A Little Folly (23 page)

‘Well – it looks as if you will have to seek that rich wife after all,’ Louisa said, with a little laugh, which was the very opposite of her feeling. ‘I wonder what, exactly, her fortune would have to amount to, to make her eligible as a candidate?’

‘You should know me better now than to take me at my liverish word,’ he said, almost scowling. ‘I think there can be nothing worse than being locked in a loveless marriage.’

‘But love in a cottage, they say, fares ill.’

‘They say a great many things. What do
you
think?’

‘I – I do not pretend to be indifferent to the comforts of life,’ she said, suppressing a shiver that was quite at odds with the stuffy heat, ‘but if one did lack them – or lose them – I believe compensations, great compensations, are still possible.’

‘Oh, everything is possible. As my sainted brother has just proved. Forgive me, I am good for nothing today. Shall we go? Georgiana, you too must be heartily sick of me, and I mean to take you for ices at Grillon’s to make it up to you, or so you won’t complain of me when we get home.’

Louisa was sorry, but not sorry: he was not in his best spirits, and her own were hardly lively. Only as he was handing her into Mrs Spedding’s carriage did he speak again.

‘By the by, the talk is that your brother does not consort with Faro’s Daughter any more. The fearsome colonel warned him off, one supposes.’

For a moment she could not answer: the subject weighed upon her heart with all its terrible oppression; and though she could not break confidence, she longed to be able to speak of it a little to him – to relieve the burden for a moment.

‘Well, as you remarked before,’ she said, ‘it is one of those tattling things that is talked of and forgotten. Though if it were not—’

‘Like Pearce Lynley and his governess bride,’ he said gloomily, ‘except there is no forgetting
that
: for some of us, it will go on and on. What a thousand pities it is that Pearce did not succeed in marrying you!’

Disconcerted, Louisa asked: ‘Why would that have been better?’

‘Oh! I don’t know,’ he said, in his most inconsequential manner; and chuckled. ‘Not that I am wishing you on him – God forbid.’

‘If he had,’ she said, searching his face, ‘he might have repented of his choice.’

‘How so? Would you have led him a merry dance?’

She hesitated. ‘You spoke of Valentine and the – the rumours attaching to him. Such associations, you know, would surely not have been gratifying to your brother. Though of course you do not mind them.’

‘Of course,’ he answered. ‘But once married to Pearce, be assured, you would have been eternally safe from reproach: the dazzle of his righteous armour would have banished all scandal and trouble; great heavens, you would have been safe!’ And laughing, half turning, he waved her languidly off.

Safe: from the awkward dissatisfaction of their meeting, and through the troubled commotion of her mind, this word rang like a deep bell. She sat numbly staring for some moments: then, when the carriage began to move, called out to the driver. ‘No – not home yet, please. I want to – I want to go and see the Law Courts.’

‘The which, miss?’

‘Where the great cases are tried.’

‘Oh, there’ll be nothing in session there just now, miss. Not the right time.’

‘It doesn’t signify – I just want to see them.’

He shrugged, supposing her, perhaps, being a little countrified about the sights, and set off. It was a long, slow business, with a great snarl of wheeled traffic at Charing Cross, and another hard by Whitehall, where a brewer’s dray had come to grief; but Louisa’s mind was so occupied with a kind of purposeful act of imagining that she scarcely noticed. At last she raised her head to see vast, venerable roofs darkening the summer sky: on one side Westminster Abbey, with the Parliament-house ahead: darkest and most solemn of all, the building to which the driver pointed with his whip.

‘Westminster Hall, miss,’ he said, mopping his brow. ‘Like I said, there’s nothing doing just now. I fancy some cases come on at the Guildhall too – but I doubt you’ll want to fag all the way over there besides,’ he added hopefully.

No, this would do very well: here was sufficient dingy loftiness, and gloomy grandeur, to impress her mind: she could picture the arched and echoing interior, could even summon the musty smell of dreadful authority. In Devonshire the petty sessions and assizes had seemed commonplace bucolic affairs, like market-days, and her father used to grumble about the amount of drinking and idle gathering they engendered. Here, all was different: there appeared something terribly appropriate in the way this ancient bastion of the law stood flanked by the greatest edifices of government and religion. Here was power that there was no evading: here no allowances would be made, and the voice that spoke of good intentions and the heart’s innocence must be rendered a pitiful whisper.

‘Now, when the sessions are on, that’s different,’ the driver said, seeming to find disappointment in her frozen silence. ‘We’d be carriages wheel to wheel then. Why, there’s no show like it.’

She nodded: she had already pictured the spectacle – the crowded galleries, the gleaming rail of the witness-box, the silks and wigs; and she had placed Valentine and herself in the midst of it.

‘Thank you for bringing me,’ she said. ‘Let us go home now.’

The vision was confronted; and she quailed at it sufficiently to make redundant the other sight she had readied herself to go and see – the debtor’s prison. But her task now was to balance it against the other vision that she had been entertaining ever since Francis Lynley’s parting words. The image of safety: experimentally and treacherously, she had allowed herself to picture her life now if, by some means, she had forestalled Mary Bowen, and brought herself to accept Pearce Lynley.

Mrs Lynley, mistress of Hythe Place, wife to one of the most respectable landowners in the kingdom, would be beyond the reach of trouble: her fortunes would be so solidly established that even if her brother should involve himself in scandal and ruin she could remain serenely untouched, if she chose. And there would not be voices lacking to say she should so choose: everything rational and sensible pointed to it.

The picture did not attract for more than a moment: swiftly its feeble glow was extinguished by the strength of her true feeling, her loyalty to Valentine, her complete belief that nothing could excuse such a cold, worldly match; still, she was disgusted with herself for the indulgence of that moment, and was glad that it was gone. Yes, even the shadow of Westminster Hall was a healthier place in which to move. But the resonance of that word
safe
was not quite ended. She thought there could be beauty in it, not mere prudence – if it encompassed warmth and truth of affection, the union of minds and hearts. There – there was something to be reached for; and hastily wiping her itching eyes as the carriage brought her back to Hill Street and to Valentine, she was grateful to have been given a glimpse of it, even if it seemed unlikely to be realised in the doubtful future that awaited them.

A
t Hill Street Louisa found no news; and it was with renewed heaviness of heart that she realised some child-like part of her had been hoping for it – that she might somehow find Valentine and Mr Tresilian turning to her with lifted brows, inviting her smiling to a seat, and explaining that some accommodation – she hardly knew what – had been reached. Instead there was Valentine mute and pale, hands in pockets, dully shaking his head at her look; and the Speddings still full of the comfortable novelty of Mr Lynley’s surprising engagement.

In the course of the long evening she found herself reviewing her own clandestine attempts at a solution to their predicament – and reviewing them, for the first time, with misgivings. Both Lady Harriet and Colonel Eversholt, in their different ways, had lent an ear to her persuasions, and so she had convinced herself that they might do good, or at least no harm; but now a dubious voice spoke up, and demanded to know how she could be sure that what she had done was not mere dangerous meddling. There was, after all, so much that was unknown to her in their situation: with Colonel Eversholt she had only a very limited acquaintance; and it occurred to her on looking back that Lady Harriet, despite her having been a guest at Pennacombe, had never stepped across that threshold which makes a person truly known; and that even in their last interview she had felt herself somehow at one remove from Lady Harriet’s thoughts and feelings, as if they were being expressed on a stage. If further evidence were needed, that she was not wholly easy with her own intervention, it surely lay in the fact that she had kept it secret – not so much from Valentine, who was too tenderly involved to judge it dispassionately, but from Mr Tresilian.

The suspicion thus roused that she might not have helped their situation, and even that she might have made it worse, was a bleak one with which to end the evening: the image of Mr Tresilian frowning over it completed the gloom with which she retired to bed, and which she had little expectation could be lifted by the coming of the brightest morning.

Bright it was: but it was with the lowest spirits, which she saw reflected in Valentine’s hollow looks, that Louisa came down to breakfast. – Yet it was not, at least, to be a blank day. There was news. Just after breakfast the maid brought in the post; and Valentine’s face as he saw the handwriting on the cover of the letter was enough to reveal to Louisa who it was from. Muttering an excuse to Mrs Spedding he started upstairs, and as soon as she decently could Louisa, struggling to conceal her agitation, followed him.

She found him sitting in his room, blinking like a man just woken abruptly from sleep, the letter on the floor before him.

‘Look,’ was all he could say.

Louisa took up the letter: at first the trembling in her hand made it dance before her eyes.

Louisa’s first reaction was that it could not be: that such a longed-for turn of events, such a liberation from the oppression of doom under which they had been living, must be the result of a mistake – of wishful thinking, of a dream; and she had to re-read the letter several times before she could be convinced of the blissful truth. Only then could she shout her delight and embrace Valentine, who held her stiffly, as if he still doubted that he was awake.

‘I have not misread it, Louisa – have I? He is giving the crim-con suit over?’

‘That is what he says. There it is, in writing. Oh! Valentine, is it not beyond anything? I am so happy for you – such relief – I feel my legs are going to give way, or else begin dancing. Oh – keep that letter safe. We must send to Mr Tresilian – he will want it filed with the lawyer, or something. He will be delighted too – who could not be? Who would ever have supposed that Colonel Eversholt could bestow such happiness?’

Valentine’s smile was unsteady. ‘What can have made him change, do you suppose?’

She had her ideas about that; but they were to be saved for her own private satisfaction. ‘I hardly know. Perhaps his friends have warned him against it, doubting its success. Probably he has been doing as you have – taking legal advice; and there he may well have heard unpromising things, especially about the costs he may be liable to. Perhaps he has simply seen sense. For my part I don’t much care – as long as you are safe.’

She hugged him again. He still seemed half stunned; but he agreed that Mr Tresilian, who had laboured so hard on their behalf, should be told the glad news at once. They took a hackney to Lombard Street, and sent up a note for him to come out to them, mindful of preserving secrecy from Kate and Miss Rose; but he came hurrying out to tell them the ladies were gone shopping, and to invite them in.

‘You say good news,’ he said breathlessly. ‘Am I wrong to hope—?’

‘No, you are not wrong,’ Louisa said, and checked herself in the strong, unforeseen impulse to embrace him too: that would never do.

In his parlour Mr Tresilian read the letter attentively, while Louisa could hardly keep still, and Valentine gazed mutely out of the window, as if seeing the world for the first time.

‘Well,’ Mr Tresilian said at last, blowing out a great breath. ‘Thank heaven. Something has made him see sense.’

‘Exactly what I said,’ cried Louisa. ‘The costs, perhaps, the risk – even the damage to his own reputation.’

‘Certainly I do not think it is his better nature,’ Mr Tresilian said. ‘As you say, prudence may at last have been the motive.’ His eye fell on Valentine. ‘Mind, there is nothing to prevent him threatening such an action again: it would make him look a fool, but he could do it – if these conditions are not met.’

‘Ah, yes,’ Valentine said, his voice muffled by the glass, ‘those conditions.’

‘Which, of course, are conditions your own good sense has already recommended to you,’ Mr Tresilian went on. ‘We have known from the beginning that that
must
be the case.’

‘To be sure.’ Valentine turned. ‘It is a victory – and, like most victories, has a little hollow taste about it. No, no,’ he added quickly, at Mr Tresilian’s look, ‘I am thankful, most heartily thankful, believe me. I am sensible that I have been saved from a dreadful prospect – all the more dreadful in that I did nothing wrong to deserve it.’

Mr Tresilian’s face remained thoughtful; but after a moment he shrugged and went to the decanter, saying lightly: ‘Well, I dare say none of us gets what we deserve, for good or ill. I shall not prate of learning lessons: let us instead simply celebrate your delivery. It is rather early, but we can pretend the sun is over the yard-arm.’

‘Now I know you are happy,’ Louisa said, joining him, ‘because you are using nautical expressions.’

‘Oh, stow it and drink your grog,’ he said, handing her a glass.

‘Truly, though – I understand your caution, but – there is nothing to fear now, is there?’

Mr Tresilian raised his glass gently to hers, with one of his rare, bright smiles. ‘There is nothing to fear.’

In such an elevation of spirits as now seized her, nothing could come amiss. After Mr Tresilian had talked of informing their lawyer of the news, and Valentine, drinking deep, had said little, Kate and Miss Rose returned. Louisa had never been so glad to see Kate’s gentle face: Miss Rose, she thought, was a well-meaning woman in her way; and she looked over and admired their purchases with an enthusiasm that set Kate glancing a little anxiously at the decanter.

On their return to Hill Street, she remained exultant; but she took some time before nuncheon to be alone, and indulge in a little prayer of thankfulness. – Whether after all it was her own persuasions, joined perhaps with those she had implored Lady Harriet to make, which had operated on Colonel Eversholt to this most felicitous result, she could not tell; and she would not tempt Fate by any crowing satisfaction. Other influences there must have been, including those she had suggested to Valentine and Mr Tresilian; but she had noted that phrase in the letter –
your apparent intimacy
– with its suggestion of an interpretation of Valentine’s conduct that could only have come from her; and so, just perhaps, hers had been the grain that tipped the balance. To joy and relief was added the warm hope that she had not failed her brother; and that she was much more equipped to deal with the great world than anyone, from her father to Mr Lynley, had ever given her the credit of believing.

A shadow – a slight shadow – remained. Valentine began to resemble himself a little more, during the course of the next couple of days: he talked freely, paid attention to his dress, and took an interest in those small matters of life that had been swallowed up in the threat to his future. He had promised faithfully to abjure the society of Lady Harriet: he remained fully sensible that there was no alternative, and that his association with her had brought him close to ruin, and Louisa was certain the promise was kept. But sometimes he gave way to downcast looks, to sighs, and to speculations on how Lady Harriet was faring: he would ask Sophie if she had seen her friend about, and what were her looks; and altogether revealed that he was not in a way to forgetting her. It made Louisa a little impatient – but impatience did not crowd out understanding; and she was above all concerned that Mr Tresilian should not be hard on him. These little lamentations Mr Tresilian heard with a barely concealed disgust; and once he growled that if he heard that woman’s name once more, he would imitate Miss Rose’s example and drop himself off a cliff.

‘He is not unthankful, believe me,’ Louisa urged him at last. ‘He knows the great reprieve he has had – knows I am sure that his involvement with her was ill-judged. But the feelings are not so easily or so soon to be commanded. They are like – well, they are like trailing plants, profuse and untidy.’

‘Pruning-scissors are the answer to that,’ Mr Tresilian said, with a grim mime. Louisa smiled; but Mr Tresilian was unsoftened: and she began to feel that the caution, the silent watchfulness that he continued to exercise after the first burst of relief was excessive. There seemed about him a new reserve – a deepening of abstraction: several times, when calling, he appeared on the brink of saying something, either to Valentine, or to herself, which he then relented of, and buried in his breast. Louisa felt it was a little hard that the heart should always be on sentry-go; and when she mentioned that the Speddings had an invitation to a masquerade ball next week, and she hoped to go too, his response made her a little irritable in return.

‘Are you now? I should have thought— Well, never mind.’

‘What should you have thought, Mr Tresilian? Surely there are no perils here. This is nothing to do with – that other matter. That is all settled—’

‘Yes, let us hope so. Indeed, I wish everyone would see it so, and draw the appropriate conclusions.’

She hesitated. ‘But you said – did you not – that there was nothing further to be feared from that quarter – from the colonel?’

‘I do not fear anything but the consequences of unbridled folly. Those have been averted once. No one in his right senses steers back into a storm,’ he said coolly, walking away.

She wondered if he meant a reproach to her, for taking up engagements so soon after the dizzying reversals of menace and release; but other than adopting a hair-shirt and throwing ashes on herself, she did not know what he expected her to do. She was every moment grateful for the removal of that terrible threat; and in that spirit was inclined to value every pleasure, and relish every experience. Caution: it was Mr Tresilian’s strength but also, she felt, his weakness – deriving perhaps from his early marriage. She wondered, too, if he were a little out of sorts from being no longer useful.

Yet his words did not go unheeded. The precariousness of their security had certainly been revealed to them by this late imbroglio: and whilst their escape was a matter for celebration, it must surely prompt reflection also. A reminder, and an occasion for a soberer mood, came in the shape of a caller at Hill Street, an earnest gentleman much involved with an association for the relief of debtors. Afterwards Tom and Sophie groaned that he was the most shocking bore; but the memory of Westminster Hall, and the sensation of being dwarfed in its shadow, were sufficiently strong for Louisa to send him a banker’s draft in donation, and to make the equally important transaction of counting her blessings.

As for the masquerade, she remained in two minds. She wondered if Lieutenant Lynley were going: then interrogated herself as to why that should make a difference. If Valentine wished to go, she thought, that might decide it; for she wished them to be together as much as possible, as they had been before the episode of the Eversholts. But they, alas, remained his one theme. She tried to divert his thoughts to other channels; but she feared that while his head told him that he must consider the welfare of Lady Harriet as nothing to do with him, his heart said otherwise; and that the unhappiness of infatuation would considerably outlast the elation of his escape.