The Drop of the Dice

THE RETURN

IT WAS NEARLY TEN years since Lance had died. I was completely shattered by his death; so was Sabrina. I saw the old fear in her eyes which I had detected all those years ago when Damans had died.

‘What is it about me?’ she cried to me. ‘Why is it that I am fated to bring disaster? There was my mother. I was indirectly responsible for her death. And now… Lance. If I had not thought of marrying Reggie, I should never have gone to that house that night. I should not have left the stole behind, and Lance would be alive this day.’

‘It is not your fault that things happened the way they did,’ I insisted.

‘But why me? Why should I be the one every time to bring disaster and death?’

‘You saved my life. Don’t forget that. I never shall.’

‘Oh, Clarissa, I’m so unhappy. There is a terrible guilt on me.’

‘No,’ I cried. ‘You must not feel this. Be sensible, Sabrina.’

The task of bringing her out of that terrible gloom was mine, just as it had been all those years ago, and I felt more than ever that our lives were inextricably woven together. I was closer to her even than to my beloved daughter Zipporah.

Zipporah was soft and feminine and yet strangely enough more equipped to take care of herself than Sabrina was… she had her friendship with Jean-Louis and I think, in her heart, was more fond of him than of anyone else.

Sabrina did not marry Reggie. After that dreadful night she could not bear to be with him. It reminded her too much. Poor Reggie was heartbroken. He went abroad to some members of his family—in Sweden, I think. But Sabrina had done something for him, I was sure. She had restored a certain confidence to him, but perhaps that was partly due to the fact that his father of whom he had been in such obvious awe, was dead. However, he went out of our lives; I sold the house in Albemarle Street and we settled in the country. I decided we would live there quietly, away from the social scene, although, after the manner of such affairs, the scandal of Sir Ralph’s death was soon forgotten.

During those ten years Priscilla and Leigh had died and Uncle Carl came home to take over the management of the Eversleigh estates. Occasionally I went to see him, but it was a sad business now that Arabella, Carleton, Priscilla and Leigh were no longer there.

The old generation passed on; the new ones were coming up. I myself was now forty-three years old and Sabrina herself was thirty. People were amazed that she had never married. Such a beautiful young woman, they said of her. She had had her admirers, of course, but I was sure that contemplating marriage brought back to her too vividly that scene in the bedroom, and always she shied away from it.

We were together so much, it seemed as though we knew each other’s thoughts, and what we wanted now was to live in peaceful security in the country. It suited us all and we did not miss the house in Albemarle Street. We threw ourselves into the life of the country; we entertained and were entertained by people we knew, who were not always those we had known in Lance’s day. There was no gambling at our house—except the occasional game of whist which was played merely for amusement. I had a stillroom and interested myself in the garden, particularly in growing herbs. It was the sort of life I had been brought up to in Eversleigh and although I was not ecstatically happy I was serene and at peace.

I was delighted to see the bond between my daughter and Jean-Louis grow stronger with the years. It was taken for granted that they would marry in due course. They were eager to do so but Jean-Louis wanted to be sure he could afford to keep a wife first. Jean-Louis was very independent. He knew the story of his mother’s deception, of course, and I think that made him more determined than ever to stand on his own feet. He had always had a great interest in the estate and before Lance’s death had learned a good deal about it from Tom Staples who was Lance’s very excellent manager. When Lance had died, Tom had managed for us with Jean-Louis’s help; and when Tom died I offered the job to Jean-Louis and he accepted it with alacrity. As there was a pleasant house that went with the job, he would now have a home of his own.

That was what he had been waiting for. I knew that he and Zipporah would now marry.

They were happy months before the wedding. Zipporah, Sabrina and I spent long hours refurnishing the manager’s house. It was good to see my daughter so happy and I had no doubt that she had chosen the right man, one whom she had known and loved throughout her childhood. They had had the same interests, the same upbringing. I did not see how the marriage could fail.

I wished that Lance could have been there to see our daughter’s happiness.

It was the beginning of the year 1745. I had said Zipporah should have waited for the summer. ‘June is the month for weddings,’ I added.

She had opened those lovely violet-coloured eyes very wide and said: ‘Dear mother, what does the time matter!’

She was right, of course; so the wedding was to be at the beginning of March.

‘Spring will be in the air,’ Zipporah reminded me.

I thought how wonderful it was to be young and in love and about to be married to the man of one’s choice. My thoughts went back to Dickon and once again I was wondering what my life would have been like if I had married him.

It was absurd to go on dreaming after thirty years.

The day before the wedding arrived, the house was full of the bustle of preparation; the smell of roasting meats and baking pies and all sorts of preparation filled the house. The guests began to arrive. Zipporah had wanted a traditional wedding with blue and green ribbons and sprigs of rosemary.

I was taken back all those years to the day I had married Lance. I remembered the haunting uncertainties which had beset me and how, when I had stood at the altar with Lance, it had seemed as though Dickon was at my side, watching reproachfully.

Soon Sabrina and I would be alone. It would be strangely quiet without Zipporah and Jean-Louis. I should miss my daughter’s bright presence greatly. But she would not be far away and I should see her often. And Sabrina and I would be together. I was always uneasy about Sabrina nowadays. I thought she should marry and have children. That would have been the life for her.

I wondered often whether she regretted not marrying. She took solitary rides. I wondered then did she brood on all that marriage might have offered; was she beginning to think her life was wasted? Now that Zipporah was getting married, did I detect a certain wistfulness in her eyes?

I was thinking about Sabrina when I heard her calling me.

I wondered why she did not come to my room so I went to the top of the staircase and there in the hall was Sabrina and beside her was a man.

I went down the stairs. There was something about him which seemed familiar.

I cried: ‘Can it be…?’

He turned to me and smiled. His eyes, I noticed, were of the same intense blue that I remembered.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it is. And you are Clarissa.’

‘Dickon!’ I whispered, unbelieving.

‘Returned to the home of his fathers,’ he said. Then he took my face in his hands and looked into my face.

I was immediately apprehensive. I had aged considerably and could not bear much resemblance to the girl he had known all those years ago. There were shadows under my eyes, and lines which had not been there when he had last seen me. I was long past my first youth.

And him? He had changed too. He was no longer the boy I had known. His lean, spare figure, his deeply bronzed face, the hair which was not so plentiful as it had been and had flecks of white in it. But the eyes were as brightly blue as ever and they burned with an intensity of feeling which I felt must match my own.

Sabrina was saying: ‘I found him looking at the house. He has come to see you. He went to Eversleigh and Carl told him where to come to find you. When he saw me, he thought I was you.’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I thought I recognized you.’

‘There must be a family resemblance. After all, we are cousins.’

‘I am so delighted to have found you.’

We were tongue-tied. I suppose after all the emotion we had shared and the passage of years that was inevitable.

‘You have come in time to dance at my daughter’s wedding,’ I said.

‘Yes, Sabrina told me.’

They smiled at each other; and I felt pleased because they liked each other. ‘This is wonderful,’ he said.

And so it was. Dickon was back.

I suppose what happened was inevitable. I should have seen it coming. When he had gone away I had been an innocent girl, very young. Sabrina had only just been born. When he came back he found an ageing woman, one whose own daughter was just married. He would have been thinking of that young girl all through the years. She would be ageless in his imagination. Surely he could not have expected me to have remained as I was before he went away? Perhaps he had forgotten the passing of time. He would have expected a certain maturity, of course. Perhaps he thought to find me looking like Sabrina.

Zipporah and Jean-Louis had left for the house on the estate. They were absorbed in each other. The guests departed. Dickon stayed with us. I had an idea that this would be a spring like no other.

I loved Dickon. I always had, and not even time and space could change my love for him. He had begun as an ideal and he continued so. As he talked to us, I caught glimpses of the old Dickon, the Dickon whom I had loved all those years ago and who had continued to haunt my life in the years between.

I knew that he had felt the same. I knew that he had come back for me.

We talked a great deal about his life in Virginia. He made us see the forests of arctic pine and balsam; he talked vividly of the plantations to which he had been assigned. He had found a certain consolation for exile in hard work.

‘I used to count the hours, the days, the weeks, the years,’ he told us. ‘Always there was the dream of coming home.’

He had worked with cotton and, finding it interesting, had worked hard; he was given promotion; his master appreciated him, and added to his responsibilities as the years passed. In time it was not like captivity at all.

‘If I had not wanted to come home so badly, I might have become reconciled,’ he said.

The climate was benign; he had been free to ride when he wished to. He loved to see the animals—the buffalo and elk, red and grey foxes, muskrats and weasels; he loved the opossums and often saw black bears in the Appalachians.

He used to fish in Chesapeake Bay for sturgeon and trout as well as cod and King mackerel. ‘We would catch the fish and cook and eat it right there in the bay,’ he told us.

In time he had been taken into his master’s house and treated as one of the family.

‘You never married,’ said Sabrina.

‘No… but there was the daughter of the house. She was a widow with a young son. She reminded me of you, Clarissa. When her father died I took over the management of the place. We might have married… but always I had this dream of coming home.’

Those were happy days. I felt uplifted. He had come home for me and all the years when I had thought of him, he had been thinking of me.

I looked at my face in the mirror and wondered how different I was from that young girl. I had aged considerably. But so had he. Who does not in thirty years? We were mellowed, mature now… but that should be no barrier to understanding.

I thought: He will ask me to marry him. It is the happy ending to our story. ‘And so they lived happily every after.’ How often had I read that line to the children. It always satisfied them. So it should. It was the only satisfying ending.

Those evenings in the twilight were the most precious moments of the day:

Sabrina was always with us. I insisted, although sometimes I think she avoided us. I wanted it to be known that Sabrina would always be with me. I knew Dickon would understand that. He always included her in the conversation and if we went riding, Sabrina would be there.

He told us how, when his term was over, he had felt impelled to stay until he had earned enough money to come back. He had felt an obligation to stay until the widow’s son was old enough to take over. Moreover, he did not know what had happened to his family’s estates, and he had wondered whether after the debacle of the rebellion in 1715 they had been confiscated. He had ascertained that they had not and that a distant relative had been looking after his interests while he was away, so he had a considerable estate in the North.

‘I am a free and independent man now,’ he assured us.

A week or more passed. Dickon had said nothing to me. Sometimes we went for long walks together and occasionally he would go alone. Once I saw him returning with Sabrina. When I asked if she had enjoyed the walk she told me she had and that she had met Dickon by chance.

Sabrina had changed. She looked younger than her thirty years; there was a new bloom on her cheeks. I had become used to her but it was as though her beauty struck me afresh.

I should have known. I should have seen it. Heaven knew, it was obvious enough. But I had to hear them before I accepted it. I had been living in a false world of my own making. It was not real. I should have seen it.

I was coming downstairs and they were in the hall. They had just come in. I was about to turn the corner of the staircase, which would have brought me into view, when I heard her say: ‘Oh, Dickon, be careful. What are we going to do?’

He said: ‘Clarissa will understand.’

I stood there, holding the banister, listening. It was almost as though I knew what they were going to say before they said it.

‘All those years she has never forgotten. She waited for this, you know. I know her well… none better. She loves you, Dickon. She always has.’

‘I love her too. I always shall. But, Sabrina, I love you… differently. Clarissa is a memory from the past. You are here… the present. Oh, my beautiful Sabrina…’

I turned and went quietly back to my room.

Fool! I thought. Didn’t you see it? Didn’t you know? You are an old woman and he has been dreaming of a young one. You have lived your life. He came back to you… for a dream… and he found Sabrina.

That it should be Sabrina was a twist of the knife in my wound.

Could I see them happy together while I myself would be longing for all Sabrina had?

How could I bear to lose them both!

They acted well. They attempted to disguise their feelings for each other, but it was becoming more and more obvious. But perhaps it seemed so because I knew.

Sometimes the desire came to me to do nothing… to wait. How could he ask Sabrina to marry him when I was there? This was the reason for his hesitation, for the haunted shadows in his eyes.

I struggled with myself. It was not easy. I had waited so long, dreamed too much. I could not give him up. Perhaps he would realize that. I could not see him married to Sabrina. How could I live near them and see them together, and yet how could I bear to lose them both?

You have your daughter, I told myself. Zipporah, who would live nearby and always welcome you to her home. You have your interests here.

No, I could not bear it.

I wrestled with myself. I knew what I ought to do, but how hard it was.

I awoke one morning with a strong resolve in my heart. I was going to be unhappy whatever happened. It was inevitable that I should be. I loved Dickon. I wanted Dickon. I wanted to start a new life with him. I wanted Sabrina, too; we had been together so long. What could I do?

I could see only one way. It was hard, but I took it.

I told Sabrina I must talk to her. She came to me uneasily and I said; ‘Sabrina, I am in great difficulty. It’s about Dickon.’

Her eyes opened wide and I could see the excitement in them.

‘You know how I have always thought of him, dreamed of him.’

‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘I know.’

‘But things don’t always turn out as one thinks they would. It’s a mistake really to expect to be able to take up things where you left them off years ago.’

She was looking at me disbelievingly.

‘Do you mean…’ She gulped a little. ‘Do you mean that you don’t… care for him in the same way?’

I lowered my eyes. I dared not look at her and tell this blatant lie, which was what I must do.

‘I am fond of him. He has grown into a fine man… but I have grown used to my freedom. I want things to go on as they have been. I want to stay mistress of myself.’

‘I understand, Clarissa.’

‘I thought you would. But how can I let him know…’

‘He will understand, I’m sure.’

She was wanting to leave me, to go to him, to tell him what I had said.

I stood up. She was beside me. She flung her arms about me.

‘Oh, I do love you, Clarissa,’ she said.

How happy they were! Sabrina had changed. She seemed to have flung off every one of those inhibitions which had plagued her from childhood. She was in love and because she was no longer very young, she loved with a great intensity. Dickon adored her. That was obvious. He was a little worried because he was some thirteen years her senior.

‘What is age?’ I asked. ‘You are ideal for each other.’

My seemingly delighted attitude at the way things had turned out was a perpetual joy to them. They kept looking at me as though they were grateful and so delighted just because I did not want to marry Dickon.

I would smile brightly to hide the fact that I was brokenhearted. It was no mean feat, and I was rather proud of myself. It was only when I was alone in my bedroom that I allowed the mask to drop and sometimes wept a little in the darkness of the night.

The end of a dream!

There was nothing left of it now. I must settle down and perhaps when Zipporah’s children began to arrive I should find some solace in them.

Sabrina and, Dickon were married quietly at the village church and then she left with him for the North.

It was one night in the July of that year when Charles Edward Stuart landed in one of the small Western Isles of Scotland with only seven men and a few hundred muskets and broadswords, and the money lent to him by the King of France. He had come to wrest the crown from our King George the Second and claim it for himself. It was like a pattern to me. It was when the Prince’s father had come that Dickon had been involved and sent to Virginia. Now Dickon was back, and here was the son come to fight for what he considered to be his right.

Everyone was talking about the new insurrection. We had had thirty peaceful years with little mention of Jacobites, but this seemed a serious threat.

Proclamations were issued. Rewards were offered for the capture of Charles Edward Stuart. In Scotland they called him Bonnie Prince Charlie because he was said to be young and handsome.

When visitors came to Clavering they talked of nothing but the Jacobites.

‘It seems,’ said one of our guests,’ that we might be getting the Stuarts back.’

‘Feckless family!’ said another. ‘We’re better off with German George.’

People were not taking the rising very seriously, however. Many of them remembered what they called the ‘Fifteen, referring to the year 1715 when this Prince’s father had come to Scotland in the hope of gaining the throne. Nothing had come of that. What were the Prince’s Highland supporters compared with the trained English army?

There was some consternation when Sir John Cope was beaten at Prestonpans, and Charles Edward started to march south and actually reached Derby.

Everyone now knows the outcome of that adventure and how the Duke of Cumberland marched to join the main army and so catch the Prince in a pincer movement. They knew that he could have reached London, and that he might have succeeded had he not been persuaded to return to Scotland and fight the decisive battle there.

He was back in the North in December.

I heard from Sabrina. She was in distress. Dickon was a Jacobite at heart and she knew that she could not stop his joining the Prince.

I reminded him [she wrote] of what happened before. He said that a man must fight for what he believed in, and that the throne belonged by right to the Stuarts.

Dear Clarissa, he is with them now and I am desolate and full of fears. I have been so happy since I knew that you no longer cared for him and now he has gone away. I don’t know when I shall hear from him again. I am here in the North right away from you. If only I could be near you I could bear it better. I play with the idea of leaving and coming to you. But I must be here… for when he comes back.

I shared her anxieties. I waited avidly for news.

It was April before it came—a lovely spring day with the birds singing wildly with the joy of greeting summer and the buds bursting open on the trees and shrubs. Spring in the air and fear in my heart.

I heard of the terrible battle of Culloden and prayed that Dickon might be safe. I wanted him to be happy; I wanted Sabrina to be happy.

The tales of the terrible slaughter shocked me. I shuddered at the name of Butcher Cumberland. ‘No quarter,’ he had said. ‘None shall be spared. We will finish the rebels once and for all.’

There was no news from Sabrina.

I prayed that he might be returned to her now. She knew I was anxious. Surely she would let me know.

No news… and the days were stretching on. May had come.

‘This will be the end of the Jacobites,’ people said. ‘This is the final defeat.’

‘Cumberland was right to be so harsh,’ said others. ‘They have to be shown that these rebellions must stop.’

‘No man should treat his fellow men as Cumberland has treated those who fell into his hands,’ said others.

Talk of the atrocities was rife. I could not bear to listen.

And still there was no news.

I wrote to Sabrina: ‘Let me know what is happening. I am frantic with anxiety.’

I waited. Each day I watched. Surely something must have happened to explain Sabrina’s silence.

May is the most beautiful of months, I had always thought, until this May. I shall never forget it… the long warm days and the whole of nature rejoicing and in my heart a feeling of dread that was almost a premonition.

It was the middle of the month and I was in the deepest despair when she came.

She walked into the house as though she were in a dream. In fact, I thought I was dreaming when I saw her. So often had I pictured her coming home to me… that it seemed like part of another dream.

‘Sabrina,’ I whispered.

I saw her face then, pale and tragic, and I knew.

She ran to me and my arms were about her, holding her fast, rejoicing in the midst of my fears because she had come home to me.

We clung together without speaking for some minutes; then I drew away and said: ‘Dickon… Is he…?’

She nodded. ‘He died… from his wounds at Culloden.’

‘Oh… Sabrina

She could not speak. She could only cling to me as though begging for comfort. I said to her: ‘Do you remember when we did our lessons together? There was one thing we discussed and I often think of it. It was what one of the Roman poets—Terence, I think—wrote. It was: “The life of man is as when you play with dice; if that which you chiefly want to throw does not fall, you must by skill make use of what has fallen by chance.” Everything depends on the drop of the dice, but once they have fallen there can be no going back. We must do the best we can with what is left to us.’

She nodded; and in comforting her, I could comfort myself.

Later we talked. All through the day and night we talked. ‘He would go, Clarissa. I tried to stop him. I reminded him of what had happened before. But he had to go. He was a Jacobite and nothing could make him forget that.’

I thought: He forgot it once when he helped me to escape. And a great pride filled my heart at that moment.

‘I begged him,’ she went on. ‘I pleaded with him, but he could not stop himself. He had to go. I understood at last. He was so certain that Charles Edward would succeed. And he did at first, but it was hopeless against the English armies. And Cumberland was determined that there should not be another Jacobite rebellion. The slaughter… oh, Clarissa, I could not describe it.’

‘You were there?’

‘I followed him. I could not let him go. I was nearby, waiting. I wanted to join him when the battle was over. He was wounded badly, but some of his men brought him in from the battlefield. Thank God, at least he died with me beside him.’

‘Sabrina, my dear child, how you must have suffered!’

‘Yes, I have suffered. I never really found complete happiness. You didn’t entirely deceive me, Clarissa. You loved him, didn’t you?’

‘It’s over,’ I said. ‘Dickon is lost to us both now.’

‘He spoke of you when he was dying. I think his mind had gone back to that time when you were young. He kept saying your name over and over again.’

I could scarcely bear it. Nor could she; but as she told me of his last hours we wept, mingling our tears.

But she is back with me now. We are together, as something tells me we were always meant to be.

And yesterday she called in the doctor. She did not let me know that she had done so, and when I was told by one of the maids that the doctor had been I was filled with a terrible apprehension.

I ran to her bedroom. She greeted me with a smile. I looked at her intently. There was no mistaking the radiance in her face.

‘I was hoping it was true,’ she said. ‘I did not want to tell you until I was sure. But now I know. Oh, Clarissa, I am going to have a child… Dickon’s child.’

I was trembling with a joy I had not known since the day Dickon came back, for now I knew he was going to live on… for both of us.