds that came from the sea.

  Once through the wood, he knew, there was the bare downland stretching to the cliffs. Under them was the creek where smugglers had found a perfect place for concealment for over half a century.

  His one advantage, he thought, as he walked through the darkness of the woods with only occasional glimpses of a starlit sky to guide him, was that he knew every inch of the land.

  He had hidden himself in every possible nook and cranny when escaping from his father.

  It took him a little time, for he moved slowly and carefully so as not to make a noise, before the trees ended abruptly and there was the rough grass of the downs stretching to the horizon.

  Soon he could hear the breaking of the waves and he knew that to reach the creek he had to move to the West.

  Keeping near the trees, he walked perhaps a hundred yards, then saw to his relief that there were a number of rough bushes that were not high enough to cover a man standing up, but would be quite effective if he crawled amongst them.

  Remembering how he had often crawled with his men on the bare mountains of Portugal when making a surprise attack, and how uncomfortable it had been sleeping in the open with little or no protection, Lord Cheriton lowered himself to the ground.

  He then began to crawl through the bushes in the direction he wished to go.

  It was some way to reach his objective and it was certainly an uncomfortable way to travel.

  Lord Cheriton was, however, in no hurry, as the night was still young, and he guessed that the smugglers would be unlikely to arrive until the early hours of the morning.

  As he moved, he paused frequently to listen.

  He had very acute hearing, another attribute characteristic of his feline namesake, and the soldiers believed his ability to see in the dark had saved them from destruction on several occasions.

  The first sound came about an hour later when Lord Cheriton had manoeuvred himself into position among some bushes above the creek.

  He looked below him and saw that there was a well-worn path winding up from sea level, a path that had been trodden many times by men carrying heavy loads upon their shoulders.

  There were hundreds of creeks like this one all along the South Coast, and it was not surprising, Lord Cheriton thought, that on nights like this the Riding Officers and the Coast Guards preferred to be conspicuous by their absence.

  The sound that he had heard came from the land, but he was not so foolish as to raise his head, knowing that as he was high above the creek, to someone below he might be silhouetted against the sky.

  He just lay quiet and listened and after a few moments he realised there were horses or ponies approaching over the grassland.

  The sound came again but nearer and now he knew it was a hoof striking a stone or perhaps a dry stick.

  But the silence was almost complete and it said a lot for the discipline under which they worked that the men who accompanied the animals did not speak – indeed, unless someone had been listening as intently as Lord Cheriton had, he would not even have known they were there.

  Then there was the soft whinny of a pony and the shaking of another animal’s head, and Lord Cheriton realised that he had been right in thinking there would be a run this evening and that the goods brought into the creek would be carried immediate
ly to the markets.

  Keeping his head down under the bushes, he remembered that it was the invariable practice of the French merchants to oblige their customers by shipping spirits in handy four-gallon casks or half-casks.

  They roped them in pairs to go across a tugman’s shoulders or a horse’s pack saddle.

  Lace, tobacco, and tea were wrapped in oil skin and tied with spun yam.

  It was not known in London exactly what the smugglers were paid, but the Surveyor General of Customs had thought it was about two guineas a trip.

  The men they hired, whom they called their “riders,” were allowed a guinea a journey and all their expenses for eating and drinking besides enough tea on which they could make a further guinea or perhaps more.

  “It is hard work getting down to the creek to fetch the goods,” the Surveyor General had said, “and they, like the smugglers themselves, run a considerable hazard if they are found with the contraband actually on them.”

  “But the profit is large,” Lord Cheriton remarked dryly.

  “Very large!” the Surveyor General agreed. “Nevertheless, I am told that because the smugglers – the oarsmen, the masters, and the riders – are frightened, they drink to great excess.”

  He sighed as he added,

  “It is that which is responsible for the terrible outrages they commit and the manner in which they will torture unmercifully anyone they think to be an informer.”

  “Fear combined with drink can drive a man to behave like a beast,” Lord Cheriton remarked, thinking of how the French troops had run riot when they captured a town.

  He knew that if he was caught spying on the smugglers he would not live to see the dawn.

  Listening, he was now sure that there were a number of ponies, perhaps a dozen, below him in the little valley into which the creek ran.

  He heard a man cough and another man sneeze, but he did not look up, since he knew that while they were silent it would be a mistake for him to make any movement at all.

  An hour must have passed, perhaps more, when suddenly he heard the faint sound of a muffled voice.

  Immediately the waiting men began to move, hurrying, Lord Cheriton knew, down the path to the water’s edge.