An Accomplished Woman (12 page)

‘Strongly put,’ Mr
Durrant said, his jaws working. ‘Though I should have to hear it again to judge
properly.’

‘Hey, well, written no
doubt by some place-seeker, hoping the honourable poetaster will do something
for him,’ Lydia said. She meant to toss the journal back on to the table with a
light, gay carelessness, but some freakish strength must have got into her arm,
and it landed with a broad, even buttocky slap.

‘Canidia,’ said Mr
Durrant, after a moment, stroking his chin. ‘Yes, the lover of Horace, I see.
But did he not end up by calling her an old witch?’

‘Once she had deserted
him, yes. It is remarkable how, when a woman refuses a man, the scales at once
fall from his eyes, and he sees what a harridan he has been swearing love to,’
Lydia said, seating herself on the oak settle.

‘And thanks his stars
for his escape. Quite.’

‘Canidia is alluded to
as a sorceress who could bring the moon from the heavens,’ Dr Templeton
rumbled, ‘and there may be a hidden theme of woman going dangerously beyond what
were perceived to be the prescribed limits of her nature.’

‘Sorceress, or
enchantress, when they love us,’ Lydia sighed, ‘and witch when they do not. Mr
Durrant, I saw your carriage outside. This is not like you. Usually you ride
from Culverton, or walk, if the weather is sufficiently bad for you to make a
virtue of it. Pray, do not begin adopting infirm habits. You will only excite
Mr Hanley further.’

‘Dr Templeton was just
telling me you ran into him in town,’ Mr Durrant said, with his most bleak and
mordant look. ‘Well, and how was the little coxcomb? As arrant a fool as ever?’

‘Too well grown to be
little;
but much affected to the dandy, certainly. He was eager that I bring back
to you the full report of his delinquency, as he called it — in that delightfully
jesting way of his, you know.’

Mr Durrant frowned —
though on his face this was not so much a discernible change as a slight
intensification of his normal expression. As a young man he had been handsome,
if in a rather gaunt, forbidding way: at thirty-eight, the forbidding gauntness
stood chiefly to the fore. His figure was still good, his hair, uncropped, was
no less black and thick — but the light in his uncomfortably pale eyes was
harsh; and the lines of humour about his mouth, which Lydia had once found
(perhaps, possibly, potentially) worth loving, appeared set into a saturnine
stubbornness.

‘Hugh will always be
little to me,’ he rapped out. ‘I suppose he bragged of his latest idiocy — this
commission in the Prince of Wales’s Own.’

‘Shockingly expensive, I
know.’

‘Hm. But in a way
suitable enough: a fool should be guarded by fools, after all.’

‘Fie, Mr Durrant, spoken
like a Tory. Has infirmity driven out the Radical in you?’

He contemplated her with
a sour absence of pleasure. ‘I hope I shall never speak like a man of any
party. The Prince is a vain fool: his royal father better only in lacking
vanity. As for my nephew, he combines both failings with a hundred others.’

‘He is very young, my
dear sir,’ suggested Dr Templeton.

‘So he is: and so is
John Carr, who has the care of all my vegetable gardens and fruit trees,
understands every detail of horticulture, keeps an excellent record-book, and
talks ten times more sensibly than Hugh Hanley. Stupidity is not a necessary
part of youth: though it does tend to thrive there, like fungus in a cellar.’

‘But, Mr Durrant, this,
I am afraid, is just the sort of thing Hugh Hanley likes,’ Lydia said, straying
partway into seriousness. ‘I believe half the motive for his extravagances is
the relish of knowing how they will infuriate you.’

‘Yes — he enjoys it: I
know that,’ he rejoined, very stiff. ‘Well, let him enjoy. This may be the last
satisfaction he shall receive from me.’

Dr Templeton cocked his
head. ‘My dear sir, you have dropped a hint before to this effect, and my
curiosity is thoroughly whetted. Do you mean there exists some way of barring
him from the inheritance of Culverton?’

‘Not as it stands.’ Mr
Durrant stalked to the window, his profile all bony disquiet. He cleared his
throat. ‘I have a friend.’

‘That in itself is
certainly remarkable,’ Lydia could not help saying, ‘though I am not sure how
to respond to the unlikely news: whether to congratulate you, or commiserate
with him.’

‘I have a friend,’ he continued,
addressing himself entirely to Dr Templeton, ‘lately settled at Clifton. Of my
own age — we were at Cambridge together; and of my own sentiments. He has
married: and he invites me to visit him and his bride at any time I choose. For
all this strange lapse — as I first thought of it — my friend seems by the
evidence of his letters still the sensible, rational creature I knew, perhaps
because he has fixed upon a woman of like mind; and perhaps also because the
fatal contract has been made at a later period than is common. He enjoys, it
seems, domestic comfort, and expects to be a father; and in short, I am
interested.’

‘Ah!’ said Dr Templeton,
on a long bass note, full of subtle harmonics of understanding.

Lydia could hardly
contain herself. ‘Mr Durrant, you don’t intend to follow your friend’s example?
Merely out of spite towards your nephew?’

‘Not spite:
irreconcilable loathing: and they are not the same, Miss Templeton, before you
say it. I intend nothing, as yet. But I admire my friend’s way of proceeding.
Conscious of his solitary state, and wishing to amend it, he made the matter
known,
without a lot of coquetting and nonsense. He went to Bath, and entered what
is quite reasonably termed the marriage market; and emerged comfortably
accommodated. Knowing my peculiar difficulties, he suggests that I might do the
same. Clifton is near enough at hand to Bath so that he might give me
introductions to the company there, and so on. I have never liked these
trifling resorts of pleasure; but they do appear different, in the light of
utility.’

‘Papa,’ Lydia said, ‘I
know it is a bright spring day, but let us have a fire built at once — I was
never so cold in my life. Though in truth the chill you have given me, Mr
Durrant, is rather invigorating. I must have it right: you, of all people —
going to Bath, of all places—’

‘I have been to a great
many places in my life, Miss Templeton, though nowadays I prefer to stay at
home: why do you seize on Bath so?’

Lydia disguised, she
thought, her hesitation very well. ‘Because, sir, it is surely what you call
it: a trifling resort of pleasure — the last thing I had supposed you
susceptible to. And actually to go there like a — I will not say a prize bull,
but pretty well with a sign slung about your neck, advertising your
availability: I cannot believe it. Which is not to say I would not like to see
it. Indeed, I could almost wish to spend the summer in Bath after all, for such
an entertainment.’

‘You in Bath? What do
you mean?’ Mr Durrant said sharply. ‘Are you ill? You don’t look it,
particularly.’

‘Oh, your honeyed
compliments,’ Lydia said: flourishing the flippancy quickly across her grubby
discomfort.

‘You know, of course,
Lydia’s godmother, Lady Eastmond of Osterby,’ her father explained. ‘She has
lately a young woman, a ward, come into her care; and there was a suggestion,
no more, that Lydia might perhaps be the young lady’s companion for a short
stay at Bath.’

‘I see,’ was all Mr
Durrant said; but he directed at Lydia his first full look since her arrival.

‘I detect in your
project, my dear sir,’ Dr Templeton said, with considering interest, ‘a sort of
dual aim, if I may so phrase it. There is on the one hand the actual
procurement of a wife, a mistress of Culverton, and in time a direct heir who
would cut Mr Hanley out altogether: and on the other hand there is the
possibility that you
might
do this — the alarming hint to your nephew
that he should not so blatantly depend upon his future fortune, and would do
well to mend his ways to prevent it. Do I have you right?’

Lewis Durrant smiled, or
rather showed his teeth. ‘I knew you would grasp it, sir. The fact is, the boy
has traded on his expectations for too long: I am come to the end of my
patience: it must be decided. And as I am not quite an old man,
nor
infirm,
then I may yet surprise him. But first I am going to see his mother — that poor
deluded sister of mine, who thinks she whelped an angel. 1 doubt I can persuade
her to rein him in, so late in the day, but I shall try, one last time; and she
shall know that this
is
the last time. If nothing else, besides, she can
tell me the sum of all the other debts he has been running up on my account.
Hence, Miss Templeton, the carriage. I go from here to Melton Mowbray, to learn
the worst.’

‘There can be no better place
to learn it. But wait, Mr Durrant —’ Lydia glanced at her father ‘— are you not
engaged to dine with us tomorrow?’

‘I am, and will do so: I
shall spend only tonight under my sister’s roof, which is as much as any man
can tolerate, and return tomorrow early. You do not expect a large company?’

‘We do not: but
consider, Mr Durrant, this aversion of yours to society will not do in Bath.
Imagine thirty or forty people in the Assembly Rooms, or Sydney Gardens: how
will you contrive to ignore them all? How will you get by with a single grunt
every half an hour?’

‘It is a consideration,
sir,’ Dr Templeton smiled, ‘that rather wearisome etiquette of watering-places.
Still, I like your plan. You know I am a friend to marriage, where there is
sound and solid attachment; and anyone who knows Culverton must wish to see the
family of Durrant continue there. My acquaintance with Mr Hanley has not been
extensive, but he does seem to think a great deal of what is due to himself,
and little of what is due to others. I fear, indeed, that whatever the outcome,
such a temper will lead him to unhappiness.’

‘You speak like
yourself, sir, in taking thought for the fellow’s future: I honour you for it.
But I am selfish,’ Mr Durrant said. ‘I don’t care about Hugh Hanley, or what
becomes of him — except that he will bring Culverton to ruin, and all who
depend on it. I don’t like this aristocratic conception of debts, as if they
were only another fashionable amusement. An unpaid debt does not mean you are a
fine fellow: it means the tradesman who sewed your coat, or built your
carriage, doesn’t get his money for it, and can’t feed his family.’

Lydia — as so often with
Mr Durrant — was precisely divided between agreement with what he said, and
disgust at the arrogance with which he said it: emotionally the effect was like
one of those sneezes that do not quite come.

‘But what
would
make
you relent towards him, Mr Durrant?’ she asked. ‘Supposing he were to undertake
solemnly to mend his ways — what evidence would you require? What would satisfy
you? Fasting, hair-shirts . . .?’

‘Perfection,’ he
snapped, ‘only perfection, Miss Templeton, will ever satisfy me.’

‘Dear me,’ chuckled Dr
Templeton, ‘is this not, Mr Durrant, deliberately to court disappointment?’

‘Quite so: and as
disappointment is the inevitable result of life, better to seek it out than
wait tamely for it to come to you.’ Abruptly Mr Durrant shook Dr Templeton’s
hand, bowed in Lydia’s approximate direction, and was gone.

‘Well, well,’ Dr
Templeton said, ‘what do you think, my dear?’

‘I think Lady Eastmond’s
ward should dispense at once with her suitors,’ Lydia said, ‘as there is coming
to Bath a gentleman who is sure to put them in the shade, with his elegance of
address, his romantic sentiments, and his cheerful temper.’

‘Ah, who knows? You like
to be severe on him, but our friend has much to recommend him still. Stranger
things have happened.’ He smiled mildly on her. ‘It is a pity, my dear, that
you will not be there to make the introduction.’

‘What shall we give our
guests tomorrow, Papa? Do we have saddle of mutton?’

Dinner at Heystead:
preparations. In the kitchen, hasty contrivances: the mutton good but scanty,
requiring the supplement of boiled fowls. Thought to be given on the matter of
stable-room — who would come by carriage, who ride — and on who would need to
be fetched. Being a hostess was a trivial thing to like, perhaps, but Lydia did
like it: she liked to dress well for the occasion, to see the table well
ordered and supplied, to minister to the little habits and whims of her guests.

Besides, all this helped
to suppress the thought of the letter that had arrived, that day, from London,
with the direction in Lady Eastmond’s boisterous hand. Helped, a little.

First to arrive were the
vicarage party: Mr Paige all aggressive compliment, Emma looking prettily
tired, and on her arm the reason for her dark-ringed eyes, her sister Mrs
Vawser. Here, at any rate, was a person to drive out niggling thoughts; for no
one was ever allowed to forget that Penelope Vawser was present. When she was
not in spirits, her muffled mumble, paralytic gait and petrifying stare
suggested some ancient prophetess stricken by the certainty of doom. When she
was in spirits, her eager laugh rattled the windows, and she overpowered with
her vivacity and playfulness. She was a tall, fair, full-figured young woman
who, if her face had ever been allowed to relapse into a natural expression,
might have been accounted very handsome. Today she was in flourishing form; and
her low-bosomed evening-gown of silver gauze, drop-earrings and ostrich-plume
headdress announced her intention of bringing a little fashion into the lives
of these country mice.