A Little Folly (13 page)

M
rs Spedding’s avowal that she would be glad to meet Mr Pearce Lynley of Hythe Place was something that lay in abeyance, very happily to Louisa’s mind: there were so many other things to gladden her aunt, she felt, that there was no need for a reminder. – Fortune, however, decreed otherwise. On Sunday afternoons it was Mrs Spedding’s fashionable habit to drive in Hyde Park, where she was always certain of seeing a great number of acquaintance, and of styles of bonnet and mantle to be admired and sought on the next shopping-expedition. Louisa and Sophie accompanied her in the barouche, while Tom and Valentine rode alongside: Tom having secured from a friend the loan of a mount for his cousin that he described, with more enthusiasm than intelligibility, as ‘the primest goer, excepting the little feather on her legs’. Valentine looked extremely well as a horseman, and quite the equal of any of the smart young bloods riding the ring; and this particular Sunday Louisa was just reflecting on how far they had come from the staid retirement of Pennacombe when the emblem of that past appeared before her.

It was Pearce Lynley: – with him, a young man in regimentals, and his sister Georgiana. All three were mounted, Georgiana on a pony that looked as prettily ill-tempered as herself: the fourth of the party, a young woman, walked beside her. There was no escaping the introduction. Tom was already hailing Mr Lynley, before Louisa’s eyes met his. He coloured slightly, and snapped at his horse’s reins, though the animal was quiet: how much was revealed in her own expression she could not tell, but the force of the tingling, unhappy memory that the sight of him revived surprised her; and she realised how effectively the London adventure had worked in suppressing it, and how signally it had failed to replace agitation with indifference.

For now all was outward civility. Valentine introduced Mrs Spedding, and Louisa had the small satisfaction of observing that Mr Lynley, taking in her dress, carriage and manner, could not fault her in point of respectability. Meanwhile her own attention turned, with sharp interest, to the young officer, whom Mr Lynley introduced as his brother Francis. In him there was nothing to be seen of Pearce Lynley’s remote, finished handsomeness: there was a want of symmetry in his dark, thin face with its prominent jaw; but something both keen and sardonic in his looks drew the eye. And when he heard her name, a glance of intense curiosity lighted first on her, and then on the marmoreal face of his brother.

‘Miss Lynley,’ concluded Mr Lynley’s introductions: apparently the young woman accompanying her no more merited a name than a mount. Louisa could only suppose her the new governess that had been sought, and pitied her: though her pale, composed look suggested she had already cultivated stoicism.

Like her children, Mrs Spedding was very ready to find everyone agreeable; and Mr Lynley being impressive besides, and having known her late sister in Devonshire, nothing was wanting for her to take to him thoroughly. Soon she was speaking of the musical party she was to hold at Hill Street the next evening, for which a famous harpist had been engaged, and extending an invitation to the Lynleys to join them. While Mr Lynley was still bowing his stiff acknowledgements, his brother spoke for the first time.

‘Georgiana would greatly like that, I think: she is very fond of music.’

‘Oh, is Miss Lynley out?’ cried Mrs Spedding. ‘In that case, I should be even more delighted.’

‘Miss Lynley is not out, in the sense that she is able to accept evening engagements in town,’ Mr Lynley said, in his most repressive tone. ‘However, the case of a musical party is, I allow, somewhat different: if she may be properly accompanied by her governess, ma’am, I do not see the harm in it: thank you.’

‘I am glad to know you are a lover of music too, my dear,’ Mrs Spedding said to Georgiana, who was looking half pleased and half sulky, ‘for I am devoted to it; and you may be sure of hearing the very best, for this harpist has played before the Prince, I hear, and was taught by Mr Handel himself.’

‘She must be prodigiously old, in that case, Mama,’ said Sophie, ‘for Mr Handel died some sixty years ago. Perhaps it was Mr Haydn.’

‘Really? I was absolutely convinced it was Mr Handel – but I am sure you are right, my dear. And so you knew my poor dear sister, Mr Lynley? It is a lasting regret with me, that I was never able to see her at Pennacombe.’

‘I recall Lady Carnell as an estimable lady, ma’am,’ was the short reply.

‘I can never look at my niece without bringing her to mind, and seldom without a sad tear,’ Mrs Spedding said, turning to Louisa with a countenance altogether cheerful. ‘It is the sweet shape of the face – and those very expressive dark eyes; do you not agree, Mr Lynley?’

‘Anyone who has seen either lady must acknowledge these and other merits,’ Mr Lynley said – as near to handsomely as was possible to him. ‘Miss Carnell, I hope you find the London air as agreeable to you as your looks suggest.’

To find him courteous, even in his steely way, cast her into such confusion that she flew to the opposite extreme, and said without warmth: ‘Yes, thank you, Mr Lynley. But you have made an omission – there is one of your party you have not introduced.’

This he plainly did not like at all; and she saw Francis Lynley looking satirically up at him from under his arched brows. But he recovered himself, and said: ‘My apologies. Miss Bowen – lately joining our household as Georgiana’s governess.’

If he was discomfited, however, Miss Bowen did not appear at all gratified by Louisa’s intervention on her behalf: she merely inclined her head, and resumed her appearance of fixing her mind at a great distance. Perhaps, indeed, she was as chilly in her way as her employer, and so was well matched with – Louisa would not say the family; for she suspected, even on so slight an acquaintance, that Lieutenant Lynley differed a good deal from both his brother and sister.

With compliments on both sides, the two parties moved on; and Louisa was left to ponder on why Mr Lynley had accepted Mrs Spedding’s invitation, when it must be thrusting him back into the society of the woman who had rejected him, and whom he had apparently forsworn with all the unbending resentment of a proud nature. Politeness: the prompting of his brother on Georgiana’s behalf, which had rather pushed him into a corner: a self-respecting determination to show that he was perfectly equal to being in her company: – all these answers she considered, without finding satisfaction. It was Sophie who as they drove on confided in her ear a different possibility.

‘Oh, my dear girl, how Mr Lynley still looks at you! I am afraid you have made a conquest there, more lasting than any of Bonaparte’s.’

Louisa started in surprise, and was very ready to call this nonsense – yet not with such a reflex of discomfort as would formerly have been the case. – She felt more sure of herself. Let him come to Hill Street: she was better able to meet him on this neutral ground than at Pennacombe, where long habit made him proprietorial: he might see for himself that she was faring very well, where he had darkly hinted that she would do very ill. As for his feeling towards her, she could not believe it was as Sophie represented it; but if it were even partly true, a voice spoke in her to say that a little deprivation and suffering would do no harm at all to someone so entirely unaccustomed to them as Pearce Lynley.

The next day, before the musical party that was to put these conclusions to the proof, there came unexpected news. Valentine, opening his letters as they sat after breakfast, came upon one from Mr Tresilian.

‘Here’s a wonder! Hark to this, Louisa. “My dear Valentine, I hope this finds you et cetera.” His words, I am not summarising. “Believe me, I am as grateful for your letters as if you had written any.” He doesn’t mean it, of course,’ Valentine said laughing, very heartily, and looking around, ‘and you know, Louisa, since we came to town there really has hardly been a moment. – Well, he goes on. “Tell your sister that when she talked of our going to London, she planted a seed that has grown into a mighty oak. Or a middling sort of oak at any rate. – Kate, Miss Rose and I are hey-ho for London. Though I detest the notion of being hey-ho for anything, and I hope that the moment I declare myself hey-ho you will, as Miss Rose would say, drop me off a cliff directly. Still, we are coming. The times are exceptional. I want to see my banker, for Boney’s fall has set off fireworks in the funds, and I’m afraid of them, and want to be sure. And then you have all the Crowned Heads of Europe, and generals and whatnot arriving, and we shall not see such a thing again, and Kate must not miss it. It’s the Tsar of Russia coming that has decided it for me, and Kate too. It is one thing to see a king, another to see a tsar – or, as Miss Rose insists on calling him, a Star. Her English tongue is affronted by the reversal of those letters. We come by the stage. Expect us in four days. If you know of a decent lodging, I will be obliged. Yours, James Tresilian.”’ Valentine, impatiently smiling, tossed the letter down in front of Louisa. ‘A decent lodging! That will be hard to find, with town so full of company. I’ll ask Tom. The Top, too. Coming by the public stage – dear God, they will be an age upon the road. – I do wish Tresilian would go at life with a little more style.’

‘Still, it will be a great pleasure to see him again,’ Louisa murmured, picking up the letter for herself, and smiling over the postscript:
Acorn, I meant, not seed. Dunderhead
, ‘Kate too.’

‘To be sure – though let that be an end of our Devonshire acquaintance descending on us, else we shall have Mrs Lappage knocking at the door next, and we shall feel we never escaped at all.’

Sophie protested at this; for her part, she would have them all come to town – nothing could be nicer: and she went on to describe Mr Tresilian in vivid and comprehensive terms to her mother, recalling with especial delight the view of one of his ships from his tower look-out. Mrs Spedding listened avidly, and said she could not wait to meet him: – and, doubtless, stored away the impression that Mr Tresilian was a small, talkative clergyman, who lived in a forest.

Louisa noticed Tom giving his sister what was, for him, a penetrating look. She wondered too whether Sophie anticipated Mr Tresilian’s arrival with something more than her usual eagerness for company; and whether it was the promised sight of someone altogether prettier and more graceful than General Blücher that was bringing him to town. If it were so, she was not sure how she felt. Something of foreboding: for Sophie, as she had seen, was a prodigious flirt, and without any ill-meaning could find three men in an evening equally fascinating. Part of her, though, registered a curious irritation at the notion of James Tresilian coaching a hundred and fifty miles in pursuit of an amorous vision. Somehow it lowered her opinion of him. – But she caught herself up: surely this was to think like her father – she would be talking of chasing hats next.

If it were Kate, however, who was behind the enterprise, she could only shake her head sadly. Watching Valentine preparing for his morning ride, pulling on skin-tight gloves and dusting specks from his mirror-like Hessians, she doubted whether his mind entertained a thought of any such person as Kate Tresilian existing in the world.

Mrs Spedding’s musical party was well attended: her large reception-rooms were filled to bursting. Accomplished amateurs of pianoforte and voice were to precede the harpist – a much-dressed lady, who seemed to have solved the question of choosing a costume for the evening by putting on everything at once. Among the guests were Mrs Murrow and her niece, the Golden Miss Astbury; who revealed herself to be a superb executant, but would play only a single piece, and calmly refused to return to the pianoforte afterwards. Mrs Spedding, who genuinely did like music, to the extent of tapping her fan in time and only talking quietly while it was playing, was in raptures; but Mrs Murrow at her side shook her wrapped-up head.

‘Well, well, I dare say she ought to receive some credit, indeed – for she practises dreadfully hard.’

‘Oh, but that is because she loves it – do you not, Miss Astbury?’ cried Mrs Spedding. ‘That is what you call a labour of love.’

‘Then I am afraid she loves it a good deal too much. I know it would give me a shocking headache to be always peering away at those little black notes: dear me, I can hardly bear to think of it.’

But Mrs Murrow reserved her dullest incomprehension for the harpist, about whose spirited performance she could only say: ‘I should think it must hurt her fingers dreadfully.’

‘The fingertips harden with use, Aunt,’ said Miss Astbury, who seemed to accord Mrs Murrow a firmly patient attention, as if she were a not very bright child.

‘Then I am sure her needlework must suffer for it – and then how will she contrive when she is old?’

As there seemed no appropriate reply to this, short of placing a bag over her head, Mrs Murrow’s question went unanswered; and Miss Astbury turning to Louisa asked: ‘Are you musical, Miss Carnell?’

‘Oh, not very – that is, I play indifferently and I listen with pleasure, but not much comprehension.’ This sounded to Louisa’s own ears faintly imbecilic: she added quickly: ‘I am fonder of reading.’

‘Indeed? Novels, I suppose.’

‘Some: but I much enjoy poetry – Cowper and Crabbe, and Scott too, but above all Lord Byron.’

‘Ah! I have met Lord Byron.’

‘Indeed? You astonish me. Not the circumstance, I mean, but – is he as fascinating as they say?’

Louisa was all agog: – but Miss Astbury’s smile was cool and quelling. ‘He is made a great fuss over, as man and poet; but the simple fact is, the irregularities of his private life cannot redeem him in either regard; and though there was a certain piquancy in the introduction, he was not a person with whom I could continue an acquaintance.’

And there was Byron dealt with! Louisa need no longer envy Miss Astbury’s having met him – it would be like envying a blind man the view from his window; and she did not trouble to defend her hero against so pitiable an attack. The supper interval was beginning: and Pearce Lynley, who so far had paid Louisa no further attention than a bow and greeting, was to be seen approaching. Whether he intended taking her in to supper there was no telling – for Mrs Spedding was quick to speak to him, and to introduce him to Miss Astbury. Here, Louisa thought, was an apt conjunction: in lofty self-regard and withering propriety they were evenly matched; and it was fitting that Mr Lynley presently gave Miss Astbury his arm to go in to supper, where they could ice the soup and chill the cutlets in concert.