The Sign of Love

Chapter One ~ 1869-2

“I will explain that to the doctor and I think you should sit down. This has been, I know, very upsetting for you.”

“It would have been much worse if – you had not been here,” Bettina answered him.

However she sat down as he had suggested, because she felt as if her legs could no longer support her.

She had never in her life seen anyone dead before and she thought it frightening how quickly someone could die.

One moment Mademoiselle had been moaning and groaning about her seasickness, complaining with all the volubility of a Frenchwoman, and the next minute she was silent and still.

Somehow now she seemed so small and ineffectual and Bettina wondered why any child had ever obeyed her or how she had ever exercised any authority in the school.

Dead!

It was a horrid word, Bettina thought.

There was something so final about it and it was hard for the moment to think, as a Roman Catholic would, that Mademoiselle’s soul had gone to Paradise and that, because she was a good woman, the Gates of Heaven would be open to her.

“I am going to find you a cup of tea,” Lord Eustace suggested, his voice breaking in on Bettina’s train of thought.

He left the Waiting Room and Bettina from her chair near the fire looked across at Mademoiselle lying on the bench.

‘I must pray for her because there is no one else to do so,’ she decided.

She wondered if perhaps she could have been kinder and more considerate than she had been during the Channel crossing.

Mademoiselle in fact had not been the sort of woman to inspire consideration let alone affection or love.

None of the girls in the school had ever liked her and perhaps because she was small of stature she had always seemed to be aggressively domineering, ordering everyone about, usually unnecessarily, and invariably full of complaints.

‘Poor Mademoiselle,’ Bettina thought to herself and wondered if she was happier now than she had been in what must have been a long-drawn-out and tedious life at the school.

The other Teachers had always had pupils ready to wait on them slavishly in return for a smile of encouragement or a compliment. But Madame de Vesarie had chosen her Teachers with care.

They all contributed to her famous school, which was acknowledged to be the best Séminaire pour les jeunes filles in France.

“In fact,” Madame often said, “in the whole of Europe there is no other school of equal importance to mine.”

Mademoiselle Bouvais had been there for years, so long that she knew more about the history of the school than did Madame herself.

That, Bettina thought, was why, even though she had become far too old to teach, she had remained while other Mistresses came and went.

Bettina knew that her death would mean very little to the school or to Madame de Vesarie.

The girls would be told the sad news after Prayers and they would all go down on their knees and pray for Mademoiselle’s departed soul.

Then she would be forgotten.

It somehow seemed terrible that a long life should end with one prayer and forgetfulness and Bettina wished that she could find herself crying or at least feeling acutely unhappy because Mademoiselle was dead.

Then with a sudden lifting of her chin she said to herself,

‘I will not cry! I really did not like her when she was alive. Why should I pretend now she is dead?’

She remembered once long ago someone, it might have been her father, saying about a funeral,

“A mass of expensive flowers now she is dead and you can be sure that she did not get so much as a faded daisy when she was alive!”

‘That is what is wrong,’ Bettina told herself. ‘We should be kinder to the living and less inclined to put on a show when they are no longer here to see it.’

She remembered the flowers that had filled the Church at her mother’s funeral. Many of the wreaths had come from people her mother had not liked and had always refused to have inside the house.

‘I wonder why they bothered to send them.’ Bettina had asked herself at the time.

Her mother would have been amused because she would have known, although she would never have said so, that the senders wished to keep in with her father because he was frequently in the company of the Prince of Wales and his friends were all very smart and influential.

As her thoughts went back to her mother’s funeral, Bettina remembered how broken-hearted her father had seemed at the time, but then how quickly he had recovered.

“Life has to go on, Bettina,” he had said while his daughter’s eyes were still red with tears.

She had missed her mother so intolerably that she could not even think about her without crying.

“Yes, I know, Papa,” she had managed to say because she knew that he was waiting for an answer.

“What I am going to do now,” her father said, “is to go and see your Godmother, Lady Buxton. She has always taken an interest in you and I feel that she is the one person who can help us at this particular moment.”

“In what way, Papa?”

“I am not quite certain, but I am sure that Sheila Buxton will know what to do.”

She had indeed known, Bettina thought, and almost before she realised what was happening she had been sent off to France to Madame de Vesarie’s School where she was to remain for the next three years.

She had been eighteen this summer and she thought that she would be allowed to leave in April and make her debut into Society as all her friends of the same age were to do.

However, when she had written to her father about it, she had learned that Lady Buxton was ill.

“Stay where you are,” her father had written. “I cannot trouble your Godmother at the moment and quite frankly there is no chance of her bringing you out this year while she is laid up.”

It had been hard to find herself the oldest girl in the school and to receive letters from her friends describing the balls, theatres and entertainments they were attending while she had to have special lessons on her own because she was too advanced for the top form.

Then suddenly two weeks ago she had learnt that her Godmother was dead and that she was to come home immediately.

It had been a complete surprise both to herself and to Madame de Vesarie.

“I should have thought, Bettina, that your father would have wished you to complete this term at least,” Madame huffed.

“Yes, I would have thought so too, Madame.”

“You might remind him, my dear, that we have not yet received the fees, which are always payable in advance. Of course we can make some reduction, but will you please point out to him that the term started on the first of September.”

“Yes, madame.”

Bettina had known then without being told the reason why she had been sent for to return home.

Her Godmother had always paid her school fees and with her death this arrangement must have come to an abrupt end.

Ever since she could remember her father and mother had always been hard up, but nothing prevented her father from associating with his rich friends and taking part in all their interests whatever the cost.

He hunted, he shot, he raced and he did all the things that contributed to the amusement of the ‘Marlborough House Set’ that centred round the Prince and Princess of Wales.

Bettina knew with a sinking of her heart that there would be little money left for her and now that Lady Buxton was dead it was doubtful if she would have even one new gown to attend a ball in, should she be invited to one.

Her thoughts were so far away that it was quite a start when Lord Eustace came back into the Waiting Room accompanied by a Steward from the buffet car carrying a tray containing a pot of tea and some rather thick ham sandwiches.

The Steward set them down on a chair beside Bettina, thanked Lord Eustace for what was obviously a generous tip and hurried away.

“You will feel better when you have had something to eat and drink,” Lord Eustace said.

“You are – so kind,” Bettina answered.

“There is a train in another half an hour and I have arranged for a tea basket for you and I have reserved for you a seat in a ‘Ladies Only’ compartment.”

Bettina murmured her thanks and poured out the tea.

Lord Eustace had been right. She did feel better, so much better that she picked up one of the ham sandwiches and realised as she bit into it that she was quite hungry.

No one had wanted to eat anything on board the Steamer and she had felt too shy to eat alone.

The ham sandwich tasted good and, when she had eaten one, she started on another.

She had only taken a few bites of it when the doctor returned and she rose hastily to her feet

“Sit down,” Lord Eustace said, “and leave everything to me.”

He drew the doctor into a corner of the room and they talked in low voices so that Bettina could not hear what they were saying.

She did not like to go on eating and drinking and suddenly became acutely conscious again of the dead body of Mademoiselle.

Ambulancemen with a stretcher then came in to lift her onto it and cover her completely with a blanket

Bettina felt that she ought in some way to say ‘goodbye’ to her, but they moved from the room in an impersonal and professional manner and the door was closed behind them.

The doctor was still talking to Lord Eustace and she saw that they had Mademoiselle’s papers in their hands, which they had taken from her handbag.

Then, as if their conversation was finished, the doctor walked towards Bettina.

“The address here is that of Madame de Vesarie’s School,” he said. “This is where we should write to notify the death of this lady?”

“Yes, that is right,” Bettina answered. “If she had a home or relations, I don’t know anything about them.”

“I can understand that,” the doctor said, “and you may rest assured, Miss Charlwood, that everything will be done as her Priest would require. I have already sent someone from the Hospital to inform him that a Roman Catholic was extremely ill. He would expect to give her the Last Rites, but, as it is, he will, of course, arrange her funeral in a Roman Catholic Cemetery.”

“Thank you very much. I am very grateful to you, doctor, for all the trouble you have taken.”

“I am only sorry that we could not have saved her life,” the doctor replied.

He shook Bettina by the hand and she felt that she ought to mention something about payment and then remembered that Lord Eustace had said that he would see to everything.

‘Papa must pay him,’ she told herself and thought it was very likely that Lord Eustace would know her father, who always seemed to know every member of the aristocracy.

When the doctor had gone, Lord Eustace came to sit down in a chair by the fireside.

“I had better give you my father’s address,” Bettina offered. “I wonder if perhaps – you know him?”

Lord Eustace waited and she went on,

“He is Sir Charles Charlwood and is a friend of the Prince of Wales.”

To her surprise Lord Eustace seemed to stiffen slightly before he replied,

“I have heard of your father, but I don’t move in the same set that he does.”

“No?” Bettina questioned, feeling puzzled.

“If you want the truth,” Lord Eustace said, “I disapprove of the Prince of Wales and most of the people he associates with.”

As if he felt that he had been rude, he added quickly,

“Please don’t think that I am disparaging your father whom I don’t know. But the Prince’s behaviour causes a great deal of gossip that can only be deprecated at a time when there is so much suffering and misery in the country.”

“They admire His Royal Highness very much in France,” Bettina replied. “In fact they always speak as if they love him.”

“I understand that His Royal Highness made a good impression in Paris,” Lord Eustace conceded. “At the same time his extravagance and that of his friends and the luxurious parties they give contrast badly with the starvation and unemployment amongst the lower classes.”