A Little Folly (17 page)

Louisa hesitated. ‘Are you – are you not happily placed here, Miss Bowen?’

For the merest moment Miss Bowen’s reserve seemed on the point of yielding – then it was gone, her face resumed its distantly dutiful expression, and she said: ‘Thank you, I am very happily placed,’ in such tones as discouraged any further conversation.

Louisa pitied her: could only suspect that her real treatment in Mr Lynley’s employ was far from the indulgence that her being included at dinner was designed to suggest. Soon, however, her thoughts were in a happier train. – Lieutenant Lynley was the first to rejoin them: he sat first beside Sophie, but very soon found an opportunity to move to the place beside Louisa.

‘There – now I cannot be accused of monopolising you, and have spoilt several gossipy letters. “Lieutenant Lynley was very particular in his attentions to Miss Carnell” – oh, scratch it out. – You look a little troubled. Will you confide in me? Though don’t if the trouble is
very
tedious.’

‘Oh, I was a little concerned for Miss Bowen: she seems rather hipped.’

‘Poor creature: I begin to suspect that is her natural expression. I have tried to talk to her, but given it up. She is so very guarded – I am half afraid of her. I can never be comfortable with a companion who will not give
something
away, for then one can never gain an advantage over them.’

Louisa’s attention was then claimed by Lieutenant Lynley, so fully that Mary Bowen was forgotten: until, soon after the tea was drunk, she looked up to find that Miss Bowen was gone. – Pearce Lynley was just closing the drawing-room door, with a tight-lipped and forbidding expression, which remained on his face some time after he had resumed his seat by Mrs Spedding. Something had occurred, it seemed: whether it had been some error of conduct on Miss Bowen’s part, which had caused him to repent of his bold experiment in leniency, Louisa could not tell – but she thought it likely. As a reminder of the exacting arrogance of his nature, it was timely: for the image of his driving with Miss Astbury had imprinted itself on her mind with unexpected force; and if the glance he presently threw towards her and his brother were as displeased, even as jealous, as it appeared, then very well. – She thought Francis Lynley infinitely the superior; and though she quickly dismissed Sophie’s whispered remark in the carriage as they drove home – ‘My dear, I do believe you are beginning to be in love with Lieutenant Lynley!’ – it occurred to her that if she
were
to fall in love with him a little, it would be a very proper blow to Pearce Lynley’s pride; and such as it would be a pleasure as well as a virtue to administer.

T
he Tresilians being established in their new lodgings, it was incumbent that they call upon them – so pronounced Sophie, high priestess of the mysteries of calling. Tom accompanied her and Louisa to Lombard Street, not only out of civility but curiosity, for he declared with a faint shiver that he had never been so far east of town in his life; though as a novelty it must have disappointed, for the district appeared respectable, the people looked perfectly normal, and there was a sad scarcity of vulgarians sitting on piles of money or making bargains in the street while wearing excessively large top hats.

On the way Sophie rallied Louisa again about her fascination with Lieutenant Lynley.

‘Oh, not that I blame you: I could easily be half in love with him myself,’ she went on. ‘There is something about him that compels – and though he can be very charming, there is an exciting sort of suspense about that because sometimes he will cut it quite off, and go into a dark mood and seem not to care a hang for you. But, then, for someone to be
too
changeable is not pleasant; and so he shall not dislodge my dear Mr Tresilian from the first place in my affections. Certainly there is not that sparkle in Mr Tresilian – but his blunt, dry way is just as engaging; and it is always to be relied upon. If there were an earthquake or a volcano, you know, I should expect to find Mr Tresilian quite unchanged.’

‘Really, Sophie, you do talk a deal of gammon and humdudgeon,’ said Tom, who had plainly been in The Top’s company recently. ‘First place in your affections indeed! There must be a round dozen of gentlemen squeezing into
that
place, and that’s only to speak of this week. And it won’t do, you know, to be adding Tresilian to your list of beaux in that way. He’s a sober sort of fellow, not your drawing-room gadfly; and it is doing no justice to his character, or credit to your sense, to pretend otherwise.’

Fond as she was of Sophie, there was much in this with which Louisa felt ready to concur, though she did not suppose Sophie would take the slightest notice of it; but her cousin, instead of answering Tom in their usual tit-for-tat fashion, flushed and gazed out of the carriage window, before saying quietly: ‘You know a great deal about waistcoats, Tom; but nothing of the thing that beats beneath them, commonly called a heart. Mr Tresilian is different, and
I
have heart enough to feel it.’

There was something new and significant in this, which threw Louisa into a state of perturbation she could hardly account for. All her previous feelings about the relation between Sophie and Mr Tresilian, ranging from curious speculation to mild disquiet, were overthrown by a great negative. – This must not be. There was everything that was wrong, there was nothing that was right, in such a prospect as seemed to be afforded, of Sophie’s setting herself seriously at Mr Tresilian; and of his responding in kind, which was rendered probable by his evident fascination with her, and by that resemblance to his late wife, which Louisa’s fancy had converted into a certainty. In this tumult she entered the tall, frowning house in which the Tresilians had the first floor – the very foreignness of the place to everything she connected with them increasing her ominous sense of a great mistake hovering; but once received into the rather pleasant rooms, observing Kate’s gentle smile of welcome, Miss Rose’s particular contentment in finding a draught to sit in, and Mr Tresilian being pleased at the visit, but not excessively pleased, her fears began to subside. Sophie soon commenced beguiling him – yet only, it seemed, in the usual way, and employing the same weapons she fired at any number of potential conquests; and Mr Tresilian seemed rather preoccupied than otherwise.

At length, when Sophie was looking over some new music that Kate had purchased, and both were trying to explain to Tom that the black notes were not the same as the black keys on the pianoforte, Mr Tresilian spoke to Louisa aside.

‘I need to talk to you privately. Can you contrive to meet me? Say Berkeley Square at noon.’

‘An assignation, Mr Tresilian? Very public – and hence very provocative,’ she said, recalling his words in the theatre. But she failed to elicit a smile; neither did she feel as light-hearted as she sounded; and as they returned to Hill Street, she began to fear that no words could have been more ill-chosen.

It was a simple enough matter to slip out to Berkeley Square at the appointed time: everyone was allowed to come and go as they liked in the Spedding household, and the footman at the door wore a consciously tactful look, as one accustomed to a world of flirtations and little intrigues. At this Louisa felt some irritation. Must the human heart only skim across such insubstantial surfaces? The clouded brow, the mercurial speech of Francis Lynley, which were continually recurring to her mind, surely suggested otherwise.

Mr Tresilian, soon to be seen briskly walking towards her across the sun-bleached square, appeared to have regained some of his usual equanimity; but taking her arm he began without preamble: ‘I hope you were not alarmed: I mean no great secrets – but still it was impossible to speak of it earlier. – I have been another jaunt with Valentine, which is why I look so deathly, and why this sunshine is an abomination.’ He frowned: not so much at the sun, she thought, as at her. ‘Did you know he has been going almost every night to Lady Harriet’s faro-house?’

‘I – I hardly know how to answer that question, Mr Tresilian.’

‘A bafflingly complex one, I admit. Try narrowing it down to yes or no.’

‘It is not something he has spoken to me about,’ she said, recovering herself. ‘Nor would I expect him to. How Valentine chooses to spend his time is, you know, quite his own affair.’

‘I see. – You will not, then, want an account of the evening I spent with him there: night, rather. And morning, come to that.’

‘You seem to think I should,’ she said, greatly disliking her own brittle tone: but it was the thin ice on the deepest unease. ‘But, come, as to his going almost every night, I cannot devise how you know
that
, from the evidence of a single occasion.’

‘Because he is treated as quite a fixture there, and appears quietly proud of the fact. Certainly, once was enough for me: I never knew anything so wearisome. I had not even the entertainment of The Top to divert me. Apparently he goes there a good deal, but just now they tell me – what was it? Ah, yes, his pockets are to let. Oh, yes, they all talk like that: but they are poor things compared to The Top: they cannot keep up that meticulous, unvarying idiocy.’

‘But, Mr Tresilian, if it was merely dull, I do not see the need for this—’

‘It was dull for me, because I do not like throwing away money on the turn of a card. And that is all there is to faro: it is a game of pure chance. But they all talk solemnly of their luck running with them or against them, as if there were such a thing. Otherwise they are a mixed set: young gallants with half-broken voices, liverish old roués still in hair-powder. They gather about a great mahogany table, drinking rather indifferent wine, while this decayed little man, who looks like a notary laid low by fraud, deals the cards. And there is a great brute in rusty livery who goes about trimming the candles, and minding admittance at the door.’ Mr Tresilian grunted. ‘High life indeed!’

The picture was, she was compelled to admit, not a pretty one: though allowances must be made, she thought, for the sturdy prejudices of Mr Tresilian, who was after all a little of the puritan. ‘And what of Lady Harriet? What does she do?’

‘Plays the hostess: and I mean plays, for this is the great pretence she must carry off, in case the magistrates look in – that these are simply her friends, gathering for an evening of elegant society, which happens to include cards. So she tries to make conversation, and stop them quarrelling and swearing too many oaths; and this she must keep up till three and four in the morning, which is when the play is deepest. And it is plain that none of them, with one notable exception, holds her in the slightest respect, or considers her as anything but the convenient provider of a gaming haunt.’

‘I pity her,’ Louisa said, shaking her head.

‘Yes: it is a great pity to see a woman with such advantages, and no lack of intelligence, finding no other resource than such barren stupidity,’ he said, with more harshness than sympathy.

‘You spoke of an exception. – You must mean Valentine.’

‘Aye: he is quite the courtier to her,’ Mr Tresilian said; and then fixed his grey eyes on the distance, as if contemplating a sea with an ominously heavy swell on it.

‘Well, so he has always been. Perhaps it is unfortunate – in the eyes of the world, which is always quick to judgement. But I am sure there is a nobility in his feeling, which—’

‘Yes, no doubt there is, but nobility has a hard time of it in that establishment, believe me. And I would be easier if he could contrive to play the knight-errant without squandering his money. Yes, he plays. He did not go at it like some of those fools, at least while I was there; but I heard one of them remark that he was devilish close-fisted tonight; and I calculate he must have lost near a hundred guineas before I could persuade him home.’

Louisa stopped dead. ‘A
hundred
? But that is terribly deep play surely. I should not be able to sleep if I lost so much.’

‘I should not be able to sleep for crying. But I dare say it is small beer in those sorts of circles, where wins and losses of thousands are gaily talked of. I don’t like it – but if he is set upon throwing good gold away, I cannot prevent him.’

‘I suppose, again, it is a way of rendering service to Lady Harriet,’ Louisa said doubtfully: the strong sun was oppressive, and seemed to scatter her thoughts like rolling coins.

‘Hm. You have not heard the worst of it. Very late there came a great knocking and commotion at Lady Harriet’s door. The liveried brute tried to keep the interloper out, but he was brushed aside, and the next moment he was in the room. – Lady Harriet’s husband: Colonel Eversholt. So I very soon collected, as he began announcing the fact very loudly – and adding, equally loudly, that he had every right to be under this roof, and we had none. I hardly know how to describe him to you: if I say impressive, I may give an idea that is too favourable.’

‘I know: I have met him. – Go on, Mr Tresilian.’

‘Have you? I hope when you made the acquaintance he was not so foxed as I saw him last night. Not incapable, though: not ungovernable, despite his being in such a passion. There was something mighty purposeful about him. He abused Lady Harriet broadly for blackening his name, and further lowering it by maintaining such a resort of vice as this: – still, he was insistent on the injury done to him as a deserted husband, and claimed that he had done everything to achieve a reconciliation: urged her to give up these flagrant courses and return to him. The brute was hovering, but as the colonel said quite coolly that he would shoot him if he advanced a step, he kept his distance. It was all very uncomfortable.’

‘Uncomfortable!’ said Louisa, aghast. ‘I should think it a good deal more than that. But as for shooting – he is known, surely, as a great braggart, and then he was drunk … What did –’ she stopped herself saying
Valentine
‘– what did Lady Harriet do?’

‘Bore it all very quietly: asked him to leave, which of course he would not; barely trembled, though no doubt she is used to him. She did choose to marry him, after all.’

It was not the first matrimonial choice to be an honest mistake, Louisa thought – but she would not say so to him; and her mind was occupied with an anxious surmise about what was to come next.

‘Well, it was Valentine who stood up to him at last. – Oh, he was quite restrained: he is learning to carry his wine, and he was moderate in his expressions; said he was a guest in Lady Harriet’s house, and as such considered her word was law, and if she had asked
him
to leave, he would have done so at once; urged the colonel to consider what was due to her as a lady and to himself as a gentleman. You wince.’

‘The sun. He did not – he did not attempt anything rash?’

‘He did not come to blows, or bare his breast to the colonel’s pistol, if that is what you mean. But such is the man’s reputation, and his evident temper, that any interference may be regarded as rash. Colonel Eversholt demanded to know his name, and what he meant by coming between him and his wife. That was when Valentine coloured up, and told him he was damned well not wanted there – and then I thought I had better try my four-penn’orth, as it was turning a little ugly. I spoke up very Devonshire, and made a great noise about wanting to win back my losses at the faro-table, not having long left in Lunnon, and how the colonel was spoiling the game: how I knew the law right enough, and if this house was let in the lady’s name he had no rights there, and I’d fetch the Watch if he didn’t leave us be. It diverted his attention, at least; but I don’t know how it might have gone on, if Lady Harriet had not at last promised him faithfully she would see him tomorrow; and with that he left, still very bitter, and glaring like a cockerel at everyone. But especially at Valentine.’

‘I don’t know what to say,’ breathed Louisa, feeling her heart return to its accustomed place, after a short residence in her mouth. ‘I was almost about to wish that Valentine were not so generous in his feelings – but that is surely a terrible thing to wish.’

‘No, a sensible one. I told him so. I was afraid we might have a falling-out over it, but it had to be done. The fact is, if he sets himself up as Lady Harriet’s protector, then he must expect people to see him as – yes, her
protector
in the other sense; and no amount of railing against the shallow proprieties of society, I told him, will alter it.’

‘You do not believe he—’ She stopped again: unable to move, or speak further, so acutely divided was she between shock and embarrassment; though the chief portion of embarrassment lay in the fact that she had secretly, and very deep down, wondered this herself.

‘I do not believe,’ he said in a low tone. ‘And not only because of the vehemence of his protests when I said it. I simply consider he has too much sense and delicacy for that. But there, we did not quite fall out in the end: he was able to soothe himself at last by laughing at me, and saying I was a sad, blundering innocent. Rather like having your father back, in a way.’