Indiscretion (15 page)

She spoke in such gloomy earnest, that Caroline felt constrained to suppress the smile this image called up. ‘My dear aunt,’ she said, squeezing her arm, ‘when I was at school once, the mistress having read my exercise asked me if I could really believe that Paris was in Spain, and I answered brightly that I could certainly believe it if I tried. But what you have just said, you know, I cannot believe.’

‘Ah, you don’t know me, Caroline.’ Her aunt sighed.’Indeed there is the point precisely! You don’t know me, because you have not had the opportunity to do so, because of that stubbornness of mine. My quarrel with my poor sister was bad enough, but to transfer it to you
—’

‘Well, we haven’t quarrelled, Aunt
—
we’ve just been apart.’

‘Oh, in my heart I have kept up the bitterest quarrel, I’m afraid. Because of what Margaret did to me. There! That sounds thoroughly dramatic, does it not? What can your poor mother have done? Well, she didn’t mean it, certainly: there was no malice in Margaret. Still, the result was the same. When she ran off with your father, you see, that left me: just me, at home with parents who were very fond but very severe and very, very disappointed in their elder daughter
—
the pretty graceful one from whom so much had been expected. Now, Caroline, you begin to see what a truly disagreeable person I am.’

‘Do I?’

‘Jealous and resentful
—
those are disagreeable qualities, surely. I resented the burden Margaret had placed on me
—
the burden of being the
good
one. Dear, dear, I’m shocked to hear myself saying this,’ Aunt Selina went on, with a tremulous laugh, and a twitch in her sallow cheek. ‘As if I did not wish to be good. When I have always been, from a girl, of the firmest Christian principles. And as for our family’s way of living in Huntingdonshire
—
healthfully situated, retired and quiet, with very little society
—
why, that suited me too. And so did the prospect of a respectable marriage in due time to a gentleman
of
the neighbourhood. Why then the discontent? Perhaps because one would be pleased to have the
choice
—
and after Margaret was gone from us, I felt I had none: only duty. Dear, dear,’ she said again shakily. ‘I have never spoken of this to anyone
—
not even John
...’
A look of alarm came over her, which was not difficult for Caroline to read: for what did this seem to say about her marriage to Uncle John? ‘Don’t mistake me, my dear. It could not have turned out better: that gentleman of the neighbourhood who came along in due course was the one man I could have loved: I have been wonderfully fortunate.’

‘That I can believe. I never saw so well disposed a couple.’

Aunt Selina’s look conveyed subtle thanks. ‘Well! Stubbornness has a logic of its own. These bitter feelings can persist long after the occasion for them has gone. I became a most unpleasant people-watcher, observing and drawing conclusions. I can do it yet. Over there, you see that pretty girl in the blue pelisse, who seems to be fascinating the two young officers? I am monster enough to frown over that scene, and to hope that she hasn’t got a plainer sister who will have to pay for her indiscretions. Delightful behaviour in a woman past forty who calls herself a Christian!’

‘Well, Aunt, you have now been donkey, pig, and monster: but the word that occurs to me is human
—
that’s all.’

‘Does it?’ Aunt Selina rejoined, with a sort of anxious hope; but then, shaking her head: ‘Ah, you haven’t heard the worst of it. I said how fortunate I had been in marriage: we were blessed in all but one regard
—
we never had a child. And will you believe I envied your poor mother there too? Not only had she been the daring one, she had got a child from it
—
and there was I
...’

‘Oh, Aunt, don’t think of it.’

‘No, no, I’m glad to.’ Aunt Selina came out of one of her abstractions with a refreshed look. ‘Severe self-examination, even when painful, is one of the best exercises for the soul.’

Caroline was not sure about that
—
looking into her own self seemed to her like rooting in an untidy long-neglected drawer, with no knowing what you might find at the bottom
—
but she was happy to see her aunt embarked on a more cheerful path of thought, and held her peace. The confession certainly seemed to have done Aunt Selina good; and when they got back to Gay Street, and Uncle John benignly asked if they had had a good walk, his wife surprised him by saying they had had the best of walks that ever was, and kissing him heartily.

The funeral being over, the Captain’s clothes and effects being charitably made over to the poor, except for a few personal mementoes that Caroline divided with his manservant, dry, unimpressible old Marriner (who mopped his eyes at the graveside, but was canny enough to strike a bargain with a new employer amongst the mourners), the question of how long she was to stay at Gay Street was much in Caroline’s mind. She had a lively aversion to trespassing on the Langlands’ good nature; and when she went to bed, that night and the night after, was strongly conscious of significant looks between her aunt and uncle, and of being talked about after she had retired. Yet at each succeeding breakfast, when she gently raised the matter of her departure, they would put her off with some remarks about there being time enough to talk of that, or by producing some reason why she should stay a little longer. One of these, and not the most convincing, was the imminent arrival in Bath of someone called Stephen.

‘My young kinsman,’ Uncle John said, laying down the letter. ‘He writes me from Beckhampton, where he is investigating a new find of antiquities
—
quite a hobby-horse of his
—
a Roman pavement no less
—
and if I know Stephen he will be down in the hole digging himself, regardless of propriety
—
even of danger. His poor mother used to get into fearful fidgets about it
—
wondered why he couldn’t just run up tailors’ bills like other young men. That was my late sister, my dear,’ he explained to Caroline, ‘Lady Milner. She married Sir Henry Milner of Wythorpe
—
my own parish, our dear, dear home ground
—
and Stephen Milner is their son. He says he will come and call on us while he is down this way
—
precisely
when
he does not say, which is just like him
—
but you must certainly stay, my dear, and meet him.’

‘Not that you may find that a great enticement, as Stephen is not the most sociable of creatures, and you will be lucky to get a word out of him,’ Aunt Selina said, smiling; and then, as if recollecting herself, ‘But you must, indeed, stay until then, my dear, of course.’

Knowing their good nature, Caroline began to wonder if the Langlands simply could not bring themselves to tell her to go; and entertained herself with a vision of a guest less tactful than herself, staying to supper and bed and then simply never leaving. She did love being with her hosts, enjoying ever more warm and confidential talks with Aunt Selina during the daily visit to Sydney Gardens, and cementing her cordiality with her uncle by reading out to him of an evening from a very mildly comic novel (which caused him to laugh, hoot, shout in surprise, and stamp about, to a degree almost as alarming as gratifying to the reader), but for her own part she had a dread of imposing. After surreptitiously consulting the London newspapers in Duffield’s circulating-library in Milsom Street
—
where, such was the elegant tone, one did not like to be seen drawing rings round the advertisements for situations
—
she began to have one set aside for her daily at a shop across the street, and pored its columns by the light of her bedtime candle.

And she found something that might suit. A lady at Highgate of independent means and infirm health wanted a respectable young person to fulfil the roles of companion, nurse, and general attendant.
‘N.B.
No Misses with Airs’ was the advertisement’s uncompromising conclusion; but as no references were required, Caroline felt that this was as good as could be hoped for, and wrote off at once. It was when she came back from posting this letter that she found her aunt waiting for her in the parlour, with the self-same newspaper in her hand, folded back at the marked advertisement.

‘My dear, you’ll think me intrusive. I was in your room to put fresh lavender in the chest. And then I saw this and
—
unforgivably perhaps
—
I grew inquisitive and looked. And read, and thought.’ Aunt Selina, always sombre, was now so very sombre she seemed to be standing in her own pool of shadow. ‘Caroline, may I ask you
—
are these your hope?’ She pointed gingerly at the advertisements. ‘Or rather
—
are they your desire? Because
—
oh, dear, I really shouldn’t say it without John here
—’

‘But I
am
here, my love!’ Uncle John leapt bodily into the room. ‘I was listening at the door!’

Caroline had been unable to repress a small scream at this apparition, but Aunt Selina only clucked her tongue and said with mild reproof, ‘My dear, really, this is almost as bad as the time you jumped out of the apple-cupboard.’

‘I couldn’t help it
—
I approached, I heard, and I knew what you were going to say.’

Aunt Selina reached for his hand. ‘Did you?’

‘To be sure
—
one doesn’t, you know, after twenty blissful years, lose that ability. You were going to put to our niece the very question that we have been discussing.’

‘Too soon, though, I fear, ‘Aunt Selina said, shaking her head. ‘I’m afraid we may offend
—’

‘Come, we must grasp the nettle
—
and pray don’t, my dear,’ he added, with his glance of confidence at Caroline, ‘be put out by that rather unflattering botanical proverb
—
it refers not to you but to the question
—
which is this: my dear Caroline, won’t you come home with us?’

It had happened before, and she hoped it would not happen again, but with Caroline it seemed there was no help for it: she answered important questions absurdly. So now, weak-legged and groping blindly for a chair, she gasped out: ‘For a visit?’

‘To stay!’ boomed her uncle exultantly. ‘To live! To be
—
why, a daughter to us!’

‘Not a daughter,’ Aunt Selina put in, wincing. ‘Whatever our own wishes, I think we offend against Caroline’s recent loss to speak in quite that way, my dear.’

‘True
—
true
—
dear me, how shocking, I am quite a fool,’ said Uncle John, sagging and then rallying again all in one moment.’ Still, still
—
you do know what I mean
—
don’t you, my dear?’

‘Yes, I do. And you are too kind. And my heart is quite full,’ Caroline wailed, and was taken into her aunt’s arms.

‘No, we’re not, and so is mine!’ cried Uncle John, embracing them both, skipping and laughing; so that they played a sort of tearful ring-a-rosie for a moment.

‘My dear girl,’ Aunt Selina whispered in her ear, ‘I hope you will take to us! We are very, very different from what you have been used to!’

The Langlands had thought it all through. They were able to meet every objection that Caroline raised over the next bewildering day or two.

Not that she did so out of any feeling against their proposal: for her heart had kindled to that at once, and not only in thankfulness at being rescued from insecurity and servitude. She considered her aunt and uncle, quite simply, the sweetest people she had ever known, and had already grieved at the thought of leaving them behind when she went to London. No, she raised objections because she fancied that this good fortune was somehow not deserved: that they must have made some mistake about her, which a very little reflection would reveal. Above all she wanted to be sure they knew what they were doing. Caroline thought herself no worse than any young woman of twenty years
—
but still, to take any of that species into a quiet, childless household was a great step.

The Langlands, however, were plainly in the habit of thinking round all sides of a question
—
witness a debate over whether the breakfast bacon was sufficiently salted so long, earnest, and exhaustive that it lasted till luncheon
—
and so there was nothing she could say that they had not anticipated. There was no rashness in this decision; and they were animated besides by a peculiar and rare brand of Christianity that consisted in deeds rather than words.

Even the details had been thought of. ‘Your room,’ Aunt Selina told her as they walked down Milsom Street, ‘has lately been papered
—
a light olive stripe
—
I hope you will like it. It is at the front of the house, with a pleasant view of the main road through the village, which passes quite close to the Rectory. We have a wall and a little screen of box and holly
—
no more
—
and no carriage-drive, though
Dr Langland
did set up a carriage last year, to spare me from the damps as he said. I must confess we have hardly used it. You will spur us, perhaps
—
ginger us up, as the saying goes.’ Aunt Selina wore a pleased little flush at having used a racy expression. ‘We are lucky to have ample room at the Rectory, and a very healthful situation. The garden and shrubbery are well laid out for walks when the weather fails
—
not that Wythorpe is often muddy, as we are on the higher ground of the county
—
you don’t know Huntingdonshire, my dear?’

Caroline hardly knew shires at all, except as the names of regiments. But she found the idea of them delightful: likewise the village, the house, the shrubbery, the olive-striped wallpaper, all of which she had begun to picture vividly, without ever quite being able to picture
herself
in the midst of them.

‘Well, it is a quiet sort of district, though there is society to be had.
Dr
Langland and I do not go about much, but even so there are five or six families we dine with. Then there are assemblies at Huntingdon
—
not that we have attended those in
years, but there again you will make all the difference, my dear. Now that reminds me
—’
they were passing a fashionable milliner’s shop, and Aunt Selina cast a dubious eye over the flamboyantly trimmed bonnets in the window
‘—
there is the matter of your dress. Would you rather have an allowance in your own hand for clothes, or leave it to us to settle? I don’t mind which
—
only you’ll forgive me observing that you’re surely in need of winter dresses, and things like fichus.’

Caroline had thought what she had on was a winter dress, but realized after a moment that Aunt Selina was misinterpreting her taste for bare arms and low bosom, and mistaking fashion for lack. This caused her a moment of anxious self-questioning whether she was not really rather a strumpet; though she could recall ladies in her father’s circles wearing gowns that were scarcely more than nudity, a little smudged.

This whole matter of money was an embarrassment, to her at least. It was plain that her aunt and uncle were comfortably situated, and well able to support her, but that did not mean she could contemplate her dependence without discomfort: nor could she bear their suggestions, that evening, of settling something on her, ‘when the time came’. She did not want to think of any such thing or any such time, and so her aunt obligingly dropped it: adding only, ‘But you are my niece, my dear, and it is as such that you shall live with us: family, you know: as simple as that.’

‘Oh, but you’re too good,’ Caroline moaned.

‘Well, if we are, you needn’t weep for it,’ her aunt said, with one of her rare laughs. ‘What, would you prefer to bed down in the stable?’

In a curious way, she would have, at least for a while: at least until they had had time to accommodate any regrets at their decision. In fact Caroline had less anxiety on the question of how she would take to a country village than how a country village would take to her. Dark, proverbial mutterings about cuckoos and nests kept flitting around her mind.

But she did her best to stifle them. If her aunt and uncle were confident, then so should she be. Soon they were deep in preparations for their return to Huntingdonshire; reflection was banished by the agreeable cares of sorting and packing: and Aunt Selina pronounced herself very thankful to be going, for ‘This frenzied pace of life,’ she said as they returned from the usual sedate stroll to the Pump Room, ‘it quite wears me out.’ Before their departure, however, there came the promised visit from
Dr Langland’s
nephew. A scribbled note arrived one evening from Mr Stephen Milner at the Bear Inn. ‘Fagged to death
—
berthing here for the night
—
wait upon you in the morning if you’d care to see me
—
if not run a nightgown up the flagpole as a sign and token
—
what ye’ve no flagpole ye rascally dogs
—
a firework then
—
love and what you will,’ was the substance, in what Caroline gathered was his characteristic style.

She wished she could share her aunt and uncle’s pleasure in the prospect: but for some reason Caroline acutely wished this Mr Stephen Milner were not coming. She knew she must be introduced to the Langlands’ circle of friends and relatives soon enough: in a way this was just getting one of them over with early; and after all did she really care so very much what they thought of her? Thus the voice of Reason: but it was faint beside her misgivings. She did not expect to find a man who got excited over Roman pavements sympathetic, and rose the next morning ready to be thoroughly scrutinized by a whimsical antiquary whom she had pictured right down to the
pince-nez
on his long, disdainful nose.

Or rather, not quite ready. There was one thing that she knew, to her shame, would help her: just a small glass of canary wine, such as was kept in the silver-topped decanter on the table in the front parlour. The door to the front parlour was the first you came to at the foot of the stairs. Going very softly, she slipped in: she would do the fortifying business, then join her aunt and uncle in the back parlour where they breakfasted. Caroline congratulated herself as she took the first sip. On the second sip, the voice spoke.

‘True
—
it is rather early for it. Still, I’ll join you in one of those.’

Choking, Caroline turned to meet the blearily blinking but observant eyes of a man who had just risen to a sitting position on the parlour sofa.

‘Good God! What the devil—?’

‘Swearing by both of them,’ he commented, with a gaping yawn, ruffling a thick crown of much
dishevelled
fairish hair, ‘has, I’ll admit, an agreeable sort of comprehensiveness.’

‘You startled me!’ she cried defensively. ‘And what the
—
what on earth are you doing here?’ She cast a confused glance at the window, grasping at a fleeting notion of the stranger as an exceptionally relaxed burglar: but the window was secure, and so too the man’s expression
—
he was quite at home, and apparently untroubled at being surprised in his shirt and breeches.

‘What am I doing? Sleeping, or was,’ he said, scratching his chest vigorously and reaching for a pair of much scuffed and muddied hessian boots. ‘Would you be so good as to pour me a glass, then? It’s unlucky to drink alone. You’re my uncle John’s Miss Fortune, I take it.’

It was hard to tell whether he
intended
the pun on her name that she heard, because his was a face that nature had already designed to be satirical. He had strongly arched eyebrows, deep-set grey eyes, broad pale cheekbones, and a wide, wry, asymmetrical bow
of
a mouth hooked up at the left corner. A very bad face, Caroline thought, especially disfigured with stubble as it was just now, though oddly difficult to look away from; and certainly not like the prim pedant she had pictured.

‘And you are Mr Milner, I take it,’ she answered, trying to pour a glass of wine with a mixture of dignity, displeasure, and insouciance
—
which was not easy: it was a lot to get into pouring. Really she wanted to run out of the room, except that that would complete the already ruinous impression she had made. ‘I had thought you staying at the Bear Inn.’

‘Was. Came away,’ he said, tugging at his boot. ‘Heard a din in the yard before dawn, stuck my head out of the window, saw a brute of an ostler thrashing blood out of a horse that wouldn’t go in the shafts. So, swore I wouldn’t stay under that roof any longer, came here, found the maid just alighting the fire. “Don’t wake anyone,” says I. “Let me lie here and finish my sleep.’” He tugged fiercely at his boot, then looked up at her brightly. ‘Ah, would you give me a shove?’

Stiff with surprise, Caroline found she was going over and doing as he asked, kneeling and pushing at the sole while he pulled at the loops. ‘Capital,’ he grunted. ‘Now t’other.’ Booted at last, he stood, a big bony longshanks of seven or eight and twenty, and gave her hand a shake. ‘And so how d’ye do? I say, you’re not some fanatic sportswoman, I hope, always in the saddle and view-halloo and all that?’

‘Do I look like one?’

‘Well, no,’ he said, after a judicious moment. ‘They usually have apple-cheeks and rumps like Herefords
—
only I wondered, as you looked a little doubtful at me about the ostler and the horse, and I feared you might be about to read me a lecture on animals liking a touch of the whip and foxes enjoying the chase and what-naught. Beg pardon. Is that my wine?’

‘If you were to put me in a saddle, Mr Milner, I should fall straight off.’

‘Dear!’ he said, gulping his wine and shaking his tousled head. ‘And yet you’re coming to live at Wythorpe
—
do I have my uncle aright in what he wrote me?’

‘Aunt Selina and Uncle John have been kind enough to offer me a home with them, yes,’ she said, in a voice that even to her own ears came out distressingly niminy-piminy. Really he had very much put her out. ‘Well,’ she went on, as he shrugged on his short waistcoat. ‘I should leave you to your dressing, sir.’

‘Why, I’m putting things on, not taking ‘em off. It’s lucky you woke me, in truth, else I might have slept through breakfast, and I’m prodigious hungry. Hungry as the devil, as you might say.’ Again it was difficult to tell whether that lopsided smile expressed satire: she thought it probably did. ‘Mind you, I have had a most unorthodox appetizer,’ he added, squinting at her through his empty wine-glass.

‘I should tell you,’ Caroline said, immediately suspecting that she shouldn’t, ‘that I am not in the habit of this.’

‘Habit of what?’

‘The habit of
—’
She frowned at him as he blandly brushed out his coat. ‘Of taking wine at
—’

‘Five past nine,’ he added helpfully, consulting a silver pocket-watch.

‘At an early hour. The fact of the matter is
—’

‘Deuced early.’

‘The fact is I have a slight indisposition. A sore throat. And I find a little canary helps.’

Stephen Milner made a noise in his own throat that, whatever its precise meaning, was decidedly not agreeable. He put on the coat, a dark cloth cutaway much past the days of its glory. ‘As long as it wasn’t to nerve yourself for meeting me,’ he grunted.

‘Good gracious, why on earth should I do that?’

‘Why the devil, in fact.’

Irritated, she made a move to the door, then stopped and demanded: ‘Why should my being no horsewoman prevent me living at Wythorpe?’

‘Oh, it won’t
prevent
you.’ He ruffled his hair, which seemed to fall into at least three partings: grimaced at himself for a cursory moment in front of the pier-glass, then turned back to her. ‘Only it does limit your conversational possibilities.’

‘Well, you live there
—
and you, I collect, don’t like horsy conversation.’

‘I don’t have conversations.’

‘Why, what are you and I doing?’

‘Taking the measure of each other,’ he said, with his most enigmatic, lynx-like look, and went carelessly past her to the door.