"He is now nearly thirty and has spent many of those years climbing mountains, moving about the world, usually I believe, on foot or on the back of a mule."
"Papa would have considered that commendable and adventurous!" Astara exclaimed.
"Your father was different!" Sir Roderick retorted "From all I hear Vulcan has just been a wanderer, enjoying himself in strange, outlandish places without a thought of using his talents."
"Nevertheless, he is number three in your trio. But suppose it is impossible to get hold of him? "
"As a matter of fact I have already learnt from Barnes after my brother "s death he converted the dilapidated Mill at Little Milden into a home for himself. When he is in England that is where he lives."
"And you think he is there now?"
"Barnes tells me he is definitely there, so he can be invited here as well as William and Lionel."
"I have a feeling that you favour William."
"I am trying to be impartial," Sir Roderick replied, "and leave the award entirely to you."
"But you cannot help pushing your favourite!" she smiled.
"I suppose really I feel rather envious of the young men who are acclaimed Corinthians, who can drive a Phaeton with an expertise that I never had time to acquire, and who are undoubtedly extremely adept at flooring bullies with their fists or duelling with their equals. "
Astara laughed in sheer delight.
"Uncle Roderick, you should write a book! You describe things so much more vividly than any of those prosy volumes d have read in English. The French do it much better. "
"But French Literature is something I do not always recommend for someone as young as you," Sir Roderick said quickly.
"You are trying too hard to protect me not from other people, but from myself, " Astara said. "You see, most be-loved of uncles, I have to grow up. I have to learn to make decisions and even to make my own mistakes. "
She looked so lovely as she spoke in a serious way that -Sir Roderick bent forward to put his arm round her shoulders.
"G.o.d knows I want to protect you," he said, "and. I know, perhaps better than most people, that this can be a difficult and sometimes frightening world for a young woman who is alone."
"But I am not alone," Astara protested. "I have you." "You know that I am over seventy," Sir Roderick answered, "and I have to think of your future. Help me, my dearest, to do what is right for no man knows how long his life will last."
He knew as he spoke that such an appeal would receive an instant response from Astaras warm heart. She took his hand and pressed it against her cheek.
"You know I will do anything you ask of me," she said. "We will write to your three nephews and I hope that when I have met them I shall be able to give you your heart s desire and say that one of them, perhaps William, is the man I wish to marry."
"It would be impossible for them not to fall in love with you," Sir Roderick said, "and the W ortields, especially my brothers and myself, have always been very careful and sensible where money is concerned."
He paused before he continued: "Our father was a rich man, and he was also very just in that he gave us quite early in life, what money he could afford. I remember him saying very solemnly: "You all know the parable in the Bible of the Talents. I can only recommend you all to read it and remember that the servant who hid his one talent in the ground was rebuked for being wicked and slothful"! "
"You certainly did not do that!" "I had intelligence and the ability to see that my talents multiplied a thousandfold," Sir Roderick said. "George, the Earl of Yeldham, certainly made use of his, and so did Mark, now Lord Worfield, the t.i.tle to which his son Lionel will succeed on his death."
"They both sound very attractive," Astara remarked, "and I am sorry for Vulcan, for what has he inherited?"
"Only a wanderl.u.s.t and an old Mill!" Sir Roderick said dramatically, and they both laughed.
Later that night when Astara was in the bed-room that she knew had been specially chosen for her by her uncle because it was the most elaborate and attractive in the house, she stood at the window looking out at the moon-light.
It had rained earlier in the evening and everything smelt with the freshness that she had forgotten was a part of England.
By the light of the moon she could see the great trees in the Park which had stood there for generations, and below the house was a lake fed by a stream which meandered away between green fields.
There was a stone bridge from under which she had seen in the daytime swans emerging like ships with full-bellied sails moving before the wind.
It was all so peaceful that she knew her uncle was rightand that one day she would like to live here ana Dung up a family.
And yet, at the same time something within her made her long to see and discover more of the world.
It was a feeling which she knew had driven her father into far-off lands and was in fact responsible for her name.
Astara was a town on the sh.o.r.e of the Caspian Sea.
Charles Beverley had been travelling in Persia when one day he had looked across the blue expanse of water and told himself it had a strange, compelling beauty that aroused him in a manner he found it hard to explain.
"I only knew, " he said to Astara when she was old enough to understand, "that it evoked in me a feeling which I have never forgotten."
He paused before he went on: "There are places that lift one s spirit and inspire one. Most as far as I am concerned have been strange and unexpected and not those that are written up in the Guide Books. "
He saw that Astara was listening and trying to understand, and he went on almost as if he was speaking to himself: "It is in those moments that our spirits, or perhaps you would say our souls, touch the infinite and we pa.s.s out of this world and into another that as yet, we cannot under-stand. "
"Like going to Heaven, Papa? " Astara had asked.
"Men have many names for the Divine," her father replied. "They call it Heaven or Paradise, Nivanah or Valhalla, and there are many others. But what it all comes down to is that man is naturally and perceptively aware that there is another world besides this one. "
"I ... think I ... understand, " Astara said.
"You will understand when you know the feeling I have tried to describe, when you step if only for a split second into the world beyond this one: a world of inexpressible beauty. "
There was something almost ecstatic in her father"s voice and Astara had watched the expression on his face for some time before she said: "1 shall try, Papa, to find the world you describe to me." "You will find it!" her father said positively, "of that I am sure!" .
Astara had never forgotten that conversation and now she thought that it was this search for beauty that had driven her father and mother to travel so extensively.
She wished she had been old enough to remember every-thing that had happened while she was with them.
But she thought now that each one of their journeys had been a voyage of discovery, and because of what she had learnt she must go on as they had done looking for the world beyond the world.
Whether it was in some far off mountain range, an un-mapped river or perhaps here at home beside the lane and under the oak trees in the Park was immaterial !
It was not time or place that mattered, Astara knew, but what one felt in the secret shrine within one"s self which held the soul.
This was the sort of thing, she thought, that she had never been able to talk about with anyone, not even with her closest friend at School or now with her Guardian whom she called "Uncle Roderick She loved him, she loved the sharpness of his brain, the compa.s.sion and understanding which he showed in every word he spoke to her.
But these other things which had been planted in her mind by her father were not anything she could put into words or explain except to herself.
"Perhaps one day," she thought, "I will find a man who will understand.
Then she was afraid she was being optimistic.
The men she had met in Rome and in Paris had been in love with her but, innocent though she was, she knew that it was her body that interested them, not her mind or her soul.
She would have found it embarra.s.sing, as they would have, to speak to them of such things.
They wanted her because she was beautiful.
"I love you!" "You drive me mad!" "Can you not understand if you will not marry me the only thing left for me is to die? " "I want you!" "I want you!" "I want you!
She could hear their voices repeating more or less the same words but always with the same intensity of feeling. The Italians were perhaps the most eloquent and she had found the fire flashing in their dark eyes was exciting, except sometimes when they became over-dramatic and made her want to laugh.
The Frenchmen had been more subtle.
They paid her the sort of compliments it was impossible for her not to appreciate. They had such exquisite manners, and many of them were very graceful.
But although she listened to them with her ears she found that nothing stirred in her heart.
When they covered her hands with kisses she only found herself thinking that their lips were hot and far too possessive, and vaguely she felt slightly repulsed because it was all so theatrical and un-real.
"Perhaps I am asking too much, to expect the same love that Papa and Mama had for each other," Astara thought now.
But she knew that what she was seeking was a love which was somehow linked with the beauty which lay in front of her - the shimmer of silver on the lake, the purple shadows beneath the trees, the mystery of the garden which she felt might be peopled by the ghosts of those who had lived here in the past.
"What is love? Is it part of beauty? Is it what Papa tried to describe to me as "the world beyond the world"?"
She asked the questions and did not know the answers. Then she realised she was cold.
"Perhaps one day I shall find out, she thought looking up at the moon.
Then shivering a little she pulled the curtains to and climbed into the darkness of the big silk-canopied bed.
CHAPTER TWO.
King George IV rose to his feet. He stood for a moment waiting for silence from the nineteen gentlemen seated round the Dining-Room table.
Somehow, against a background of walls papered with silver and the columns of red and yellow granite, the gentle-men still managed to look highly decorative.
The long table with its enormous gold ornamentations and blue Sevres china was sensational in that the King had introduced the fashion of not using a white linen cloth.
Instead on its polished surface the crystal goblets embellished with his monogram, the gold dessert knives and forks, and the Waterford gla.s.s decanters were reflected as if by a mirror.
As every face at the table was turned towards him His Majesty raised his gla.s.s.
"Gentlemen," he said, "I give you a toast to an out-standing thoroughbred which gave us today a race that will long be remembered in the history of the turf Topsail, and his popular owner Viscount Yelverton!
The guests rose to their feet with the exception of the Viscount who was sitting at the end of the table. Gla.s.ses were raised and nineteen voices cried: "Topsail ! Yelverton!"
As the King seated himself and his guests followed him the Viscount got up.
There was no doubt he looked extremely elegant and distinguished. There was not a man present who did not glance appreciatively at the manner in which he had tied his cravat in a style they had not seen before.
Speaking in a low but carrying voice and showing that he was an accomplished orator as well as having so many other outstanding qualities, the Viscount said: "May I thank Your Majesty and you, my friends, for your appreciation of my horse? I feel you would all like me to say that, if any of us have successes on the turf such as I have enjoyed this afternoon, it is because this "Sport of Kings" has been encouraged, supported and, if I may say the word, inspired by the greatest sportsman of us all the King I"
Everybody jumped up to drink the King"s health and there was no doubt that he was delighted at the compliment and the manner in which the Viscount had turned the tribute from himself into one to his host.
It was in "fact true that the King"s chief delight was the turf, to which he had been introduced by the Duke of c.u.mberland.
Indeed, when he was young, one of the grooms at Carlton House had remarked that horses were the one and only subject of his thoughts.
He went racing whenever he could and regularly attended Lewes, Brighton and Newmarket Races.
But like everything else the King loved, his racing had its ups and downs.
At the end of the century his stud had been broken up in accordance with his proclaimed intention of leading a more economical life, but he had quickly built up a new racing establishment at Newmarket and in eleven years his horses had won no less than 1,185 races.
Newmarket however was later "taboo owing to a scandal over his jockey Samuel Chiffney, and to the dismay and concern of many of his friends the King declared he would have no more to do with Newmarket.
This did not prevent him from attending all other race-meetings and spending far more money on the horses than he could possibly afford.
And, as the Viscount had said, he encouraged all those with whom he a.s.sociated to build up their stables and, more regrettably, to bet on them as he himself had always done.
When everybody had sat down for the second time his neighbour said to the Viscount: "That was a d.a.m.ned good speech, William. I wish I could make one as easily as you do!
"It is practice, my dear boy," the Viscount replied. "Like everything else in life, expertise comes with doing the same thing over and over again until one achieves perfection."
"That also applies to love, I suppose?" his friend laughed.
"As you say, in that field as in all others practice makes perfect!
There was laughter from several other diners who had been listening.
In fact everybody at the table was finding it easy to laugh after a meal which had reached the heights of culinary art and wines that were superlative.
It was always the same at Carlton House, the Viscount told himself. One came away feeling that the King man-aged to excel at everything he undertook except in gaining the confidence of the people and the popularity he desired.
At dinner-parties like this when he was surrounded by his friends it was impossible not to admire his wit and be almost mesmerised by his charm.
If in nothing else, the King had insisted to those who followed his lead that courtesy and charm were essential to a gentleman.
Morals might have deteriorated during his supremacy in the Beau Monde, but good manners had improved out of all recognition just as cleanliness had.
The port was pa.s.sed round the table and the King leaned back in his chair, being so witty and so amusing that everybody wished to listen to him rather than to talk among themselves.