An Accomplished Woman (28 page)

So, she was to be either
vengeful Capulet or soft-hearted old Nurse. It was far more her inclination to
cry, ‘A plague on both your houses,’ but let him find that out for himself.

‘Lincolnshire I do not
know at all,’ he was saying, ‘but I fancy it a dull, flat sort of country’

‘It is true that there
is a deplorable lack of mountains in Lincolnshire,’ Lydia said, ‘but it manages
a few beauties nonetheless.’

He looked sceptical. ‘Of
the park-and-meadow sort, no doubt: any county can claim those. But no one can
appreciate beauty in landscape until they have stood before great bold hills
and wild prospects — the Lakes, now. All is tame beside the Lakes. If you were
to see them, Miss Templeton—’

‘I should like to see
them again, certainly’

He gave her his widest
eyes. ‘You have seen them — then you will concur, you must concur, in their
being magnificent, wholly magnificent and sublime.’

‘A beautiful part of the
country indeed: so much so, that it is
almost
worth the trouble and
inconvenience of going there.’

This concluded what they
had to say on the relative merits of landscape. Phoebe, smiling a little
fixedly, put in: ‘So, Mr Beck, are you tolerably settled in Bath? Have you
attended the Pump Room yet?’

‘The Pump Room — good
God, no. Was there ever anything so ridiculous and insipid? I know you must
feel it so, Miss Rae —’ he made a great tenderly confiding business with his
eyebrows ‘— even if you are forced by convention and circumstances to go
there.’

It was very vexing,
Lydia thought, to hear something of your own sentiments crudely echoed by a
person you found so unsympathetic; but not half so vexing as the implication
that
she
was the strait-laced Bath tabby drilling her young charge in
the ways of genteel boredom.

‘Well, there is still
very agreeable music to be heard there,’ Phoebe said. ‘That is one of the real
pleasures of Bath. There is a concert coming on this week at the Upper Rooms—’

‘I am not overfond of
music, unless it truly stirs the heart,’ Mr Beck said, ‘and what one hears at
Bath is generally very trivial, artificial stuff. I know from coming from here
often with my father in my youth.’ (Lydia estimated Mr Beck’s age as at most
twenty-four.) ‘He tried the waters for several seasons, to no effect.’

Phoebe asked: ‘Your
father does not enjoy good health?’

‘Oh, it is simply that
he has too much time on his hands to brood about it,’ Mr Beck said, with all
the confidence of a robust physique. ‘Since my mother died he is rather the recluse.’

‘Mr Beck is a West India
merchant, I believe?’ put in Lydia.

‘Was: he is pretty much
retired now.’

‘You have never been to
the West Indian islands yourself?’ Phoebe asked.

‘No, not I. My father
last sailed to Antigua ten years ago. It is one place I have no desire to
visit.’

‘I am glad of that,’
Phoebe cried, ‘for what one hears from the wars lately — the way the soldiers
die of fever there — it seems as if those islands are a perfect graveyard for
white men.’

‘They are somewhat less
than healthy for black men also, I fear,’ Lydia remarked.

‘Oh, slavery will go,’
Mr Beck said, with an expansive gesture. ‘It will end — when other evils end —
when there is a great reform all over: when there comes the great change in the
minds and hearts of man. That’ — with a swelling sort of modesty — ‘is what my
writing is for, I hope: to contribute to that great end, by ever so little.’

‘It is a noble, noble
aim,’ Phoebe murmured, with a soft rasp of emotion.

Yes, it was: and Lydia’s
own feeling was a faint sadness: the aspiration so large and real, the ability
so weak — as, even leaving aside the absurdity of lacteous buckets, whose would
not be? However, it seemed that Mr Beck could always be relied on promptly to
destroy any sympathy one might begin to feel for him; for he turned to Lydia
and, with a tolerant look, declared: ‘Well, well, I am not helpful: I have now
dismissed the Pump Room, and concerts; and I fear poor Miss Templeton must
wonder what there is left in the social life of Bath that she can safely recommend
to me.’

A recommendation that he
depart forthwith and boil his head was, perhaps, more tempting than prudent:
Lydia only replied: ‘I would not presume to dictate, or even suggest, sir. I only
wonder at your being in Bath at all: its amenities, as you say, being of no
interest to you, and the printing-house, and your work on your review, being
based at Bristol.’

‘I am in Bath for one
reason only,’ he answered — not so much speaking as vocalising a shudder.

Phoebe could not miss
the import of that, and did not at all appear to dislike it; but she only
asked: ‘When do you anticipate the
Inter
— the magazine going on sale?’

‘Oh, not yet. There must
be revision, in the light of... In short, Miss Rae, I await your approval: your
blessing on the enterprise. Oh, yes, yes, you must, for I consider it our — our
own offspring — after those happy times in London, when you were kind enough to
lend an ear to my effusions — to hearken to my dreams.’

Lydia doubted that there
was any way of not hearkening to Mr Beck’s dreams, short of locking yourself in
a cupboard: but she supposed Phoebe was not the first nor would be the last
young woman to be fascinated by a man with an excessive propensity for talking
about himself. Indeed it promised a certain compatibility; for while her
fascination lasted, at least, they would never lack a topic of common interest.

‘But before you give me
your final opinion,’ he said, jumping up and seizing the proofs from the
side-table where Phoebe had placed them, ‘there is one place — a horrible
betise
of style, it has been preying on me.’ He took a stub of pencil from his
pocket and scribbled vigorously. ‘There — consider that as permanently erased.’

Lydia hoped, in a
half-regretful way, that it was the hedger’s needful implement.

‘I have come to the end
of that miserable convention, the half-hour call,’ Mr Beck said, with a dark
glance at his pocket-watch, and a darker glance at Lydia, as if the miserable
convention had been invented by her. ‘Never mind. It can — it must — sustain me
until the next time.’

‘And besides,’ Phoebe
said, meeting his burning look with bright good sense, ‘we are all staying in
Bath, and will lack no opportunity of meeting. If you should reconsider the
concert, Mr Beck, it would be . . . well. Good day.’

He went all molten and
twitching out of the room: leaving Phoebe to fall once more on the
Interlocutor,
and at length to carry it away with her upstairs; and leaving Lydia to
reflect on the invidiousness of her position. Here was Mr Beck despising and
resenting her for being a chaperon — the very role she had never sought or
wanted in the first place! — it was rather unfair.

There was, of course,
something else besides: irrespective of roles, she and William Beck did not
like each other. The fact that they had large areas of common ground did not
alter this: it was always the borders of countries that were fought over. But
she felt he should be careful about regarding her as the vinegary and
obstructive companion, alert to his every failing. He must surely know the
proverb about giving a dog a bad name.

The presence in Bath of
the beautiful Miss Rae, and her still more beautiful fifty thousand pounds, was
now sufficiently known for a regular deck of calling-cards to appear on the
hall table at Sydney Place. Shuffling, Lydia found a viscountess and her
honourable son — perhaps the ace in the pack — besides several esquires, a pair
of reverends, and a solitary lieutenant R.N. gamely hoping that even a deuce
could take a trick now and then.

Phoebe was not
interested — or rather, only as interested as she was in everything. She would
be very glad to make the acquaintance of all these people; but Lydia could not
foresee any of them being added to the equation of Mr A and Mr B.

From one point of view —
the selfish — this was a relief. Lydia reeled at the thought of having to
counsel Phoebe on the relative merits of Mr C, Mr D and Mr E ... Yet still she
felt that Phoebe was being too precipitate in trying to add up the sum at all.
Where was the need for hurry? She was not yet twenty-one, and the world was
wide. This was what she tried to convey to her friend the next day, when
Phoebe, by various hints, revealed her anxiety to know what she thought of her
two suitors.

‘Well. Now that I have
had the pleasure of meeting both gentlemen, I can say that I see nothing
absolutely to object to in either. I am assuming, of course, that you do value
my opinion on the matter. And despite what Lady Eastmond says, I am far from
convinced that it is my place to speak on it—’

‘Oh, but you must!’
Phoebe cried. ‘That is — Lydia, I have never had a true friend before. A friend
I can speak with openly, and in confidence. It is what I have so wanted. And
this is what friends do, is it not? They are not afraid of offending, or being
too familiar: they know that each has the other’s best interests at heart.’

Lydia was touched; not
only by this but by the brushing thought of her mother, and the friendship she
had needed at the most vulnerable time of her life. ‘Well, then, as a friend, I
would only urge you not to be hasty in
any
decision you may make. It is
simply unnecessary. Consider: soon enough you will be twenty-one, and in
control of your whole fortune. You will have an enviable degree of
independence. You may well find that that in itself is a satisfaction, for now:
being your own woman, and able to do as you like. It may allow you to realise
better who you are and what you want in life. You remember the magnificent
cedar at Culverton? It grew so splendidly because it was planted on its own,
with no other trees to crowd it.’

‘That is true,’ Phoebe
said; and then, after a thoughtful pause: ‘But I always think there is
something rather melancholy about those solitary trees.’

‘Do you? Well, I am a
solitary tree, if you like. No specimen cedar — more a common beech with a
touch of worm — but not, I hope, a melancholy sight.’

‘Oh! no, no, indeed,’
Phoebe said — with such energy that Lydia did wonder, just for an unpleasant
moment. ‘You are right, of course: I should do nothing hasty. But I am glad to
hear you say you like both gentlemen.’ Before Lydia could protest she went on:
‘I was a little afraid that you did not entirely take to Mr Beck. And yet I am
sure now that that cannot be so. You and he are much alike, after all.’

Lydia was so silent and
rigid with horror she might have been a tree.

That morning Phoebe had
a fitting for a new gown at a dress-maker’s in Milsom Street — one recommended
by Mrs Allardyce. Lydia waited for her at Driffield’s circulating-library
Seeing one of those prosy ladies she had been avoiding enter the reading-room,
she snatched up the largest newspaper she could find, and hid behind it until
she was sure the familiar droning voice had gone away. The fact that the
newspaper was upside down perhaps rendered the subterfuge a little obvious, but
no matter — or it would not have mattered, if she had not lowered it to find
Lewis Durrant seated opposite her with a look of choice amusement.

‘I’m trying to see the
reasoning behind it,’ he said. ‘Does it make the bad news good, perhaps? But
then that would make the good news bad. Not that there ever is any good news.
The alternative, that you are trying to avoid me, is too wounding to
contemplate.’

‘Sometimes one wishes to
remain quiet and unmolested; and we are not all in your fortunate position, Mr
Durrant, and able to scare people away merely by facial expression.’

‘You are too kind: I
used to flatter myself that I had that gift, indeed, but I fear I am losing it.
I have read of certain priests of the ancient world who covered their face with
a great brass head, and could only be spoken to when they took it off. I think
that would do very well for me, though it might excite comment in the Pump
Room.’

‘Well, I am glad I have
seen you, anyhow — oh, only because I want information from you. When you were
calling yesterday, and Mr Beck came in, you spoke as if you knew him.’

‘So I do, though not
well. His father is a near neighbour of my friend at Clifton, and they often
dine together: I met young Mr Beck there.’

‘Ah, so you know the old
slave-driver! There’s an elegant addition to your acquaintance.’

‘Oh, I confess I thought
the same, at first; but old Beck is rather an interesting man. He inherited the
West India estates from
his
father, and now he is sold up, and something
of a philanthropist: endows schools and charities, and is setting up a scheme
to train poor boys to the sea.’

‘Ah, the late workings
of conscience. I’m sure the slaves would be delighted to know they laboured for
such admirable causes.’

He raised an eyebrow.
‘You do not believe in the reformed character, Miss Templeton?’

‘A reformed character
usually means a rogue who has been scared into hypocrisy.’