A Gentleman of Fortune (31 page)

As she came within sight of the inn she saw that the London coach was stopped on the green, attended with all its usual bustle of boxes and parcels being lifted up into the basket and horses being led out of the shafts and passengers hurrying into the parlour to eat and drink as fast as they might. Miss Bevan was sitting upon a bench nearby – which was what her letter had led Dido to expect. But what she was not entirely prepared for was the travelling cloak lying on the bench – and the corded trunk beside it. She frowned rather thoughtfully as she made her way across the grass, through the little throng of gossiping friends, dawdling lovers and darting children.

‘Are you going upon a journey, Miss Bevan?’ she asked as they shook hands.

‘Yes, I am just now taking the coach to London and there I get into another – for Yorkshire.’

Dido sat down and took a long look at her companion. Her face was white and every strand of hair had been scraped back into the dark, severe bonnet. Her wide brown eyes looked larger than ever – there was a suggestion of fear in them, but also great determination.

‘You go to the house of Mr Grimbauld?’

A smile darted across Mary’s face. ‘I do indeed, and it is to be hoped that his nature is pleasanter than the sound of his name!’

‘I sincerely hope that it is.’

Dido was now the one being scrutinised. ‘I think,’ said Mary, ‘that you are not entirely surprised by my decision.’

‘I was not quite prepared for Mr Grimbauld,’ admitted Dido. ‘I had not expected you to go away today – to Yorkshire.’

‘When once we have determined upon a right course of action, I believe it is best to embark upon it straight away – otherwise it is all too easy to begin to argue against ourselves.’

‘I am sure you are right.’

‘So, Miss Kent, you, at least, did not expect me to stay here and marry Mr Lansdale?’

‘No, I do not think that I did.’

‘May I ask why?’

Dido only shrugged and repeated Mary’s own words back to her, ‘It is better to be a governess – better even to be a teacher in a school – than to marry a man one does not care for.’

‘Oh!’ Mary turned aside with a look of great consciousness and, one of the guards just then appearing, began to busy herself over getting her box tied onto the coach. When that was all settled and the man had warned her, with a broken-toothed smile, that they were to, ‘be off in just ten minutes, miss,’ she resumed her seat and folded her arms tightly about herself. ‘You know then that I do not…? You understand my feelings?’

‘Yes,’ said Dido gently. ‘Though when you first spoke those words to me, I did not quite understand that you were speaking about yourself. It was only afterwards…’

‘Afterwards?’

‘Yes, after I realised that it was you who had sent the mysterious letter to me. Then, you see, I began to wonder about your behaviour and your motives. And, of course, I recollected that at Ramsgate you had been unwilling to accept Mr Lansdale’s offer – that it was only after the discovery of your parentage – when your need for a home was pressing – it was only then that you accepted him.’

Mary bowed her head. ‘I should not have consented. But I persuaded myself that there was nothing wrong in what I was doing. After all, there was no shame in marrying prudently: it was no more than what other women were doing every day. And he seemed to be so very much in love…’ She stopped and shook her head. ‘This will not do. I cannot excuse myself. The truth is that I was desperate. When Mrs Midgely said that I must leave her house, I did not know what I would do. It is very hard, Miss Kent, to be entirely friendless.’

‘Yes, I am sure that it is. I do not wonder at what you did. I only wonder at what you have failed to do.’

‘And what is that?’

‘Why, you have failed to fall in love with Mr Lansdale! Which, considering he is young, handsome, rich, lively and good-natured, besides being excessively in love with you, is, I think, rather remarkable.’

‘You are right to wonder at it! There was a time when I wondered at it myself. At Ramsgate, when he first made his offer, I was unsure. Though I did not doubt my present feelings, I thought that they might change. I thought that I might learn to love him. That is why I did not give him an outright refusal – but only asked for time in which to consider.’

‘But now you are sure you can never love him?’

Mary hunched up her shoulders and folded her arms tightly across her breast. ‘Since the discovery in the book room…’ she began, but her voice faltered – that subject could not be talked of with safety. ‘Miss Kent,’ she said simply, ‘I do not think that I could ever confide in a man again. And if I were to marry Mr Lansdale I should despise myself forever. I should hate myself because I would know that I had been mercenary; and I would know that I had nothing to give in return for everything I had received from him – nothing but a pretence of affection.’ She stopped, pressed her hand to her mouth as if to prevent any more words escaping it, and sat a while in silence before asking, ‘How did you know? It must have been more than just the timing of my acceptance. What made you suspect that I was indifferent to him?’

‘Well, when I came to consider carefully I saw that your behaviour over these last weeks has been…wrong. You see, although you have been uneasy, even distressed, you have not behaved like a woman who sees the life of the man she loves under threat. Not at all. If you had really loved Mr Lansdale you would not have been able to hide your concern for him. Nothing else would have mattered to you but his safety.’ She stopped, half-expecting Mary to protest; but she only shrugged up her shoulders and gave a little nod of understanding.

‘Well, that is not how you have behaved. You have been reserved – quiet. You have not come forward with the information which you had about the night his aunt died – though from the beginning you have known things which must – at the very least – have shifted blame and attention from him. And then, when you did act – when you sent that note to me – it was not to protect Mr Lansdale – it was to protect Maria Carrisbrook, was it not?’

There was a very slight nod from Mary.

‘It was for the destitute, the desperate and friendless that you pleaded: you pleaded for women like Maria Henderson – women like yourself. You wished to protect her because you felt such a strong affinity with her. You were the same. Two women who must both sell their accomplishments in order to make their way in the world. “The world is not their friend, nor the world’s laws.” You meant that Maria should be excused for thinking only of herself – just as you should be.’

Mary had been watching anxiously through this last speech: her face becoming more shocked as Dido progressed. ‘You know!’ she cried when it was finished. ‘You know the truth about Maria!’

‘Yes, I believe I do.’

‘But how? How can you know?’

Dido hesitated awkwardly, for once unsure about explaining herself. But fresh horses were now, with much shuffling of hooves and shaking of heads, being backed into the shafts of the coach and two farmers were already climbing up to take their seats on the roof. There would not be much more time for talking.

‘Well,’ she began cautiously, ‘first of all there was your interest in her – which I traced to the time of your returning from Ramsgate. I knew that – after the discovery in the book room – you were uncomfortable in Mrs Midgely’s company and fell into the habit of sitting in the back parlour with Miss Prentice. And, as I have discovered myself, to sit with Miss Prentice is to sit beside the window – and to begin to watch out of that window as she does.’

Mary smiled. ‘It seems impossible to avoid it.’

‘It does indeed! But your eyesight is rather better than Miss Prentice’s I think – and your mind perhaps a little quicker. Though you might not have watched Knaresborough House so long, I think you saw a great deal more than she did!’ She paused, but Mary said nothing. ‘You were not taken in by the unbecoming clothes and bonnets in which the Misses Henderson walked abroad – you saw that they were very pretty women. More than pretty – quite beautiful. And, though I am only guessing at it, I think you saw other little things which made you suspect that this was a rather…unusual household.’

‘What kind of little things, Miss Kent?’ asked Mary with interest.

‘Oh well… Perhaps you saw that Mr Henderson bore a likeness to the butler Fraser. And perhaps – while Miss Prentice saw only that family carriages arrived in the evenings – you were able to discern more. You were able to see, perhaps, that it was not families who descended from those carriages – but only gentlemen. Certainly you saw enough to make you so interested in the inhabitants of Knaresborough House that you were prepared to set aside propriety and introduce yourself to the young ladies in the park.’

‘You are right, of course. And you are right too in supposing that my interest was heightened by the similarity I saw in our situations. I was, you must understand, very unhappy at that time – my consent was given to Mr Lansdale and he was beginning to plan our elopement, but already I was blaming myself for agreeing – and yet, independent of him, my future was so very unpromising that I had not the courage to withdraw my consent.’

‘Of course, I quite understand.’

Mary looked curiously at her. ‘You seem to understand me very well, Miss Kent, and I daresay I am more transparent than I had hoped! But how do you come to understand Maria Carrisbrook? That is beyond my comprehension.’

‘Oh well, it was her accomplishments that I first wondered at,’ said Dido.

‘Her accomplishments?’

‘Yes. You see I watched her very carefully during our day at Brooke and I concluded that hers had been a very strange education indeed! Maria Carrisbrook plays and sings; she knows French; she knows how to charm and put people at their ease; she is able to enter into pleasant conversation upon any subject. In all these things she is remarkably accomplished. But there are odd deficiencies. Why, I wondered should she be so very anxious about a cold collation? And why did she not know what entertainments were usual at a summer garden party? Why had she never been instructed in these little matters – or observed how they were done by others?’

Mary was now watching her talk with unabashed wonder. Dido smiled and shook her head. ‘In short, Miss Bevan, I concluded that, although she had been taught how to captivate and delight a man, she had not been taught the business of being a wife.’ Colour rose in Dido’s cheeks. She looked down. ‘Marriage,’ she finished quietly, ‘was not the purpose of her education.’

‘No,’ said Mary. ‘It was not.’

Now the coach passengers were beginning to come out of the inn parlour and the guard with the broken tooth was reminding Mary that they would ‘be off in just two minutes, miss.’

‘And then, of course,’ Dido hurried on, ‘there was the way in which Sir Joshua behaved when I asked him about Mr Henderson. He became very uncomfortable indeed at the sound of the name. As he ought to be! For he knew his own guilt! He knew very well that the establishment the butler had had the audacity to form in Knaresborough House was…a disreputable one.’

‘So,’ said Mary, taking up her cloak, ‘you did not need me to point out the meaning of my letter in Dr Johnson’s essay?’

‘Ah yes! That is what confirmed everything! The use to which the good doctor puts those lines explains everything!’ They stood up. For now the other passengers had all taken their seats and the coachman was picking up his whip, the outriders mounting their horses. The bustle around them helped to overcome the awkwardness of finishing her story. ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘it is not lovers, nor apothecaries, to whom he claims the world and its laws are no friend. It is prostitutes.’

As she spoke the word, they both stopped and for a moment looked one another in the eye. Two very respectable young women in their plain morning gowns and simple bonnets, standing amid all the loud busyness of the coach’s departure. Dido held out her hand in farewell; Mary took it and held it fast a moment. ‘You will not expose her, will you?’ she said.

Dido shook her head.

Mary smiled gratefully and turned towards the coach. But, just as she was about to step into it, Dido took her arm. They might never meet again. She must ask the question. ‘Do you really believe,’ she said urgently, ‘that you and Maria Carrisbrook are so very alike?’

Mary pulled the travelling cloak about her; she looked up at the coach and seemed to see in it everything that lay before her: the journey; Yorkshire; her future of laborious duty and mortification. ‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘After all, Maria and I are not so very alike – we have made different choices.’

‘But if you had chosen differently? If you had married Mr Lansdale?’

Mary said nothing. She turned away and climbed up into the coach. Dido pressed forward to the window, hoping still for an answer. But now the door was being closed, the horn was blowing, the harness creaking as the horses strained against it. Mary’s pale face at the window only smiled; she raised her hand in farewell and Dido was forced to step back as the great vehicle lumbered into motion.

When the coach had rumbled and clattered out of Richmond, Dido walked slowly to her seat beside the lime-walk. And there she was soon engrossed so deep in contemplation of all that had happened in the last few weeks as to leave her insensible of time and of everything passing around her.

The true cause of Mrs Lansdale’s death must create a deep impression upon any thinking mind. For though no one was guilty of her murder, here were four people to be blamed with neglecting her and wishing her out of the way – four people who had each gone a little way towards that terrible extremity of selfishness which is murder. And, besides all this, was that other shameful crime which had been carrying on in the very heart of respectable society.

Here was more than enough to occupy her thoughts! But, as she sat there in the breezy sunshine, her mind was less occupied with such moralising than with the extraordinary behaviour of Miss Bevan – and with the belief which had prompted that behaviour: the belief that there was an affinity, a fellowship, even, subsisting between herself and the Misses Henderson. Her silence at the final moment of parting – what had it signified?