108. An Archangel Called Ivan (2 page)

He was therefore nearly fifty when he was finally married.

He was extremely happy with his young and very beautiful wife.

Unfortunately and to his and everyone else’s great sadness she died during the birth of her first child.

Whilst Arliva was a comfort to her father, he was continually travelling throughout the world and it was not until she was old enough that he took her with him.

The countries they visited and the people they met made a great impression on a girl who was only fourteen years of age.

She learnt to speak almost as many languages as her father and to be friendly with the men and women of every different nation. It was an extraordinary education in a way for an English girl.

But, when her father died, she then realised that her wandering life had come to an end.

She was obliged to settle down in the large country house he owned in Gloucestershire and be given lessons by Governesses, who could teach her very little that she did not know already.

In his years of extensive travelling Lord Ashdown had become even richer than he had been when he had inherited his fortune from his father.

He was interested in so many different things.

The treasures he had brought home from his travels filled the house in the country to the rafters and were an increasing delight to his daughter.

Whenever she saw something for sale which she knew would delight her father, she insisted on buying it, thereby adding to the great collection he had already made.

Arliva was chaperoned after her father’s death by his sisters. As he had four of them, they took it in turns to have her either in the house where they lived or to stay at Ashdown Abbey which had been her father’s favourite house and which was now hers.

It was not surprising that the stories of the valuable treasures that the house contained and the beauty and worth of its owner reached London long before she set foot in Mayfair.

To claim that she was an overnight sensation at the first ball given for her in London by one of her relatives was to express the situation mildly.

The very fact that she appeared to be so completely unaware of her beauty and her money made her attractive to every man who danced with her.

Naturally it caused her to receive great attention from the Dowagers, who not only wished to marry off their daughters to someone of importance but also to find a rich and charming wife for their sons.

To Arliva it was a new world that she summed up, as she had every other place she had visited, to find out the truth beneath the obvious glitter and the reality behind the diplomatic pretence.

She had learnt so much from her father.

What was most significant was his advice never to frighten people with your knowledge and never to let them feel that you are too clever to enjoy the compliments they undoubtedly will pay you.

Arliva had laughed at the time, but she had noted how astute her father was in dealing with Statesmen from other countries who wanted to obtain something of value from him.

And how he never let them realise that he was well aware what their tricks would be long before they tried to capture him with them.

Arliva therefore acknowledged the varied proposals of marriage that she received demurely and kindly.

At the same time never letting the man who was proposing be aware that she knew what really attracted him was her fortune.

“You are a huge success, dearest,” one of her aunts complimented her, “and we are so proud of you. Of course there is no reason at all for you to be in any hurry to marry anyone.”

Arliva realised that her aunts had been consulting amongst themselves as to how they could deter fortune-hunters from snatching Arliva away from them.

They need not have worried.

Her father had taught her so much that she knew almost before the man in question asked her to be his wife that he was thinking of piles of gold rather than the light in her eyes.

The one outstanding talent of Lord Ashdown had been the fact that he could sum up the man he was talking to almost immediately he entered the room.

“It’s not exactly what he says or what he does,” he told his daughter, “it is something that vibrates from him and that is what you have to learn to recognise.”

Arliva understood exactly what her father meant.

As she grew older, he had sometimes allowed her be with him when he had a caller that he suspected would sooner or later desire to conduct some vital business with him.

“Now what did you think of that man?” he would ask Arliva when they were alone together.

“I thought that he was very good-looking and well-dressed for the part he wanted to play,” she replied.

Her father had smiled.

“Go on,” he urged her.

“Then I sensed,” she continued, “that behind the complimentary words that he was mouthing to me and the warm welcome he was repeating on behalf of Her Majesty, there was a determination to obtain something from you which he thought you would not immediately be aware of.”

“You are quite right,” he said, “and you are getting better at it every day. It was something I rather suspected before he came, but which I could see quite clearly once he began to talk on so many different subjects that he thought would blind me to the main reason for his attention.”

“At the same time, Papa, we want this country to be our ally and to support Queen Victoria rather than being antagonistic,” Arliva pointed out.

“You are quite right,” her father agreed. “Equally the danger remains that they wish to extend their borders and they can only do so by invading the countries adjacent to them.”

Looking back on that particular day, Arliva learnt what a brilliant diplomat her father was.

How, just as she had used her brain and her instinct when she was dealing with such people, it was something she must do in a small way in the Social world.

She had incredibly already received no less than five proposals of marriage since she had come to London.

Whilst she had been outwardly flattered by their attention, she had known that the men in question did not love her for herself.

‘What I really want,’ she mused, ‘is to be loved for myself and not for all that I possess.’

She had a strong feeling sometimes that her father’s enormous fortune was like a high mountain.

It covered her so completely that it was impossible for anyone to see her as herself.

Now, as she opened the door of her sitting room that had once been her father’s, she saw that there was only one lamp alight on the writing table.

But glittering beside it was the gold handbag she had left in the dining room.

She walked across the room and picked it up and then she sat down at the table to look in the small mirror of her compact to see if her hair was tidy.

The last dance she had taken part in had been The Lancers and she had been swung around by enthusiastic young men whose undoubted strength had made her limp in their arms.

She was relieved to see that her hair was unruffled and the beautiful pearls round her neck, which had been her mother’s, had not moved.

Then, as she placed the compact back in her gold handbag, she heard a voice speak her name.

“So then, do you really mean to propose to Arliva Ashdown?” a woman’s voice resonated round the room.

Arliva stiffened.

Then she realised that the voice came through one of the open windows that led onto a terrace overlooking the garden.

She wondered who was speaking.

Then on an impulse, before she heard the answer, she moved a little nearer to the window.

“I
have
to ask her,” a man replied.

Then to Arliva’s astonishment there was a note of almost desperation in his voice.

“But, my darling one,” the woman said, “how can you marry someone else when we are so happy together? I have always believed that God would answer our prayers and somehow you would find enough money to carry on.”

“It is hopeless, utterly hopeless,” the man sighed. “As you said, we thought things might improve, but the war took too much from the country and too many men. Two of my best farmers have lost everything they owned with the bad spring and it’s impossible for me to help them to replace what has gone.”

“I realise that,” the woman said very softly, “and you have been really wonderful. You have almost starved yourself to help your people.”

“But now I cannot pay the pensioners,” the man replied, “so they will definitely starve. As you well know yourself, there is no one working on the land and we have hardly a decent horse left to carry us over the estate.”

“I know, I know,” the woman cried. “But I love you, Charles, and I know that you love me. How can we possibly go on without each other?”

“That is just what I have been asking myself every night,” the man called Charles replied. “It will be an agony beyond words, my darling, to leave you, but I have no alternative than to marry Arliva as her aunt wants me to.”

It was then that Arliva realised who was speaking.

It was a young man called Charles Walton whose mother had been one of her aunt’s bridesmaids and her greatest friend.

She had heard them talk before of the family estate that he had inherited from his father.

It had been doing pretty well until the Crimean War had taken a great number of men who were in the County Yeomanry into the British Army fighting the Russians and indeed the British casualties had been very high.

“I hate wars,” Arliva’s father had said at the time, “and it has been extremely poor diplomacy on our part for us to become so entangled in this one.”

Arliva knew he was right when in the following years the countryside suffered by the loss of the men who had died so bravely in the Crimea.

She knew now that the young man she had been listening to was a near neighbour of hers in the country.

Her father, who had been a friend of his father, had always said that Charles was a very bright young man who would go far if he had the chance.

Now Arliva realised that his only chance had been to try to save his family home and estate.

And, as he had failed, he was to lose the girl he loved as well.

She had a suspicion who she was, but she was not certain. Then, when a few minutes later he said her name, she recognised her.

“You do have to be brave about all this, Betty, my precious,” Charles said. “But I just cannot allow any more deaths in the village. Apart from that, you know as well as I do that the roof is leaking badly and, unless it is repaired, it will undoubtedly collapse and cost a fortune to replace.”

There was silence for a moment.

Then Betty asked,

“Is there anything you can sell?”

“Do you imagine,” Charles replied, “that I have not walked round the house a thousand times to find something to sell if it is only a piece of china? But the only things left of any value are entailed onto the son I will never be able to afford to have, although I have often dreamt of how wonderful it would be to see him in your arms.”

“I have dreamt of that too,” Betty said softly, “but I feel that we are giving in too easily.”

“I wish I could think the same,” Charles went on. “I have thought about selling the pictures even though it’s illegal for me to do so.”

“If you did, would anyone really be aware of it?” Betty quizzed him.

“They would know immediately. Every month the Trustees make some excuse to visit me. I know it’s to see that I have not sold, as they expect me to do, one of the pictures that were the joy and delight of my grandfather or the silver he inherited as a young man and was determined should remain in the family as long as it existed.”

Charles spoke with such bitterness that Arliva was not surprised when Betty sighed,

“I am sorry, darling Charles. It’s just that I feel like you do that something must be done. But it would be an agony for me to watch you marrying someone else.”

“I have to marry Arliva even though she is quite obviously not in love with me and she will appreciate the fact that her father and mine were close to each other. I am quite certain that, if he was alive, Lord Ashdown would have helped Papa when he knew how bad the situation was.”

”Could you not just ask Arliva to help you?” Betty enquired.

“You don’t suppose her Solicitors and those who control her fortune would encourage her to give it away in large quantities. To get straight, Betty, my dearest one, we need twenty thousand pounds, which is a fortune by any man’s calculations.”

There was an ominous silence.

Then Betty said in a trembling voice,

“Do you think she will accept you?”

“Because our fathers were so friendly she at least will be more interested in me than in those over-dressed, stuck-up young London bloods, who flutter round her and who she must realise would make, if they married her, very poor husbands.”

“And you think you would be a good one?” Betty asked in a voice that Arliva could hardly hear.

“I would behave to her like a gentleman and be a man of my word. At the same time to marry anyone but you, Betty, would be an agony beyond words. It has made me miserable for the past two weeks to even think about it.”

“I wondered what was upsetting you. I thought it was just the death of the two old pensioners and the fact that they had died for want of food.”

“I know, I know!” Charles exclaimed. “That is exactly what has brought home to me the horror of what is happening on my land and I feel that I am responsible.”

“Of course not,” Betty said. “How could you help things going so wrong while you were away? I knew how bad it was before you returned, but what on earth was the point of saying so? There was nothing you could do.”

“I know,” Charles sighed, “and you were wonderful to many of the people especially those who had babies and were not well enough to feed them.”

“I would have done much more if I could,” Betty murmured, “but, as you know, my Papa is feeling the pinch just like everyone else and we have a struggle to keep our heads above water.”

There was a silence and then Betty said,

“I will pray for your happiness and you do know, Charles, that whatever happens, even if we never see each other again, I will never love anyone but you.”