A Little Folly Page 3

  Mrs Lappage, a neat, small woman prettily faded, like good wallpaper in a sunny room, was all unaffected pleasure at finding herself in the drawing-room at Pennacombe House. Her smiles, her civility were universal – as was her observation; and her eyes brightened most keenly whenever their glance fell on some change or innovation.

  ‘I cannot help remarking, my dear, how very much lighter and airier it is in here than my remembrance. The removal of those heavy brocades, I fancy. And was that not John Colley’s youngest daughter I saw in the hall? A very pretty, pleasant girl, I am sure she will do well – and poor Mrs Deene has long needed more help, though it was never seen in certain quarters. But you need not fear I shall make any allusion to that, my dear. I should be a very blundering insensible creature if I did. Yes, Mr Lappage, did you want me?’

  Mr Lappage, however, did not: this little appeal being a reflexive habit in Mrs Lappage, to make sure her husband had not gone to sleep.

  The small party was completed by a family with whom Louisa and Valentine had long been on close terms. The Tresilians, as Valentine had said, would surely come. During Sir Clement’s time they had been among the few visitors who were, if not exactly welcomed, at least tolerated at Pennacombe House. Old Mr Tresilian, dead some half a dozen years since, had begun as a merchant shipping china-clay out of Teignmouth, and had risen swiftly to riches and eminence. He had built himself a good house inland, a short ride from Pennacombe, and there lived in such a respectable manner that Sir Clement felt himself able to ignore his origins and speak well of him, his good opinion being further secured by old Mr Tresilian’s temper, which tended to the dour and severe. His only son had inherited The Ridings, and the substantial shipping interests, and was a considerable man in the district – but he had revealed a terrible flaw in his character.

  James Tresilian had married very young, and against his father’s wishes. His bride was still younger: a delicate, entrancing creature, who was staying with relatives at Teignmouth, and was as pretty, giddy and fashionable as she was penniless. The couple had been united after the briefest of courtships, and to a general prophecy that young Mr Tresilian would rue. Seldom can a prediction have been so satisfyingly realised. The young lady rapidly repented of her choice, led her husband a merry dance of trouble, discontent and mild scandal, and made him as thoroughly unhappy as the most disinterested observer could wish, before succumbing within a twelvemonth of the wedding to a galloping consumption, and leaving Mr Tresilian a sorrowing widower, chastened by experience, at an age when most men were just contemplating matrimony.

  Sir Clement, of course, had disapproved most heartily. James Tresilian, though some years Valentine’s senior, had been his nearest friend since boyhood; and after this episode, one of Sir Clement’s prohibitions might easily have been expected. Yet Mr Tresilian’s fall so perfectly vindicated Sir Clement’s beliefs about the consequences of wilful independence that he could not have borne to exclude him from his circle: to forgo the pleasure of saying, with a shake of his head, ‘Ah! here’s poor Tresilian – an example to us all, alas’; of moralising on Mr Tresilian’s hollow cheek and muted manner; and above all of making his unfailing jests on the way in which the ill-fated attachment had begun.

  Mr Tresilian, walking along the sea-front at Teignmouth, had rescued the young lady’s hat, which had been carried away by the wind. This simple circumstance never lost its power to elicit Sir Clement’s brittle mirth. ‘Ah, Tresilian,’ he would say, ‘you have learned your lesson, I think, and will not go chasing hats again, hey?’; and if ever he heard in the neighbourhood of a rash or imprudent marriage – and to Sir Clement virtually all marriages were such – he would sweeten his outrage with the reflection: ‘Someone has been chasing flying hats again – poor fool!’ By the time of Sir Clement’s death, the incident of Mr Tresilian’s marriage was some seven or eight years in the past; Mr Tresilian had gone on with his solitary life, prospered, and ceased to be an object of general interest, but Sir Clement persisted in his acid pleasantries to the end.

  Fortunately Mr Tresilian was a man of imperturbable temperament, who responded to the harshest of Sir Clement’s sallies with his characteristic half-smile. Loyalty to Valentine, to whom he stood in something of the relation of an elder brother, perhaps accounted for it; but there might also have been a wish to see this relation made real. – He had a younger sister, Kate: a shy though not awkward girl, much accustomed to rely on his protection. A year or so ago, she and Valentine had danced much together at one of the rare assemblies the young Carnells were suffered to attend; and afterwards, the time being February, she had sent him a Valentine verse, partly inspired, it seemed, by the aptness of his name. This for Sir Clement was unthinkably bold, even if undertaken in playful fashion; yet it served as a useful warning. Well set up and respectable the Tresilians might be, but Sir Clement made it clear that when the time came for the heir of Pennacombe to marry, he must aim at a connection much superior to that.

  What Valentine felt Louisa could not quite tell: that he was flattered was no less plain than that he was embarrassed; and Louisa suspected that he shared his father’s views at least in this: that he did not look to find romantic attachment so close to home. His was an expansive and idealising temperament. ‘When I marry,’ he had once said to her, ‘but then, you know, even to say those words indicates a dismal state of comfortable preparation. One cannot prepare – expect – anticipate. There is no planning an event that must begin like lightning striking from the sky, overturning and oversetting everything.’

  Whether Kate Tresilian had intended a declaration, or whether Mr Tresilian still entertained any hopes in that direction, Louisa again could not tell. – Kate had returned to shyness, and he was always impossible to read. He was an odd, whimsical character; though gentleman-like, more at ease with sea-captains and ship’s-chandlers than in society; and though Louisa liked him, was often amused by him and valued the unobtrusive friendship he had always shown to Valentine, she could not help but secretly deplore the spiritless way he submitted to her father’s facetious contempt. He possessed fortune and independence, and owed Sir Clement nothing; and she for one did not consider those events of his past – of which, being then only a girl, she had a mere sketch of remembrance – to be an occasion of shame. Altogether she could not understand it: unless his unhappy adventure in matrimony had left him so defeated that his self-respect was quite extinguished.

  There was something of that in Mr Tresilian’s appearance: in his lean angular frame, his sadly scuffed boots, and the dusty-fair hair, which – to the impatience of Valentine, who was particular about his Grecian crop – he allowed to grow like a careless boy’s. His habit of silence suggested it likewise; but he could speak with quickness and point when the subject interested him, as now, when on sitting down to dinner Mr Lappage mentioned the war news.

  ‘It is an apt time for new departures,’ Mr Tresilian said. ‘The latest intelligence is that the Austrians are within a hundred miles of Paris, Wellington is far advanced into the south, and Bonaparte is at bay on all sides.’

  ‘Surely he is finished at last,’ said Mr Lappage.

  ‘He may yet have a trick up his sleeve – but certainly he cannot produce new armies out of thin air.’

  ‘That detestable monster,’ cried Mrs Lappage, who felt warmly on every subject. ‘I hope he will be brought sternly to answer for all the wrongs he has done.’

  ‘Of course, the loser in any dispute is always in the wrong,’ Mr Tresilian remarked.

  ‘Come, Tresilian, never tell me you feel any sympathy for Bonaparte,’ Valentine said. ‘The war has been putting your ships in danger a hundred times.’

  ‘Oh, I only wonder, as a matter of curiosity, whom we shall find to hate after he is gone: we have got so used to a good, comfortable state of loathing that I fear we may be bereft without it. For myself, I shall be glad to see him fall. All that tedious adventuring. Crossing the Alps and whatnot.’

  ‘Well, there, for al
l his later tyrannies, one must admire the spirit of daring that animated him,’ Louisa said.

  ‘Really?’ said Mr Tresilian. ‘I don’t see why. The Alps must have been put there for a very good reason. I have never wished to cross even a single Alp. He should have stayed at home and found an occupation: that was the trouble.’

  ‘Well, we have had enough of war, that is certain,’ said Valentine. He had already had his glass refilled several times, and it was with a dreamy inward look that he added: ‘Aye, we have had enough of those times.’

  ‘My dear Valentine, those are my sentiments exactly,’ Mrs Lappage cried. Then, in a lower tone: ‘Dear me – old habit – of course I should say Mr Carnell.’

  ‘No, no, ma’am, none of that frosty ceremony,’ said Valentine, eagerly. ‘I would have only openness and ease at Pennacombe from now on. If the master of this house is to receive any respect, let it be earned by genuine esteem and affection. – Mr Lappage, I see your glass is not filled. Christmas, now – come next Christmas, I mean to observe it in the proper manner. I regret to say that lately even the village carollers have been frightened to approach the gate. Next time we shall see some true hospitality.’

  ‘Watchmaking,’ said Mr Tresilian. ‘There’s a proper profession. Plenty of interest and satisfaction. One never hears of a watchmaker crossing the Alps.’

  ‘But, my dear James, he might want to,’ gently suggested his sister.

  ‘Then he would be a very silly watchmaker,’ Mr Tresilian said gloomily. ‘What do you think, Miss Rose?’

  The lady thus addressed had been taken into the household at The Ridings a few years ago, being a second cousin of the Tresilians and having fallen upon hard times – meaning she had reached a certain age without anybody wanting to marry her. For Sir Clement this charity had been a slight further evidence of the softening of Mr Tresilian’s brain consequent on the chasing of hats; but it might with justice have been a sorer cause of repentance for a man not possessed of Mr Tresilian’s patience. Not that Miss Rose was any trouble: indeed, it was the very aim and desire of her life not to be so, as she was constantly asserting. An early attempt on the part of the Tresilians to acknowledge their relationship, and soften the sting of dependence by calling her Aunt, had been quite rejected by her aggressive humility; and though she had the dignity of the housekeeping keys, and the chaperonage of Kate, she could never sufficiently declare herself unworthy of them.

  ‘I beg your pardon, Mr Tresilian,’ she answered, ‘and it is a great nuisance in me, I know, to be so particular where I can claim absolutely no right to consideration – but may I ask to what specifically your question refers?’

  ‘Bonaparte,’ said Mr Tresilian, drinking his wine, and raising his heavy eyes a little at its quality. ‘What to do with him. Hang, burn, or drown. Or all three.’

  ‘My dear sir,’ Miss Rose said, with her little squeezed cough of self-deprecation, ‘to consult my opinion on a matter of national moment is so very inapposite that I could almost bring myself to protest at it – if it were not for my consciousness that the enquiry is meant as a token of polite attention, but I hope I am very far from expecting any such tokens, or considering them my right in the least. If ever I did lapse into such unwarranted vanity, I hope I should drop myself in the river directly.’

  ‘Dear Miss Rose, I wish you wouldn’t speak of the river so,’ said Kate.

  ‘My dear Miss Tresilian, if you wish it, then of course I shall not do so. Anything other than a complete acquiescence would be shockingly unbecoming of my position. I hope indeed I should accept any prohibition of my speech without a murmur – even if it were an injunction to absolute silence,’ said Miss Rose, in her most frozen and petrified manner, accompanying her speech with the penitential half-closing of her eyes, which suggested that even the power of sight she regarded as a presumption in a being such as herself.

  ‘Well, ma’am, Bonaparte and the war and all of that is poor dull stuff, I’m sure you will agree,’ Valentine said. ‘Take a glass of wine, if you please, and think no more of it.’

  ‘I beg your pardon, Mr Carnell, but your inviting me to take a glass of wine is an attention that I cannot with good conscience allow myself freely to accept, even at the risk of rewarding your condescension with ingratitude,’ murmured Miss Rose, with a little drawing-in of her thin, tissuey form, as if to take up less room on her chair. ‘I stand in a position of dependence, quite as much as a child to a parent, and I hope I shall never forget to refer any such question to my benefactor: indeed, the moment I do forget, I hope I may drop myself off a cliff.’

  ‘Drink the wine or not, as you choose, ma’am,’ said Mr Tresilian, with the bluff patience that never seemed to fail him. ‘I’d advise it, for it’s good and heady. You have made a proper start on the cellars, Valentine.’

  ‘I hope I have,’ said Valentine, colouring a little, ‘for they have done little enough before now to justify their existence – which I take to be the fostering of conviviality and general enjoyment.’

  But Miss Rose’s determination to be ignored and slighted was not yet satisfied; and there must be a good deal more fuss about her taking a glass of wine, and her insisting that she did not expect such a privilege, before the matter was done, Miss Rose in this demonstrating the peculiar talent of those who proclaim their absence of self-esteem for getting a lot of attention by pretending they never get any.

  The dinner passed pleasantly enough; but it was large and rich, neither Valentine nor Louisa being at all experienced in the planning of such things, and both of them inclined to liberality; and the wines in particular took their toll of Valentine. Louisa was just hesitating over that awkward responsibility of the hostess, of rising and inviting the ladies to retire, and wondering whether a parade-ground bark of ‘Drawing-room – quick march!’ might answer, when Valentine rose to his feet.

  ‘I hope you will give me leave to say something,’ he announced. ‘It is this. I wish to apologise. Not for myself, but for – well, let us say only that most of you, indeed all of you, have at some time been subjected to unpleasantness, even insult, from a certain quarter, in this household. At the time I refer to, it did not lie in my power to express my regret for these proceedings; but now it does, and without for a moment wishing to speak ill of – of anyone, I must convey to you that sincerest regret, and to assure you that those times are quite gone.’ Valentine’s eye fell wanderingly over the company: their silence seemed rather to encourage than dismay him; and he was just embarked on a ‘Furthermore …’ when Mr Tresilian got up and clasped his arm in an access of warmth and gratitude, which almost looked like a determination to press him back into his seat before he could say any more.

  Louisa took her cue to lead the ladies out, trusting that Mr Tresilian would be vigilant over the port; and though there were only Mrs Lappage, Miss Tresilian and Miss Rose to be entertained, all well known to her, she presided over the tea-things in some confusion, and not without some startling crashes, as if she were going at her task with hammer and chisel. In truth she was so unaccustomed to wine that the very little she had taken had dizzied her head; and beyond that, she was not as comfortable with the occasion as she had hoped to be. Acting the hostess felt strange; the very house felt strange with this unprecedented company in it; she wanted everyone to be easy and contented, but could not be so herself. Part of her regretted Valentine’s outburst – yet she would have fiercely defended him against anyone who had questioned its propriety. Altogether she was in a thoroughly mixed state of feeling over their new enterprise of living.

  It required only a little conversation with Mrs Lappage, however, to restore her to a consciousness of its one great advantage. That lady talked tactfully around the matter of Valentine’s little speech – conveyed as delicately as she could that she did not take it amiss in the slightest, and that if it had been up to her, there would have been some much stronger expressions, and that when it came to apology, there had long been an apology due to Valentine and Louisa
from a certain quarter; and then, brightening, appraised Louisa with a glance, and cried: ‘But there, we look to happier times, as Valentine said, and I see those in your bright looks, my dear. Such a skin! And I like excessively the way you have trimmed your gown – that is the newest mode, I should think.’

  ‘If it is, I have hit on it most luckily, for I know nothing of the newest modes,’ Louisa answered frankly. ‘Valentine spoke of my having a new gown from Exeter, but I – I had an idea for making something pretty of this one.’ In truth she had scrupled to accept, because the voice of her father still spoke in her, sternly reproving the notion of fligging herself up in new clothes as soon as mourning was over.

  ‘Ah, but you know how to dress, my dear, and that’s something that no amount of new purchases can grant. All I can say is, I’m sure Mr Lynley will be as well satisfied with your looks as I am. You will know, of course – none better – that he is just returned to Hythe.’

  ‘I know of it, ma’am,’ Louisa said, after a moment.

  ‘Well! I run ahead of myself, no doubt – I always do,’ Mrs Lappage said, studying her closely. ‘It’s my failing. But when I observe that the relation between you and Mr Lynley is spoken of as a settled thing, I base my information not on gossip – heaven protect me from that – but simply from common report.’

  ‘The relation between Mr Lynley and I—’ Louisa faltered, performing more noisy tricks with the tea-things.

  ‘It is not strictly accorded the title of an engagement – I think those cups have not been properly dried, my dear, and that’s why they are so slippery. No, not exactly an engagement, and of course in the late solemn circumstances all such things must lie in abeyance, but there is a general expectation, shall we say? Now pray, my dear Louisa, don’t suppose that I mention it from any desire to draw you out about the matter, because assuredly I do not.’