Friendship and Folly: The Merriweather Chronicles Book I (21 page)

It was but a week or two after Lady Lenox’s dinner, that Major Merrion and Lord Merivale were both granted a brief leave, and Merriweather being destitute of relations, they proposed spending it in town, and more specifically, at Merrion House. The Parrys were all cast into a state delightful anticipation by this news; news that caused Ann, at least, to give thanks that Miss Denbigh’s aunt possessed such fixed notions on the duties of guests to allow themselves to be entertained. Ann had no objection to make regarding Mr. Hayden, whose only social flaw, as far as she could judge, was a tendency to tell rather long anecdotes, which might have been interesting in themselves, if he had not habitually included so many superfluous descriptions as to cause his listeners frequently to lose sight of the main point of his narrative; but subsequent encounters with his ward had done nothing to alter her initial impression, which was, that Miss Denbigh was a distinctly tiresome creature, who had been better left at home with her hens. Talk of books, of policies, of speeches and sermons, of abolition or inventions, or witty talk about nothing in particular--in short, the usual intellectual fare of the Parry dining and drawing rooms--held little interest for such a mind as hers. She continued to require, or at least secure, the support of Julia or Lady Frances or
someone
, lest she spend a “very dull time” at Merrion House. Clive had, perhaps, discovered the best method of dealing with her, for he took her measure at once, and thereafter, whenever he became trapped in conversation with her, was sure to find a way to lure Sir Warrington into it as well; waiting only to see them happily embroiled in some subject that suited them both, before eliminating himself from the equation.

Ann did not doubt of Major Merrion (if not, perhaps, his nephew) being able to dispose of Miss Denbigh in this same fashion; but far better, that he should not be plagued with her at all. She gave Mr. Hayden credit for the firm but genial fashion, in which he pleaded the prior claims of the barbaric aunt during the gentlemen’s projected stay, and was only rather sorry, that there was no hope of sweeping Sir Warrington out of the way for the duration of it at well; especially, as the mere mention of their coming, provoked him to loud and quite unaccountable anxiety. He could not disguise it--indeed, it was never noticeable that he even tried to do so--and bounded out of his seat, to walk about the room in a distracted fashion, ejaculating various phrases that began with “O”--as “O dhare!” “O murther!” “O hivvens!”--deaf to all entreaties for an explanation. At length, becoming aware that every eye was fixed on him in astonishment, he stopped, and grasping his hair as if it were a wig he was desirous of wrenching from his head, he exclaimed, “Oi mist tale Paddy!” and bolted out as if afraid someone would leap on him to prevent it if he departed at the normal rate.

After a moment, Kitty put forward the suggestion, that perhaps he was upset because the visitors were “sodgers,” and it was cautiously admitted, that having lived through the uprising, he might possibly mistrust any one in a red coat--but no one found this very credible, and the discussion soon moved to the problematical Paddy. Since no one had ever liked to ask after him, and as they had waited in vain for Sir Warrington to mention the man again himself, they remained as ignorant of his status and person, as they had been the day of the baronet’s first visit to Merrion House.

Sir Warrington returned at the dinner hour, full of unexplained sighs, and arrayed in a coat of unexampled insubordination, and a countenance of Learlike tragedy. All Lady Frances’s concerned inquires produced nothing but deeper sighs, and the intelligence that “Paddy” had proven singularly unsympathetic, his consolation consisting of a single phrase in an outlandish tongue, which, when translated for them by Sir Warrington, seemed to be a proverb to the effect that, “If a man reaches for the largest potato, he must expect to get stuck in the back of the hand with a fork.”

They did not dare laugh in the face of his obvious misery, but the solemn tone in which he uttered this bucolic epigram made it difficult, and no one dared press the matter further to ask precisely what he or his Paddy meant by it.

Mr. Lenox, arriving for tea, appeared undisturbed by whatever apprehensions beset his brother, though it was clear, from the deliberate normalcy of his behavior, that he knew all about it, and also, that he did not mean to share his knowledge with others, deeming it a subject best ignored. The Parrys were quick to follow his lead, and it would have needed a stronger temper than Sir Warrington’s to preserve his megrims in the face of such general complacency. He still sighed on occasion, and gazed at Julia as if she were the last flower of summer whenever he remembered to do so; but he no longer sat like Patience on a monument; and when Julia suggested he sing to her accompaniment, he agreed with no small share of his customary enthusiasm. The Parrys had long discovered his fondness for this pastime, and indulged it whenever they could, for he had a fine, large voice, which found the right notes without apparent effort, and his lack of instruction became manifest only in those passages where it is left to the ingenuity of the performer to discover a place to breathe, if breathe he must. Julia herself had only a modest singing ability, but she could play ballads and ditties by the hour in accompaniment, and never grew flustered when her vocalist began on the wrong measure, or forgot the words, and then foolishly tried to retrieve them. Sir Warrington made a slight difficulty over the choosing of the first song, but with the opening chords all captiousness fled, and thereafter he warbled with increasing cheerfulness of desponding shepherds and cruel-eyed maidens, and sweethearts returning nae maire.

The gentlemen’s arrival next day, and their reception, were sufficiently characteristic to provoke Ann to amusement. Major Merrion sprang out at once without employing the step, as if his limbs, so long compressed, had suddenly uncoiled at the halting of the carriage, and ejected him; but though he was the first to emerge, it was Lord Merivale, descending in a statelier fashion, who received the mad, scampering rush of his young relatives’ welcome. It is true that Julia, coming with slightly more dignity, and not being immediately able to reach Lord Merivale for the barrier of her siblings, did, in fact, greet her uncle before her cousin; and that Clive paused to direct a “Howeryousir,” at Major Merrion before grasping his cousin’s hand and attempting to wring it off while he told him a hundred and one things in as many seconds. But it is doubtful if Kitty even saw her uncle standing there to the side; and as for the youngest children, not even the faithful instruction of their parents was yet sufficient to cause them to rate the claims of mere dutiful politeness over that of joy.

Had it been anyone but Major Merrion who was thus slighted, Ann would have felt anxious and dismayed as she approached, sure of his displeasure. But he never seemed to think of his own deserts, and begrudged his nephew the younger Parrys’ affection no more than he seemed to begrudge him Lord Meravon’s title and estates. When he saw Ann approaching he stepped forward to meet her, laughing, and shook her hand heartily, asking what she thought of his notion, that next time his nephew intended a visit, lottery tickets ought to be issued beforehand, and then everyone granted access in strict rotation, as their numbers were drawn.

In the excitement and joy of their coming, Sir Warrington and his proverb were temporarily forgotten. The fact that he himself was not present, pressing his gloomy face against the glass in conjunction with the rest, Ann put down solely to Mr. Lenox, who had implacably reminded him the night before, of their having a previous engagement; which she was privately convinced, of Mr. Lenox having engaged them for only just that moment in his head. The night following, however, Mr. Parry had persuaded them both to come to dinner, and then everyone remembered to be anxious, and to wonder, as they awaited the carriage, if Sir Warrington should have recovered his spirits. Major Merrion found their anxiety diverting, and declared his impatience to meet the fellow whose childish moping could put them all into such a pother. Had he seen a grown man come to dinner bringing along his uninvited gripe, he would have known what to think of him.

“You do not understand,” said Lady Frances. “It is so unlike him! He is always the happiest boy!”

Major Merrion looked askance at this denomination, for he had been given facts and figures, and was aware that the baronet was nearly two-and-thirty, five years older than he was himself. But Sir Warrington’s face, as he entered the drawing-room, was certainly enough to reassure the Major as to his sister’s judgment, for his expression and bearing was exactly that of a small boy who has been made to dress up nicely, and be civil to his aged relations, and pouting because he has been made to wash behind his ears. He scarcely had a glance to spare for the Parrys. Even Julia might have been an inkwell, from the way his eyes passed over her, and went straight to the Major, who was leaning against the mantle-piece, looking particularly striking in his scarlet coat. Aside from Sir Warrington, he was quite the tallest gentleman present, and Ann thought perhaps it was this circumstance that accounted for the look of hostility---or if not hostility, certainly something very like it--which immediately suffused the baronet’s face, and glared from his eyes. She wondered momentarily, if Kitty’s surmise had been correct after all, and felt a stirring of apprehension; a feeling evidently shared by others, for Mr. Lenox, coming through the door and seeing his brother’s truculent stance, laid a hand on his arm, even as Lady Frances bravely stepped forward between her brother and her guest, drawing Lord Merivale with her as she did so--possibly with the thought, that if anyone could find a soft answer to turn away wrath, it was he--and made haste to introduce them. Sir Warrington was so busy frowning at Major Merrion (who was, Ann saw, having difficulty in refraining from laughing; and probably, from getting into the spirit of the contest, by crossing his eyes, or
taking a sight
with fingers to nose), that he did not at first make any response to this presentation. Then, all at once, Lady Frances’s words must have reached that portion of matter between the baronet’s ears where the seat of intelligence is popularly supposed to reside, and his gaze shot around to her, and then, with a look of incredulity almost stage-like in its perfection, down at Lord Merivale. For a stark moment he was absolutely silent, and then he cried,

“
Ye’re
Lard Maryvail? Not” (with another wary look at Major Merrion) “
him
?”

And without waiting for their confirmation, he whipped around still further to face his brother in great excitement, and was beginning to utter who knows what horrific indiscretion in the relief of his feelings, when Mr. Lenox forcefully cut across his speech with “Yes, I can see that,” at the same moment that Clive, who was the only other person to understand any of the words contained in Sir Warrington’s aborted speech, exclaimed in astonishment, “Paddy! Does he call
you
‘Paddy’?”

As a diversion, it could not well have been improved upon. Confusion, explanations, further explanations, laughter, more explanations, were all the next ten minutes had space for, particularly as almost everyone in the room was concerned to bury the matter of one mistaken identity, as far as possible under the verbiage of the other.

Mr. Lenox, being ignorant of all the speculations that had gone before, was at first slightly startled by Clive’s eagerness. “Yes, why should he not? It is my name--although it is true that my mother declines to address me by it, and has, I understand, extracted a promise from Warrington that he will not do so either, at least while we are in England, where it somehow strikes her as being particularly dissonant. If this is indeed the first time you have heard it, it would seem that he has kept his promise with quite remarkable fidelity.” Here Sir Warrington looked rather abashed, as though he felt the indignity of having made such a commitment, and knew it deserved the reprobation of his brother. However, Mr. Lenox’s tone held no censure, and he continued his explanation with apparent amusement, “You must not think that my mother’s antipathy for the appellation is of some trifling or recent origin, for it predates my birth. A few months before my arrival in this world my father’s half-brother returned from the West Indies and took an instant dislike to his very English sister-in-law. He set himself to be as Irish as possible, and also began to throw out strong hints that, should the coming child be a son, and this son named after him, he might feel very much inclined to make such a pleasingly-denominated nephew his sole heir. As he was a bachelor possessed of middle years, moderate health, and supposedly fabulous riches, my mother, after much heartburning, agreed that I should be called Padraig after him, and Edmund after one of her own brothers. Uncle Paddy, of course, insisted that his name should have precedence--and though I do not imagine that this trifling connection between us can have had any great degree of influence on his affections, he was always exceedingly kind to me, and did indeed make me his heir. However, as his fortune was discovered to be adequate rather than fabulous, I expect my mother would have considered my name an ill bargain at twice the amount.”

**

For the first part of the evening Sir Warrington had a rather frustrating time of it, longing to expound on the reasons and results of his mistaking one Merrion for the other, and mysteriously unable to do so. He alone seemed to realize that the matter had not yet been fully resolved and clarified, and that if only everybody would not distract him at the very moment when he had settled in his mind how he meant to do it, he could put it all behind him and think on something else.

Clive at length took pity on him, and allowed the guilt-ridden baronet to shepherd him into a corner of the drawing-room and confide and excuse to his heart’s content; concluding the interview by somehow impressing on him the pointlessness of ever referring to the matter again. Clive did not, of course, feel himself bound by his own injunction, and recounted the substance of the baronet’s disclosure to a number of interested persons, first of whom was Ann, who summoned him almost directly afterward to her side with an imperative look, and a cup of sweetened tea. She, in turn, recounted it to Major Merrion, who disappointed her, by finding the explanation as amusing as Clive had done.

“Come now,” said he, at her pensive look, “you cannot suppose she meant to mislead him. Why, Kitty is the quintessential worm-bewailer. She would no more set out to make a man suffer, than I would go canvassing for a Grenvillite. You know how fond she is of Merivale; I daresay she was merely extolling him in a universal way, and the fellow misunderstood her.”

Ann was doubtful if even Sir Warrington was simple enough to listen to one girl’s praise of her cousin, and come away with the conviction that the girl’s sister was all but engaged to that cousin, without there being some sort of
intention
; but she did not like to argue with Major Merrion, and so conceded that Kitty was entirely too kind to have done such a thing on purpose.

“It is no manner of use your murmuring dulcet agreements at me,” said he, “if in your head you are scribbling away at provisos. You may as well show ’em to me at once. I am a great hand at objecting.”

Ann smiled, and replied, “It is only, that I think Kitty must have given him some reason to believe her cousin a rival. Could she not have done it in the belief that she was doing him a kindness, in preparing him for his inevitable disappointment? Or perhaps her own wishes in the matter manifested themselves to him, without her even knowing that they had done so.”

He appeared rather surprised. “Does she wish for such a match, then?”

“Oh, yes! That is, I suppose she would greatly prefer it if all her sisters were to remain unmarried, that they might one day set up a school together, after the pattern of the More’s and the Lees’; but I think she must have been forced to realize the unlikelihood of Julia continuing to evade the matrimonial net, with so many eager fishermen in the world; and from one or two things she has said to me since his return, it is clear that her cousin comes closer to meeting her standard for What Julia’s Husband Must Be than any other gentleman of her acquaintance.”

“That is a fine compliment for any man,” said he, smiling. “Such standards must be exceedingly rigorous.”

“Indeed, yes. He must, first, be heir to the property on which his wife-to-be and her family are living; secondly, have no intention of ever living any where else; thirdly, have no objection to her spending as much time with her family after her marriage as she did before; and fourthly, be so compliant as to fall in with the wishes of any one who will take the trouble to express them in his hearing.”

She immediately felt rather ashamed of herself for this speech, and hastened to add, that this was merely her own estimate, that Kitty had never been explicit, and that after all Lord Merivale knew nothing of the matter and so it did not signify. Then, as Major Merrion was still looking at her in a speculative fashion that she did not at all care for, she looked across to where Kitty sat listening to a conversation between her cousin and her mother, and said, that she hoped a way could be found, to keep from Kitty the reason for Sir Warrington’s distress, which any one could see, she was entirely ignorant of having caused. “Not to mention the discomfort of others! Poor Lord Merivale! To be so immediately dismissed as a rival worthy of apprehension!”

“’Poor Lord Merivale’ will not regard it in the least,” replied her companion; “you need not be concerned for him. What you may need to take heed of, is the behavior of Master Deauville, should it ever come to his bellicose ears that his hero was adjudged less of a threat then myself, on the basis of a few paltry inches.”

Ann could not help smiling at the imputation that the Major’s height was the only distinction between himself and his nephew, the only feature to make the difference between arousing or appeasing a rival’s fears; but she said only, that she would go herself and warn Clive not to speak of it to Gerard.

Clive may or may not have paid heed to her warning, which was in any case rendered entirely superfluous by Sir Warrington, who, in continued wonder at his deliverance, could not resist making, at least with his eyes, frequent and obvious comparisons between himself, or his brother, and Merivale; his beaming smiles pronouncing always his satisfaction in the result, to the depreciation of the latter. Such open narcissism would have disgusted Ann, had he not seemed as much, or more, gratified by the contemplation of his brother’s inches and appearance, as he was by his own; convincing her that his comparisons had less to do with vanity, than with heartening himself to pursue a journey, by contrasting the fleetness of his own transport, to the sorry condition of the footpad at the side of the road. His temper kept pace with his confidence, and it was not long before, being fully restored to his usual benevolence, he began to pity the hopeless state of his supposed rival, and to treat him with such marked compassion, that had it been anyone save Lord Merivale, he could not have helped but take offense.

Illustrative of this was Gerard, who failed entirely to take Ann’s palliative view of the baronet’s behavior. Moderation was not a word with which he had much acquaintance, and he had for years irritated Margaret, by his extravagant devotion to her cousin; the question of that gentleman’s stature alone accounting for more than half-a-dozen battles with Warwickshire youths of more valor than discretion, before Lady Frances took it upon herself to lay the situation before Lord Merivale, entreating him to intervene. The result had been a letter from Hythe, inscribed to “His Impetuosity, Gerard Deauville, Duke of Valiance, Duke of Temerity, First Prince of the Bloodied-Nose, Knight of the Down-trodden, Grand Master of the Order of Thumping Ruffians, of Insolence Chastened, and of Sniggers Retracted,” which no one but its recipient was ever allowed to touch, or know the contents of, and which brought about an immediate diminution of howls and bruises in the environs of Merriweather.

But though he had abandoned all attempts to defend his demigod’s reputation with his fists, this was not to say that he had ceased to be jealous for it. Years of being surrounded with Parrys had hammered a semblance of civility onto his outward form; but he had several times to be reprimanded for saying discourteous things about Sir Warrington after that gentleman had departed, disparaging his person and attributes in comparison not only to Merivale, but also to Mr. Parry, Major Merrion, and indeed, any created being much above the level of a garden snail.

**