‘I promise you I should not! It sounds very disagreeable – and quite as boring as the life I’ve known! You refer, I collect, to Lady Hester: did you ever meet her?’
‘Yes, at Palmyra, in – oh, I forget! – ’13? ’14? It doesn’t signify.’
‘Have you visited Greece, as well as the Levant?’ she interrupted.
‘I have. Why? Can it be that you are a classical scholar?’
‘No, I am not, but Aubrey is. Do, pray, tell him about the things you must have seen in Athens! He has only Mr Appersett to talk to about what he most cares for, and although Mr Appersett – he is the Vicar, you know! – is a fine scholar he has not seen, with his own eyes, as you have!’
‘I’ll tell Aubrey anything he may want to know – if you, mysterious Miss Lanyon, will tell me what I want to know!’
‘Well, I will,’ she replied handsomely. ‘Though what there is to tell you, or why you should call me mysterious has me in a puzzle!’
‘I call you mysterious because –’ he paused, amused by the look of innocent expectancy in her eyes – ‘Oh, because you are five-and twenty, unwed, and, so far as I can discover, unsought!’
‘On the contrary!’ retorted Venetia, entering into the spirit of this. ‘I have two admirers! One of them is excessively romantic, and the other is –’
‘Well?’ he prompted, as she hesitated.
‘Worthy!’ she produced, and went into a peal of mirth as he dropped his head into his hands.
‘And you a nonpareil!’
‘No, am I? The truth is that there is no mystery at all: my father was a recluse.’
‘That sounds to me like a non sequitur.’
‘No, it’s the very hub of the matter.’
‘But, good God, did he shut you up as well as himself?’
‘Not precisely, though I have frequently suspected that he would have liked to have done so. My mother died, you see. He must have loved her quite desperately, I suppose, for he fell into the most deplorable lethargy, and became exactly like Henry I: never smiled again! I can’t tell how it was, because he would never have her name mentioned; and, besides that, I was only ten years old at the time, and not at all acquainted with either of them. In fact, I can scarcely remember what she looked like, except that I am sure she was pretty, and wore beautiful dresses. At all events, Papa was utterly thrown into gloom by her death, and until I was seventeen I think I never exchanged a word with anyone beyond our own household.’
‘Good God! Was he mad?’
‘Oh no! Merely eccentric!’ she replied. ‘I never knew him to care for anyone’s comfort but his own, but I fancy eccentrics don’t. However, when I grew up he permitted Lady Denny and Mrs Yardley to take me now and then to the Assemblies in York; and once he actually consented to my spending a week in Harrogate, with my Aunt Hendred! I did hope that he would consent also to let me visit her in London, so that she might bring me out in the regular way. She offered to do so, but he wouldn’t have it, and I daresay she didn’t very much wish to do it, for she didn’t press it.’
‘Poor Venetia!’
If she noticed his use of her name she gave no sign of having done so, only smiling, and saying: ‘I own I was sadly dashed down at the time, but after all, you know, I don’t think I could have gone, even had Papa been willing, for Aubrey was still tied to a sofa, and I couldn’t have left him.’
‘So you have never been farther afield than Harrogate! No wonder you dream of travel! How have you endured such intolerable tyranny?’
‘Oh, it was only on that one subject Papa was adamant! For the rest I might do as I chose. I wasn’t unhappy – did you think I had been? Not a bit! I might now and then be bored, but in general I have had enough to keep me occupied, with the house to manage, and Aubrey to take care of.’
‘When did your father die? Surely some years ago? Why do you stay here? Is habit so strong?’
‘No, but circumstance is! My elder brother is a member of Lord Hill’s staff, you see, and until he chooses to sell out someone must look after Undershaw. There’s Aubrey, too. I don’t think he would consent to go away, because that would mean he could not read with Mr Appersett any more; and it wouldn’t do to leave him alone.’
‘I can well believe that he would miss you, but –’
She laughed. ‘Aubrey? Oh, no! Aubrey likes books more than people. The thing is that I am afraid Nurse would drive him crazy, trying to wrap him in cotton wool, which is a thing he can’t bear.’ Her brow creased. ‘I only wish she may not vex him to death while he is here! I was obliged to bring her, because if I had not she would have trudged all the way. Then, too, she does know what to do when he is ailing, and I couldn’t leave him quite on your hands. Perhaps Dr Bentworth will say he may come home.’
But when the doctor arrived, although he was able to allay any fears that Aubrey had seriously injured his hip he returned a flat negative to Nurse’s suggestion that he would be better in his own home. The quieter he was kept, said Dr Bentworth, the more quickly would the torn ligaments heal. This verdict was accepted reluctantly by Nurse, and by Aubrey, whose endurance had been tried pretty high by the doctor’s examination, with profound relief.
With a tact born of experience Venetia had not accompanied the doctor to the sickroom. She had asked Damerel to go with him in her stead, and he had nodded, and had said in his curt way: ‘Yes, I’ll go. Don’t worry!’ It was several minutes before it occurred to her that she had turned to him as to a friend of many years’ standing. Then, a little wonderingly, she thought over that protracted dinner, and of how they had sat talking long after Imber had removed the covers, Damerel leaning back in his carved chair, a glass of port held between his long fingers, she with her elbows on the table and a half-eaten apple in one hand; and the dusk creeping into the room unheeded, until Imber brought in candles, in tall, tarnished chandeliers, and set them on the table, furnishing a pool of light in which they sat while the shadows darkened beyond it. Trying to recall what they had talked of during that comfortable hour, it seemed to Venetia that they had talked of everything, or perhaps of nothing: she did not know which, but only that she had found a friend.
When the doctor told her that he could not advise her to remove Aubrey from the Priory he seemed to be both surprised and relieved by her tranquil acceptance of his verdict. The note of apology in his voice at first puzzled her, but after she had thought it over she saw what he must have meant when he spoke of embarrassment and awkward situations; and when Damerel came back into the room, after escorting the doctor to his carriage, she looked rather anxiously up at him, and said with a little difficulty: ‘I am afraid – I hadn’t thought – Will it be troublesome to you to keep Aubrey until he is better?’
‘Not a bit!’ he replied, with reassuring alacrity. ‘What put such a daffish notion as that into your head?’
‘Well, it was Dr Bentworth’s saying how sorry he was to be obliged to put me in an awkward situation,’ she disclosed. ‘He meant, of course, that it is quite shocking to foist poor Aubrey on to you, and he was perfectly right! I can’t think why it should not have occurred to me before, but I daresay –’
‘He meant nothing of the sort,’ Damerel interrupted ruthlessly. ‘His solicitude is not on my behalf, but on yours. He perceived the impropriety of thrusting you into acquaintanceship with a man of libertine propensities. Morals and medicine warred within his breast, and medicine won the day – but I daresay morals may give him a sleepless night!’
‘Is that all?’ she exclaimed, her brow clearing.
‘That’s all,’ he answered gravely. ‘Unless, of course, he fears I may corrupt Aubrey. Evil communications, you know!’
‘I shouldn’t think you could,’ she said, dispassionately considering the matter. She saw his lips quiver, and her own gravity vanished. ‘Oh, I don’t mean that you would make the attempt! You know very well I don’t! The thing is t
hat even if you were to hold an orgy here the chances are he would only think it pretty tame, compared with the Romans, not to mention the Bacchae, who, from anything I can discover, were precisely the sort of females one would wish a boy not to know about!’
This view of the matter was almost too much for his self-control; it was a moment before he could command his voice enough to say: ‘I promise you I won’t hold any orgies while Aubrey is under my roof!’
‘Oh, no, I know you would not! Though I must say,’ she added, a gleam of fun in her eyes, ‘it would be worth it, only to see Nurse’s face!’
He laughed out at that, flinging back his head in wholehearted enjoyment, gasping: ‘Why, oh why did I never know you until now?’
‘It does seem a pity,’ she agreed. ‘I have been thinking so myself, for I always wished for a friend to laugh with.’
‘To laugh with!’ he repeated slowly.
‘Perhaps you have friends already who laugh when you do,’ she said diffidently. ‘I haven’t, and it’s important, I think – more important than sympathy in affliction, which you might easily find in someone you positively disliked.’
‘But to share a sense of the ridiculous prohibits dislike – yes, that’s true. And rare! My God, how rare! Do they stare at you, our worthy neighbours, when you laugh?’
‘Yes! or ask me what I mean when I’m joking!’ She glanced at the clock above the empty fireplace. ‘I must go.’
‘Yes, you must go. I have sent a message down to the stables. There is still light enough for your coachman to make out the way, but it will be dark in another hour, or even less.’ He took her hands, and putting them palm to palm held them so between his own. ‘You’ll come again tomorrow – to visit Aubrey! Don’t let them dissuade you, our worthy neighbours! Beyond my gates I make you no promises: don’t trust me! Within them –’ He paused, his smile twisting into something not quite a sneer yet derisive. ‘Oh, within them,’ he said in brittle self-mockery, ‘I’ll remember that I was bred a gentleman!’
Five
Venetia opened her eyes to sunlight, dimmed by the chintz blinds across her windows. She lay for a few minutes between sleep and waking, aware, at first vaguely and then with sharpening intensity, of a sense of well-being and of expectation, as when, in childhood, she had waked to the knowledge that the day of a promised treat had dawned. Somewhere in the garden a thrush was singing, the joyous sweetness of its note so much in harmony with her mood that it seemed a part of her happiness. She was content for some moments to listen, not questioning the source of her happiness; but presently she came to full consciousness, and remembered that she had found a friend.
At once the blood seemed to quicken in her veins; her body felt light and urgent; and a strange excitement, flooding her whole being like an elixir, made it impossible for her to be still. No sound but bird-song came to her ears; quiet enfolded the house. She thought it must be very early, and, turning her head on the pillow, tried to recapture sleep. It eluded her; the sunlight, blotched by the pattern on the chintz, teased her eyelids: she lifted them, yielding to a prompting more insistent than that of reason. A new day, fresh with new promise, set her tingling; the thrush’s trill became a lure and a command; she slid from the smothering softness of her feather-bed, and went with a swift, springing step to the window, sweeping back the blinds, and thrusting open the casement.
A cock pheasant, pacing across the lawn, froze into an instant’s immobility, his head high on the end of his shimmering neck, and then, as though he knew himself safe for yet a few weeks, resumed his stately progress. The autumn mist was lifting from the hollows; heavy dew sparkled on the grass; and, above, the sky was hazy with lingering vapour. There was a chill in the air which made the flesh shudder even in the sun’s warmth, but it was going to be another hot day, with no hint of rain, and not enough wind to bring the turning leaves fluttering down from the trees.
Beyond the park, across the lane that skirted Undershaw to the east, beyond its own spreading plantations, lay the Priory: not very far as the crow flew, but a five-mile drive by road. Venetia thought of Aubrey, whether he had slept during the night, whether there were many hours to while away before she could set forth to visit him. Then she knew that it was not anxiety for Aubrey, her first concern for so many years, which made her impatient to reach the Priory, but the desire to be with her friend. It was his image, ousting Aubrey’s from her mind’s sight, which brought such a glow of warmth to her. She wondered if he too was conscious of it; if he was wakeful, perhaps looking out of his window, as she from hers; thinking about her; hoping that she would soon be with him again. She tried to remember what they had talked of, but she could not; she remembered only that she had felt perfectly at home, as though she had known him all her life. It seemed impossible that he should not have felt as strongly as she the tug of sympathy between them; but when she had thought for a little she recalled how widely different were their circumstances, and recognised that what to her had been a new experience might well have meant nothing more to him than a variation on an old theme. He had had many loves; perhaps he had many friends too, with minds more closely attuned to his than she believed her own to be. These troubled her as his loves did not. With his loves she was as little concerned as with his first encounter with herself. That had angered her, but it had neither shocked nor disgusted her. Men – witness all the histories! – were subject to sudden lusts and violences, affairs that seemed strangely divorced from heart or head, and often more strangely still from what were surely their true characters. For them chastity was not a prime virtue: she remembered her amazement when she had discovered that so correct a gentleman and kind a husband as Sir John Denny had not always been faithful to his lady. Had Lady Denny cared? A little, perhaps, but she had not allowed it to blight her marriage. ‘Men, my love, are different from us,’ she had said once, ‘even the best of them! I tell you this because I hold it to be very wrong to rear girls in the belief that the face men show to the females they respect is their only one. I daresay, if we were to see them watching some horrid, vulgar prize-fight, or in company with women of a certain class, we shouldn’t recognise our own husbands and brothers. I am very sure we should think them disgusting! Which, in some ways, they are, only it would be unjust to blame them for what they can’t help. One ought rather to be thankful that any affairs they may have amongst what they call the muslin company don’t change their true affection in the least. Indeed, I fancy affection plays no part in such adventures. So odd! – for we, you know, could scarcely indulge in them with no more effect on our lives than if we had been choosing a new hat. But so it is with men! Which is why it has been most truly said that while your husband continues to show you tenderness you have no cause for complaint, and would be a zany to fall into despair only because of what to him was a mere peccadillo. “Never seek to pry into what does not concern you, but rather look in the opposite direction!” was what my dear mother told me, and very good advice I have found it. She spoke, of course, of gentlemen of character and breeding, as I do now – for with the demi-beaux and the loose-screws females of our order, I am glad to say, have nothing to do: they do not come in our way.’
But Damerel had come in their way, and although he was not a demi-beau he was certainly a loose-screw. Lady Denny had been obliged to receive him with the appearance at least of complaisance, but she was not going to pursue so undesirable an acquaintance; and there could be little doubt that she would be horrified when she discovered that her young protégée was not only on the best of terms with him but was also committing the gross impropriety of visiting his house. Could she be made to understand that he, like those nameless, aberrant husbands, had two sides to his character? Venetia thought not. The best to be hoped was that she would understand that while Aubrey lay at the Priory his sister would go to him though Damerel were a Caliban.
The clatter of shutters being folded back in the parlour beneath her room roused her from
these doubtful reflections. If the servants were stirring it was not so very early after all: probably about six o’clock. Seeking an excuse for rising an hour before her usual time she remembered the several not very pressing duties which had been left undone on the previous day, and decided to perform them immediately.
She was no bustling housewife, but by the time she came into the breakfast-parlour she had visited the dairy and the stables; discussed winter-sowing with the bailiff; delivered to the poultry-woman, in a slightly expurgated form, a remonstrance from Mrs Gurnard; listened in return to a Jeremiad on the general and particular perversity of hens; and directed an aged and obstinate gardener to tie up the dahlias. It seemed improbable that he would do so, for he regarded them as upstarts and intruders, which in his young days had never been heard of, and always became distressingly deaf whenever Venetia mentioned them.
Mrs Gurnard, to Venetia’s relief, took it for granted that she would drive over to see poor Master Aubrey, but was thrown into dignified sulks by Venetia’s refusal to carry with her a sizeable hamper packed as full as it would hold with enough cooked food for a banquet. When asked, in a rallying tone, if she supposed Aubrey to be living on a desert island she replied that there were many who would consider him to be better off on a desert island than abandoned to the rigours of Mrs Imber’s cookery. Mrs Imber, said Mrs Gurnard, besides being feckless, inching, and unhandy, was one whom she could never bring herself to trust. ‘I’ve not forgotten the pullets, miss, if you have, and what’s more I never shall, not if I live to be a hundred!’
‘Pullets?’ said Venetia, bewildered.
‘Cockerels!’ uttered Mrs Gurnard, her eyes kindling. ‘Cockerels every one, miss!’
But as Venetia could perceive no connection between cockerels and Mrs Imber’s cookery she remained adamant, and went off to collect the various items which Nurse, in the agitation of the moment, had omitted to pack. These included the shirt she was making for Aubrey, and her tatting, both to be found in her sewing-basket, together with needles, thread, scissors, her silver thimble, and a lump of wax. Venetia was to wrap all these things up neatly in a napkin, and to be sure not to forget any of them; but as Venetia knew that the only certainty was of being told that she had brought the wrong thread and the very scissors Nurse had not wanted she preferred, in spite of its formidable dimensions, to take the basket itself to the Priory.