Childish Loves (10 page)

‘Oh, I have not the least claim to being original.' Later, she returned to this theme more seriously. ‘You say she is like me; I do not believe it. Young men, when it comes to women, have eyes only for the general, they lack any sense of the particular. We are tall or fair or dark or dumpy, as you have said, but nothing more. There is no discrimination, no fineness. You differ only in the words: gentle, sweet, lively, and so on.'

‘And yet you have lumped me happily with the rest of my sex. With John Musters, for example.'

Breakfast was finished, and Elizabeth's letter lay on the table before me. We sat in the relative gloom of the dining hall, with a candle lit, in spite of the fair morning. Another long day stretched before us – we could see it through the windows, as far as the crown of elm trees on Miskin Hill, under a blue sky.

‘I believe, Mary,' Miss Wollaston said, without any ill-humour, ‘it is only you, and others like you, who are
gentle
and
sweet
. Some of us must be content with
cheerful
and
good-tempered
. Though, in truth, I am no better-tempered than you are gentle – we have only the appearance of it, and no one seeks farther than appearances.'

‘Miss Pigot is cheerful and Miss Wollaston is cheerful. Everyone, it seems, is cheerful – excepting me.'

Miss Wollaston meanwhile had taken up Elizabeth's letter. I tried to reclaim it, but her strength surprised me, and there was a certain disorder of movement, tilting of chairs, clatter of cutlery, and upsetting of cups, before I was finally persuaded to give up the attempt. Afterwards, she read the letter silently to the end, and I could think of nothing to do or say until she was finished. Phrases like
my little Miss Capulet
and
Lord Byron in love
drowned out every other in my head, and I was conscious of a kind of noise, like the noise of a kettle, growing more insistent all the time.

‘She writes a very fair hand,' was all Miss Wollaston said, on returning the letter to me.

‘Of course,' Mary added, ‘she is perfect in all things. I long to meet her brother.'

*

I have been staying occasionally at Annesley in what Mary calls the nursery, for she played there as a child; but the room has been re-fitted since, with a canopied bed and a side-table and a basin. Her old school desk is still pushed against the window, which overlooks the stables, and sometimes I sit with my knees pressed under it and continue this journal.

Mrs Clarke herself suggested my use of the nursery, when a thick summer rain set in one day after tea. We have all become quite comfortable. Even the presence of my cousin has declined for me in its intensity till she burns no brighter than a household fire. Yet I am constantly warming my heart against her. Whenever she leaves a room, it grows cold. Miss Wollaston has never mentioned to me the suspicions expressed in Elizabeth's letter. In fact, we get along very well together, in a kind of alliance against Mary, and mock her for her charms quite as if we were equally indifferent to them.

Mr Becher has said that I should fall in love and perhaps I have done no worse than follow his advice.

There seems to be a sort of family understanding, according to which Annesley and Colwick Hall shall be united in marriage – and Mary and Mr Musters are merely the instruments of this intention. That she feels his attractions, I have no doubt. He is a proper, mild-mannered, able gentleman, with an income of fifteen thousand, a large estate, and a house on Wimpole Street, but her attraction is mixed up with a deal of fear, which he does nothing to dispel. Once or twice I have been on the point of repeating to her what he once said to me, that he liked them to have long necks, for they bend easily; but I hesitate to contribute to the awe with which she already regards him.

Once indeed I mentioned to Miss Wollaston that Mr Musters was very charming, but one never knew what he thought – so that, in consequence, one imagined all kinds of terrible things.

‘I believe I know very well what he is thinking of,' she said. ‘I suppose you have thought it, too, or
will
think it.'

We were sitting in the garden, on the gravelled walk, on a bench positioned between the windows leading into the drawing room. Mary was reading on the sofa inside; at least, she had a book in hand. I believe she was asleep. Nevertheless, I kept my voice low, and as the summer's day was loud in other noises, there seemed little danger of our being overheard.

‘Is there an engagement? I cannot be sure; sometimes he acts as if there is.'

‘I believe there is an understanding,' Miss Wollaston said.

‘I cannot understand the need for secrecy. Their fortunes are equal; the families both respectable, and disposed to the match.'

‘Yes,' – for the first time, she hesitated. ‘Perhaps there is no secrecy. It has been spoken of so long, perhaps there was no occasion for making it explicit.'

‘And yet, if there can be any doubt …'

We sat like this, companionably enough, enjoying the heat of the afternoon. Miss Wollaston sometimes let the shade of her parasol fall over my face, before withdrawing it again. A kind of game, I supposed, but when I looked at her, with a smile, she appeared unconscious of it. So I said, ‘Sometimes I believe she is almost frightened of him.'

‘You have been reading too many novels,' she said. ‘In life, in Nottinghamshire at least, there is still such a thing as a good match, a comfortable engagement, and a happy marriage.'

‘Then I see no reason for so much secrecy and hesitation.'

‘It may be,' she said, after a minute, ‘there is always a little fear, in such cases, which accounts for much of what you say – on both sides.' Then, with a laugh: ‘You look very serious, my lord. You need not worry on
her
account. She has a great gift for doing exactly what she pleases. But I believe you are not, you speak mostly on your own.'

‘I do not think you understand my cousin as well as you pretend to. She seems to me not at all happy.'

‘Oh, it is the novels again; you see everything through novels. And pray, why is she so unhappy? With ten thousand a year, and Annesley Hall, and the prettiest eyes and figure in – perhaps she is unhappy because of her eyes. You mean, I suppose, that she is too pretty to be happy? Though as for that one can't be
always
happy. Even I, with five hundred pounds to my name and a hook nose, am not always happy.'

‘What are you conspiring about?' Mary called from within. ‘I have been having most unpleasant dreams; I keep hearing my name.'

‘We have been talking about you, of course,' Miss Wollaston said, turning round.

*

Lord Grey has taken up residence in Newstead. I returned one afternoon for the sake of a few books I had left in his study and found him quite naturally installed in my former bedroom. I came up the back way, through his study, through the dark. ‘Alice,' he said, as I pushed open the door; but he received me very hospitably and offered to send for her and bid her make up a bed in a corner of the great hall.

‘I suppose old Owen has been telling you stories about the crickets,' he added, on seeing my face. ‘I have no objection to sharing my own – we get used to bed-fellows quickly enough at school.'

But in the end I decided to take my luck in the hall; and after a sleepless night, returned in the morning to Annesley. Lord Grey and I breakfasted together. He had caught the sun, as he said, in his mountains, and looked for once quite happily indifferent to his own appearance: very brown and red in the face. I invited him to join our expedition to Peaks Hole and was rather relieved when he declined. He had travelled enough for one summer. But he inquired pleasantly into the arrangements. Miss Chaworth was a wonderfully pretty girl, and he knew Mr Musters slightly at college – he had the reputation of a ‘Man of Method'. I asked him what this meant. Most of his college set, he said, had a touch of the Method – it signified very little, but then he broke off to ask if by this stage they were decently engaged?

‘You mean,' I said, ‘Miss Chaworth and Mr Musters? Nobody will say, though it is generally presumed.' I added, ‘Mr Musters claimed your acquaintance. He said you often went hunting together.'

‘A kind of hunting,' Lord Grey replied.

*

My mother has written again and again, complaining of my absence. She wishes to know when I intend to return to school. She has had a letter from Mr Hanson about it, who had a letter from Dr Drury; and now she is threatening to come to Newstead herself. But I am hardly at Newstead these days, with everything in preparation for Peaks Hole. I will make up my mind about school on my return. The dance at Matlock Bath has been put off, owing to a small fire in the kitchens. There was some talk it would be abandoned altogether, but a new date has been fixed, and we have arranged ourselves accordingly. But the weeks have passed. August is over, and already the chestnut trees, which run either side of the approach to Annesley, begin to lose their leaves – they have withered in the heat. After a wet beginning, the summer has had no rain, and the farmers almost despair of it. But the great day is here at last, which has been looming so large. Tomorrow morning the party from Southwell arrive at Annesley, for a hasty breakfast, before we dispose ourselves in the two carriages and continue our journey into Derbyshire.

***

Mr Becher and I have been given a room together, at the Old Bath Hotel; but his bed is empty, he is still at the dance below, the sounds of which make their way up through the chimney and boards of the hotel. And I have lit a candle and sat down to the only table at hand, and pushed the washbasin aside, to write – in order to relieve my feelings, which are strained to bursting.

The breakfast party went off well enough. The duty of introductions fell by necessity to me, which was painful to my diffidence, but I acquitted myself tolerably. There was only one awkward moment. Mr Becher, mistaking John Musters for Lord Grey, reached out his hand and said, ‘We knew each other a little at Oxford.' But in fact they had not met and Mr Musters gave him rather a puzzled, cold stare.

Elizabeth and Mary professed themselves greatly pleased with each other, and I had the occasion to compare them
in the flesh
. It amazes me now that I ever considered her pretty. Her face is too narrow and brown and her complexion not at all good, though she makes up for this by the liveliness of her expressions. She is also perhaps a hand's breadth shorter than Mary, which I had not suspected, and carries herself in an under-bred comfortable way. But they claimed each other instantly as friends. Elizabeth said to me, as we left the breakfast table and disposed ourselves again in the yard, ‘I am glad she is pretty; she is really very pretty. I should not have liked you to fall in love with a frump.'

And Mary, when she sent me in again for something she had forgotten, Thompson's Tooth-powder, which she could not at all do without, whispered in my ear, ‘I like her immensely. She is not so pretty as I.'

It was agreed at breakfast that
Southwell
, as the Pigots were called (with the addition of Mr Becher), and
Annesley
should intermix – it only remained uncertain to which party I belonged. In the end, Mr Musters took us all in hand. He accompanied Elizabeth and her brother John, along with Miss Wollaston, in Lady Hathwell's barouche, leaving Mrs Pigot, Mr Becher and Mary to me. This occasioned the first little drop in Mary's countenance. But we set off in high spirits. The weather, as Elizabeth promised it
must
be, was perfectly blue and clear. There was just a shadow of autumn in the sky, which prevented the sun from scorching and robbed the fields and the hills of any garish brightness. Mary attempted to flirt with Mr Becher.

When we passed through Kirkby, on the half-hour, the bells of St Wilfrid's tolled, and even Mary fell quiet because there was something to see. If only the usual sights. A dressmaker's, showing a dark red dress in its window, with the hems undone; a tea shop; a baker's – at which Mary called quickly for the coachman to stop and sent me out for a currant loaf. Then Mrs Pigot wanted another, and John emerged from Lady Hathwell's barouche on a similar errand. I asked him, as we waited with our pennies in hand, what he made of Mr Musters.

‘I don't make much of him,' John said. ‘We had an argument about sitting in the box. He strikes me as one of those men who won't have a favour done him. But I won out at last. I said, I can't be sitting with my sister. But Lizzy finds him amusing enough. At least, all I can hear is her laughing. Miss Wollaston, too.'

When I gave Mrs Pigot her loaf, Mary complained, ‘It is really shameful of Mr Musters to have put us in the post-chaise. I had much rather travel in a barouche, in this weather. Are you not intolerably hot, Mrs Pigot? Perhaps we may have the hood down, a little; the sun is not
very
strong. I apologize for Mr Musters, but it is always his way, he always takes the best plum for himself.'

A bell marked the quarter when we set off. There was in fact a shout of laughter from the carriage ahead, as we cleared the graveyard and followed the turn of the road towards Sutton. Uphill and down again, with a view of the spire at Kirkby, on one side, and the spires of Hilcote and Huthwaite showing by glimpses. Between the towns, the wide green fields bending to their hedgerows – fields where nothing distinguished itself but a few odd cows and trees.

Mary said, ‘I often find that the spirits of a party of people sound much higher at a distance. I can't think what Mr Musters might be saying. He can never think of anything to say to me.'

My heart sank at all this, for it showed Mary in the strongest light; and if I had planned, as I half intended, to confess my feelings to Mr Becher the opinion he must be forming served as a sufficient check. He could not understand her. But it pained me also to see Mary jealous; it made
me
jealous. Lady Hathwell's barouche, which preceded us by twenty paces, had such an elegant, spirited air. There are men whose worst suspicion is that they belong always to the gloomier half of any party, and I seem in a fair way to becoming one of them.