Childish Loves (24 page)

But there are women enough in Southwell to occupy me. It appears that the rumour about Julia Leacroft's engagement is untrue. I had this from her father's own lips one evening,
a propos
of whatever you please, at a small dance given by Mr Buckleby. Mr Leacroft said to me, when I had taken a rest from dancing, ‘There is nothing I dislike more than what is sometimes affectionately called a
little woman
.' (Julia is rather tall.) And then, ‘It is all nonsense, of course, the stories about Mr Tuttle. This is what comes of living in a small town.' Now is such
paternal solicitude
, I asked myself, so very different from the consideration shown Mary by her own poor father? To be fair, Mr Leacroft expects a better price. I danced one dance with Miss Leacroft and afterwards we sat on a bench in the garden and ate an ice.

Elizabeth protests that I have become so lively she hardly knows me; and the truth is, she knows nothing of my arrangements about the miller's cottage, and I should be sorry if she did. I think she would be shocked, and she is not easily shocked. About a dozen times a day I consider the necessity of riding out to Newark. Mary has employed herself in my absence and swept the floors clean and pulled the rotten sodden remains of the mill-wheel out of the water, so that the stream flows past the cottage and does not flood it on rainy days. There are always picked flowers on the window ledge when I come and, if it is cold, a wet green smoking little fire in the grate – for she knows how I hate the cold. She calls me
Lordy
. Our bed is straw covered in sacking, and the stalks come through and tickle us until we scratch ourselves. We begin to stink of each other, and when the sun is out, before riding home, I bathe in the shallow water, stepping gingerly on stones and roots. Then dress with the clothes sticking to me. She stands cheerfully in the doorway as I ride away.

In the evenings, I dine at the Pigots, and afterwards go out, with John and Elizabeth, to a party at the Leacrofts or the Muswells, etc. where we might encounter Lady Hathwell or Mrs Burgage-Mainwaring, who lets the house to my mother. Mr Becher is often ‘in attendance'. And I discuss with him the question of Reform and think of the brown hairs on Mary's legs.

*

I have had a letter from Edleston, and Kitty has one from Hanson. I don't know which gives me more pain. Edleston writes to say that his sister is to be married – to a clerk in a counting-house! And that among the inducements which persuaded her to accept his proposal (I would say
this young man's
, but it appears he is not a young man) was his conviction that he could obtain a place for his wife's brother, once she was his wife, at the same house. And this is what the world calls love. I have never met Miss Edleston but have seen a sketch of her, in pen and ink, done by her brother, who is very accomplished in this art; and if it is anything like, and if she is anything like
him
, she must be ‘beauty's self', with or without her robes. And yet Nature's Coin has bought her nothing better than a middle-aged clerk in a mercantile house in the great city of London, who lives in two rooms off the Pentonville Road.

Edleston is in despair, on his own account as well. The truth is, he cannot bear to part from me and revives an old plan we have sometimes discussed of living together, like Nisus and Euryalus, or Lady Butler and Miss Ponsonby, in
retirement
.

Hanson writes about my debts – it is his great theme, and he returns to it as Cato to Carthage. Not only the four or five or seven thousands worth of debts contracted in London and due upon my majority, but the small accounts scattered about Cambridge, for which he himself is liable, as I tell Kitty, by deed of Crown. If the tradesmen go unpaid the shame is all his own. But Kitty seizes her opportunity and begins to lecture me about my father. Who was also a spendthrift, and a profligate, and a whoremonger, and what you please, though I tell her, we have nothing so much in common as a horror of
you
. She says that she does not believe me to be happy, that I was always a loving child, who defended her even from imaginary slights and would rather go without his dinner than suffer the least insult to his or his family's honour. But that I had got in with a disreputable set at college. Augusta (who knows nothing of the matter) has said something to her about Bankes's choristers, and Kitty has imagined the rest. The name of Byron is now a term of abuse, and fathers even in Southwell guard their daughters against me.

I gave her several instances to the contrary. To which she responded, inconsequently enough, that if they knew the true state of my affairs – Newstead and Rochdale hopelessly entangled, myself in debt and under bond to several Jew-lenders, etc. – they would keep their daughters to themselves and not parade them about in this shameless way. But a Byron can never resist
bidding
for what is
offered
.

She suspects me of the wildest improprieties and checks my room each night, standing in the light of the hall in her night-gown, to re-assure herself. Elizabeth tells me it is true, she has made such a spectacle of herself no one in Southwell will return her card, unless I am at home; and she has no visitors but Mrs Pigot, who makes it a point of duty to call on her twice a week. Kitty talks a great deal of Aberdeen, where her cousin still lives in a large house on the river; and where she was known, it seems, to two or three good families, whose visits she received. But the fact is, people grow tired of hearing her complaints, accusations and regrets.

Mrs Crawley's macaroons, for which she sends daily, have made her dyspeptic; and she doses herself afterwards with pink pills from Stambridge, the apothecary. He sells her a notorious diuretic, which I have tried myself to no very pleasant effect. I have spoken to him confidentially about her – about these pills, and other things. I think they do her no good and some harm. He took me aside into a small room at the back, extended into the garden, with a sky-light, rather dusty, shedding a milky cloudy light over everything – phials liquids powders brass instruments books.

‘If Mrs Byron comes to you asking for – this or that,' I said, ‘complaining of slugs in the garden or difficulty sleeping, take care what you give her.' But he only smiled at me, and I felt a little foolish. ‘I should not like to answer for the
use
she intends to make of it,' I said.

Later I learned the reason for his impertinence. It appears my mother had approached him on similar business, concerning
me
. Mr Stambridge told John Pigot, who was visiting his shop (and who knows how many besides); and John told me. We were riding out one day towards Newstead, with a strong sunny breeze against us. John in his hesitant way delivered himself of the story, which he had been brooding on, like a hen laying its egg, and was much relieved to hear me laugh at it. We rode as far as Ravenshead, then south to Garden Lake, which took us the better part of the morning. Then rested our horses and let them drink. I could see the arch of the Abbey, and the trees blown this way and that behind it, through the ruins.

John said, ‘Shall we go on? Is Lord Grey at home?'

But I dislike seeing the place in another man's possession, and Mrs Pigot anyway expected us to lunch. On our way back, I asked him (as a medical man), if he meant to kill himself, the method he should prefer. He could not resist this appeal to his professional opinion. Cyanide, he said, in solution, with a little magnesium – to mask its bitterness.

Meanwhile, my poesies accumulate. Elizabeth wonders greatly at the extent of them, if nothing else, for she never sees me with a pen in hand, and she sees me every day. But I write when no one else writes, at two in the morning, or at six; at breakfast or dinner; on sofa or lawn or bed, and in every
conceivable
position. Even at the mill-cottage, I have fitted up a table and furnished it with quill, ink, paper. Such is our appetite for contrast – after one kind of exertion, we delight in another. And while Mary sleeps, I write.

Elizabeth says to me, ‘It is strange you so often profess such a passion for solitude, when you strike me now as the most
public
of men.'

‘You used to consider me boyish and shy. I suppose I have changed.'

‘No, you are shy still, in certain company, and boyish enough I think.'

‘Then I don't know what you do mean.'

We were sitting on chairs at the edge of the Green, which we had carried ourselves from the Pigots' front room. About four o'clock on a Saturday afternoon, when the families of Southwell make their parade of the town – a few hundred yards each way. Elizabeth had sketch-book and pen on her lap, with an ink-pot at her foot, and considered the view with her fine narrow ironical eye. But she liked to talk as she worked and did not look at me.

‘Your shyness,' she said, ‘is only a sort of stage-fright. You hang back rehearsing your lines and preparing an entrance. It is nothing like real shyness, which wishes to be let alone. You wish to be brought out. John is shy.'

‘It may be you do not understand me.'

‘Oh, this is your great cry. You must have secrets, or something at least to confess to.'

‘Now I do not understand
you
. But I am never alone, when I write. I think this is what you mean. For then I am also rehearsing my lines, as you put it.'

She looked at me sharply then and opened her mouth. But said only, with a kind of admiration, ‘My dear Lord Byron …' The thought of what I could tell her, of what I might sincerely confess to, made me unhappy.

Most days around noon, if it is hot enough, John and I meet in a corner of Mr Buckleby's fields and play cricket. I wear seven waistcoats and sweat; John's bitch mastiff chases the balls. Mr Becher joins us occasionally, and a few others, Captain Leacroft included. Afterwards, we go to the Pigots' house, which is nearer, and I take nothing for lunch but biscuits and soda-water. Captain Leacroft has started the idea of putting on a play. His sister meets us there, with Elizabeth and one or two women, and we sit long hours in discussion. I have prevailed upon them to put on
The Wheel of Fortune
by Cumberland, as he was also a Trinity man, and I feel some affinity on that score. The part of Penruddock is very good, and I have picked it out for myself – the rest may dispose themselves as they please.

Mary grows sulky if I don't come till after tea. I find myself approaching the cottage, its plumes of smoke just visible from the road, reluctantly, and departing afterwards equally reluctant. Ridge said something odd to me once, that he had seen her in town going into the milliners, Mrs Michelson's. Mary has a distinctive burrowing gait, low-shouldered and sprightly; he could not be mistaken; but when he followed her into the shop, she was nowhere to be seen. It appears she owes him money.

Long has written to invite me to Littlehampton, where his father has taken a house. But I am still too much in the thick of Southwell affairs to think of leaving. Mary depends upon me entirely. I have passed more than two months in this desultory way, taking tea with the Pigots, walking out with Elizabeth and riding with John; cricketing swimming dancing; making love occasionally, and a few other things. Edleston complains that I have forgotten him, for I have not written above once or twice since departing the Cam. My head is so full of my rhymes (I wrote him at last) I have no words to spare for ordinary prosing. But perhaps I have been unfaithful, in my way – my heart always alights on the nearest perch.

***

It is all over, and very suddenly, too. One day in Newark, coming out of Ridge's, I thought I saw Mary's
shapeliness
exiting swiftly towards Friary Road; but a grocer's cart then overturning, with a confusion of bloody fruits, I could not follow in the carriage and gave her up. I made no mention of this to her in the afternoon (and she none to me), but drove away as usual, returning an hour later to find her in bed with one of the soldiers then stationed in Newark, from the Coldstream Guards; a fat pliable fair-haired gentleman, who seemed not at all sorry to see me, as he had
got what he paid for
. These were his words. It seems Mary had kept up a little of her old trade – ‘which would not be put off,' she says to me, with the injured innocence of womankind. And though I was in rather a jealous passion at the time, I could not help laughing at this, which is always the death of me – one cannot be violent and amused. The guard and I parted on reasonable terms (for, after all, he meant me no harm), and Mary and I not much worse – though I could not help feeling a little shame-faced towards her, for imagining our affair to be anything but … what it was. But part we did, as we could not continue on the old terms and I had no intention of paying the new. This was at first a source of some heartache, which made the solitary ride afterwards to Newark appear very long, and the evening at home still longer (the Pigots had gone to Cheltenham for a week); but it declined into a fretfulness and died in the night, and I woke again the next morning feeling something like relief.

After two or three days, I had really begun to think very little about the whole business – when I was awoken one night, about two in the morning, by my mother. She had found Mary at a window attempting to steal in. How the ‘poor lone woman' came by the house I do not know; perhaps she recognized the carriage. Kitty had seized her by the ear or throat or whatever else she could fasten on and taken her into the kitchen, where I met them. It appears Mary is with child; her father had discovered this fact, and beaten her; and she had walked or run at dead of night all the way from Newark (eight miles on a muddy road) to claim the protection of her – protector. That she had previously sacrificed all claim to this protection, it did not suit my dignity to reveal; for my mother raised up such a storm of protest and abuse one could only keep from capsizing by sailing into it. It needed only this, says she, for me to go one better than my father, for he at least did not
marry
his whores. And other similar reflections. In the end, taking advantage of a brief abatement, I escaped with Mary to the carriage, which my groom had prepared, and we drove away in the ‘dead of night' but without its silence – for Kitty pursued us as far as George Street in her night-gown.