Jasper watched the situation developing itself with fiendish amusement, and could not resist telling Poppy what he had done.
‘Oh! I say, poor Mrs Lace,’ she said, laughing, ‘anyway, I don’t suppose she believed a word of it.’
‘Didn’t she just? Well then, why is she being so nice to Noel all of a sudden? She would hardly look at him before.’
‘That’s true. I think it’s awfully funny, but awfully unkind of you, Jasper.’
‘Not at all. The girl’s having a fine time, and so is Noel. I think it was exceedingly nice of me, especially as I could have had her myself by raising a finger, and she’s quite a cup of tea you know.’
‘Really, Jasper, you are outrageous. Pass me the soap-dish, will you?’
Next time they were all together Poppy could not resist treating Noel with exaggerated deference for the benefit of Mrs Lace.
As for Anne-Marie, her dreams became daily more extravagant. She saw herself now as the central figure of an impending tragedy. The farewell scene – Noel booted and spurred, and glittering with decorations, kissing her good-bye in the moonlight while an equerry, holding two horses, awaited him at a discreet distance. ‘Keep this ring and wear it always, it was my mother’s.’ He would tuck her little glove (or handkerchief, she had better order some new ones) into his belt, and gallop away, leaving her in a dead faint. Dreary weeks would follow, during which she would scan the papers for news of his triumph. Then, much later on, the wedding. Anne-Marie, drawn as by a magnet to his capital, would be standing in the crowd while Noel rode in state to marry some royal princess of an unexampled hideosity. His eye would light upon her as she stood there heavily veiled, and pierce her disguise. He would turn deathly pale and bite his lip until the blood came, to hide its quivering. Then, regaining his composure with a kingly gesture, he would ride on amid the huzzas of the populace. At that moment the assassin would draw his weapon, quick as thought she would throw herself before him, and stop the bullet with her own body, to die a few minutes later in the arms of Noel. As he closed her eyes he would pluck from his bosom, and pin to hers, the highest Order that was his to bestow. An alternative. Perhaps in the hour of his triumph he would send for her and install her in some gorgeous palace, joined to his own by an underground tunnel. She would be his good genius, guiding him with her wonderful feminine intuition through the quagmire of internal and international politics. The statesmen of all countries would bow before her and solicit her good offices with the king, and when she died her strange life would be written in several different languages. In fact, there was no end to these interesting possibilities.
The day after his scene with Mrs Lace, Noel was obliged to go to London. His lawyer wanted to see him; a visit to his dentist was becoming necessary. Jasper suggested that as he was going anyway, he should use the opportunity to buy some little present for Anne-Marie.
‘I’ve never known it do much harm at this stage in the proceedings,’ he said, ‘and after all, you’re simply stiff with cash old boy aren’t you?’
Noel said it was no thanks to Jasper if he was. He thought the idea a good one, however, and when he had finished all his business and eaten his luncheon he went to a pawnshop and bought a small but pretty aquamarine set in a ring. The price, as the jeweller told him, was extremely reasonable, and this was because the market had been flooded ever since the sale of the Russian Imperial jewels, which had included several parures of this stone.
When he slipped his present on to Anne-Marie’s finger he said, to make it seem more romantic, ‘This ring, my beloved, once shone upon the finger of an Empress, but she wasn’t half as beautiful as you.’
‘An Empress!’ cried Mrs Lace. ‘How wonderful!’
Meanwhile arrangements for the pageant were going ahead in good earnest. It had been settled that the inhabitants of the Jolly Roger, Mrs Lace, Eugenia and her Comrades of the Chalford Branch, were to be responsible between them for providing all the clothes and for the opening scene, in which George III would arrive and be welcomed to Chalford House. After this, George and Charlotte, surrounded by their courtiers, were to mount a small platform on which there would await them two thrones, and here they would remain whilst the other scenes, consisting of salient events of the reign, were enacted on the lawn before them. These episodes were being entrusted by Eugenia to various neighbouring branches of Social Unionists, each branch to be responsible for one episode. (Mr Leader and his friends, having learnt that the pageant was in aid of the Social Unionist funds, had politely intimated to Mrs Lace that they would be unable to help.)
Rehearsals for the first scene had already begun. Mrs Lace, having resigned herself to the dismal necessity of driving with Mr Wilkins, was greatly cheered when Jasper promised her that Noel, taking the part, and wearing the actual clothes of the Lord Chalford of the day, should receive them at the front door, help her from the coach and arm her to the platform, where he would then present an address of welcome. Eugenia, as the Prince of Wales, Poppy as Fanny Burney, and Lady Marjorie as the Duchess of Devonshire, would also be there to greet them with billowing curtsies. Mrs Lace felt that after all there
