The Rising Storm

Roger felt shamed and humbled in the presence of such a love, but he knew it to be his clear duty to point out to her the worst aspects of the marriage she contemplated, so he forced himself to say:

'Money is a sordid thing, yet happiness often hinges upon the possession of at least a near sufficiency of it by each person in accordance with their upbringing. From your childhood you have lived in great luxury, and I am far from rich. It would break my heart to see you pining for things to which you have been accustomed, and be unable to procure them for you.'

'I have no fear of that. I hate ostentation and my personal tastes are simple. From what you have told me you are in receipt of a regular allowance, and that, though small, should suffice to keep us from actual starvation. Then, seeing that you are an only son, and your father is a man of some substance, there seems good reason to suppose that he will increase it on your marriage. But, whether he does or no, however angry my own father may be at my marrying without his consent he is much too fond of me to allow me to want for the means to live respectably.'

'Think you then that after a time your parents will forgive you ?' Roger asked in some surprise.

'My mother will not. She is deeply religious and so under the thumb of her confessor that I doubt her ever forgiving my marriage to a heretic. But my father is of a different mould. He is too old now and in his life has climbed too high to be any longer a slave to his ambitions. Naturally, for the sake of our house, he would like me to make a suitable alliance, but I am sure that my happiness means more to him than such second-hand aggrandizement. He will have no cause for shame in my marriage to an honourable gentleman who is an English Admiral's son, and he is too broadminded to allow the religious question to dominate his affections.'

From all she said it seemed that their prospects were far better than Roger would ever have imagined they could be in such circumstances. Every instinct urged him to have no further scruples about taking this lovely, rich, sweet-natured bride; yet the words of the dying Senora Poeblar persisted in ringing in his ears. True, it was no longer any question of making Isabella his mistress, so that if she remained with him for any length of time their relationship must inevitably bring shame and unhappiness upon her; but the Senora had so clearly felt that if given time the fires of Isabella's passion would die down. Ought he not to ensure a fair margin of time for that possibility to take effect, before allowing her to commit herself irrevocably to this drastic step which would revolutionize her whole life? With that in mind he said:

'Since there seems some prospect of your father eventually becom­ing reconciled to you, it would perhaps considerably increase it if you wrote first explaining our circumstances and asking his consent to our marriage; albeit making plain that in any case you could not be dis­suaded from it. He would then have less cause for umbrage and might, at a pinch, become a willing party to the design.'

'Nay,' she cried swiftly. 'That I will not do. I have too many relatives and he too many powerful friends for me to risk it. Some of them would surely get wind of our whereabouts and seek to take me from you. They would even use force if all else failed.'

He brought himself to adopt another line. 'All the same I am against any hole-in-the-corner marriage, as unworthy of you. Would you be willing to trust yourself to me until I can take you back to my mother in England ? I vouch for it she could not fail to love you, and there we could be married with the solemnity and happy rejoicings which are beyond hope of attainment for a couple situated as we are, here in France.'

'My trust in you is absolute,' she smiled. 'And now that we are pledged to one another I am not wild to marry you on the instant. I will gladly do so tomorrow if you wish; but if you prefer to wait a month or two the joyous anticipation I shall feel will amply compensate me for exercising patience.'

'Damme! I do not prefer to wait!' he blurted out. 'How I will find the patience to support so long a delay in making you truly my own I cannot think. Yet my sense of fitness tells me there are good reasons for it.'

'I think you right. And the admirable restraint you put upon your­self makes me love you all the more. Yet the sooner we can get to England and be man and wife the better I will be pleased.'

'I fear I am committed to deliver Her Majesty's letter first,' he said with a genuine sigh.

She nodded. 'I had not forgot it. And on account of your wound its delivery has been overlong delayed already. Let us set out for

Florence tomorrow then, and as soon as you have completed your mission seek a ship in Leghorn which will carry us to England. But while we are in Florence we must have a care. The Grand Duchess is the daughter of the late King Carlos III of Spain. When she married she took an aunt of mine with her to Florence as one of her ladies- in-waiting. A year or two later my aunt married a Florentine nobleman named Count Frescobaldi, and still lives there. Should she get wind of my presence in the city she will wonder why I have not sought the hospitality of her palazzo; and if she learnt that I am lying at an inn in the company of a handsome Englishman instead of a duenna we might be hard put to it to get away.'

After pondering a moment, Roger said: 'Perhaps then it would be safest if I left you in Marseilles while I deliver the letter to His Highness; although I would be very loath to do so, particularly seeing the un­settled state of France.'

'Nay!' she cried, grasping his hand in sudden panic. 'I beg you never leave me from now on. I could not bear it. In spirit I am married to you already, and for the rest I am content to wait. But if I were parted from you even for a week I would die of anxiety that some frightful thing might prevent your returning to me. No! To Florence you must go, but I will go with you.'

'Then it had best be under an assumed name; and we will make all possible haste to be through with the business.'

'You are right on both counts,' she agreed swiftly. 'And I shall not rest easy until we are on a ship bound for England. But tell me more now about the country that holds so sweet a future for me. I am anxious to hear every detail you can give me of it.'

He laughed. ' 'Tis the custom there that immediately upon a couple. pledging their troth they should kiss. We have not done so yet and can scarce do so here in the open. Let us drive back to the hotel, in order that I may pay the tribute that I am so eager to give to my beautiful fiancee.'

When they got back he produced the fine ring that Madame Marie Antoinette had given him. It was a little large for Isabella's engagement-finger but she was enchanted with it; and it made him very happy to think that fortune had provided him with a jewel for her of much greater value than he could ever have afforded to buy.

That evening after supper she asked him to haul out from under her bed two heavy brass-bound coffers. He knew them well by sight, as when the coach was on the road they travelled concealed in a secret compartment under a false bottom to the coachman's box, but each evening they were carried up to her room, and it was for their protection as much as her own that either Hernando or Pedro slept rolled in a rug outside her door every night.

Kneeling down she selected three keys from the bunch at her girdle and opened the larger chest. Roger had naturally assumed that it contained money, but he was positively staggered by the amount and value of the coin in it. Apart from a few rouleaux of silver ecus for im­mediate needs, it was three-quarters full of Spanish gold. Nearly all the coins were the equivalent of ?5 pieces, as large as a crown and weighing an ounce. Most of them had been minted in America and bore the head of King Carlos III with the individual markings of Mexico or Peru. He had never before seen so much gold in his life and could not even form a rough estimate of its value.

But Isabella laughed up at him and said: 'This is the residue of the allowance that my father made me these last few years. As I lived at Court and mainly at Her Majesty's expense it was far more than I needed. There must be all of a thousand doubloons here, so you see we have ample funds to support us for some time to come.'

Turning to the smaller chest she picked out another group of keys and unlocked that. It contained her jewels; ropes of pearls, gem-encrusted crosses, rings by the score, ornaments for hair, neck, wrists and corsage. As she opened case after case the diamonds, emeralds, rubies and sapphires flashed and scintillated in the candlelight. Laughing up at him again she said:

'These are all mine. Most of them were left to me by my great-aunt, who was a Duchess of Alva. Were they sold they would fetch at least a hundred thousand ecus; so I do not come to you as quite a pauper. If need be we will sell some of them from time to time to provide ourselves with little luxuries.'

Roger was neither avaricious nor a spendthrift, and although he was normally generous by nature he had inherited from his Scottish mother's family a very sound appreciation of the value of money. So, soon after­wards, when he was undressing in his own room, he could not help it flitting through his mind that Isabella's fortune in gold