Love Comes West

Chapter One 1885-1

Chapter One 1885The Earl of Wentworth was dying.

The heat in the tent was intolerable, even though it was of black material like those of the Bedouins and, although the side was open, there was not a breath of wind to stir the leaves of the palm trees in the oasis.

Roberta dipped a piece of cloth into the water, which, having been poured from a goat’s skin was almost as warm as the air and wiped his forehead.

He had been either asleep or unconscious for a long time, but now he opened his eyes.

“Would you like a drink, Papa?” she asked.

For a moment it seemed as if her father could not understand, then he nodded very slightly.

She fetched the drink that she had already prepared of brandy and water, which was standing in a bowl to keep it cool.

Gently she lifted his head and held the rim to his lips.

Although the Earl’s face was very pale from his illness, he was still a handsome and very attractive man and it was understandable, Roberta thought involuntarily, that many women loved him.

He took a few sips of the brandy and water and it seemed to revive him slightly, for, as she laid his head gently back against the pillow, he stammered,

“I am – sorry – dearest.”

“For what, Papa? You cannot help being ill.”

“I am dying – as you well – know,” the Earl replied, “and in a very – inconvenient –place.”

Roberta gave a little cry.

“Don’t talk like that, Papa! You know I cannot lose you. What would I do without you?”

The Earl took a deep breath as if to give himself strength.

Then he said,

“Listen – my precious, because we have very – little time. When I am dead – bury me – here in the – sand.”

Roberta would have protested, but she realised what an effort her father was having to make to talk to her and thought it best to keep silent.

“Hassam will take you – safely to – Algiers,” her father went on as if he was following his own thoughts. “Tell the men you cannot – pay them until you get – there. That will ensure you have no – trouble.”

“I will do that,” Roberta murmured.

Again there was silence. Her father had closed his eyes and she thought that he had finished, but after a moment he said,

“I have been – thinking of how – uncomfortable it will be for you to – go home.”

“I know, Papa,” Roberta agreed, “and that is why you cannot die and leave me alone. You know how disagreeable the family will be to me when I return.”

The Earl nodded his head as if he understood and after a moment he said,

“Go to your – Aunt Margaret – she is the best of my sisters – and I think you would be – happy with – her.”

Roberta looked puzzled.

“You must – remember,” the Earl said as if she had questioned him, “that your Aunt Margaret was more like – me than the rest of my relatives and ran away with an – American preacher.”

“Yes, of course!” Roberta exclaimed. “I remember it now.”

“Her name is Dulaine – and you will find a – letter from her written – I must admit –nearly two years ago – amongst my papers in the – Bank in Algiers.”

“America is a long way off, Papa,” Roberta murmured.

“I know,” her father agreed. “At the same time – you have the choice between being –punished by the family for my sins – or else making a new life for yourself – in a new world with your Aunt Margaret.”

His pale lips twisted in a faint smile as he added,

“I know which I would – choose.”

With an effort Roberta managed to say,

“It will be an adventure, Papa, but not the same if you are not sharing it with me.”

“I wish I could – go with you,” the Earl replied. “I would like to see – America.”

He closed his eyes again and Roberta realised that the effort he had made to talk to her had been superhuman.

Once again she held the glass of brandy and water to his lips, but, although he obediently took two small sips of it, she felt as if he was drifting away from her.

Sitting back on her heels beside the bed, which was nothing more than a mattress on the sandy floor, Roberta wondered frantically if there was anything she could do.

She knew her father was right when he said that he was dying. The same fever had killed his mistress a month earlier and her body now lay buried outside a small Arab village without even a cross to mark the place.

‘Why could I have not died too?’ Roberta asked herself.

The fever that had swept through the caravan had caused the deaths of two camel boys and of Francine, who her father had been deeply infatuated with.

He had succumbed to the same fever which had left him limp, bloodless and with no strength to go on living.

Looking back, Roberta thought it was almost a miracle that they had survived so long without any illnesses or indeed any other setbacks in their strange fascinating wanderings in North Africa.

It was something she had never expected to happen to her when, having inherited her father’s spirit of independence and sense of adventure, she had found the courage to run away from the gaunt dark house in Essex.

It was there that her relatives never stopped finding fault and telling her what a disgrace her father was to the family.

Because she had found their restrictions and endless criticisms intolerable she could understand how her father, after her mother’s death, had found England unendurable.

Without any warning he had therefore left Worth Park, his ancestral home, one morning never to return.

The fact that he had taken with him the wife of the Lord Lieutenant of the County did not make his behaviour any more excusable in the eyes of those he had left behind.

Roberta’s grandmother, the Dowager Countess, had arrived with Lady Emily, her youngest and unmarried daughter, to close up The Park before taking Roberta to live with them in Essex.

She could remember resenting at the time that, having lost her mother two years earlier, she must now lose her father, the horses she loved and the old servants who had looked after her since she was a child.

What was more, her grandmother dispensed with the services of her Governess on the ground that she was frivolous.

She arranged instead for Lady Emily to give Roberta some lessons, while an elderly retired teacher was brought daily from the neighbouring village to instruct her in the subjects in which her aunt could not profess to be proficient.

Because Roberta was very intelligent, she found the lessons as dull as the life she was now expected to lead with two elderly women whose closest bond in common was that they violently disapproved of her father.

Every day she was forced to listen to long tirades about his disgraceful behaviour and any effort she made at being charming, looking pretty or even laughing merely brought the rebuke that it reminded them of ‘poor misguided Duncan’.

Had Roberta been younger she might perhaps have begun to believe that her father was as immoral and wicked as they made him out to be.

But she was nearly fourteen when he left and she could remember all too vividly how handsome and charming he was and how the tempo always seemed to rise when he came into a room.

She could recall, too, how every woman, however old she might be, had a flirtatious expression in her eyes when she looked at him.

There was the memory also of how happy they had all been when her mother was alive.

There had been house parties every weekend, people continually spending the day or a few nights with them, hunting and shooting in the winter, boating on the lake and picnics in the woods in the summer.

Everything they had done seemed to have evoked peals of happy laughter.

Only Roberta had known how miserable her father had been when her mother died and the sunlight had seemed to have left the house.

It was then that he had started going to London in an effort to forget and he always came back looking better and with amusing stories to tell Roberta of the theatres he had visited, the supper parties he had enjoyed and the people he had met.

She had the idea later that these seldom included the social personalities who had so often stayed with them at home.

Instead he told her of the attractiveness of the Gaiety Girls, the amusing artists who appeared at the music halls and the gay nights that he had spent at Romano’s and other notorious restaurants where she knew that she would never be allowed to dine.

Then, after her father’s absences in London had grown more and more frequent, suddenly everything changed.

He now appeared to prefer the country where he would ride with the attractive Lady Bingham who was married to the Lord Lieutenant.

She was his second wife, very much younger than her husband, and Roberta thought how lovely she was and that she would like to look like her when she grew up.

Sometimes her father and Lady Bingham would take her riding with them and occasionally she joined them on the river or for luncheon.

In the summer when it was hot, the Earl ordered the meals to be served out of doors in the Grecian Temple at the end of the garden.

It seemed to Roberta that it was almost as if her mother was back, because her father laughed and everything she and Lady Bingham said appeared to amuse him.

There was a new atmosphere of happiness, which she had never forgotten.

Then, without the slightest warning, her father had gone.

When he said goodnight to her the night before he left, he had held her very close to him and there had been a serious note in his voice as he said,

“You are growing up, my darling, and you are going to be very pretty or perhaps ‘lovely’ is the right word. I must think about your future and make sure that you are chaperoned by somebody who can introduce you to Society, so that you meet the right type of man who will eventually make you a suitable husband.”

Roberta had laughed.

“There is plenty of time for that, Papa, and I would much rather talk to you, dance with you and just be with you than with any other man I have ever seen!”

Her father’s arms had tightened around her as he had said,

“Thank you, my dearest one. That is a compliment I appreciate. At the same time my sort of life is not the best where you are concerned.”

Roberta did not understand what he meant and anyway she was very sleepy.

They had spent a wonderful day alone together and, although she was very fond of Lady Bingham who made everything so amusing, it was fun to have her father all to herself.

They had ridden away from the house soon after breakfast and gone all over the estate, almost as if her father was inspecting it.

For luncheon they had eaten bread and cheese and drunk cider at an inn several miles away from the house, riding home late in the afternoon.

Then they had spent a long time in the stables looking at the horses and it was only afterwards that Roberta realised that her father had been bidding them goodbye.

Then, the greatest joy of all, she had dined alone with him in the dining room dressed in her best and prettiest gown.

He had talked to her as if she was grown up and she had even had a small glass of champagne.

After she was in bed, he had come in to her room to kiss her goodnight and said,

“Take good care of yourself, my adorable little daughter and always remember that I love you.”

“I love you too, Papa!” Roberta replied. “You are the most wonderful father any girl ever had!”

She felt the Earl drew in his breath before he bent down to kiss her forehead.

Then, without saying any more, he had left her bedroom and she had fallen asleep.

In the morning she found that he had left her a short note.

It said very little except that he had gone away to France and that he had asked his mother to close Worth Park and take her to live with her in Essex.