A Little Folly (21 page)

In a moment Louisa was decided. – She would go and see Lady Harriet: not to complain or upbraid, but to hear what she had to say, and discover whether there were anything in it that might help them to a solution. It was, besides, doing something: anything was better than this helpless suspense; and she was so eager for activity that she walked to Jermyn Street, taking a wrong turning on the way, and arriving very hot and thirsty.

Lady Harriet’s house was not difficult to find: it was tall, squeezed, soot-blackened and very forlorn in its tottering grandeur. A yawning maid admitted her, and a large ugly man, whom she took to be the brute of Mr Tresilian’s account, put his head out of a little room like a counting-house to bestow a stare on her. At last she was bidden to walk up. These, then, were the dusty stairs that gentlemen ascended to the enticements of the faro-bank; and coming to the open doors of a large saloon, she presumed this was where the business was enacted. She saw a great table, and a half-broken chandelier that gave the effect of a mouth with missing teeth, and a good many of the kind of ornate mirrors that seem designed only to become fly-blown. Probably it all looked better at night: it certainly could not look less prepossessing by day; and she found a moment to be thankful that Francis Lynley had never been drawn in by such dismal temptations as these.

Lady Harriet, however, received her in an altogether brighter room: a small parlour, which, though faded, bore evidence of her own touch. Hastily she moved some books and fashion-papers so that Louisa might sit down; then, seating herself, she held up a white hand.

‘Miss Carnell – one word first. I know why you have come. Let me say that I would have given anything – anything – for this not to have occurred. And that once said, I give it over entirely to you. Whatever you wish to say, whatever reproach you wish to lay upon me, I am content to hear. You cannot think worse of me than I do.’

‘Lady Harriet, I do not come to reproach you – at least— I hardly know where to begin. I felt that I
must
see you, because of the dreadful communication Valentine has received from Colonel Eversholt. You do know the substance of it?’

‘Certainly,’ Lady Harriet said, with a ghostly smile. ‘I have received just such a communication. My husband seeks to pursue a crim-con suit against Mr Carnell. He tells me that he is simultaneously notifying the gentleman, as he gracefully puts it. Was the letter very insulting?’

‘It was … not pleasant. It could hardly be so – but then it is not the letter, you must understand, it is everything that it promises, or threatens. I am not experienced in these matters, but I am well able to understand that such an action is most serious in its consequences – even calamitous.’

Lady Harriet nodded. She went to a side-table and poured two glasses of canary wine; then asked quietly, with lowered lashes: ‘How has your brother taken it?’

‘He is greatly distressed,’ Louisa said, ‘angry, indignant. – But all chiefly on your behalf.’

Lady Harriet nodded again, biting her lip; then drew a deep breath and brought over the glass of wine. ‘And you do not come here to reproach me! You are more generous than I fear I could be in such a situation. But then – if you will allow me to say so – you are very like your brother, in all ways.’

‘All I seek to do is help Valentine. I cannot conceive that reproaches could do that – even if they were deserved,’ Louisa said carefully.

‘Oh, but they are.’ Lady Harriet drank her wine quickly. ‘The fault is entirely mine. I should never have encouraged Valentine – Mr Carnell, I should say – even to that degree of innocent friendship which appears so damning in my husband’s eyes. I was often telling him that we ought not to be on such familiar terms – that we should not be so much together – but I know I did not tell him so with sufficient force. Because my heart gave my tongue the lie. I valued his company: I felt alive again. I even felt, yes, a woman. You saw, I dare say, the room where I keep my faro-bank? Delightful, is it not? Imagine it night after night filled with dull gamers: the heaviness, the low wit and rancour and greed. Instead, there is Mr Carnell – lively and sympathetic, quite the paladin indeed; and coming there because he sought my society, not the sordid commodity I supplied.’

‘All the same, he has played at faro here,’ Louisa said gently, ‘and lost by it.’

Lady Harriet shrugged. ‘It is as I said: I expect, and accept, every reproach. I may as well say that I urged him not to lay heavy stakes. But of course I should have urged him not to come at all … You said he is angry.’

‘Yes. Not with you: he is above all angry that your character will be defamed.’

Lady Harriet laughed shortly. ‘Believe me, I care nothing for that. Whatever ill name my husband cares to pin upon me, let it be. But for the others involved – there I do care, greatly. There is not only Mr Carnell. Your own name will be tainted by association with such a scandal.’

‘Because I am Valentine Carnell’s sister?’ said Louisa, her heart swelling. ‘Why, I can imagine no circumstance in which that would ever be anything but the greatest pride to me.’

Lady Harriet shook her head. ‘You
are
like him. Good and true … But I should be glad to know, Louisa, that you are in a position whereby you will lose nothing – nothing immediately precious to you, in esteem or affection – if it should come to a public suit, with all the gossip, the notoriety, the stigma that such must bring.’

‘Be assured of that,’ Louisa said, with Francis Lynley’s crooked, sardonic smile before her mind’s eye. ‘But you say
if
it should come. Lady Harriet, do you have any hope that it may not? Any intimation that your husband does not intend all that he says in this letter?’

‘Hope – perhaps: but I have lived on hope with Colonel Eversholt these past few years, and am like to die fasting. It was hope that kept me by him when every sensible consideration spoke against it: hope that he would – not reform or improve, but simply be again the man I married.’

‘You speak as if you still have some feeling for him,’ Louisa said, observing her inward look. ‘If it is so, then could you not use your persuasions with him, Lady Harriet? If approached by you, urged by you, might he not see reason?’

‘That is exactly what he does not see, when he is near me,’ Lady Harriet said, with a rueful smile, and a shiver. ‘And I dare say that goes for both of us. If we had ever been in a way to be rational with one another, then none of this … But I will try. He may refuse to see me: and if he is indeed set on this legal process, then he would be correct not to.’

Louisa hesitated. ‘I wonder … if Colonel Eversholt were to hear it from your own lips that there had been – no impropriety—’

‘As
you
wish to hear it from my own lips, I think, Miss Carnell?’ Lady Harriet said, her dark eyes glittering.

For a moment Louisa could not meet them. ‘Doubtless it is a thing we should not talk of,’ she murmured.

‘Oh, it will all be talked off, in great and humiliating detail, come the court case,’ Lady Harriet said, going again to the decanter. She paused, weighing the glass in her hand. ‘I will approach him, yes, Miss Carnell, you have my promise. Anything I can do to avert this … But the difficulty is, my husband will tend to see any approach from me as a move towards reconciliation. And that there can never be. Not now – now I have had my eyes opened to what the word
gentleman
truly means. I can never consent to have them blinded again.’

Her assurance that she would try was given again before Louisa, refusing more wine, took her leave: she seemed in earnest, pressed Louisa’s hand tenderly, and thanked her for her understanding. – It was something, but not enough to satisfy Louisa, who felt that Lady Harriet was still as wistfully wrapped up in the ideal of their situation as Valentine: a beautiful ideal, no doubt, but not one that the world would handle gently. Fatigued but restless, she returned to Hill Street, impatient for the return of Valentine and Mr Tresilian, and anxious lest the Speddings return first, for there would be an end of the possibility of their talking confidentially.

There was luck: Valentine and Mr Tresilian were first, and could give her an account of their meeting with the lawyer – or, rather, Mr Tresilian could, for Valentine, after the first affectionate and even desperate squeeze of Louisa’s hand, retreated into a withdrawn and brooding temper.

‘He is going privately to consult with a friend, another lawyer, more experienced in these matters,’ Mr Tresilian told her, ‘just laying it out as a hypothetical case – no names. But in the meantime he suggests that a letter in reply to Colonel Eversholt’s would be expedient. Letters count for a great deal in such a case. A letter simply stating innocence of the charge – nothing humble, of course, nothing supplicating,’ he added hurriedly, glancing at Valentine standing rigid and high-shouldered at the window. ‘And adding that the respondent is prepared to meet the colonel, without prejudice, to discuss the matter, at the address of some neutral party. Nothing more than that. – I think it our best first course, as soon as it can be managed.’

The look he gave Louisa was not lost on her; and as soon as he was gone, with promises to wait upon them tomorrow, with any new advice he could gather, she gently urged Valentine to the writing of such a letter. ‘So I will,’ was his firm reply, and he actually sat down and began it: but the arrival home of Mrs Spedding and their cousins enforced an interruption he seemed not greatly to regret. After dinner, Louisa persuaded him to his room, and to a second attempt at the communication: stood by, while trying not to stand by, as he wrote it; but very soon he threw down his pen, declared that he could not settle his mind to it, and announced his intention of going out.

‘I must – I shall go mad lingering here, and gnawing over everything. It will do me no good, nor this intolerable business in hand,’ he said, and at Louisa’s look, or the look he chose to see, he added: ‘I want only air and a change of scene. I do not mean
there
. If you will simply allow me to go to the club with Tom, it is all I engage for.’

She guessed from his asperity that he was mentally addressing Mr Tresilian rather than her; and quietly acceded. Still, she could not sleep until she had heard him come in – at a reasonable hour, which suggested he had kept his promise – and even after that, lay long awake. She feared that the worst part of this for Valentine was his separation from Lady Harriet: that even now he was not seeing the matter straight, in all its gravity and momentousness.

Mr Tresilian was back the next morning and, after presenting only the briefest compliments to the Speddings, bore Valentine off again. There was the lawyer to see; and letters to be written, not only to the colonel but to Valentine’s banker and the steward at Pennacombe, so that the state of his finances could be assessed. Mr Tresilian was all blunt briskness, as he had need to be, so despondent was Valentine’s mood; but he found a moment in the hall before leaving to address Louisa.

‘And what of you? You bear up well, I hope.’

‘Certainly. I have to.’

He nodded his understanding. ‘Well, things may yet be retrieved. But it is a sad interruption for you.’

He did not say of what; and she presumed he referred to his accusation about her ‘game’ with the Lynley brothers. Well, it was to be hoped he would find time to reflect on that. How mean, how petty those strictures appeared, now something so truly destructive was upon them! But, then, he had not seemed himself that night; and she wondered if the entanglement with Sophie had been preying on his spirits. She would have warned him against it – but
she
was not so eager as others to take on the gratifying role of dispenser of advice.

In the meantime she had conceived a scheme of her own that might be instrumental in Valentine’s salvation. It was entirely her own – not to be mentioned to anyone. There would be – from Mr Tresilian surely, and Valentine probably – heavy objections. But men, she considered, did not understand everything: they knew all about the best roads to take, but never thought of the path across the fields. What she had in mind could not, she felt, harm their cause: it might even be the deciding factor: let events reveal. It meant she must cry off again from spending the morning with her aunt and Sophie – whose eyes glinted when she was told.

‘My dear, town has made you a delightfully mysterious creature! Well, let me just mention that we intend calling on the Lynleys today; and if you like, I can apologise for your strange absence, at least to
one
of the gentlemen – I shall not say both.’

‘I fear no misunderstanding in that quarter,’ she answered calmly.

Louisa perfectly recollected the address at the head of Colonel Eversholt’s letter; and once the Speddings were gone, she dressed with particular care, then took a hackney there.

S
ilver’s Hotel, off the Strand, proved to be a very masculine establishment: sporting and military in character – leathery and horsy; the yard filled with curricles and gigs, and bow-legged men smacking their palms with riding-crops and talking about rigs and turn-outs. There were more of the same in the public rooms, along with half-pay officers lounging and smoking and drowsing over newspapers, and young bucks after the pattern of The Top, working hard to perfect the cold, vacant smirk that would establish them at the pinnacle of fashion. Louisa found that, apart from the barmaid in the tap-room, she was the only woman there; and when she gave her name to the waiter, and asked if Colonel Eversholt would see her, she received a vast stare, and the most dubious nod ever accorded. He returned to tell her the gentleman was out; and stared harder when she said she would wait in the coffee-room, and asked him to notify her when the colonel returned.

She was prepared to wait, however long it took; but she was not quite prepared for the interest she excited. The waiter came back every quarter-hour or so, simply to stare at her again; and every lounger and strutter took her in at his leisure – which was the one thing they all seemed to have an abundance of, though lacking any notion of how to make use of it. At last she took up one of the newspapers: it had nothing in it she would have called news; instead abundant reports of famous guns, close-run battle royals, estimable gamecocks, fillies and hacks, all so dull and bewildering that she might as well have essayed reading Latin. It struck her, however, as she sat on through the vinous fug and the loud, hard talk, that the spheres of the male and the female were much more profoundly separate than was commonly realised; and it seemed less surprising that so many marriages turned out unhappily, when the two creatures involved came from such different worlds.

The morning had almost worn away, and with it her resolution, when at last the waiter appeared with Colonel Eversholt at his side.

‘Miss Carnell. I am told you wish to see me.’

‘Yes. Thank you, Colonel Eversholt.’

The waiter would have upheld his privilege of standing and staring: but a look from the colonel sent him scurrying away.

‘You come alone?’ Colonel Eversholt said. His manner, his expression betrayed nothing but a neutral politeness; but Louisa already believed him more given to self-command than his reputation indicated – and felt it made him more, not less, formidable.

‘Yes, sir – and on a matter of some urgency, which is why I have waited on you here. As the matter is also of some delicacy, I would be glad if we were able to speak confidentially.’

‘Certainly. That can hardly be done here: I have a set of rooms upstairs, but you may doubt the propriety of attending me there. Speaking for myself, I can only say that I am a man of honour: that in itself should obviate any scruple. If, however, you had brought your maid—’

‘I have no maid, Colonel, and I rest absolutely secure in your honour.’

He bowed: the little pursing of his lips as he led the way suggested that he was rather susceptible to compliment, but she cautioned herself against overdoing it.

His sitting-room was everything she expected of a hotel lodging – well-appointed in a faintly shabby way; and she noted how very little impress of himself he had placed on it. He was after all, she thought, a man without a fixed home. But her eye fell quickly on a miniature portrait propped on the mantelshelf. – It was of Lady Harriet. He followed her gaze, and frowned; and for a moment she felt herself a great intruder and meddler, before she recovered her purpose.

‘Colonel Eversholt, you are probably aware of what has brought me here,’ she began, trying to keep her voice level and calm. ‘My brother and I have no secrets from one another; and given the – the purpose you have avowed to him in your letter, there can be no question of secrecy. If you hold to that purpose, then in time it will be rather a matter of the greatest and most pitiless publicity.’

‘That is the case: yes. And it might have been better if your brother had thought of it before he subjected
me
to the humiliating publicity attendant on his consorting with my wife.’ Colonel Eversholt went from restraint to vehemence with startling suddenness: indeed, he seemed even to have surprised himself, for he coughed and smoothed back his thick wings of hair with a slightly unsteady hand. For the first time she detected a faint smell of liquor. ‘But I must say, Miss Carnell, I wonder at your hardihood, in coming here to talk of such things. The mention of them is extremely repugnant to my feelings – and must be still more so to a young woman situated as you are. But let me guess: your brother has sent you to try what youth and beauty may do in extenuation of his mortal offence.’

‘My brother knows nothing of my coming here, Colonel. I may as well say, as you will hear it soon enough, that he certainly intends contesting any such suit as you threaten to bring, on grounds of his, and the lady’s, complete innocence.’

‘Indeed? I wish him well of that.’ The colonel did not sit: he stood large and braced by the fireplace, his eyes on the ashes, as if seeing there an emblem of his situation. ‘There is, my dear madam, plentiful evidence to the contrary, much though it grieves me to offend your innocence by saying so. I fear your brother may have misled you: a deception that I fear must be added to the catalogue of his trespasses.’

‘As I said, sir, Valentine and I have no secrets from one another. I know well that he has been a frequent habitué of Lady Harriet’s faro-bank: that he has been seen with her in public. I myself saw them together at the theatre – and thought it very ill-advised. But if you were to understand, sir, a little more of Valentine’s history, his character, then I hope you would begin to see that a quite different interpretation may be placed on this evidence. I do not deny,’ she hurried on, as his chin went sharply up, ‘that his conduct has been indiscreet and imprudent – that it has indeed laid him open to such imputations. But I am all the more able to believe his earnest protestations of innocence, from having viewed the progress of his acquaintance with Lady Harriet since her stay at Pennacombe – and having viewed him from a youth in which such an acquaintance was entirely outside his scope.’

‘Come, now, Miss Carnell. If you would seek to persuade, you had better not try to delude. Whatever might be my private feelings about Mr Carnell, I know he is a gentleman of good family, with an estate of five thousand a year. This does not place him out of Lady Harriet’s circle – as far as
acquaintance
goes.’

He had made sure, she noted, of assessing Valentine’s fortune. ‘Certainly – under the usual circumstances. But my brother and I shared an exceptionally sheltered upbringing, Colonel, under the tutelage of a father with strong, even eccentric views about the liberty, or lack of it, to be extended to young people; and the greatest mistrust of society. Until his death last year we had known nothing grander than the odd country assembly: we had never visited a watering-place, let alone London; we had never even received company at Pennacombe.’

‘Indeed. It is all the more regrettable that your father’s jealous care should produce, in his son at least, such unhappy results,’ Colonel Eversholt said, in his softest, most implacable tones.

‘It was a care that – not to speak ill of my father – was I fear likely to produce some distortion. But I do not mean in the direction of excess. I feel that I can say this to you, Colonel, because I know a little of the history of your and Lady Harriet’s marriage.’

She half expected an eruption: but he only inclined his head. It reminded her, curiously, of being in the drawing-room of the rectory at Pennacombe, where Dr Sayles’s large and temperamental hound would lie by the hearth, unperturbed by loud noises or sudden movements, but twitching and growling at the most trifling gesture or quiet remark.

‘From what I understand,’ she went on, feeling uncommonly dry-mouthed, ‘there was much that was unfortunate in the disposition of Lady Harriet’s family – an alternation between neglect and vindictiveness; and when she married the gentleman, the perfectly eligible gentleman of her choice, both she and he were to suffer quite unnaturally.’

‘You are well informed,’ he said: then shrugged. ‘To be sure, it was common knowledge. We were shockingly robbed of our expectations.’

‘And this is what I mean by the distortion of early influences. You and Lady Harriet married, I am sure, in good faith and for love, and could not conceive how any other construction could be laid upon it. What the world sees, and what we see, may be entirely different. So it is with Valentine. Colonel Eversholt, I truly believe that what Valentine feels for Lady Harriet, as it has always been since she first came to Pennacombe, is admiration: admiration in the purest sense, like a courtier to a queen. He had never known anyone like her, and was dazzled, and remains so, I think – to such an extent that he is blind to the appearances of propriety, and shocked to find that anyone can view his relation with her in any other light than that of chivalry.’

Colonel Eversholt gazed soberly at her for several seconds; then burst into a shout of laughter. ‘Oh, dear me. Oh, Miss Carnell, forgive me, but I really cannot help myself.’ The laughter stopped abruptly, though a sort of smile remained. ‘Your upbringing, at least, must have been positively cloistered if you can believe such a transparent fiction about the nature of your brother’s
admiration
. No, I am afraid he has been trading on your trusting good nature, madam: and so more shame to him.’

Louisa hesitated for a moment before the plunge. ‘Colonel Eversholt, I have of course only heard one side of the story concerning your marriage. But I do believe you still love Lady Harriet.’ She mentally added the qualification
after your fashion
.

He flushed. ‘I do not care for the turn this conversation is taking. I should be sorry to have to use the term
impudence
to a lady whom I have hitherto found it easy to respect.’

‘And I am sorry to press you in this way – but there is so much at stake for us, as you surely know, that I must dispense with formalities. They are after all not much observed, I think, in the debtor’s prison. I cannot conceive how you would wish to see – how you could bear to see Lady Harriet placed under all the humiliating scrutiny of a crim-con suit.’

‘Plainly you cannot conceive it, Miss Carnell, because you accord nothing to my sense of honour. I do not choose to make a parade of it, but the injury to my sense of honour is great: indeed it is intolerable.’

Ten thousand pounds, however, would make it tolerable, she thought; but she must be careful not to allow these thoughts to show on her face: he was no fool. ‘I hope I am not insensible to such a feeling, sir. And I would not have addressed you thus, if I had not believed you susceptible to just those kind of finer feelings – honour, delicacy, and perhaps the peculiar chivalry that has inspired my brother to his unfortunate association with Lady Harriet.’

‘I am very far from convinced that this finer feeling exists on his part,’ the colonel said, throwing her a shrewd look. ‘But let us suppose that it does: why, then, the chivalry? It is traditionally extended to women in distress. Is it thus that he sees my wife? Does he consider
her
the wronged and deserted one? Does he, in fact, take her part against me?’

‘If so, then – then it is in the same idealistic spirit, I am sure,’ Louisa said desperately, ‘and of course no one is in a position to judge the rights and wrongs of such a situation except the parties themselves. But, Colonel, Valentine has – as I have – so very little experience of these things, and of the way the world moves, that his errors are rather to be expected than wondered at.’ She found a moment to wonder, indeed, what Valentine would make of this countrified innocent she was painting him: she doubted he would like it at all – but with luck he would never know. ‘And I believe that he will absolutely undertake to forgo the society of Lady Harriet, permanently, if by that road an understanding may be reached.’

He smiled greyly. ‘Do you really believe that, or do you wish to believe it? Oh, Miss Carnell, you must not misunderstand me. I am far from welcoming the noisome attention, the scandal, the ignorant notice that must be taken of both my wife and myself by a recourse to law: it is entirely loathsome to me. But there is no other resort, it seems to me, for a man in my position.’

‘But if I may venture to suggest – there is another: that of believing my whole-hearted assurance that my brother is guilty of nothing more than ill-judgement. A belief that once accepted offers you a further comfort: that of knowing Lady Harriet to be entirely innocent also.’

‘Ah, a comfort: when half the town believes otherwise.’ Frowning, Colonel Eversholt drew out his watch. ‘Your pardon, Miss Carnell, I have an engagement; and it is besides too repulsive to my feelings further to talk of these things.’ Suddenly he offered her what seemed a genuine smile. ‘I will say, however, that I do not think I could have endured it even thus far, with anyone else. Your brother is more fortunate in his advocate than his conduct deserves. But I make no undertakings, madam, other than to assure you I will think on what you have said. Nothing in it presently inclines me to any other course than injured nature demands; but you have my word that I will not dismiss it from my mind.’

With this, as he opened the door and stood waiting, Louisa had to be content: but she was far from thinking it the worst result that could have been achieved. His pride and pomposity she must allow for: the greed and cupidity that Mr Tresilian attributed to him was unlikely to be easily conquered. But she was not hopeless of successfully appealing to his feeling for Lady Harriet: she had observed that he did not once allow his eyes to rest on her portrait, which seemed to her as revealing as if he had sighed over it. And if alongside that she had introduced a little doubt that his suit would be successful, then some breach had been made in what she had feared was an impassable wall; and she even dared to think it possible, though not probable, that his simple humanity might be reached through the same opening.