Indiscretion (2 page)

‘Ah, yes, Hertfordshire,’ her father said sorrowfully. ‘And there, I dare swear, the young men were mightily impressed with you.’

‘Well, there was Miss Willis’s brother. But he was only sixteen and quite the puppy. The fact of my being called Miss Fortune he could not get over. He even kept going out of his way to stumble and have accidents so he could say it was a
misfortune.
In the end he quite hurt himself—’

‘Caroline, Caroline. You know well what I mean. This — this is where I feel most the lack of a mother’s care. For she would know how to put you in the way of a good marriage.’

‘Put me in the way? You make it sound like a speeding coach that would flatten me!’

‘Well, so it is, in some sort. A happy marriage — and by that I mean a love-match — is something overwhelming, and overpowering. It is the end
of
choices, but happily, most happily so ...’ His eyes grew misty. ‘That was how it was with your poor mother and me, at any rate.’

‘But, Papa, you spoke of a
good
marriage. And that is something entirely different, is it not? No, don’t pout. You know what I mean. A girl should set her sights on a man who has money; or if not, who can expect to come into money; or if not, who has moneyed connections. That’s the order, is it not? But you know I’m not sure I want to marry on those terms. Or indeed marry at all. So you must not reproach yourself because I am not forever being crushed by eligible young men at carpet-dances. That I don’t hanker for in the least.’

‘Hm. But not to marry? That’s as much to say, to grow old alone, Caro. Think of that. For you know the rest of me will catch up with this damned leg soon enough.’

‘Isn’t it better to be alone than tied to a man you don’t love or care for?’

‘I don’t know. I have had love, and so for me everything is coloured by that. But I know that there are many women and men grown old and solitary who spoke as you do when they were young, and now regret it.’

‘To be sure; but is it a sufficient reason to do something, that if you do not, the opportunity may be lost? There are some workmen getting ready to demolish an old brick wall across the street — but I’m not about to run out there and beat my head against it, just because soon I shall not be able to.’

‘Well, well,’ he said, smiling sadly, ‘I would not have you do aught against your will. But, Caro, don’t, I pray you, be caught in narrow notions of love and marriage. Your mother and I made a love-match, yes. But it would also have been a good, sound, prosperous match, if her family had not been so damnably determined to disoblige us. Love and prudence
can
go together. And that, you know, is what I see for you. No old-maidish solitude, no, no: a good man who loves you, and a comfortable situation — the sort of soil that makes love flourish, and not grow crooked. That’s what I see for you, my darling, and always have!’

Her father beamed at her: he had cheered himself up considerably; and he appeared as proud of this golden vision of her future as if he had ever done anything to secure or foster it for her. But this was not untypical of Captain Fortune, who in his cups would often talk in vivid detail of what he would do when he was rich, and how much he would bestow and where; to the extent that Caroline even found herself once profusely thanking him for a notional fifty thousand, while he wagged his head in bashful modesty. But then she supposed he was not the first to establish himself in the character of a generous man on such easy terms.

It was a relief, at any rate, to find him no longer desponding. Indeed only someone less used to the Captain’s quixotic ways would

have been surprised to see him now fairly bouncing off the sofa, and calling lustily to his manservant, Marriner, to send out for a bottle of brandy. Marriner, a bald long-faced dry Yorkshireman, only asked where they might apply, for they had no credit left at any place he knew of; but the Captain breezily told him to use his imagination. ‘That’s the blessing of shifting to new quarters, man
—
we’re not known hereabouts!’

‘Yet,’ grunted Marriner, stumping out.

‘Well, Papa,’ Caroline said, taking advantage of his altered mood to press her point, ‘the governess notion
—
it is not so very terrible, is it? And there is nothing against my beginning to make enquiries to that end, at least?’

‘Nothing,’ Captain Fortune said, ‘except this: it will not be needed. Because I have an idea.’ He began to pace the narrow width of their parlour, his lame leg thumping on the floor. ‘It has come to me in a flash
—
an inspiration
—
I don’t know from where
—
unless it was talking of the old days. But I cannot conceive why I did not think of it before. Indeed it is so simple it is absurd. The remedy has lain beneath my hand the whole time. My dear, you recollect when we were thrown
—
that is, asked to leave our old lodging t’other day? And I gave that impudent clod of a landlord a thorough set-down in the street, where he had so unwarrantably placed my possessions, with the result that an urchin made off with my boot-trees? Did you observe? Did you not notice how people congregated as I ripped him up, and gaped and cheered?’

‘Yes, Papa,’ she answered, not without constraint. ‘I noticed.’

‘Then you will smoke my meaning at once, Caro
—
you have me, I am sure
—
and will concur that there was never a better notion. I
have
a resource. The man who was unanimously declared the finest Romeo ever seen in Bristol
—
to say nothing of Gloucester
—
need not fear pecuniary embarrassment. I shall tread the boards again!’

He struck a flourishing pose, and seemed to invite her applause. There was no denying that, at nearly fifty, her father remained a handsome man. He was upright and broad-shouldered: his complexion had survived soldiering and port-wine remarkably well; and he had eyes of a singularly bright, fresh, beguiling blue, which he often reminded Caroline she had inherited from him, as complacently as if they were ten thousand pounds. And yet, a man of nearly fifty he remained; and as for treading the boards, the phrase threw into relief the principal objection, which still she hesitated to name.

‘You doubt me,’ he said.

‘No, no,’ she said hastily. ‘I was only wondering, Papa
—
it has been so long, and perhaps you have grown rusty
—’

‘Ah, not I. Before Talavera, you know, I gave my brother officers recitations from
Henry
V,
taking all the parts. One fellow said after that
he couldn’t wait to throw himself at the French guns. To be sure, there is the question of gentility. I believe it may be got over. For my part, I see myself as a devoted amateur of the thespian art, who will accept, with good grace, a fee.’ He came and sat by her. ‘You won’t find your sense of decorum offended, I hope, Caro, seeing me perform in the theatre? I’d drop myself in the river before that.’

‘Of
course not, Papa.’ She looked helplessly at him. It was the regrettable consequence of being the more realistic of a pair, that one of you must always be appearing a carper and a spoiler. It was not
a character particularly wanted by Caroline, who had a strong fanciful vein of her own. Indeed if she resented anything about her father, it was that he was so reliably silly it left her no scope. So with hesitation she poured her trickling of cold water, saying: ‘But
if
it does not answer
—
if by some chance this excellent idea does not bear the fruit you hope
—
then we must consider something else. And that means me doing something for my living, like becoming a
governess. Which is a prospect I truly do not fear, Papa. Is that agreed?’

Her
father gave the eager, smiling, attentive nod that meant he was not listening at all; then limped over to the little store of books she had lovingly arranged on the alcove-shelf, took down his Shakespeare and began excitedly thumbing. ‘The fruit, my dear,’ he said, with an expressive gesture, ‘will be plump, and juicy, and delicious trust me for that! By heaven, I really cannot conceive why
I did
not think of this idea before!’

The answer to that was, that it was not a very good idea. But Captain Fortune began the pursuing of it the next day, with all the energy and address at his command.

For it was no lack of these qualities that had brought him to the condition of a near-bankrupt. When he had an end in view, he fairly drove himself at it; but his judgement as to whether an end was attainable, or worthwhile, was less to be relied upon.

Caroline’s father had come from a genteel Devon family, but had alienated their affections by a flamboyantly rebellious youth, which had culminated in his engaging as a strolling actor with a touring theatre company. This was where eccentricity had descended into disgrace. Becoming a tapster at a gin-shop could hardly have made a worse impression on the sensibilities of his elderly and conventional parents. The names of Garrick and Sheridan might have rendered the stage illustrious: they could not make it respectable; and James Fortune’s parents took their hostility to the grave. At last he had recovered his credit with one of his surviving relatives, an uncle, by joining the militia, then embodied against the new-risen threat of Bonaparte. The uncle, an old military man, had smiled upon his errant nephew, and settled on him sufficient money to buy a commission in the regulars. It was in a line regiment only; but the young James Fortune had a dash and brilliancy that would have suited the Prince of Wales’ Own Hussars
—
and a spending habit to go with it. It was thus, as a handsome young officer, that he had met Caroline’s mother.

She was then a very young woman of gentle upbringing and untried character, making her first sortie from Huntingdonshire, where her father had a good property, to London. No amount of parental protectiveness could overcome the fact that she was very ready to be dazzled; and much worse might have befallen her than the passion for young Captain Fortune, which swiftly led to their elopement and marriage by the Gretna blacksmith. For he loved his bride as steadily as his volatile temperament would allow: nor could he be fairly said to want her for her money, for that was at the disposal of her outraged parents, who withheld it, and still he stood by her.

But she was not cut out to be a soldier’s wife, at least not one of those who followed the drum. Her health and spirits were alike unequal to the hardships of campaign, and when Captain Fortune went with the army to the Peninsula she remained in England, living upon very little, and perpetually in fear that her grass-widowhood might at any moment become the real thing. She was by now the mother of the infant Caroline, but her parents remained
unreconciled
to her marriage: the estrangement was lasting and complete. The portion she might have expected was bestowed on her more dutiful sister: and only the fondness, or senility as some called it, of a
grandparent secured her a legacy at last, and soothed her anxiety as
to the future of herself and her child, should the worst happen.

The worst did not happen
—
apparently so, at any rate. Captain Fortune returned from the Peninsula alive, though wounded, his right knee shot away so that he limped, as he said, like Jago’s donkey. The restored family were not rich, but with the price of his commission, and Mrs Fortune’s inheritance, they had a competence. But the Captain, with his expansive schemes and expensive tastes, soon brought them into difficulty. Caroline’s mother, never strong, had died when her daughter was twelve, in the unhappy knowledge that there was not much money left, nor much prospect of any more.

Captain Fortune’s elastic temper recognized neither of these things, just as he recovered swiftly from the loss of the woman he genuinely loved. Reality was not to him oppressive: it was a garment he
could shrug on and off at will. Caroline spent her youth in a succession of London boarding-schools, whilst her father kept up a sem
i
-regimental life of clubs, gaming, and running up debts, in between infallible plans for making money. He bought and sold horses, of which he was a tolerable judge, for friends and acquaintances: he invested in commercial enterprises, of which he was no judge at all. And except when talking of putting an end to his existence, he remained cheerful.

To some, this was an affront. The Captain had been a shockingly bad father to his daughter: everyone must think so. Her education had been fitful, her mode of life unsettled: she had no large circle of acquaintance, and her wardrobe was sadly inadequate to set off such beauty as nature had blessed her with; and from long mixing in male company, and that not of the best, she knew far too many curse-words. This at any rate was the opinion of such respectable people as came into their orbit
—
Miss Willis’s mother, for one, had voiced these very sentiments, not quite out of Caroline’s earshot. And now her father had expressed them himself, in the extremity of gloom.

But Caroline was less severe. She could regret her father’s delinquencies without hate or blame. Besides, life with him had been an interesting experience, and that counted for much. In her father the colourful worlds of the soldier, the dandy, and the artist met, and she had glimpsed all of them. As a girl she had sat on the weighing-scales at Gentleman Jackson’s boxing-rooms in Bond Street watching the young bloods sparring with the great pugilist. At school she had shocked her teachers by singing an Italian song learnt from the lips of a buxom opera-singer with whom she had shared a backstage supper, and which was not, as she had supposed, about anything so innocent as nightingales. In her nearly twenty years she had been nourished by a very rich diet of experience compared with the bland fare served to most young ladies; and excepting the loss of her mother, she had known no enduring pain.

Thus there was no bitterness in her, even as she regarded her father with the last veil of illusion stripped, saw him as incorrigible, and realized she must make her own way. As for his scheme of relaunching himself as an actor, she gave it a tolerant attention, listening to him read Romeo, and even accompanying him to auditions, where she took charge of the flannel with which he protected his throat and the scented gargle with which he lubricated it. ‘The voice,’ he instructed her, ‘the voice is all.’ Their new lodgings were certainly well situated for his purpose, being so close to Covent Garden and Drury Lane, and much of the neighbourhood inhabited by theatre people. But the time of year was unpropitious. It was June, when the season ended, the town emptied, and the Patent Theatres closed until September. The Haymarket stayed open for the summer, but the manager there
—
as Captain Fortune was informed with a firmness he judged excessive
—
had already contracted all the performers he could require. It was in the touring companies, preparing to sally to the provinces, the spas and the seaside watering-places, that the Captain’s best hope lay; and it was to their auditions, in fair-tents and inn club-rooms, that he repaired, with the supplementary hope that he would find people who remembered him from his first career thirty years ago.

Here was a sorrow, however. Those members of the theatrical fraternity who would have helped him had all died. Unaccountably, the only survivors were those who had always been dead set against him.

‘I was popular, you see, my dear. I was a great draw, in my day. The votaries of Thespis, alas, have always been sadly prone to envy and jealousy. And they have long memories. They will never forgive you a triumph!’

But even Captain Fortune’s sanguine temper was unequal to the series of rebuffs he met with at these auditions. Nor could the voice, which was undeniably resonant, efface the impression made as soon as he stepped on to the makeshift stage.

‘Can’t you disguise that limp?’ the manager called out, at the last audition.

‘What do you suggest, sir?’ answered her father with breezy exasperation. ‘I put a wig and moustache on it?’

‘Next!’

Caroline was diverted, but she felt his humiliation
—
more, perhaps, than he did. And it spurred her on to making enquiries on her own account for a governess’s position.

She had thought the matter round, and concluded that, townbred as she was, a post in London would best suit her: that she would prefer older to younger children; and that if there were a fascinating elder son with the looks and wit of Byron ready to fall in love with her
,
she would have no strenuous objection. In other words, she would take what she could get.

When her father was out of the way, she went to consult with her old nurse, a sensible woman and a valuable source of advice for a motherless girl. She was now settled at Marylebone as a poultry-keeper, Captain Fortune having sorrowfully dismissed her a few years since, when financial difficulties made it an impossible extravagance to keep a permanent female servant. (Marriner, of course, was a necessity, the Captain being particular about his coats.) Directed by her to the Petty Register Office where prospective governesses and employers were matched, and counselled not to tell
too
many fibs about her accomplishments
—
so that was the end of the fluent Russian and clarinet
—
Caroline was excited about her new undertaking, and only a little knocked back by the Office’s request for references.