The Love Child

My mother shrugged her shoulders. Although she agreed that it was a good, practical idea for the children all to be under one roof, she did not approve of Harriet’s action.

That was why that year was a happy one for me. What I had so desired had come about in a natural way. I had my new baby and my own Carlotta and I was with them every day. Leigh was away a good deal and I was anxious for him, but I had the comfort of my children and I was happier than I had been since Jocelyn’s death.

Then there was consternation in our household. My mother knew that if it came to war she would not be able to prevent my father’s sharing in it. One day he was missing and she found he had gone, leaving a note for her.

I found her seated in the window, the letter in her hand and a look of blank despair on her face.

“He’s gone,” she said. “I knew it was in his mind. I knew I kept him against his will.”

I took the letter from her and read:

My dearest,

I could not tell you. I knew you would unnerve me. You would have made me stay. I cannot. I must go. So much is at stake. Our future depends on it… the future of our grandchildren. Understand, dear Bella, I must go. You will be in my thoughts every minute. God bless you.

Carleton

She murmured: “It is like an evil pattern. Oh, God, if he should be taken again… as he was before…”

“Perhaps this will be over soon. They say the King hasn’t a chance.”

“He defeated Monmouth.”

“It was before he had shown that he was not a good King.”

Then a terrible thought struck me. Leigh would be involved in this. He was in the King’s army. My father would be on a different side from my husband. I knew that Leigh had no great respect for the King, but he was in the King’s service and a soldier’s first duty was loyalty.

I could not bear to think of what might be the outcome.

As for my mother, I was afraid she was going to be ill again as she had been in Dorchester.

The coming of William of Orange had set James attempting to rally men to his cause.

There would be war, and the people remembered that other war of not so very long ago. The last thing they wanted was civil war-Englishmen fighting Englishmen. There was little glory to be gamed and a great deal of sorrow. “No war!” declared the people.

I rejoiced when I heard that the Duke of Marlborough had deserted the King and gone over to William. That meant that Leigh and my father would not be on opposing sides.

Everybody was deserting the King. I could feel sorry for him, although I knew he had brought this on himself by his obstinacy and foolishness. His daughter was the wife of the man he would call the usurper; his second daughter, Anne, with her husband, the Prince of Denmark, had turned against her father and was supporting her sister and brother-in-law.

That must have been a bitter blow for James. He would know then that the day was lost.

As disaster and defeat descended upon him, our spirits rose. It looked as though the war was over. James had fled to Ireland, where the Irish rallied to him because of religious sympathies. But William was a brilliant general, and James had little chance against him.

Both Leigh and Edwin fought in the Battle of the Boyne, which was decisive.

The war was over. The revolution was successful. Few kings had been turned from their thrones with such ease.

We had now moved into a new era. James was deposed and in exile. William and Mary reigned in England.

A Visit to London

Now our lives had set to a pattern. Leigh continued in the army and we waited eagerly for those times when we could be together. The children were growing up. Damaris was six years old; Carlotta, thirteen. I was twenty-eight years old.

“There is plenty of time to have more children,” said my mother.

She was contented. My father was at home and she was glad that he was getting old.

“Too old for adventures,” she said with a chuckle.

But my father was the sort who would always be ready for adventure, as Leigh was.

My mother and I were closer than we had ever been. We shared each other’s anxieties.

She told me what a comfort I had always been to her. “Though when you were born,” she said, “I was disappointed because you weren’t a boy. But only for your father’s sake, of course. He always wanted boys.”

“I know,” I said, with a trace of bitterness, “he made that clear.”

“Some men are like that,” replied my mother. “They think the world is made for men … and so it is in many ways. But some of them can’t do without us.”