With a thousand glad contentings?
Cannot the chance of a night or an hour
Cross thy delights
With as many sad tormentings?”
When it was done the listeners applauded politely, all but Jemima and Samuel, who were enthusiastic. “Oh, if only I could sing like that!” cried Jemima.
And Samuel went to take her hand. “My dear, I think you have the prettiest voice I’ve ever heard.”
Amber kissed Jemima on the cheek and slipped her arm through Samuel’s, smiling up at him. She was still holding her guitar which had been a gift from Rex Morgan and was decorated with a streamer of multicoloured ribbons he had bought for her one day at the Royal Exchange. She was relieved to have the evening done and was eager to get upstairs where she could feel safe. Never again, she had promised herself a dozen times, will I be such a fool.
Lettice sat leaning forward in her chair, tense, her hands clasped hard, and now Katherine gave her an impatient nudge with her elbow. Suddenly Lettice’s voice rang out, unnaturally clear and sharp: “It’s not surprising that Madame’s voice should be pleasant.”
Henry, standing across the room, gave a visible start and his adolescent face turned red. Amber’s heart and the very flowing of her blood seemed to stop still. But Samuel had not heard, and though she continued to smile up at him she was wishing desperately that she could stop up his ears, push him out of the room, somehow keep him from ever hearing.
“What do you mean, Lettice?” It was Susan.
“I mean that any woman who used her voice to earn her living should have a pleasant one.”
“What are you talking about, Lettice?” demanded Jemima. “Madame has never earned her living and you know it!”
Lettice stood up, her cheeks bright, fists clenched nervously at her sides, and the lappets on her cap trembled. “I think that you had better go to your room, Jemima.”
Jemima was instantly on the defensive, looking to Amber for support. “Go to my room? Why should I? What have I done?”
“You’ve done nothing, dear,” said Lettice patiently, determined that there should be no quarrel within the family itself. “But what I have to say is not altogether suitable for you to hear.”
Jemima made a grimace. “Heavens, Lettice! How old do you think I am? If I’m old enough to get married to that Joseph Cuttle I’m old enough to stay here and listen to anything you might have to say!”
By now Samuel was aware of the quarrel going on between his daughters. “What is it, Lettice? Jemima’s grown-up, I believe. If you have something to say, say it.”
“Very well.” She took a deep breath. “Henry saw Madame at the theatre this afternoon.”
Samuel’s expression did not change and the three women about the fireplace looked seriously disappointed, almost cheated. “Well?” he said. “Suppose he did? I understand the theatre is patronized nowadays by ladies of the best quality.”
“You don’t understand, Father. He saw her in the tiring-room.” For a moment she paused, watching the change on her father’s face, almost wishing that her hatred and jealousy had never led her to make this wretched accusation. She was beginning to realize that it would only hurt him, and do no one any good. And Henry stood looking as if he wished he might be suddenly stricken by the devil and disappear in a cloud of smoke. Her voice dropped, but Lettice finished what she had begun. “She was in the tiring-room because she was once an actress herself.”
There was a gasp from everyone but Amber, who stood perfectly still and stared Lettice levelly in the eye. For an instant her face was naked, threatening savage hate showing on it, but so quickly it changed that no one could be certain the expression had been there at all. Her lashes dropped, and she looked no more dangerous than a penitent child, caught with jam on its hands.
But Susan pricked her finger. Katherine dropped her sewing. Jemima leaped involuntarily to her feet. And the brothers were jerked out of their lazy indifference to what they had thought was merely another female squabble. Samuel, who had been looking younger and happier these past weeks than he had in years, was suddenly an old man again; and Lettice wished that she had never been so great a fool as to tell him.
For a moment he stood staring ahead and then he looked down at Amber, who raised her eyes to meet his. “It isn’t true, is it?”
She answered him so softly that though everyone else in the room strained to hear her words they could not. “Yes, Samuel, it’s true. But if you’ll let me talk to you—I can tell you why I had to do it. Please, Samuel?”
For a long minute they stood looking at each other, Amber’s face pleading, Samuel’s searching for what he had never tried before to find. And then his head came up proudly and with her arm still linked in his they walked from the room. There was a moment of perfect silence, before Lettice ran to her husband and burst into broken-hearted tears.
CHAPTER TWENTY–SEVEN
NO FURTHER MENTION was ever made, in the presence of Samuel Dangerfield, of his wife’s acting.
The morning after Lettice had made her sensational disclosure, he called her into a private room and told her that the matter had been explained to his own satisfaction, that he did not consider an explanation due the family, and that he wanted no more talk of it among themselves, nor any mention to outsiders. Henry was told that he could either forgo visiting the theatre or leave home. And to all outward appearances everything went on exactly as it had before.
The first time Amber appeared at dinner after that she was as composed and natural as if none of them knew what she really was; her coolness on this occasion was considered to be the boldest thing she had yet done. They could never forgive her for not hanging her head and blushing.
But though Amber knew what they thought of her she did not care. Samuel, at least, was convinced that she was wholly innocent, the victim of bad luck which had forced her into the uncongenial surroundings of the theatre, and that she had been tainted neither physically nor morally by the months she had spent on the stage. His infatuation for her was so great, his loyalty so intense, that none of them dared criticize her to him, even by implication. And they were all forced by family pride and love of their father to protect her against outsiders. For though, inevitably, gossip spread among their numberless relatives and friends that old Samuel Dangerfield had married an actress—and one of no very good repute—they defended her so convincingly that Amber became acceptable to the most censorious and stiff-necked dowagers in London.
But if the rest of the family was shocked and ashamed to be related, even by marriage, to a former actress, there was one of them who thought it the most exciting thing that had ever happened. That was Jemima. She teased Amber by the hour to tell her all about the theatre, what the gentlemen said, how my Lady Castlemaine looked when she sat in the royal box, what it felt like to stand on the stage and have a thousand people stare at you. And she wanted to know if it was true—as Lettice had said—that actresses were lewd women. Jemima was somewhat puzzled as to exactly what a lewd woman was, but it did sound wickedly exciting.
Amber answered her questions, but only part of each one. She told her step-daughter of all that was gay and colourful and amusing about the theatre and the Court—but omitted those other aspects which she knew too well herself. To Jemima fine gentlemen and ladies were fine because they wore magnificent clothes, had an elaborate set of mannerisms, and were called by titles. She would not have liked to be disillusioned.
And for all that Lettice could say or do she began to imitate her step-mother.
Her neck-lines went lower, her lips became redder, she began to smell of orange-flower-water and to wear her hair in thick lustrous curls with the back done up high and twisted with ribbons. Amber, motivated by pure mischief, encouraged her. She gave her a vial of her own perfume, a jar of lip-paste, a box of scented powder, combs to make her curls stand out and seem thicker. At last Jemima even stuck on two or three little black-taffeta patches.