A Little Folly (12 page)

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.

M
rs 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 there 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.

It was a close, noisy occasion. ‘Just the sort of crush I like,’ Sophie declared on their going in; but the unseasonably warm weather made Louisa wish for a little less crush, and a little more air; wearing a train, and being unaccustomed to managing it, she experienced several times the startling immobility of having it trodden on. Lady Carr was a little nervous woman, as much occupied with promoting her guests’ comfort as Mrs Murrow was in detracting from it; but the chief attention of both was devoted to their niece. Miss Astbury was indeed the queen of the evening. Louisa was in due form introduced; and several minutes of talk ensued, being nothing much beyond civil enquiries, commendation of Mrs Spedding’s qualities, and agreement on the happy prospects of the peace. We are always apt to find fault with the manners of those handsomer and wealthier than ourselves: – still Louisa could not warm to her. She was very tall, slender and glacially fair: her bare, thin-muslined Grecian costume, complete with sandals, showed her to great advantage, and even rendered her Christian name – Parthenope – rather appropriate than awkward; but there was about her a deadly sort of haughtiness that could not please. It was understood that Miss Astbury, in preparation for her entrance into society, had been polished at the best schools; and Louisa could not help feeling that the polish had been too liberally applied, with results that glared rather than shone.

Valentine seemed scarcely more impressed. ‘Quite the beauty – and thoroughly conscious of it too,’ he remarked. ‘Well, I have had my audience, and I gladly give place to the rest of the eager courtiers, lining up to kiss the ring. Great heaven, a man must be dead to all self-respect, who can go crawling after her and her guineas like that. I say, Tom, isn’t that The Top over there? Now
he
has more sense, at any rate.’

Louisa had heard this singular name mentioned before as a close friend of Tom’s, but had thought she must be mistaken, and that it actually referred to one of their fashionable places of resort, like The Corner and The Finish. But soon she was being introduced to the gentleman who rejoiced in this sobriquet. ‘Bellingham is the name,’ Tom explained, ‘but to everyone of the
ton
he is simply The Top, you know: no one would think of calling him anything else.’

‘I should think not!’ said The Top; who was a very crisp-starched, high-booted gentleman, not young, and rather fleshy, wearing such a tightly tailored coat that Louisa doubted it could be taken off in the usual way at all, but must be escaped from with applications of bear’s-grease, and perhaps a rope. ‘Now come to the mark, Spedding, what in the name of blazes do you call
that
?’

With an appalled glance he indicated Tom’s cravat, which to Louisa’s eye only looked slightly more complicated than usual.

‘Why, it’s the Imperial,’ Tom said, a little doubtfully.

‘Is it indeed! Lord, Spedding, that’s doing it too brown! Unless I miss my tip, you’ve been studying for it in the fashion-papers! Look at your friend Carnell there – that’s the way to wear it. Imperial indeed! Never heard such a Banbury tale!’ The Top concluded with a short metallic laugh; and turning to Louisa, continued: ‘Well, Miss Carnell, what do you say to this precious squeeze? A dead bore, is it not? But I felt I had to see the famous Miss Astbury for myself. Wouldn’t have been half surprised if she’d turned out to be a shocking quiz! The fact is, for all her blunt she’s not of the first stare. So I told young Rivers, who’s dangling after her: not up to the scratch for the son of a marquis, even if he is lodging in Queer Street just now. Too much splashing at Lady Harriet Eversholt’s faro-table! He should learn to bet like a gentleman: always stand up after the first five hundred. What do
you
say, Miss Carnell?’

‘I am afraid I cannot be easy at the thought of anyone betting five hundred pounds on the turn of a card,’ she said frankly.

‘You think me pitching it rum!’ he said, in his hard-smiling way. ‘Not a bit – happens every day! Oh, my dear Miss Carnell, I could tell you a tale or two!’

She was sure he could; and it only took a little longer in his company to convince her that none of them would be interesting. He was, she supposed, very much the man of fashion, and could understand that someone of Tom’s tastes would admire him; but it surprised her to see Valentine deferring to a man in whose character there appeared so little of substance. His talk soon moved on to horseflesh, pugilism, single-stick and ratting-matches, in all of which he was as expert as in the finer points of shirt-linen and boot-blacking: but of thought and feeling there seemed nothing; and though she gathered he was accounted a great wit, she could not devise wherein the reputation rested, unless in his habit of saying things in abrupt slang, and peppering everything with audible exclamation-marks.

He did not remain long at the reception, declaring that it was such a bore it put him flat in the dismals; and afterwards, on Tom’s asking how she liked him, she could only say: ‘He is certainly very well dressed.’

‘That he is,’ said Tom, reverently. ‘The absolute nonpareil. I feel a proper tomnoddy about the Imperial. I
thought
it didn’t look right.’

‘Tell me, when you get to know The Top very well, can you address him more familiarly? Can you simply call him The?’

Tom seemed about to give the question serious consideration; but Valentine smiled and said: ‘He is a little extravagant, to be sure. But he is a man who knows a great deal of the world, and a capital companion, all in all. He has the
entrée
everywhere.’

Louisa made no demur at this: loyalty to Valentine remained her first consideration, and if his tastes and pleasures were not her own, she was not about to reproach him for it. But from the conversation of The Top she drew one anxiety. Lady Harriet’s faro-bank, and the large stakes laid there, appeared to her mind for the first time as a reality, and not as a yardstick of worldly toleration. She hoped that Valentine and Tom did not take it in during their nocturnal jaunts; and she was almost ready to ask Tom about it: – but she made the mistake, on Tom’s enquiring again what she thought of his friend, of referring to him as a dandy; and this set him off on such a painstaking explanation of the subtle differences between a dandy, a swell, a beau, a buck, a blood and a Corinthian that she gave it over.

There was a further distraction. – Sophie took her aside, and astonished her with the information that several gentlemen to whom she had not been introduced were longing to meet her, and several more to whom she
had
been introduced had been warm in their praises.

‘No – you are funning,’ was all Louisa could say; for as far as she was conscious of herself at all, she suspected she was hot and cross-looking, and inclined to say very stupid things.

‘Not in the least: I never joke about the important matters of life, my dear – and you may ask Valentine, if you like, for he heard them too. No, the Golden Miss Astbury is not to have the field all to herself, believe me.’

This Louisa could not believe: and it was on the tip of her tongue to say that where Miss Astbury was Golden, Miss Carnell could claim only the title of Bronze, or perhaps Tin; but on second thoughts, she reflected that she had known sufficient disparagement over the years, without turning it on herself. She would not allow praises to go to her head: – but they might be allowed to reach as far as her eyes, which, when she saw herself reflected in the hall mirror as they left, certainly seemed uncommonly bright.