A Little Folly (25 page)

On arriving at Hill Street, they found Mr Tresilian waiting alone in the drawing-room. He never took any notice of the prescribed hours for calling, turning up whenever he wanted to; and had come when the Speddings were dressing for dinner. He laid down his newspaper with a smile when they entered – but a glance at their faces must have shown him that all was not well.

‘Ah, you are looking cheerful, Tresilian,’ Valentine remarked. ‘Obviously you have not heard the news.’ He went to the side-table, poured himself a full glass of wine, drank it, and poured another.

‘Not news of a kind to be found in the
Chronicle
, I take it,’ Mr Tresilian said, watching him.

‘Lady Harriet and Colonel Eversholt are – are no longer separated,’ Valentine said. ‘They are once more living together as man and wife. In a delightful house in Hampstead, no less. We have just seen it.’

‘You have done what?’ cried Mr Tresilian; but Louisa, with a calming gesture, interposed.

‘From a distance, that is all. We had the news first from Sophie – and it was a little unclear as to detail so we took a ride out there, in order to discover the truth.’

‘Yes: the truth. It does not seem greatly to surprise you, Tresilian,’ Valentine said. ‘Had you already heard of it?’

Mr Tresilian shrugged. ‘It was in the wind.’

‘And what do you say to it?’

‘Nothing. It is no business of mine what they do. It was unfortunately your business, for a time, when the colonel made those threats – but that is over now, as you well know. Let them go their ways, Valentine.’

‘The curious thing is, I know you are not unfeeling,’ Valentine said, drinking down his second glass of wine, ‘and yet you will persist in portraying yourself so. Consider, for a moment, what has happened. Lady Harriet has returned to a husband who has treated her shamefully: returned to a life that must involve her in misery and abasement. That in itself is surely enough to move the hardest heart. But does it not occur to you what her motive must have been?’

‘You think she has done it for you,’ Mr Tresilian said, with a weary look. ‘Is that it? No, no. Leave go of that, Valentine. Very fine I know, but a fiddlestick nonetheless.’

‘I begin to wonder if I was wrong to take you into my confidence,’ Valentine said bitterly. ‘It seems to me we might have mismanaged the whole affair, if
she
had not taken it into her own hands, and effected my rescue at such cost to herself—’

‘Valentine, you do not know all,’ Louisa burst out, unable to bear it any longer. ‘I had never meant you to know this – nor you, Mr Tresilian. But after that first letter came, I – I tried to do something on your behalf, by going privately to see Lady Harriet. Colonel Eversholt also. I did not mean anything underhand, and all I undertook was to plead your cause – and your innocence. I did ask Lady Harriet to approach her husband, simply to urge that innocence, in the hope that face to face he might accept it. And when I saw Colonel Eversholt, I simply spoke what I believed – what I knew to be the truth: that his accusations were groundless; that there was nothing, except perhaps a little heedlessness, to be reproached in your conduct; and begged him to reconsider. I did not think it could do any harm – and I do not know what success I had. But it is there, I suspect, that explanations are to be found: there, perhaps, the path to their reconciliation was opened. I do not know – and I must agree with Mr Tresilian, it is not for us to enquire.’

‘Well, I must say you are remarkably cool about it all,’ Valentine said, in a pinched voice. ‘You have kept this secret from me so well, Louisa, that I must beg leave to wonder whether this is
all
the truth. You persuaded Lady Harriet to meeting her husband: are you quite sure you did not press her further, to do her wifely duty, to throw herself on his mercy? Did you have more of a hand in this than you recognise?’

‘Before you abuse your sister,’ said Mr Tresilian, in a soft but carrying voice, ‘you had better hold your tongue and listen to me. I shall not say this more than once: it was never intended to be told; but plainly you are still so damnably set on your folly that nothing else will shake you from it. – Valentine, you have been taken in. This shabby little plot was hatched between Lady Harriet and Colonel Eversholt, both, to extort money – the money they are always so deplorably short of. I do not know, I cannot tell, at what point they decided you were a fitting mark for the scheme: at some time after you came to town, at any rate, and your attachment to her was made plain. They certainly were separated, as they have been more than once in their rackety marriage; but they were reunited a good while ago.’

‘What do you mean?’ cried Valentine, turning crimson.

‘Just what I say. When Colonel Eversholt threatened a crim-con suit, I made my own enquiries. Cronies, creditors, servants. The brute who kept her faro-house was very happy to talk for gold, and it was plain that Lady Harriet and her husband were often together there; sometimes he would even be sleeping upstairs, while you were laying stakes at her faro-table.’

‘But of course this is a fiction,’ Valentine said, with a bemused look, ‘and I cannot understand why you are making it up.’

‘Ask around yourself, then. You will soon be disabused. His creditors had Jermyn Street as his address. Amongst them was a coachmaker at Long Acre, who perfectly remembered Colonel and Lady Harriet Eversholt coming to his workshop three weeks ago, to look over a curricle he was building for them – and to assure him, by the by, that his bill would soon be paid in full.’

Louisa could hardly bring herself to look at Valentine. But Mr Tresilian went on remorselessly.

‘It was the sort of evidence that might well discredit his suit, I thought: it might even convince a court that the whole thing was undertaken, as of course it was, as a piece of sheer swindling blackmail. But that still meant a court case, with the shaming publicity we wished to avoid, if possible.’ Mr Tresilian’s eye lit on Louisa for a moment. ‘I thought it would be possible. I understood what they wanted; and so I went to see Colonel Eversholt, presented what I knew, and invited him to settle on terms. He was evasive, he shifted his ground – he is no fool; but at last he realised he had better take what was offered. It was not all he, or rather they, had hoped for from a crim-con suit, but it was a fair result. I did wonder how long it would be before they set up house together again: not long at all, as it turns out. I would expect them to be in society again by the winter – perhaps to fall conveniently out in mid-season. Oh, yes, I would take my oath they have done this before.’

In the whirl of emotions that flung her mind about during Mr Tresilian’s account – in the astonishment, the indignation, the anger at herself for her own blindness – Louisa found the strongest was pity: pity for Valentine, caught up through the most ardent and idealised feelings in a scheme so sordid, so humiliating, and so destructive of all he believed. She could not wonder that her brother stood with his arm half raised, as if to ward off the blow of self-knowledge that must come.

‘So: as I said, this was never meant to be told, and I am no more happy in telling it than you are in hearing it,’ said Mr Tresilian, grimly. ‘But my hand was forced; for otherwise you would be descending on Castle Hampstead to rescue your lady from the giant’s clutches, and we should be back where we started.’

Valentine’s hand went to his wine-glass; but it was as if he lacked even the strength to lift it.

‘As for your part,’ Mr Tresilian said to Louisa, in a gentler voice, ‘it was undertaken in good faith, I am sure, and I’m sorry you were put to the trouble; but you see it can have made no difference, when they were in perfect communication with each other, and all had been arranged between them.’

The sting of knowing she had been made a fool of was little to bear: there were greater things at stake. ‘Mr Tresilian, you spoke of settling on terms,’ Louisa said. ‘What exactly did you mean?’

‘Why, paying them off. That was what they had always wanted, in court or out. It was the only way. As they had been careless, the fellow could not bargain too hard. He held out for five thousand: he got three; and I collect he was well satisfied with that, from the promptness with which he wrote you of withdrawing his suit.’

‘
You
paid him?’ Louisa cried. ‘You paid Colonel Eversholt three thousand pounds to—’

‘To good effect,’ Mr Tresilian rapped out. ‘Paid
them
, one should properly say: for the pair are nicely sharing their spoils, as is evidenced by their Hampstead retreat.’

‘No,’ Valentine said. The wine-glass slipped from his shaking hand and shattered on the floor. ‘No, I cannot hear any more of this. You must have taken leave of your senses. Good God, Tresilian, such an unwarrantable interference in my affairs! It is treating me like a child – it is treating me as my father would have treated me, and he had at least the excuse of blood for his overbearing conduct. To go behind my back in this fashion – and with so little delicacy – for in handing over that money, you were as good as saying that Lady Harriet
was
guilty—’

‘You blind fool, do you still not see that they
wanted
the appearance of guilt? Or else where was the profit? But of course I knew you would think in that way – of her honour and reputation and all the rest of it – which is why I undertook the business. Now it’s done, and there’s an end. You fell prey, Valentine, to a pair of plausible adventurers. It is not the first time the crim-con laws have been taken advantage of to such an end. Thank your stars you did not come off worse.’

‘Just now, Tresilian, I am not in a way to think of any worse result than this,’ Valentine said, in a dull, mechanical voice. He dropped to his knees and began picking up the shards of broken glass.

‘Valentine, leave that,’ Louisa said, ‘you will cut yourself.’

‘Already have,’ Valentine said, holding up a bloodied finger. ‘Not to be trusted, you see: not with anything.’ He rose stiffly. ‘Of course the sum will be paid back, Tresilian, immediately.’

‘As you wish, or not,’ Mr Tresilian said, with a shrug. ‘Set your finances straight first.’

‘That is the last piece of advice I expect ever to hear from you,’ Valentine said, bestowing on his old friend the bitterest and coldest look; and with a little patter of blood-drops, walked out of the room and the house.

‘Well, well,’ Mr Tresilian said, taking out his handkerchief to mop his brow: she thought it momentarily stole to his eyes also. ‘That was not what I wanted, believe me. But no matter, he is clear and free; and so all will be well in time. Now you had better dismiss me also, I should think.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you are loyal to him in all things,’ he said gruffly. ‘Admirably so. But I had to speak up, when he began turning on you. I could not stand by and see that.’

‘Couldn’t you?’ she said – conscious of being able to answer only very stupidly; but so many responses had been demanded of her, in this bewildering day, that she felt she could scarcely summon an appropriate reaction if the house went on fire.

‘All I have done—’ Mr Tresilian began again: but just then he heard Tom’s foot on the stair; and muttering about being unequal to company, he made his goodbyes, and hurried away.

L
ouisa waited up for Valentine that night, and had long to wait; and when he finally came in, he was rather the worse for wine, and in the company of The Top: who, as far as she could discern through the thickets of slang, had undertaken to see him home safely. She thanked him; but he was still inclined to linger about, chaffing Valentine and uttering his short, empty laugh, and she found his presence the greatest irritant to nerves already sorely tried by the events of the day. She got rid of him at last by assuring him, with some slang invented on the spot, that Valentine would do perfectly well: ‘Don’t fradge yourself, sir: he is only a little niddle-noddled.’

‘To be sure he is!’ cried The Top, readily; but he took his leave looking faintly disconcerted, as if entertaining the terrible suspicion that he might not be bang up to the mark, a sure card, and the pinkest bloom of the
ton
after all.

Valentine wanted only to go to bed, and was perhaps in no condition for discussion; but when she mentioned Mr Tresilian, the bleariness left his eyes, and his voice was hard and precise. ‘Don’t speak of it, Louisa. I have said all there is to say. I shall pay him back; and then there is an end of all communication between us. You must do as you please; but for my part, the breach is complete.’

The morning saw no alteration in him. Any allusion to the subject was met with the same curt response, and the same refusal to pursue it. He went out riding with Tom, and Louisa was left to dwell on the matter alone: to try to make sense of all that had happened, and set in some sort of order her painful perplexity of feeling.

In one respect, the mist of bewilderment had already lifted, and revealed something very clear and sharp. – With the Eversholts, she knew very well how she felt. There was nothing of extenuation, nothing of regret – except the regret that they had ever set eyes on them. Calling them to mind, she experienced only anger and contempt. That she had ever given Lady Harriet the hospitality of their roof was a bitter reflection for her. She did not suspect that her guest had then begun any such plans as had lately borne their corrupt fruit: that must have waited on town, and the quickening of Valentine’s fascination; but there must have been in Lady Harriet a disposition to look out for her chances, to use stealthy and subtle means towards her end, which was as detestable as the most flamboyant villainy. That Sophie had never detected the duplicity of her friend’s character was unsurprising, given the Spedding tendency to think well of everyone, and to wish to be liked in turn; but it was a pity, Louisa thought now, that that universal goodwill was not tempered by a little firmness of judgement. As for Colonel Eversholt, the evident smallness of the man scarcely even merited the strength of disdain. All in all, she concluded the couple were well suited – and she only hoped that in the future troubles of their marriage, the real would come to outnumber the invented, and that they would know for themselves all the distress and anxiety that they had been so willing to inflict.

She ardently wished, however, that Valentine could begin to see them in such a light; but he was so devotedly attached to the image of Lady Harriet that he had created that there must be a great tearing and wrenching of self before it could be destroyed. There, she thought, was the true source of his implacable feeling towards Mr Tresilian – for he was the one who had dethroned her, in his brief and crushing narration yesterday. He had presented Valentine with the evidence of his folly, and so Valentine had violently dashed it away: all the more violently, as his pride was touched on every point. It was no wonder that he had invoked the name of his father, in deploring the interference, the high-handedness of Mr Tresilian’s paying off the Eversholts. There, the first impulse of her heart had been to agree: had she not accused Mr Tresilian of playing the father to her when he had condemned her conduct with the Lynleys? It was overbearing – belittling: a tacit declaration that one was not fit to handle one’s own affairs.

And yet the reflection that followed that first impulse could not allow Mr Tresilian’s action to be painted in such simple colours. – If it was interference, it was also generosity – stupendous generosity. Mr Tresilian was a prosperous man, certainly; but few prosperous men could willingly part with a sum as large as three thousand pounds to relieve the difficulties of a friend – difficulties that, in a part of her heart she could never show Valentine, she must admit to be in some degree self-inflicted. And it was an action he had intended should be secret – never to be rewarded with gratitude or acknowledgement: only the heat of argument, only Valentine’s obstinacy had brought it out. Why had he done it? Mr Tresilian was not demonstrative: his friendship for Valentine, which she knew to be deep, ran perhaps deeper than his surface revealed – but still the magnitude of the gesture confounded her.

There was, of course, Kate. It was no use denying that Kate Tresilian had been quietly and fixedly in love with Valentine for a long time; and it might be that Mr Tresilian, believing in Valentine’s worth, believing that time would remove those dazzling and excessive sensations that his entry into society had produced, had acted with a view to that longer future, when a steadier character might waken more fully to Kate’s qualities, and return her affections. But this was still a good deal to stake on an uncertain train of events; and there seemed in it a ponderous calculation that did not accord with what she knew of Mr Tresilian’s character.

No: all was dubiety and confusion; and more than once on that heavy day did she come close to wishing they had never come to London. The supreme thankfulness that they had been preserved from ruin reigned still, but its power was diminished by these unhappy consequences: Valentine unable to reconcile himself to the truth of his association with Lady Harriet, and the painful estrangement from Mr Tresilian. And she could only think of them, wearily: she could not unburden herself with speech. Valentine, when he was home, remained darkly absent, and would not speak to her except on trifling matters; and even if she had been able to confide in her aunt or her cousins, she could not have expected understanding there. Louisa realised, as evening dragged to a close, that the person she had most been accustomed to turn to, when she needed to talk rather than chat or converse, was Mr Tresilian: the very person from whom she was now cut off. Certainly Valentine had said she might do as she liked, in regard to him – but such an awkwardness between the families was not easily overcome. Mr Tresilian plainly supposed that he was not welcome, either to brother or sister, as he did not call that day: nor did the next morning bring him – to a disappointment that Louisa could hardly credit in her own breast; for she hardly knew how she would address him.

Distraction came, in what seemed at first the most promising manner. – They were invited to dine at the Lynleys’. There, surely, in the sharp playfulness, the ripple and prickle of Francis Lynley’s company, she would find a relief for overstrung feelings. It was true that there was first the embarrassment of Valentine’s declining to go with them, and her anxiety about how he would comport himself in the meantime; and once arrived at Brook Street, she must confront another perplexity. – Pearce Lynley was all cordiality in his welcome, all attentiveness in his hospitality, and all glowing pride in being able to receive as an honoured guest his future bride – for as a matter of propriety, Mary Bowen had removed to another lodging until they should be married. Certainly Mr Lynley would never be an easy host: there remained too much correctness and seriousness in his manner; and she did not suspect there would be an abundance of laughter in the household of the future Mr and Mrs Lynley. Still, Louisa must confront the fact that she had misjudged him. There was more flexibility, more humanity than she had supposed – or than she had wished to suppose. For she saw that he had borne the insuperable handicap of being approved by her father: and no degree of charm and amiability, she realised, could have overcome that. It was a chastening reflection. In perseveringly resisting influence, she had been influenced. – When, she wondered, could one escape it, and begin thinking for oneself?

‘Never,’ was Lieutenant Lynley’s reply, when she put this question to him, in more general terms, at dinner. ‘Abandon all hope of that. We are fixed from the cradle.’

‘Thank you. You have recommended me to a course of despair.’

‘I am glad to have performed the service, and would do it for all the world if I could,’ he said, and applied himself to his wine. He looked at his most dark and saturnine; and the few further remarks she elicited from him confirmed that he was in the lowest of spirits, and still wholly preoccupied with the matter of his brother’s marriage, which he spoke of in the same withering terms as he had employed at the Pantheon. Louisa was disappointed: it seemed to her, in her own dejected mood, that there was surely self-indulgence in this; and she told herself, given this unsteadiness of temper, this captious yielding to the emotions of the moment, that it was very fortunate she was not in love with him. She was unequal to the task of lifting both his spirits and her own; and resigned his entertainment to Sophie, who was seated on his other side, and who was always quite content to go on being fascinating without any visible result.

The next day began no more propitiously, with Valentine absent from breakfast after another late night, and the Tresilians’ manservant bringing over a book that Louisa had lent to Kate. In other circumstances she might have taken no notice of this; but now it was impossible not to see it as a signal of their lasting estrangement: and all it needed now, Louisa thought, as she returned the volume to its place on the shelf in her room, was a call from Mrs Murrow to seal the morning’s gloom. Prompt upon that came the knock at the door, followed by Mrs Murrow’s complaining voice in the hall; and Louisa had to consult her reflection in her mirror to make sure that she was not absolutely grimacing, before she joined the company downstairs.

‘Well, and here’s the other one!’ was Mrs Murrow’s greeting: so unaccommodating even for her, and accompanied by such a baleful stare, that Louisa suspected something out of the common was amiss. ‘He didn’t make
you
privy to it, I dare say. Or perhaps he did, which makes it even worse.’

‘There, my dear friend, I have told you not to agitate yourself over it,’ said Mrs Spedding, all smiling placidity. ‘And as for Louisa, I do not think she
does
know what we have been talking of, and she must be quite mystified.’

‘Oh, let me tell it, Mama, for it is the most delicious thing,’ cried Sophie. ‘Louisa, will you believe that Valentine has actually made a proposal of marriage to Parthenope Astbury? Is it not capital? Is it not beyond anything marvellous?’

Louisa, supposing some kind of joke, looked from her cousin to her aunt, and then to Mrs Murrow: who seemed to find a world of gloomy satisfaction in her expression, for she resumed: ‘Ah, indeed, you might well look so shocked, Miss. It has quite set us all by the ears. My sister has been obliged to take a posset and lie down this morning, for she is not strong: though she is a good deal stronger than me, I must say – and how
I
have borne up I cannot think.’

‘You poor thing, I am exceedingly sorry for your trouble,’ said Mrs Spedding, ‘but it is nothing so very exceptional, you know: Lord, there will be more proposals than that for your dear niece, I’ll be bound, before she is settled.’

‘So there will: I can hardly bear to think of it,’ sighed Mrs Murrow; and then, directing the full force of her sourness at Louisa: ‘But proposals, it is to be hoped, for which there has been some preparation – some due attentions paid, some evidence given of a proper attachment: that was how it was in
my
day.’

‘It was certainly very sudden – but that is all
we
know, my dear,’ Mrs Spedding said. ‘It is not as if Miss Astbury and my nephew are quite unacquainted: why, when I had my little musical party, with the lady who performed so brilliantly on the trombone—’

‘Harp, Mama,’ put in Sophie.

‘Was it a harp, dear? I have a strong recollection it was a trombone – but I am sure you are right. Well, on
that
occasion I recall Valentine and Miss Astbury talking together for a good while: and I am sure there must have been others. Louisa, perhaps,’ Mrs Spedding said, twinkling, ‘could tell us a tale or two if she chose.’

Louisa was still so astonished by this intelligence that she could hardly frame a reply. ‘I beg your pardon, Mrs Spedding, I— Do you mean, had I any knowledge of Valentine’s intentions? I did not, certainly. But perhaps I am not understanding this aright. You mean that Valentine actually made a proposal in form, to Miss Astbury?’

‘Last evening – at Mrs Challender’s rout,’ said Sophie, eagerly. ‘He was very proper, and asked Lady Carr’s leave to pay his addresses – and mighty surprised she was, for she had never an inkling that he thought anything of Miss Astbury, and no more did I, nor Tom, and plainly neither did you. Is it not the most famous thing? I can hardly wait to quiz him about it!’

‘It was— I collect the proposal was refused,’ Louisa said faintly.

‘You may be sure of
that
,’ said Mrs Murrow. ‘And pretty summarily, you may be sure. My niece, thank heaven, is not the sort of goose to say yes to the first man who asks her: leave alone when it is done with such precipitancy – such a want of decorum. How she is contriving to support her spirits, I cannot think.’

‘But, my dear friend, you told me Miss Astbury was in fine fettle, and hardly discomposed by it at all,’ smiled Mrs Spedding.

‘So she is: but
how
she is, I cannot think; and I am most grievously overset by it all.’

‘Well, but you feel things so keenly, my dear,’ Mrs Spedding said, patting her hand. ‘I do not think we need to look further than your sweet niece’s exceptional beauty, and the impressionable heart of my nephew’s ardent youth. I can remember being young very well – and some people have been kind enough to say, I hardly seem past the first bloom of youth myself; and these things happen. I hope Miss Astbury, if she cannot be flattered, is at least not put out; and I hope Valentine is not too badly disappointed. I dare say everyone involved will be able to laugh about it, before very long.’