A Little Folly Read online

  ‘It is a very great pleasure to see you at last, my dears,’ she said, taking their hands, and searching their faces with a wondering smile. ‘Dear me, yes, there’s my poor sister, to the life! It’s such a pity we have been so long unacquainted – but there’s an end of that. You must consider this absolutely your home, you know, as long as you are in town. I am very fond of company, and there is after all no company like family. Bless me, we shall have a thoroughly pleasant time of it.’

  To the novelty of cousins was now added that of an aunt: though it was soon clear that the august quality that that word bestowed was not much sought by Mrs Spedding, who wished rather to look young. She was a pink, rounded, daintily smiling woman, with eyes very open, perhaps so that they should not wrinkle, and a little light hair artfully made much of: fashionably dressed in a high-necked gown, with many tinkling bracelets: serenely easy in her manner, full of civil enquiries, happy responses and ready agreement. Sophie and Tom treated her with great fondness and indulgence, reassuring themselves that she had not suffered a moment’s loneliness without them, commiserating her small ailments, loading her with presents they had bought at Lyme, and generally according her every sort of attention, compatible with not really taking any notice of her.

  ‘Well, you tell me you had a safe journey, my dears, and so I believe you; but I am always a little anxious about these things, ever since the time you got lost in Scotland.’

  ‘Dear Mama,’ laughed Tom, ‘that was Wales: and we did not get lost – one of the carriage-horses lost a shoe; quite different, you know.’

  ‘Is that how it was? How very surprising: I had Scotland quite fixed in my mind. But of course you must be right, my dear – and it is still very disagreeable when a horse loses a shoe. One must wait about for an age. I know I had to wait a good half-hour at Vauxhall once; and I always suspect damp at Vauxhall. How do you like Vauxhall, Louisa?’

  ‘I’m afraid I have never been there, ma’am: I have never been in London since we came here as little children.’

  ‘To be sure – exactly what Sophie wrote me. Well, here is your opportunity, my dear, to try all the diversions of the town. For my part I live pretty quietly, but these children of mine are the most sociable of creatures. I dare say they will be taking you everywhere.’

  ‘Exactly our plan, Mama,’ said Sophie. ‘It is our determination that not a single day or night shall pass without its engagements, as long as our cousins are with us.’

  Fatigued as Louisa was, there was more just then to oppress than to excite in Sophie’s promise of their entertainment; but after being shown to her room, and enjoying the comforts of hot water, a change of clothes, and a luxurious stretch of her limbs on the ample bed, her spirits were almost restored; and an excellent dinner completed the revival. Even the sounds of London, the continual undertone of carriage-wheels and rapping doors and street-criers, began to act not on her nerves but her imagination, and to speak a promise.

  A comfortable couple of days of settling in succeeded: – enough to reveal to Louisa whence came the assurance of address, the confidence of belonging in the world, that characterised her cousins. The ease and liberty prevailing in the Spedding house could hardly have presented a bolder contrast with her own experience of home. Mrs Spedding was the mildest of châtelaines; and her untroubled references to her late husband, and the portrait of him in the hall, which appeared to show a smiling man melting apologetically into his cravat, suggested that his own temper had been no more exacting.

  Not that Mrs Spedding was spoiled or selfish; but generally she presented the appearance of a woman who had never suffered any greater inconvenience than was occasioned by the bringing of two children into the world. There was that, indeed, about Mrs Spedding’s pretty smile, which suggested that her cheerfulness was private and interior, and not much altered by seeing you, or hearing what you had to say: – but this was to quibble. She made Louisa and Valentine very welcome: listened devouringly to anything they had to tell, and promptly got it entirely wrong in retailing it to someone else; and gave every indication that if either of them were to fall under the wheels of a carriage tomorrow, she would find it thoroughly regrettable.

  ‘You know, I feel as if I have lived here all my life,’ Valentine remarked to Louisa, a few mornings after their arrival, as he stood at the breakfast-room window looking down at Hill Street. ‘Pennacombe seems very far away!’

  In fact Louisa had just been wondering whether the housekeeper was being kind to her cat, and whether Jane Colley had heeded her instruction to call in the surgeon to look at her gammy knee, and not go to that old woman in the village who brewed noxious nostrums out of snails. – Valentine, however, was plainly not so encumbered by recollection. He was all eager receptiveness: was already speaking familiarly of the Strand and the Monument, of hackney-stands and link-boys, even with a note of true London world-weariness; and last night had been talking with Tom of the advantages of a town residence every winter, with a ready agreement that a neighbourhood east of Soho Square was not to be considered. He had only one dissatisfaction – they had seen nothing of Lady Harriet since their arrival; though Sophie assured him that her friend had not deserted them, and that she must have a thousand things to attend to in Jermyn Street.

  Not the least of these, Louisa surmised, was the reopening of the faro-bank by which she supported herself: though there might also be, for all she knew, negotiations with her estranged husband to be dealt with. Certainly there must perforce be an end to the holiday-time, the retreat from the world, which Lady Harriet had enjoyed in Devonshire; and Louisa found herself several times on the brink of hinting at this to Valentine. But on second thoughts she trusted the general fascination to displace the particular. Lady Harriet had appeared at Pennacombe as a brilliant fragment of the greater world: that world now lay all about him, in its vastness and variety. Her significance must surely be crowded out by a host of other impressions. There was more safety, Louisa felt, in being universally dazzled than in following a single light down a doubtful and unpropitious path.

  For her own part, Louisa was very soon thrust into the bustle of a town season. Sophie, of course, was voraciously social; and Mrs Spedding, in spite of her avowal of living quietly, scarcely less so. Her especial addiction was shopping, for which she made a daily expedition; and once Louisa politely accepted an invitation to accompany her. – Once was enough. Louisa could find only so much interest in looking over hats, ribbons, fans, scent-bottles and gewgaws, and was heartily glad when Mrs Spedding had done. Her aunt’s appetite for buying never diminished, however; and on every subsequent occasion, she returned to Hill Street with something new and prodigiously pretty that she could not live without; and which would make an appearance once, in her costume or on her work-table, before being entirely forgotten.

  Paying morning calls was another rite that Louisa found less than stimulating, though its complexities greatly exercised Sophie, who was deep in the matter of who had called on them and when, who had left cards, who had departed from town, who had arrived, who was expected. – The culmination of all this activity was often nothing more than half an hour spent sitting in a cold drawing-room on a hard chair, exchanging commonplace enquiries with people who seemed to Louisa quite as bored as she felt, before rising, expressing delight in the visit, and going on to the next, where the only expectation of novelty was that the hard chairs might be differently distributed.

  Much more to Louisa’s taste, indeed, were the galleries, concert-rooms and theatres, and here her cousins were invaluable guides and arbiters. May, and the end of the season, it might be; but as Mr Tresilian had said, there was to be no tailing-off into summer this year. – Preparations were afoot for a great round of celebrations: foreign dignitaries and even crowned heads were to descend on London to mark Europe’s final crushing of Bonaparte; and even Sophie admitted she had never known town so lively. It was the theatre, above all, that convinced Louisa she had never properly lived until now. Even to
step into the lobby at Drury Lane was an excitement; though Sophie delicately cautioned her, indicating the concourse of gauzy females, that this was not a place to linger.

  ‘Because they do rather tend to use this as a place of resort,’ she said; and then, at Louisa’s enquiring look: ‘Demi-reps, my dear. Cyprians. Votaries of Venus. The muslin sisterhood.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Louisa, in an impressed tone. ‘I thought they were just prostitutes.’

  As for the performance, she could have dispensed with the patriotic prologues, but The Merchant of Venice, with Mr Kean as Shylock, was another matter. She was so incensed by the gentlemen who came in yawning at the last act, and talking loudly to their friends, that she could have turned Shylock herself, and divested them of a pound of flesh each without compunction.

  For some time afterwards she remained wrapped in the high-coloured world that had been presented on the stage; and, on returning to reality, found everything about herself drearily everyday. Even a dose of tragedy, she thought, would be a fair price to pay in order to feel life that intensely. No such exaltation of emotion intruded at Hill Street, of course: still, there came some ripples to its untroubled surface. Among the many calling-cards that adorned the hall table, that of Mr Pearce Lynley one day appeared.

  ‘Ah, yes, one of our Devonshire acquaintance,’ Tom informed his mother. ‘Has the neighbouring estate to Pennacombe. Capital fellow. Never known a better, taken all in all. His place is called whatsname, no, Valentine, don’t tell me. Begins with a – what’s the letter? – jolly old B.’

  ‘Hythe Place,’ supplied Valentine, smiling. ‘Mr Lynley is indeed our neighbour at Pennacombe, Mrs Spedding, and was a friend of my father’s. He came up to town, I believe, shortly before we did.’

  ‘Well, it is a thoroughly pleasant attention in Mr Lynley,’ Mrs Spedding said, ‘and I shall be very glad to have his acquaintance. It would bring me a little closer to Pennacombe, indeed, and to my poor sister.’

  Louisa was silent, though she felt the eyes of both Valentine and Sophie turned to her. The card was only a card – the name only a name: still, they released a flood of unhappy feeling, which she was at some pains to disguise; but at last she forced herself to recollect that Pearce Lynley was nothing if not punctilious, and that the leaving of a card at an address of his acquaintance in London he would consider an imperative form, even if he had to dodge through a second Great Fire to do it. – This duty once performed, there was nothing more, she thought, to be apprehended. He seemed to have viewed the Speddings as, at least, tainted by their association with Lady Harriet Eversholt, and would surely not expose himself to the potential corruption of a house where she was welcome.

  But of that welcome Lady Harriet herself did not seem sure: she called at Hill Street, at last, and was comfortably received by Mrs Spedding, and overwhelmed with attention from Sophie – but she could not be easy.

  ‘Your mother is the kindest of women,’ she said to Sophie, while Mrs Spedding was occupied with fetching her maid to come and disentangle her bracelets, which had tortured themselves into a sort of chain-mail halfway up her arm. ‘And for that reason I would not see her reputation in the least endangered by my presence. I know, she does not mind: still, it is much better if I do not come. My time in Devonshire has taught me how to value good, kind, decent society and not to be so thoughtless as to see it threatened. You will understand, my dear – and I flatter myself that Miss Carnell will likewise. Of Mr Carnell I do not speak,’ she added, her voice falling. ‘I am afraid he is too chivalrous. I must rely on you to bring him to an understanding that our country acquaintance was one thing – our town acquaintance quite another.’

  ‘She is very hard on herself, poor creature!’ Sophie said, when Lady Harriet had gone. ‘But I know we shall not see so much of her in any case: her time is much taken up. Yes – the faro-bank is begun again. She has the greatest distaste for it, but what is she to do? Colonel Eversholt remains obdurate – allows her nothing. I know he has returned to town – he has been at Bath – and that there has been a meeting: productive only, I collect, of more unhappiness. His temper is worse: at Bath, they say, he fought one duel, wounding his man horribly, and threatened another; only the gentleman would not fight – declined, on grounds that a challenge from a madman was no challenge. Why he went to Bath I cannot devise; if it was for the waters, I fear it was only so that he might mix them with his brandy.’

  The picture thus presented of Colonel Eversholt was an alarming one: it could only reinforce Louisa’s conviction that Valentine was better out of Lady Harriet’s society, gallant and disinterested though she believed his feeling for her to be. She might have said something of this to him, but that would be to act in the heavy, carping manner of their father, which they were done with; and there was, besides, a diminishing of their intimacy as their time in London wore on. – It was the one alloy to her very real pleasure in the new scene. He was no less fond as a brother, but he was more distant. He went about much with Tom who, besides coaching him in the latest modes of tying the cravat and dressing the hair, was securing his admission to White’s club, and introduced him to Limmer’s, and Tattersall’s, and other haunts of fashionable males – all of which, Valentine laughingly assured her, were a good deal more steady and commonplace than their reputation, though that did not stop him resorting to them frequently, and returning late, and often a little foxed.

  But any disquiet she might have felt at this could be easily banished by summoning an image of Pearce Lynley glaring in disapproval; and besides, she herself was beginning to resemble Sophie in finding sleep a rather dull interruption of living, and often found herself at the earliest of hours impatiently throwing back the bedclothes and springing up, as if someone were calling her.

  Chapter XI

  Mrs Spedding had a great many friends, all of whom seemed to be her very oldest and dearest; but the lady on whom these epithets were most liberally bestowed, and who was the most frequent caller at Hill Street, was a Mrs Murrow. She was a lean, dry, sallow woman: much given to feathery, flowery caps fastening under the chin, and with her head always staringly on one side, so that it looked as if someone had tried to strangle her with her head-dress. Like her friend, she was a widow: very soon into Louisa’s acquaintance with her, she gave it out, with emphasis, that she had buried two husbands; and even that degree of acquaintance was enough to create the ungenerous suspicion that they might well have submitted to the interment without the formality of dying first.

  She was not an easy conversationalist. ‘Carnell?’ was her cry on first introduction to Louisa and Valentine. ‘Carnell, did you say?’ – with a look as if a poor joke were being played on her, and they had pretended to some absurd surname like Butterfingers. The mention of Devonshire brought the same uncomprehending, deprecating look; and on her being brought at last to accept the existence of such a place, she could only say: ‘I should think it is dreadfully cold down there.’

  ‘Oh, we have had our share of snowy winters,’ Valentine said, at his most agreeable, ‘but generally, ma’am, being near the sea, we are lucky enough to enjoy a mild climate.’

  ‘I should think that is worse. It is just the sort of climate to breed fevers and agues, and I don’t know what else: upon my word, I can hardly bear to think of it,’ said Mrs Murrow, with a pained look at Valentine for making her do so. ‘And so, when do you go back, Miss – Miss—’ Mrs Murrow, with a shudder, gave up on the unpronounceable name.

  ‘The midsummer perhaps,’ Louisa said. ‘Aunt Spedding is kind enough to set no limit on our stay.’

  Mrs Murrow shook her head. ‘I should not like that sort of uncertainty. I think there is nothing worse. Then, to be sure, when you do go back, I should think you will find it horribly dull.’

  ‘Well, and how does your sweet niece?’ asked Mrs Spedding, whose patience with her friend’s habit of poisoning the wells of conversation appeared limitless. ‘People still talk of her triumph at Almack’s, you know. They say t
here never was such a coming-out.’

  ‘Dear, dear, no wonder at that – with her beauty and elegance,’ sighed Mrs Murrow, as if referring to a sad deformity. ‘And such a round of engagements as she still has – there is never an end to it. I fear it may tax her strength at last; and if she were to be ill, I don’t know what I should do.’

  ‘Bless me, but there is nothing to be feared in Miss Astbury’s constitution, I hope?’ Mrs Spedding said.

  ‘Oh, no: thank heaven, her constitution is very good – but if it were not, you have no idea how dreadfully alarmed I would be: dear, dear, you really cannot conceive it!’

  Mrs Spedding hastened to commiserate with her friend on the alarm she did not feel; and went on: ‘She is young, you know: at her age, I was ready to dance all night, and do it again the next. But she is well guided by her aunts, I am sure; and as she is quite the belle of the season, let her enjoy it. There will be a very good match made in time, I do not doubt. I have asked Tom if he did not find Miss Astbury a delightful creature,’ she added, laughing, ‘but he only shrugs and chuckles, and says he is content to be a bachelor. I think all young men should be eager to marry. Valentine, you are not so stuck in your ways, I hope.’

  ‘Well, I am in no hurry, ma’am,’ Valentine said, laughing a little consciously. ‘I should hope to emulate the position of Miss Astbury, and to enjoy my liberty for now.’

  ‘The young will have these ideas,’ Mrs Murrow said, clucking her tongue. ‘I am sure when I was young, I never had any,’ which Louisa was very ready to believe.

  This Miss Astbury was, as Louisa soon learned, quite the prodigy of the season. She stood heiress to her grandfather, who lived reclusively in the far north of England: not only a large fortune, but vast coal-bearing estates would descend to her, and so to any gentleman who could win her hand; and thus it was not only in tribute to her renowned fairness that she was known in society as the Golden Miss Astbury. Fortune-hunters there would certainly be: but old Mr Astbury had sensibly decided to declare a sort of open season, rather than sequester his heiress. She had been despatched to the care of her maternal aunts, Lady Carr and Mrs Murrow, who, being both widowed and well-off, kept together a good house in Portman Square. From there Miss Astbury had made her entrance into society in high style. The Portman Square receptions maintained their fame even at such an exceptional time – for the town, far from emptying, was now crowding with company for the arrival of the Allied Sovereigns to celebrate the peace – and Louisa was as curious as any, when the invitation came, to behold the golden heiress in state.