The Song of the Siren

However, no one we knew was implicated. We heard that the General had not yet been tried but soon would be, and as the days passed I, at least, forgot about it.

I had other matters with which to occupy myself, for during those Christmas holidays Benjie again asked me to marry him.

I still declined to give him a definite answer but he was a great deal in my mind.

He said: “You don’t still think of Beaumont Granville, do you?”

I hesitated.

‘?Oh, but he’s gone, Carlotta. He’ll never come back now. If he had intended to he would have done so long ago.”

“I think I must be the faithful kind, Benjie.”

“My dearest Carlotta, do you know what Harriet said to me the other day? She said: ‘Carlotta cherishes a dream. It’s about a man who never existed.’”

"Beau existed, Benjie.”

“Not as you see him. What Harriet means is you built up a picture about him and it was a false one.”

“I knew him very well. He never pretended to me that he was other than he was.”

“He’s gone, Carlotta. He could be dead.”

“Sometimes,” I said, “I think he must be. Oh, Benjie, if only I could find out the truth and if he is dead how he died ... I think I could begin to start again.”

“I’m going to find out,” said Benjie. “He’s abroad somewhere, and Harriet said that he would be in some fashionable city. He would never bury himself in the country.

I’m going to marry you, Carlotta. Remember that.”

“You’re good to me, Benjie,” I said. “Go on loving me ... please.” Perhaps that was an admission. Perhaps I knew that I would one day marry Benjie.

At the end of January Harriet, Gregory and Benjie went bad; to Eyot Abbass. Harriet had now firmly decided that the sooner I married Benjie the better. She asked me to go and stay with them soon.

“When the spring comes,” she said, “I shall expect you.” It was May when I set out to visit Harriet.

My mother was in a happy state of mind. It was clear now that there would be no reverberations about General Langdon and I was sure she believed that when I returned I would announce my betrothal to Benjie. It was what she wanted. It would bind us all more closely together.

Leigh was always busy about his land. He was cultivating more and more. They were all very pleased that there had actually been a new Act of Settlement which declared that Princess Anne was next in the line of succession to William, and that if she died without heirs the throne should go to the descendants of Sophia of Hanover, providing they were Protestants.

Leigh said: “It’s sensible. It shows clearly that we’ll never have James back. And it means that England will never consider any but a Protestant King.”

I felt impatient with all this talk about religion. “What difference does it make?”

I cried. “Who cares whether we have a Protestant or Catholic King?”

“It makes a difference when men start quarrelling about it and insist that others think as they do,” explained Leigh.

“Which is just what they are doing with this Act of Settlement,” I pointed out.

I didn’t really care. I just wanted to be argumentative. Perhaps I did feel a little resentment at the treatment of the Catholics, as my father had died because he was one and dear old Robert Frinton, who had left me his fortune, had been a staunch adherent of the Catholic Church. And now General Langdon was going to come to a tragic end. I knew these men courted danger-all of them-but I was impatient with their intolerance towards each other.

However, the fact that the King was obviously ailing, although there was an attempt to prevent this becoming public knowledge, did not matter as much because there was the Princess Anne to step onto the throne if he should die; and although she was without heirs, she was only in her thirties and there was always the Electress Sophia with her brood in the background.

So I prepared to leave for Eyot Abbass.

Damaris was sent by my mother to help me sort out my clothes. My mother was always trying to bring us together and created a fantasy in her mind that we were devoted to each other. That Damaris had a blind adoration of me I knew. She loved to brush my hair for me. She liked to put my clothes away; and when I was dressed ready for dinner when we had guests or was going riding, she would stand before me, that little round rosebud mouth of hers quite eloquent in her admiration.

“You are the most beautiful girl in the world,” she once said to me.

“How do you know?” I asked. “I suppose you’re a connoisseur of the beauties of all countries, are you?”

“Well,” she replied, “you must be.”

”Why, because I’m your sister and you think everything connected with our family is better than everything else?”

“No,” she answered. “Because you are so beautiful nobody could be more so.”