Love Comes West

Chapter One 1885-2

For a moment Roberta could hardly believe that her father meant to leave for ever.

Then, when she realised that he had taken Lady Bingham with him, she knew that the scandal it would cause would make it impossible for him to return for a very long time.

What was more, the Lord Lieutenant was refusing to divorce his wife, which meant that if she and the Earl ever returned to England they would be completely ostracised.

And as the Dowager Countess never ceased to say, “would never be accepted at Court!”

“How dare your father do anything so disgraceful?” was a question that Roberta was to hear repeated over and over again.

“A man in his position should have known better!”

“He has dragged our name into the dirt!”

“He should be heartily ashamed of himself!”

She felt sometimes as if the same scathing remarks were being repeated and repeated so that even when she was alone they seemed to echo inside her head.

It was two years later that she learned not from her grandmother but from what the servants were whispering amongst themselves that Lady Bingham had returned home and her husband had forgiven her.

Of course a great number of people in the County would refuse to speak to her and, as the Dowager Countess had predicted, she would never again be accepted at Court.

One day Roberta was about to enter the drawing room when she overheard her aunt say to a caller,

“No gentleman could have behaved more magnanimously to one who is nothing more than a scarlet woman!”

Arrested by the words, she had listened at the door, making no move to enter the room.

“And what had happened to your brother?” she heard the caller ask. “I have always thought him the most handsome man I have ever seen!”

“I am afraid Duncan’s looks have been his undoing,” Lady Emily had said sourly, “and doubtless he will console himself with somebody else.”

“You don’t think he will come home?”

“I imagine that would be very unlikely.”

There was silence for a moment.

Then the caller enquired,

“Where is he at the moment?”

“He was in Spain,” Lady Emily replied, “but I heard quite by chance from one of our cousins that he has rented a house in Paris for the spring. I suppose he finds the gaiety of the French Capital very much to his taste!”

There was that sarcastic note in her aunt’s voice that Roberta was very familiar with.

She was sure now that the denunciation of her father, which had died down a little, would rise up all over again.

Quite suddenly she felt that she could not bear it.

How could she spend the next two years, before she was expected to marry, listening to the tirades which she had no defence against?

She did not go into the drawing room as she had intended.

Instead she went upstairs to her bedroom to sit at the window gazing out.

She did not see the first green buds of spring sprouting on the trees, the golden daffodils flowering in the long grass or the first baby lambs frisking in the fields.

Instead she saw her father’s laughing face, his eyes twinkling, the magic of him making her feel as if everything in life was wildly exciting and that if she wanted she could jump over the moon.

‘He is alone,’ she told herself, ‘and now I can go to him.’

At sixteen she had developed what her teacher from the village described somewhat disparagingly as “an intelligence beyond her years, something not particularly desirable in a young woman!”

Carefully Roberta made her plans.

She knew that it would be impossible for her to travel to Paris alone, but she remembered that her grandmother had given a cottage on her estate in Essex to an elderly housemaid, now retired, who had accompanied her as a lady’s maid when she had had to move from Worth Park.

She had, however, not been happy at being uprooted from the estate where she had lived all her life and where all her friends either lived in the village or else were working, as she had, in the ‘Big House’.

She had hoped, when she had asked if she might retire, that she would be sent back to Worth Park, but the Dowager Countess had no wish to have anything to do with her son’s estate, which was now being managed by Solicitors.

Instead she had given Gracie, as the old woman was called, a cottage in the village.

It was impossible for her to refuse, but Roberta was aware of how unhappy she was.

Because Gracie was almost her last contact with her home, she regularly visited her at least once a week and they would talk about the old days when her mother was alive.

As Gracie admired her father and nothing would make her say a word against him, it was a joy to Roberta to hear him praised rather than abused.

It was therefore to Gracie she went the next morning, riding with a groom and leaving him to hold her horse when she went inside the small cottage.

“Oh, it’s you, my Lady!” Gracie exclaimed when Roberta appeared. “I was hopin’ to see you. I’ve got somethin’ to tell you!”

“I know what it is, Gracie,” Roberta answered. “You have heard that Lady Bingham has returned home.”

“Oh, you knows already!” Gracie exclaimed, obviously disappointed at not being first with the news.

“Yes, I have heard,” Roberta admitted, “and now that Papa is alone, I intend to join him.”

“You’re never going to do that!” Gracie exclaimed in astonishment. “What’ll your grandmother say?”

“She will say a great deal,” Roberta replied, “but only after I have gone!”

“D’you mean you’re leavin’ without tellin’ her?”

“I will keep them guessing as to where I am,” Roberta smiled. “Actually I am going to Paris to find Papa and you are coming with me!”

Gracie, who was very energetic and spry at sixty-nine, looked at her in astonishment.

“Did you say we’re a-comin’ with you, my Lady?”

“Yes, Gracie. You know quite well I cannot travel alone. Mama would not have approved, and so you have to look after me.”

Gracie gasped in astonishment, but, because she loved Roberta and was actually thrilled at the idea of going away, she agreed to everything that was suggested.

It was not easy, but once Roberta had made up her mind she could be as determined as her father when the occasion arose and everything seemed to fall into place.

She had no ready money because she seldom went shopping and her grandmother gave her only the same amount of pocket money she had received when she lived with her father and mother.

This was actually not enough to take her to Paris, so she planned to wait until the end of the month when the servants in the house, as well as those employed on the estate, would be paid.

This meant that the estate Manager, a slow-thinking middle-aged man, would come to The Hall the afternoon before and sit in the room that was known as the Estate Office and count out all the money that would be given out the following morning.

When he had put it into neat little bags, he would lock them up in the safe for the night and hand the keys to the Countess, leaving everything in what he called ‘apple pie order’.

That afternoon Roberta waited until she had heard him say goodbye to her grandmother, when as usual the Countess placed the keys in the right hand drawer of her desk before going upstairs to change for dinner.

It took Roberta very little time to collect them, go to the safe, open it, empty all the little bags of money into a small case she had ready and leave a piece of paper on which she had written,

“I owe you the money I have taken from here and which will be repaid by my father, the Earl of Wentworth.”

She had signed it with a flourish, placed it in a prominent position and put the keys back in the desk.

Then she had gone demurely upstairs to say goodnight to her grandmother and her Aunt Emily before she ate her supper alone in the schoolroom.

Because she was only sixteen, it was only on special occasions that she was allowed to dine downstairs.

However, as she found dinner in the dining room, waited on by a butler and two footmen, long drawn out and extremely boring, she much preferred to eat alone and read a book at the same time.

But that night she was too excited to read and, having sent away most of the well-cooked, nourishing but dull dished that were brought to her, she went to her bedroom to make sure that everything was ready for the morning.

The most awkward problem had been how to get the local brougham, which was for hire, to call at the house without her grandmother being aware of it.

Then Gracie had come to her aid.

“If I says one of my relatives be ill, my Lady, I can hire Tom Hanson to take me to the station and he’ll call for me at whatever time I tells him to.”

“Of course, Gracie! I might have thought of that myself!” Roberta exclaimed. “Will you tell him to be outside your house at four-thirty in the morning so that we can catch the milk train to London which I know leaves from Chelmsford at five o’clock.”

“I’ll do that, my Lady,” Gracie agreed.

It was therefore as dawn was rising over the trees in the Park that Roberta reached the stables.

All she was taking with her was a small carpet bag that contained only necessities and two of her lightest dresses.

They had been chosen for her by her grandmother and she was quite certain that her father would think them as unattractive as she did and buy her something new.

The same applied to the very plain gown she was to travel in and the coat that went over it.

It was her Sunday best and every time she put it on she felt as if she might have come out of an orphanage.

Her bonnet was the same dark blue as the rest of her outfit and was trimmed with the blue ribbons that seemed to have no colour in them.

It presented no difficulty to Roberta to saddle one of the horses she habitually rode and to ride it holding her carpetbag on the saddle in front of her.

When she reached Gracie’s cottage she saw with a leap of her heart that Tom Hanson’s brougham was outside and that he was just walking up the small path to knock on the cottage door.

There was a light in the window, which told her that Gracie was ready.

As she dismounted with some difficulty because she was still holding her bag in her hand, Tom Hanson turned around to stare at her in astonishment.

“‘Mornin’, my Lady!” he said. “And where might you be a-goin’?”

“I am coming with you, Tom,” Roberta replied. “It’s a long journey for Gracie to make on her own, so I have decided to accompany her.”

“That’s right kind of your Ladyship,” Tom exclaimed, “but what be you goin’ to do with your ’orse?”

“I shall turn him loose on the village green,” Roberta replied. “He will not go far and I thought you might be kind enough when you return from the station to take him back to the house for me.”

Tom Hanson scratched his head.

“I’ll do that right enough, my Lady,” he said, “but what’s ’appened to all them grooms in the stables?”

“They were asleep,” Roberta said lightly, “and it was quicker for me to come alone than to wake one of them up.”

Tom laughed and she was certain that this was a joke that would be repeated against the grooms for a long time to come.

Then she and Gracie were off and she knew that it would be at least four or five hours before anybody realised that she had gone. By then it would be too late to stop her, even if they guessed where she was going.

She had left a note for her grandmother, but was too wise to say that she had gone to her father, thinking perhaps they would telegraph to the authorities to stop her at Dover.

Instead she wrote that she had suddenly heard that a dear friend was ill and had gone by train to visit her, taking Gracie with her as she was certain that her grandmother would not like her to travel alone.