A Little Folly (24 page)

Though Valentine continued to solicit intelligence of Lady Harriet from Sophie, it was with little result; for Sophie, while temperamentally inclined to divulge any information that came her way, admitted that though she was not absolutely
dropped
as a friend, she heard little of her nowadays, and saw less. She was all the more eager, then, to share a piece of news that must excite interest; and fairly burst upon Louisa and Valentine with it, as they sat by the open drawing-room windows trying to catch a little breeze in the stifling noon.

‘What a pair you look! But
I
have something that will revive you. And is it not curious, by the by, that I never suffer from the heat? Tom says it is because I am such a wisp of a thing, and that if we have a summer storm I must be careful not to perish in it, like a mayfly. Well, and what do you suppose is the news? Will it be believed that poor Lady Harriet is actually reconciled with the colonel?’

Valentine started up. ‘Reconciled – what do you mean? That is surely impossible. You mean they have come to some accommodation – some agreement to a legal separation—’

‘As for the
accommodation
, that is most definitely under one roof,’ said Sophie, with her most impish look. ‘I have it on the strongest authority – an intimate of both Lady Harriet and the colonel, from his time at the Palace. They are properly reconciled, and vow to place past misunderstandings behind them, and live henceforth peaceably as man and wife; and as they have both been in indifferent health, they have left broiling London behind them, and taken a house at Hampstead – a very pretty house, it seems, right on the salubrious heights. Well! you know me – the last thing I am is credulous: I must be fully satisfied of proofs before I catch at a tale; and so I went to Jermyn Street, very hardily, and rang the bell. And it is assuredly so: the faro-house is all shut up, except for a servant to mind it; but Harriet had left me a sweet little note – though very short – wishing me well, and saying that she and her husband were gone into a country retirement, and did not anticipate an early return to town. Is it not amazing? I shall not refer to knocking me down with a feather, for Tom would no doubt say
that
is easily enough achieved at any time. How lucky you are, Louisa, not to have a brother who is forever saying disobliging things about you.’

Louisa had remarked with alarm the rapid changes in Valentine’s expression throughout this narration; and felt that she had better say something, for Sophie was cheerfully awaiting a response. Sophie could hardly have been quite unaware of Valentine’s inclination towards her friend; but she lived so thoroughly in a world of flirtation, of takings and likings, all conducted at the most superficial level, that she had placed it there most comfortably, and did not suspect she touched any dangerous depths.

‘You are sure there is no misunderstanding?’ Louisa said, trying to sound easy and unconcerned. ‘After all, there is such a deal of gossip about the Eversholts generally, and things can become so garbled—’

‘Just as
I
thought, until I had her note,’ Sophie said, ‘but that leaves no doubt of it. I have been puzzling over it exceedingly; and can only conclude that it is as it appears – love has overcome all that division can do. For, you know, I never felt that Harriet’s heart was quite closed against him, despite all his iniquities: I fear we women are sad geese in that way.’

‘But what can have caused the change?’ Louisa murmured, as Valentine snapped to his feet and began pacing the room.

‘It may be that the colonel has promised a thorough reformation – as he has done before, to be sure,’ said Sophie. ‘Only this time he has carried conviction. Perhaps he has come to a proper appreciation of what he has lost; after all, there are many men who would consider that in Harriet they possessed the dearest treasure. And perhaps he really
does
intend a change for the better. I should like to think that it can happen, you know – that the worst rogue can be reformed. We mortals should all like to be given the benefit of the doubt. I sound quite holy today, don’t I? I did pass St Martin’s church on my way home, and very nearly went in, or thought about it anyhow, which may account for it.’

Valentine left the room; and Louisa, concealing her own agitation, stayed talking with Sophie as long as she was able, gleaning nothing more than these bare facts of the Eversholts’ taking a house at Hampstead, together with a general opinion that Lady Harriet’s faro-bank must have been exceptionally profitable for them to afford it – before at last seeking her brother alone.

She found him, to her perturbation, seated at the writing-desk: the pen was mended, but the sheet of paper before him was as blank and white as his expression. She put her hand on his shoulder. ‘Town tattle,’ she said quickly. ‘No one knows better than us how to disregard it—’

‘No.’ He patted her hand, with a brief tender smile. ‘Bless you, Louisa, you do it very well, but you know that’s not true. They are certainly gone together; and the question I must answer, or go mad, is why.’

‘It is a question— Oh, Valentine, after all that has happened, it is a question that should not concern you.’

‘It is a question I must answer or go stark mad, so there we are,’ he said, avoiding her eyes. ‘For God’s sake, she left that man – she exposed herself to all the indignity and difficulty of the unsupported wife, because she could not bear his treatment of her, of which, from our late intimacy, our late friendship, I know more than you may suppose. What could make her return to him now? It is incredible – intolerable.’

‘Whatever her reasons – and I do not deny that I greatly wonder at it myself – still it is not for us to enquire into them. Above all, not for you, Valentine.’

He shook his head, and scored deep lines across the letter-paper. ‘I had thought you would understand me, Louisa. You always did before.’

There was a wound in this, which she would have been more able to feel if anxiety had not taken the first place – anxiety that he would do something rash, which might overturn all that had been achieved. Her thoughts flew to Mr Tresilian: – but he, she was afraid, would not be forbearing, and she must trust to her gentler persuasions.

‘You knew her, certainly, very well, and had a keen sympathy for all her distresses,’ she said. ‘But we must consider – we cannot, and should not know all the circumstances, surrounding so private a thing as a marriage; and between man and wife there may be many complexities of feeling, which it is beyond us to penetrate.’

‘I speak of simplicities of feeling. The simple disbelief and abhorrence this must arouse in all but the most jaded and cynical heart. She could not do it of her own free will, Louisa. There must have been some form of coercion – some overwhelming pressure: I cannot conceive what, but I do not doubt that that man would consider nothing beneath him, no lie or trick or subterfuge, in the pursuit of his will.’ Valentine tore the page across and sprang to his feet. ‘I must know – I cannot rest until I know the truth of it. It is no manner of use writing: he will be sure to supervise her correspondence.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘Ride out to Hampstead, of course. Seek an interview.’

‘Valentine, this is madness. Have you forgotten the terrible threat that was but lately hanging over you? Do you not see that if you go after them now they are reconciled, and seek to thrust yourself upon them, you will be reawakening those worst suspicions in the colonel’s mind, with still greater force? I beg you, Valentine, consider your future: consider us.’

Her appeal was not wholly without its effect; his lips quivered – but still he shook his head, and persisted: ‘It cannot be as it appears. Sophie must have it wrong. It may well be that they are both at Hampstead: many people are repairing there for the air just now. They may even have ended up in the same large house-party, by unlucky management. Aye, now that seems more likely. Let me only ride out there – I undertake to speak to neither of them, only to ask around, to discover the true facts – and I shall be contented.’

Louisa doubted that; and she thought his whole plan folly – but seeing that he would not be diverted from it, and that he might pursue it independently of her once her back was turned, she proposed a compromise. If he really insisted on going to Hampstead, she must go with him: hers would be the enquiries, and she would take one of Mrs Spedding’s cards with her, for greater disguise. Beyond that she could not look: she deeply regretted indulging him even this far, but saw no help for it.

As for her own feeling about the Eversholts, she would very willingly have never thought about them again; but being brought to it, her suspicion was that her own intervention, however indirectly, had brought them together. She had urged Lady Harriet to a meeting, in which the innocence of her relations with Valentine was to be canvassed: she had impressed that same innocence on Colonel Eversholt, perhaps with something like success: feelings must have been discussed between them, misunderstandings perhaps cleared away, and a new start possibly appeared to them in the aftermath. Such had never been her intention: all her aim had been to save Valentine; and if this reconciliation had been an additional consequence, then very well. – She saw in it no matter for praise or blame, or responsibility: they were, as Mr Tresilian would say, a grown man and woman.

Louisa was no rider; and once Valentine, with some reluctance, had acceded to her going with him, he proposed the hire of a post-chaise, and hurried her to the livery-stables at Red Lion Yard. The chaise was procured with fortunate despatch: but every delay was agony to him; he could barely keep still while the horses were put into the traces, and once on the road he urged the driver to such a speed as was quite impossible while they were yet in the city streets, and would only sit back once they were past the Camden Town turnpike and struck the open highway.

‘We should have asked Sophie for more particulars,’ he said suddenly, with a stricken look. ‘We only know of this handsome house on the heights – nothing more.’

‘We are sure to discover something,’ Louisa said. ‘Hampstead is a sort of spa, and visitors like the Eversholts will be noticed.’

‘That’s so. I remember Tom saying he took a cure there, and preferred it to Bath. There will surely be a visitors’ book, or something of that kind.’

The air was certainly clear and clean after the heat of the city, and at any other time Louisa would have found it wonderfully refreshing: but the oppression of her spirits was not to be blown away by breezes; and nor could they be lifted by the pleasant sight of the heathery slopes, green woods and water-flashes presented by their approach to Hampstead. The resort was plainly well populated: there were many strollers, invalids in chairs, children bowling hoops – but the two he sought, as Valentine’s frantic glance revealed, were not to be seen. Fortunately their coachman knew Hampstead well, and without asking put up at the yard of the Green Man, by Well Walk; and as this appeared a principal inn and hotel of the place, Louisa thought her simplest course was to make enquiries there.

‘No, Valentine, I had better do it. Please, stay in the chaise. I shall not be long.’

She was not: nothing could have been easier, she found, than gaining intelligence of distinguished visitors to Hampstead. The housekeeper of the inn, of whom she first made enquiry, was not sure about the colonel, though she could swear to at least one major; but the landlord, bustling her aside, was able quickly to assure Louisa that Colonel and Lady Harriet Eversholt were certainly in residence – had taken Norlees House, above Whitestone Pond, and had been good enough to patronise the Green Man for its stabling; and a gentleman passing through civilly chimed in, to the effect that he knew them well, or rather by sight: that they had tried the waters, and twice been seen in the Great Room.

It was not, then, to be doubted. Louisa hardly knew how to tell Valentine, for fear of his reaction; but at last, rejoining him in the chaise, she chose simply to relay the information, and watch his face.

His lips thinned: but all he said, after a short struggle, was: ‘Let us go and look at this Norlees House.’

‘You will not present yourself there, Valentine,’ she said. ‘I will not endure it.’

‘No: I only want to see it,’ he said, quite mildly. So their coachman sought directions, and presently brought them up a winding road to pull up before the wicket-gate of an elegant white house, more villa than mansion; and with its prettily flowering gardens, espaliers and snug arbours, more lovers’ bower than either.

Valentine gazed: said at last, ‘I see,’ and rapped on the roof, to Louisa’s breathless relief, to tell him to drive on.

On the return journey, he was wholly silent until they again reached the Camden Town turnpike, where the groan of the gate seemed to rouse him from the deepest thought. He blinked around him, and said distinctly: ‘Well, I know how it is, now. It is altogether sadder than I could have supposed.’

Louisa, taking this for an admission that he had recognised the truth of the Eversholts’ reconciliation, and was resigned to it, reached for his hand; but ignoring that, and sitting up with energy, he went on: ‘She has done it to save
me
. It is magnificent, and dreadful. Apprised of her husband’s intentions for a law-suit that might ruin me, she has sacrificed herself: she has overcome very natural aversion, every consciousness of the wrongs done her, and delivered herself once more to him, so that that blow should not fall on me. Dear God, I can hardly bear to think of it: though if anything can make it tolerable, it is the knowledge that she is all and more than I thought her – a heroine, indeed, in tender selflessness. What pain and humiliation it must have cost her! And how little he deserves her, who can win back his wife by such vicious means! – for I am almost sure that was his intention all along. But she has spared me by not sparing herself. It was a curse that she ever saw me – but no, no, I will not say that: I will never say that.’

Valentine’s eyes were feverishly alight: there was no doubting that this explanation he had arrived at, while it disgusted him, also moved him beyond measure. – His bafflement was overcome: Colonel Eversholt was reliably devilish again, and Lady Harriet restored to the angelic. But Louisa was desperately uneasy: she still thought her own estimate of the case more probable; and without disparaging Lady Harriet, she could not conceive of such a worldly woman committing an act of pure self-abnegation. She was afraid that Valentine was deluding himself, and in such high-flown terms as suggested his attachment to Lady Harriet was perilously intact. Wanting to say all this, she found that her tongue would say nothing: fear of some further rashness if she opposed him, perhaps, disabled it; but she suspected, from his uplifted look, that he had just now no ears to hear, and must hope that a more rational mood might possess him, as Hampstead was left further behind.