A Little Folly (3 page)

Mr Lynley was a notable man in the district. He had succeeded to the neighbouring estate of Hythe at a young age, and had at once proved himself more than equal to its responsibilities. Here was all the prompt forcefulness, and indisposition to have his will opposed for a moment, that her father must approve. Beyond that, Mr Lynley, though only five years Louisa’s senior, possessed a degree of reserve, of cool self-possession and disinclination to think well of the world as befitted an older man; and all of these qualities recommended him to her father, who disliked youth on principle. That he was wealthy and of good family went without saying – her father esteemed no one who was not: but equally important, there was no fashionable extravagant nonsense about him.

The admiration was returned. Mr Lynley accorded her father a respect that, given his own fortune and standing, could have nothing to do with fear or calculation. He seemed to find Sir Clement’s strictness perennially refreshing, and heard even his most extreme pronouncements with his dry thin smile of assent. As to his admiration of
her
– which was to be assumed, since Mr Lynley showed perfect willingness to go along with her father’s plans – Louisa could only be grateful that he did not trouble himself to give it expression. She was scarcely equal to the prospect of being marked out for a man whom she disliked as much as she disliked Pearce Lynley; and could not have endured it if he had added to his vast assurance the urgency of the lover.

There was no sign of this, however. He seemed to have assessed her as a well-bred young woman who would be a thoroughly suitable match, whose fifteen thousand pounds would make a comfortable addition to a comfortable income, and who – being well trained by her upbringing – must be sensible of her good fortune in having her marital destiny so easily laid out before her. There had indeed been, shortly before her father’s death, strong hints from Mr Lynley that he was ready to declare himself – or, rather, to enter into possession, like a man foreclosing on a mortgage. But circumstances had carried him quite out of the neighbourhood for the whole of the succeeding time. – He had been on a long visit to his maternal grandmother, who was in sole possession of a large property in Nottinghamshire, and was accustomed to rely on him for the direction of her affairs.

It had been for Louisa a blessed absence. Her detestation of Pearce Lynley was so complete that she could easily acquit herself of not liking him simply because her father wished otherwise. This was not rebellion: this was choice. There was nothing displeasing about Mr Lynley’s person, for he was a handsome, imposing man; but the arrogance and superiority of his manner repelled her, and she found in his presence a chill, a want of humanity that jarred on her deepest sensibilities. He was, perhaps, all too reminiscent of her father; but where Louisa, being of a warm, quick, affectionate nature, could not help but love her father even when he was oppressing her with unhappiness, she was under no such obligation to Mr Lynley. The news of his imminent return to Devonshire roused at first the old feeling of dismay; but it was quickly followed by something much livelier and sharper: Pearce Lynley now lacked an advocate. Valentine did not much care for him, and liberty of choice was in any case to be the first principle of their new life together; and so when Mr Lynley next brought his vast assurance to Pennacombe House he would encounter only Louisa’s true feelings, hitherto obscured by evasion and trammelled by duty.

So she joined in with Valentine’s preparations for a revolutionary dinner; still she remained cautious enough to gasp a little at the number of wines he proposed, and when, on the Thursday, she passed Dr Sayles in the village on his high-bred hunter, she suffered a guilty pang. But when she thought of Pearce Lynley, the flag of defiance waved high. She even had a curious dream, in which the fire-screen was painted not with cherubs but with various representations of Mr Lynley’s face; and instead of consigning it to a spare room, she was taking great pleasure in throwing it on to a merry bonfire.

‘I
am so very glad to welcome you to Pennacombe again,’ Louisa told Mrs Lappage, ‘and I am sorry that – well, I regret that we have not been able to do so for such a long time. The circumstances being – oh, Lord, how difficult it is!’

‘My dear Louisa, don’t say another word. I have never pretended to be a clever woman, but one thing I can claim to possess is discretion. Believe me, there is absolutely nothing that
you
, or dear Valentine, have the slightest need to apologise for. If offence lies anywhere, it lies in an
entirely
different quarter – but that I will not even allude to. And how well you are looking! Quite a brilliancy in your complexion! Valentine too – such elegance – such a taking figure. It has been a sad long winter for you, my dear, in more ways than one – but there, I won’t allude to it. I hope I have more discretion than that.’

Mrs Lappage, a neat, small woman prettily faded, like good wallpaper in a sunny room, was all unaffected pleasure at finding herself in the drawing-room at Pennacombe House. Her smiles, her civility were universal – as was her observation; and her eyes brightened most keenly whenever their glance fell on some change or innovation.

‘I cannot help remarking, my dear, how very much lighter and airier it is in here than my remembrance. The removal of those heavy brocades, I fancy. And was that not John Colley’s youngest daughter I saw in the hall? A very pretty, pleasant girl, I am sure she will do well – and poor Mrs Deene has long needed more help, though it was never seen in certain quarters. But you need not fear I shall make any allusion to that, my dear. I should be a very blundering insensible creature if I did. Yes, Mr Lappage, did you want me?’

Mr Lappage, however, did not: this little appeal being a reflexive habit in Mrs Lappage, to make sure her husband had not gone to sleep.

The small party was completed by a family with whom Louisa and Valentine had long been on close terms. The Tresilians, as Valentine had said, would surely come. During Sir Clement’s time they had been among the few visitors who were, if not exactly welcomed, at least tolerated at Pennacombe House. Old Mr Tresilian, dead some half a dozen years since, had begun as a merchant shipping china-clay out of Teignmouth, and had risen swiftly to riches and eminence. He had built himself a good house inland, a short ride from Pennacombe, and there lived in such a respectable manner that Sir Clement felt himself able to ignore his origins and speak well of him, his good opinion being further secured by old Mr Tresilian’s temper, which tended to the dour and severe. His only son had inherited The Ridings, and the substantial shipping interests, and was a considerable man in the district – but he had revealed a terrible flaw in his character.

James Tresilian had married very young, and against his father’s wishes. His bride was still younger: a delicate, entrancing creature, who was staying with relatives at Teignmouth, and was as pretty, giddy and fashionable as she was penniless. The couple had been united after the briefest of courtships, and to a general prophecy that young Mr Tresilian would rue. Seldom can a prediction have been so satisfyingly realised. The young lady rapidly repented of her choice, led her husband a merry dance of trouble, discontent and mild scandal, and made him as thoroughly unhappy as the most disinterested observer could wish, before succumbing within a twelvemonth of the wedding to a galloping consumption, and leaving Mr Tresilian a sorrowing widower, chastened by experience, at an age when most men were just contemplating matrimony.

Sir Clement, of course, had disapproved most heartily. James Tresilian, though some years Valentine’s senior, had been his nearest friend since boyhood; and after this episode, one of Sir Clement’s prohibitions might easily have been expected. Yet Mr Tresilian’s fall so perfectly vindicated Sir Clement’s beliefs about the consequences of wilful independence that he could not have borne to exclude him from his circle: to forgo the pleasure of saying, with a shake of his head, ‘Ah! here’s poor Tresilian – an example to us all, alas’; of moralising on Mr Tresilian’s hollow cheek and muted manner; and above all of making his unfailing jests on the way in which the ill-fated attachment had begun.

Mr Tresilian, walking along the sea-front at Teignmouth, had rescued the young lady’s hat, which had been carried away by the wind. This simple circumstance never lost its power to elicit Sir Clement’s brittle mirth. ‘Ah, Tresilian,’ he would say, ‘you have learned your lesson, I think, and will not go chasing hats again, hey?’; and if ever he heard in the neighbourhood of a rash or imprudent marriage – and to Sir Clement virtually all marriages were such – he would sweeten his outrage with the reflection: ‘Someone has been chasing flying hats again – poor fool!’ By the time of Sir Clement’s death, the incident of Mr Tresilian’s marriage was some seven or eight years in the past; Mr Tresilian had gone on with his solitary life, prospered, and ceased to be an object of general interest, but Sir Clement persisted in his acid pleasantries to the end.

Fortunately Mr Tresilian was a man of imperturbable temperament, who responded to the harshest of Sir Clement’s sallies with his characteristic half-smile. Loyalty to Valentine, to whom he stood in something of the relation of an elder brother, perhaps accounted for it; but there might also have been a wish to see this relation made real. – He had a younger sister, Kate: a shy though not awkward girl, much accustomed to rely on his protection. A year or so ago, she and Valentine had danced much together at one of the rare assemblies the young Carnells were suffered to attend; and afterwards, the time being February, she had sent him a Valentine verse, partly inspired, it seemed, by the aptness of his name. This for Sir Clement was unthinkably bold, even if undertaken in playful fashion; yet it served as a useful warning. Well set up and respectable the Tresilians might be, but Sir Clement made it clear that when the time came for the heir of Pennacombe to marry, he must aim at a connection much superior to
that
.

What Valentine felt Louisa could not quite tell: that he was flattered was no less plain than that he was embarrassed; and Louisa suspected that he shared his father’s views at least in this: that he did not look to find romantic attachment so close to home. His was an expansive and idealising temperament. ‘When I marry,’ he had once said to her, ‘but then, you know, even to say those words indicates a dismal state of comfortable preparation. One
cannot
prepare – expect – anticipate. There is no planning an event that must begin like lightning striking from the sky, overturning and oversetting everything.’

Whether Kate Tresilian had intended a declaration, or whether Mr Tresilian still entertained any hopes in that direction, Louisa again could not tell. – Kate had returned to shyness, and he was always impossible to read. He was an odd, whimsical character; though gentleman-like, more at ease with sea-captains and ship’s-chandlers than in society; and though Louisa liked him, was often amused by him and valued the unobtrusive friendship he had always shown to Valentine, she could not help but secretly deplore the spiritless way he submitted to her father’s facetious contempt. He possessed fortune and independence, and owed Sir Clement nothing; and she for one did not consider those events of his past – of which, being then only a girl, she had a mere sketch of remembrance – to be an occasion of shame. Altogether she could not understand it: unless his unhappy adventure in matrimony had left him so defeated that his self-respect was quite extinguished.

There was something of that in Mr Tresilian’s appearance: in his lean angular frame, his sadly scuffed boots, and the dusty-fair hair, which – to the impatience of Valentine, who was particular about his Grecian crop – he allowed to grow like a careless boy’s. His habit of silence suggested it likewise; but he could speak with quickness and point when the subject interested him, as now, when on sitting down to dinner Mr Lappage mentioned the war news.

‘It is an apt time for new departures,’ Mr Tresilian said. ‘The latest intelligence is that the Austrians are within a hundred miles of Paris, Wellington is far advanced into the south, and Bonaparte is at bay on all sides.’

‘Surely he is finished at last,’ said Mr Lappage.

‘He may yet have a trick up his sleeve – but certainly he cannot produce new armies out of thin air.’

‘That detestable monster,’ cried Mrs Lappage, who felt warmly on every subject. ‘I hope he will be brought sternly to answer for all the wrongs he has done.’

‘Of course, the loser in any dispute is always in the wrong,’ Mr Tresilian remarked.

‘Come, Tresilian, never tell me you feel any sympathy for Bonaparte,’ Valentine said. ‘The war has been putting your ships in danger a hundred times.’

‘Oh, I only wonder, as a matter of curiosity, whom we shall find to hate after he is gone: we have got so used to a good, comfortable state of loathing that I fear we may be bereft without it. For myself, I shall be glad to see him fall. All that tedious adventuring. Crossing the Alps and whatnot.’

‘Well, there, for all his later tyrannies, one must admire the spirit of daring that animated him,’ Louisa said.

‘Really?’ said Mr Tresilian. ‘I don’t see why. The Alps must have been put there for a very good reason. I have never wished to cross even a single Alp. He should have stayed at home and found an occupation: that was the trouble.’

‘Well, we have had enough of war, that is certain,’ said Valentine. He had already had his glass refilled several times, and it was with a dreamy inward look that he added: ‘Aye, we have had enough of those times.’

‘My dear Valentine, those are my sentiments exactly,’ Mrs Lappage cried. Then, in a lower tone: ‘Dear me – old habit – of course I should say Mr Carnell.’

‘No, no, ma’am, none of that frosty ceremony,’ said Valentine, eagerly. ‘I would have only openness and ease at Pennacombe from now on. If the master of this house is to receive any respect, let it be earned by genuine esteem and affection. – Mr Lappage, I see your glass is not filled. Christmas, now – come next Christmas, I mean to observe it in the proper manner. I regret to say that lately even the village carollers have been frightened to approach the gate. Next time we shall see some true hospitality.’

‘Watchmaking,’ said Mr Tresilian. ‘There’s a proper profession. Plenty of interest and satisfaction. One never hears of a watchmaker crossing the Alps.’

‘But, my dear James, he might want to,’ gently suggested his sister.

‘Then he would be a very silly watchmaker,’ Mr Tresilian said gloomily. ‘What do you think, Miss Rose?’

The lady thus addressed had been taken into the household at The Ridings a few years ago, being a second cousin of the Tresilians and having fallen upon hard times – meaning she had reached a certain age without anybody wanting to marry her. For Sir Clement this charity had been a slight further evidence of the softening of Mr Tresilian’s brain consequent on the chasing of hats; but it might with justice have been a sorer cause of repentance for a man not possessed of Mr Tresilian’s patience. Not that Miss Rose was any trouble: indeed, it was the very aim and desire of her life not to be so, as she was constantly asserting. An early attempt on the part of the Tresilians to acknowledge their relationship, and soften the sting of dependence by calling her Aunt, had been quite rejected by her aggressive humility; and though she had the dignity of the housekeeping keys, and the chaperonage of Kate, she could never sufficiently declare herself unworthy of them.

‘I beg your pardon, Mr Tresilian,’ she answered, ‘and it is a great nuisance in me, I know, to be so particular where I can claim absolutely no right to consideration – but may I ask to what specifically your question refers?’

‘Bonaparte,’ said Mr Tresilian, drinking his wine, and raising his heavy eyes a little at its quality. ‘What to do with him. Hang, burn, or drown. Or all three.’

‘My dear sir,’ Miss Rose said, with her little squeezed cough of self-deprecation, ‘to consult
my
opinion on a matter of national moment is so very inapposite that I could almost bring myself to protest at it – if it were not for my consciousness that the enquiry is
meant
as a token of polite attention, but I hope I am very far from expecting any such tokens, or considering them my right in the least. If ever I did lapse into such unwarranted vanity, I hope I should drop myself in the river directly.’

‘Dear Miss Rose, I wish you wouldn’t speak of the river so,’ said Kate.

‘My dear Miss Tresilian, if
you
wish it, then of course I shall not do so. Anything other than a complete acquiescence would be shockingly unbecoming of my position. I hope indeed I should accept
any
prohibition of my speech without a murmur – even if it were an injunction to absolute silence,’ said Miss Rose, in her most frozen and petrified manner, accompanying her speech with the penitential half-closing of her eyes, which suggested that even the power of sight she regarded as a presumption in a being such as herself.

‘Well, ma’am, Bonaparte and the war and all of that is poor dull stuff, I’m sure you will agree,’ Valentine said. ‘Take a glass of wine, if you please, and think no more of it.’

‘I beg your pardon, Mr Carnell, but your inviting me to take a glass of wine is an attention that I cannot with good conscience allow myself freely to accept, even at the risk of rewarding your condescension with ingratitude,’ murmured Miss Rose, with a little drawing-in of her thin, tissuey form, as if to take up less room on her chair. ‘I stand in a position of dependence, quite as much as a child to a parent, and I hope I shall never forget to refer any such question to my benefactor: indeed, the moment I do forget, I hope I may drop myself off a cliff.’

‘Drink the wine or not, as you choose, ma’am,’ said Mr Tresilian, with the bluff patience that never seemed to fail him. ‘I’d advise it, for it’s good and heady. You have made a proper start on the cellars, Valentine.’

‘I hope I have,’ said Valentine, colouring a little, ‘for they have done little enough before now to justify their existence – which I take to be the fostering of conviviality and general enjoyment.’