A Little Folly Page 19

  In all this novelty and enjoyment, however, a keynote was struck, without which it would have been merely diverting noise. – Francis Lynley was the one she sought out, whenever they were mutually engaged. In his company and conversation she found an attraction that was not merely incidental: that could not be interrupted or discontinued without an itching wish to have it resumed; eagerly she looked out for him in the evening crush, or listened for his halting footstep on the stair in the mornings at Hill Street. There was everything in his temper and situation to engage her sympathies – she would not say her affections; and to Sophie’s repeated teasings about her being in love she could present only a tolerant smile.

  Her acquaintance with Francis Lynley was, besides, as frustrating as it was pleasing. Where he could be easy and vivacious, he could likewise be withdrawn and bitter; and in the latter mood, was not above saying that she would presently grow tired of vexing his brother by being attentive to him, and would then drop him.

  ‘This is to paint me a very superficial creature,’ she answered, with real mortification.

  ‘Is it? Then I have paid you a compliment. To be superficial is the best thing in the world, surely. The superficial are always certain of endearing themselves wherever they go: no one is much inclined to worry about depths and, indeed, would rather prefer that you do not show any; and then the superficial are not likely to suffer great trouble or injury, for nothing goes very hard with them. No, no, shallowness is the thing: I would recommend it to everybody; if I ever had a child, I would urge its tutors – “Surface, please, cultivate the surface!”’

  ‘But surely where there are no depths, there are also no heights.’

  He laughed crossly. ‘You reproach me very properly for my ill-humour by giving my nonsense serious attention, instead of walking away and talking to someone with a modicum of politeness.’

  ‘If it were only nonsense, I should not mind,’ said Louisa, still serious. ‘But I cannot be easy if I have given even the faintest impression that I am using you as a – as a weapon against your brother. Between him and me there is, I hope, a perfect understanding that my father’s hopes were founded on his own inclination, not mine: that is done with; and I should hate to think I have been coquetting over it.’ She hated the thought so much, indeed, that she banished it quickly from her mind; and was glad when Lieutenant Lynley made one of his sudden leaps into animation.

  ‘Now you have found me out exactly. It is just like when I used to beat my nurse’s leg with a stick – oh, I assuredly did, that was the species of little beast I was as a boy – and tell her she was in a very bad temper today: meaning, of course, that I was. I talk of your vexing Pearce, because that is what I am doing lately. I cannot help myself.’ He spread out his arms in wry appeal. ‘It would be better if he were more overbearing; but damn it, there is a new kind of patience in his taking me in hand, which quite discomfits me. Some influence must be at work, to make him like this – capable of showing a little more feeling than a marble grate: a very little, at any rate. Perhaps I am merely coming in for the best of him.’ He lowered his voice and drew closer, and she observed how very dark his eyes were – almost no distinction between iris and pupil. ‘There was a great to-do yesterday, with Mary Bowen wanting to give her notice. Whether he had found fault with her once too often, I don’t know: she is quite a downright creature; but somehow he persuaded her to reconsider, probably calculating that he would never find someone so well able to manage Georgiana, and that it was worth a little sacrifice of pride to keep her. Ah, what an amiable picture of our domestic life I am giving!’

  Louisa could not help wondering whether that influence of which he spoke was Pearce Lynley’s continuing attachment to her. Certainly she was conscious of his addressing her with a persistent amiability, though it plainly cost him some exertion, and there was never any peril of his relaxing into pleasantness; and she could not but feel that if he was seeking to compete with Francis, even in a general way, he was presenting only a sort of varnish, which was very bland compared with the restless play of mind, the volatile spirits of his brother. But she was, as Valentine said, partial: – just how partial was revealed in her own surprise that Mr Tresilian did not much care for Lieutenant Lynley.

  They met at Hill Street and elsewhere, and conversed with an apparent good understanding; but Mr Tresilian, when pressed, only said: ‘Oh, he is well enough. In truth I almost prefer his brother, stiff-neck though he is. At least you know where you are with him.’

  Louisa was used to relying on the independence of Mr Tresilian’s judgement; and she was dismayed to suppose that he had fallen into a lazily conventional way of thinking, and had accepted the received idea of Francis Lynley as the troublesome and unreliable younger brother, who had planted those sad grooves between Mr Lynley’s brows.

  ‘Lieutenant Lynley, you know, has been much maligned,’ she told him.

  ‘Has he? I don’t hear of it. He has an honourable wound from the Peninsula, and is respected for it; he is received in good society: everyone speaks well of him, and the ladies positively quiver when he is by.’

  She felt a little scornful at the notion of the quivering ladies – certainly at her being numbered amongst them. ‘It is a good opinion that has been hard earned; and I think he would willingly exchange it all to have his brother for once approve him, and allow that the indiscretions of the past may be outlived.’

  ‘Oh, as to that, he is a grown man,’ Mr Tresilian said, with a shrug, ‘and grown men should grow up.’

  It was like Mr Tresilian to be blunt – but not to be unfeeling. Louisa could only account for it, after some reflection, by a speculation that he was jealous. Francis Lynley had after all lived in a daring and precarious fashion; whereas James Tresilian, after the brief adventure of his marriage, seemed to have contracted an aversion to the slightest risk. He was often muttering about the extravagant speculations going on in the funds now that Bonaparte was gone, and prophesying bubbles bursting; and though she was willing to believe he might be right, it seemed to her a pity that he should also be such a cautious investor in experience, content with small returns of pleasure, and an annuity of inexcitement.

  Such was the state of her feeling when the Spedding household received an invitation to a ball at the Portman Square residence of Miss Astbury: a ball of exceptional magnificence, as she learned from Mrs Murrow, for several of the visiting notables from the Continent were positively engaged for. – Even the Golden Miss Astbury could not manage a tsar, but at least one German princeling and a general would lend their august presence to the evening, and make themselves available to be stared at.

  ‘Not that I can understand why all these foreigners are here,’ mourned Mrs Murrow.

  ‘Well, my dear, they are our allies, so we are celebrating defeating that dreadful Boney,’ said Mrs Spedding, brightly.

  ‘Why, what do we want to do that for?’

  ‘It is the custom to celebrate victories, ma’am,’ Louisa put in. ‘Somehow celebrating defeats does not carry the same enjoyment.’

  Mrs Murrow shook her head. ‘I don’t know: I never heard the like of it. We never had such things when I was young. They had much better go home. The next thing you know, we shall have Red Indians here; and if I were to see a Red Indian walking down the street towards me, I hardly know what I should do, I am sure: I think I should fall down dead on the spot.’

  The picture thus called up was as agreeable as it was unlikely; but not even Mrs Murrow’s fatuity could detract from the prospective pleasure of such an occasion. The Lynleys were invited, as Louisa soon discovered from Francis when he called – Pearce remaining quite a favourite, as he drily remarked, with the glacial Miss Astbury; and the Tresilians too, Mrs Spedding’s good nature having secured them an introduction at Portman Square – though Louisa suspected Sophie had been the chief instigator.

  ‘I mean to make him dance with me, as we did at Pennacombe,’ she confided to Louisa. ‘Then we shall see something.’


  Louisa did not believe they would see anything – or, rather, did not wish to believe it. The thought of Mr Tresilian being caught in Sophie’s gossamer web still disturbed her more than she could account for: – he was after all, to use his own words, a grown man. But she suspected that in many regards grown men, and women, did not grow up – that the fresh susceptibility of youth still sent its green shoots through the hard stones of experience. But she felt herself powerless, and contradictory: who was she to take Mr Tresilian aside, and warn him against such an entanglement? And was she not the same woman who was deploring his excessive habit of caution?

  She could only trust that something would save him: – his own good sense: some apprehension of wrong paths, and right paths – something.

  When the evening of the Portman Square ball arrived, sultry and airless, she experienced an intense relief and pleasure in being seated next to Valentine in the Spedding carriage. Here also she found grounds for hope that a right judgement would prevail. Instead of devoting the evening to his usual pursuits – which, though he gave nothing away, she took to be his continued, fascinated attendance on Lady Harriet – he had yielded to her careful persuasions: which were based on the simple truth that she would enjoy herself much more if he were there. This, indeed, was much nearer to what she had fancied when they had begun their enterprise of living; and on arriving at the house in Portman Square, which was brightly lit in every window, bedecked with flags and banners, and besieged by carriages, she felt that very little was wanting for her complete felicity, at least for the evening, which was as far as she cared to look. That want was quickly supplied: a glance across the great reception-room assured her that Francis Lynley was there, and they were soon joined by the Tresilians, in good spirits – Kate especially. She wore a new white gown that spoke as eloquently for her taste as her neatness of figure; but as ever it was the animation of amusement that brought her beauty to the surface. Among the guests was a German noble, to whom Lady Carr had introduced her, and who bore the redoubtable name of Count Pfaffenhoffen.

  ‘I could keep my countenance a little more if he were not so grave and solemn,’ Kate said. ‘A Pfaffenhoffen ought at least to be a little jolly. – But it is very childish of me: I’m sure the name Tresilian sounds just as absurd to him.’

  ‘A mercy Mrs Murrow did not have to make the introduction,’ Valentine said. ‘She would never have recovered from it.’

  ‘The German language does have its beauties,’ Kate went on, ‘but I fear it often sounds abrupt to our ears. That lovely name Cinderella, which is very pretty in French and Italian, as Cendrillon and Cenerentola, comes out in German as Aschenputtel.’

  ‘Enough to make the prince repent of his choice.’ Valentine laughed. ‘But I had no idea you knew German, Miss Tresilian.’

  ‘Oh, studying music you pick it up almost unawares,’ Kate said, making a creditable attempt not to blush.

  ‘It is not my place perhaps to remark on the subject,’ intoned Miss Rose, who had responded to the brilliancy of the occasion by wearing a large cameo of someone long dead, ‘but it was always my poor understanding that the moral of the fable consisted in the prince disregarding the superficial, and valuing those qualities in the heroine that had been overlooked. I may be wrong: I am sure I am.’

  ‘I knew a fellow at Oxford who had the most ridiculous name,’ said Tom, beginning his great rumble of laughter. ‘One simply could not hear it without laughing out loud – it was so uncommonly odd. What was it now? Well, I cannot for the life of me remember it, but I can assure you it was the funniest thing.’

  ‘Your assurance of the fact is all I need, Mr Spedding,’ said Mr Tresilian. ‘My sides are fairly splitting already.’

  The rooms were very soon even more crowded than on Louisa’s first visit there; but what had been irritating was now stimulating. She was known: no longer conscious of herself as an awkward outsider: eager to drink in faces and talk, to mark the impressive and be amused by the absurd; and if she found a part of her pleasure in being admired, whisperingly commended, and sought after, she hoped that made her human rather than sinfully vain.

  Before the dancing began, she made her way over to Lieutenant Lynley, aware that his lameness would render him unable to participate in it. – She did not mind for herself, but she minded for him. At the first sound of the music, however, he only glanced up, and said: ‘Ah, now comes my salvation. I shall have the great pleasure of not having the pleasure. Oh, if you like I could make a great Byronish fuss about it, and look stricken and doomed and outcast, because I am shut out for ever from a quadrille. I have even thought of lumbering about the floor in spite of my recalcitrant foot, and disrupting the set unconscionably: – that might be amusing. But the unromantic truth is I never cared excessively for dancing. It is rather as if you were to be told you could never again drink lemonade in your life: you would have to work hard to fancy it a deprivation.’

  It was spoken in his most rapid and careless way: still Louisa suspected, once the dancing began, that the exclusion would be felt; and she would willingly have stayed by his side for the first set, if it had not occurred to her that this would be precisely calling attention to it. She saw across the room that his brother had long been in conversation with Miss Astbury, and was now offering his hand: Miss Astbury very civilly declined, however – the German princeling was hovering, and on such an occasion precedence must be observed; even though he was a painfully young man with large ears, and such a chestful of medals that he must have begun winning them in his cradle. The next thing she knew, Pearce Lynley was before her, inviting her to dance, and she was accepting. – She hardly knew why: it was part perhaps of a general disposition to be pleased, reinforced by the happy sight of Valentine leading out Kate Tresilian. That Mr Tresilian was partnering Sophie was less surprising, as Sophie had earlier been inviting the invitation by fondly hanging on Miss Rose’s arm, to that lady’s stony astonishment, and sighing that with one or two exceptions the place was full of young puppies and nobodies whom she would rather die than dance with.

  Mr Lynley, as befitted a man both athletic and self-controlled, danced well: that improvement in his manner which she had noted, though it was far from making him effusive, was still present; and she wondered, as an idle fancy, what she would have made of him if this had been their first introduction.

  ‘Miss Astbury is having heavy work with her partner,’ she remarked. ‘He looks as if he would be more comfortable on the parade-ground.’

  He smiled slightly. ‘Fortunately she has more than enough grace and elegance to compensate.’

  ‘She is much admired. By some, I conceive, for her fortune; but by others for her qualities. My acquaintance with her is so little developed I cannot judge; but you, I collect, have come to know her better, Mr Lynley.’

  ‘I have taken great pleasure in the acquaintance. Miss Astbury has sense, talents, and a steadiness of temper that must command the admiration of all but the most trifling minds.’

  ‘And she is thoroughly moral,’ Louisa said, recalling Miss Astbury’s censures on Byron.

  ‘I could not approve anyone, man or woman, who is not,’ said Mr Lynley, with something of his old distant look. ‘However, if you would place me among her idolaters, I must disappoint you. I would not speak disrespectfully of the lady who is, despite her aunts, really our hostess: I would only say that the sum is less than the many parts: the impression she makes is strong, but not deep or lasting.’

  Louisa was surprised at this; and wondered if Mr Lynley had received a more significant rebuff from Miss Astbury than the loss of the first dance for him to be finding imperfections in her.

  ‘Still, she would be a great catch, for any man who could win her,’ she said.

  ‘Indeed. And all the more important that he should not be dazzled. A man must know truly what he wants, or suffer to have it revealed to him too late.’

  ‘I am glad to hear you admit at least the possibility of a man not entire
ly knowing what he wants,’ said Louisa, studying him, ‘and would be even more glad to know that this understanding was extended to your brother.’

  He looked coldly at that: but the dance separated them before he could reply; and when they rejoined, he had retreated into silence, which she expected to be lasting. On the dance ending, however, he did not lead her back to her seat but, with a gentle pressure, detained her.

  ‘There is perhaps more understanding between Francis and me, Miss Carnell, than you are inclined to give credit for. I have in the past, as head of the family and guardian of my grandmother’s interests, found more to deplore than to applaud in his general conduct. But natural affections persist alongside our sterner judgement: we still love where we cannot wholly approve. This, I am sure, you are well placed to comprehend.’

  Louisa had no doubt that Mr Lynley had heard the tattle surrounding Valentine and Lady Harriet; but she wished she could hear this confirmation of it without a blush. ‘Certainly: and well spoken, indeed, Mr Lynley. I only think it a pity that you do not show this natural affection which you claim to feel.’

  ‘I show it in the best way I know, by seeking to direct him in the most propitious courses.’

  She sighed. ‘And then you are surprised when he does not wish to be directed. Really, Mr Lynley, I—’

  ‘Miss Carnell.’ He startled her by seizing her hand: he was not a seizing man; but there was much that was altered about him, not entirely to her comfort. ‘I know in the past I have tended to speak to you, on serious matters, in a way that may have appeared sharp – peremptory. As if I do not, did not know how to value feeling. Please believe that – though I hope I always did – I am learning to value it better, and more generously. If you will believe this, then allow me simply in that spirit to allude to my continued solicitude for you – without reference to the past; and to say, out of that solicitude, that I cannot view your growing intimacy with my brother – its rapidity, its heedlessness – without the strongest misgivings.’