A Quiet Adjustment (18 page)

Lord Byron meanwhile had opened a letter and begun to read from it, without looking up. Nor did Augusta glance at her brother. She said, instead, how happy she was to meet ‘her new sister'. Her voice, like Byron's, was low and musical, an effect brought out in part by nerves, which gave to its tone a deepening uncertainty. What surprised Annabella, whose faith in Augusta's good intentions was by no means complete, was the rush of real sisterly feeling the introduction inspired. Gus offered to lead Annabella to her rooms; she was sure the journey must have fatigued her. Her brother, she knew, being an inveterate traveller, had only the dimmest sense of what a woman suffered in the squalor of a public house. Byron at this looked up from the letter he was reading. ‘Nonsense, Gussie,' he said, ‘you'll soon find that Lady Byron is perfectly indestructible. I have put her to every test.'

Annabella followed her hostess to the top of the stairs and along a dark corridor to the door at the end of it. Her room, at least, was clean and bright, though it overlooked the stables. Against the odour of which and the restless noise, Augusta now shut the window—an act of modest kindness that drew from her sister-in-law a sudden kiss. ‘It was the kiss,' Annabella said, not without a touch of reproach, ‘she had meant to bestow upon her new sister on sight.' She had guessed at possibilities: that Mrs Leigh might offer her an outlet for those feelings her brother so irregularly reciprocated. A sister, in fact, from her earliest childhood, had been the highest dream of escape from that solitude which Annabella had practically come to believe was her natural state. And what pleased her especially was that she felt already, rising in her, the confidence to assume in their relations the part of the elder and wiser. This, in truth, is what her insistence on kissing Augusta was supposed to seal. Gus only said, ‘I should see to my brother now,' and added, by way of apology, ‘he can be very awkward in company, especially with his sister! and dislikes particularly greetings and farewells. He becomes very abrupt and seems rude without the least intention of it, only we have been so used, you know, to being on our own.'

Having washed and dressed, Annabella descended to the drawing room. There was silence within. She listened at the door for a moment before entering, to find her husband inside, limping along in pain behind the sofa, back and forth, while Augusta sat with her back to him and her head bowed. He tended to suffer afterwards for the forced repose of a long coach-journey. The sun had set and the curtains were drawn against the night; a fire burned damply in the fireplace. The house was neither cold nor warm but a something in between—one was just as likely to sweat as shiver.

Annabella felt the general oppression of accumulated life. Paintings and prints, mostly of horses or hunting scenes, had been added haphazardly to the walls. There was, in that preference for subject, a general neglect of the subtler art of arrangement. Annabella discovered, in the course of her stay, a Romney hidden away in a corner of the chimney-breast, while a large sketched print of a mutton-legged English setter was given conspicuous prominence. One sensed in these appointments the insistence of Colonel Leigh; nevertheless, Augusta inhabited the house with so comfortable an indifference that Annabella could not help but admire her for it. She had yet to make herself at home in her husband's tastes. Occasionally, perhaps, the equine passion was taken a little far: a child's rocking horse, draped with a lady's shawl, stood in place of a stool at the pianoforte. One had the sense of arriving at any empty seat just in time. Annabella sat down on a low-backed chair covered in green baize, having removed from the cushion an unfinished piece of embroidery and set it on a card-table nearby.

A decanter of spirits was open on the tantalus. Lord Byron disengaged the spring and poured himself a glass. When he saw his wife, he stopped, with pointed attention, and offered her the drink. On her refusal, he drank it down and continued his parade. Augusta began with an apology. ‘My dear sister, you'll find us very dull here, I'm afraid.'

‘Gus and I are used to amusing ourselves,' Byron added.

‘What he means is only that the children adore him. He plays the part, very happily, of uncle and slips quite noiselessly into family life. We haven't, I fear, the advantages of a town. Our days are mostly taken up with a great deal of bustle in a very narrow round. I confess I have got used, simply, to chasing after the children, and B is often good enough to join me in that thankless task.' She laughed. Annabella was surprised to see her sister-in-law capable of so much manner—she had the first real inkling, not of fear exactly, but of that responding pride which measures itself against the confidence of others. Augusta seemed hardly so shy as she at first appeared.

‘I should like very much to see the children,' Annabella sweetly replied. ‘My husband and I have been constrained, since our marriage, to make do with each other. It is something of a relief to be forced to make do with other people.' And Annabella herself was equal to a laugh.

‘You forget, my dear, the entertainment we enjoyed at Seaham at your parents' house. Your father, in particular, diverted us with variations on a speech he had given at Durham the fortnight preceding, concerning certain enclosures and the provisions necessary to implement them. Such games we had, too; it was quite like Christmas.'

The irony in his tone created a silence, which Augusta at last ventured to break. ‘I have never laughed so much as I did on hearing how my little brother plucked the wig from Lady Milbanke's head. You kept yourselves very well amused, I believe. I was quite astonished to discover how many occupations he had acquired: walking, dining, playing draughts with your mamma. Though I am vain enough to think he did not entirely forget his Gus.'

‘He was a perfect little child,' Annabella replied, not to be outdone. ‘He has a child's gift, too, which never fails to charm, of declaring his wants in such a way that it is quite a pleasure to satisfy them. Poor little B, he grew in the habit of saying—wants this, wants that. We all doted on him.'

‘I am so glad. You have hit on, at once, just the way to manage him. Never mind what he says and see that he eats enough. He has a terrible passion for starving himself, which must be resisted. One suffers much more oneself for his hungry humours.'

Byron, meanwhile, who hated ordinarily to be caught out on his feet, continued to pace behind the sofa. Annabella heard the rustle of the curtain against his leg as he brushed it aside, again and again. ‘Shall we call the children in?' he said at last. ‘There is one among them, Pip, I should particularly like you to meet; she is a great favourite with me. It is said, though I am no judge, that she takes after her uncle. I believe that any imputed resemblance is more flattering than plausible. Medora is reckoned very beautiful.'

‘They have just been got to sleep,' Augusta said, ‘and I should like first to have a quiet minute with my sister—'

‘You have nothing to say to each other,' Byron interrupted her, raising his voice; he rested his hands on the sofa behind her neck. ‘This is intolerable. To be smothered like this in female kindnesses. I will not be managed!'

Augusta flinched, with a stiffness that suggested how rigidly she had been holding herself—she closed her eyes as if the blow had been real. His sister's excess of manner had been, Annabella supposed, only the careful containment of a woman on the verge of tears. His wife, she reflected, not without pride, was more accustomed to such outbursts. She picked up the piece of embroidery and held it against the light, to see how much remained. Grateful, for once, to be allowed to disregard his anger. ‘You may do as you like, my dear.' It was left to Augusta to answer him. ‘You always do.'

Chapter Seven

AT SUPPER HE BEGAN TO DRINK IN EARNEST.
Annabella found, as she attempted to tighten them, that he had quite slipped his reins. His sister also learned that the hand with which she was used to comforting him had lost the power of direction. A painful meal: of roast chicken, slightly burnt, and underboiled potatoes. There was something, indeed, in the quality of cooking that expressed the general mood of helpless unhappiness. It was as if—and Annabella afterwards, on one of their quiet walks, ventured to make the reflection to Augusta, she was sufficiently pleased with it—a large wild bird had flown into the room and, unable to escape, had begun to beat them with its wings. The effect of which, understandably enough, was to draw the new sisters more closely together. They exchanged in the course of the meal a series of underlooks, in which a genuine and shared fearfulness was mixed with the real pleasure of conspiracy. Lord Byron, who never drank himself to insensibility, could not help remarking on these glances and feeling (Annabella almost pitied him for it) the extent of his masculine exclusion.

In the evening, they sat in the drawing room and watched him drink. Augusta had claimed to fear that the three of them might find it very dull together. At least they did not find it dull. Annabella was angry enough to be grateful for that fact; she was almost light-hearted with anger. And there was consolation to be had from seeing her private suffering made public. He insisted, once again, on waking the children. He particularly wished to introduce Medora, his daughter, his goddaughter, to her new aunt. He had been in a fever to see her all day; she had been the real object of their journey. There would be time in the morning, Annabella said. They had, after all, at their disposal a comfortable fortnight. It was unnatural, he maintained, to keep Medora from him and would do the child no good. He dimly remembered, he could not have been more than one or two, being woken, after one of his revels, during one of his reappearances, by his own father—‘who was no doubt as drunk as I am now'—and roused out of bed, to be held and cried over. How old was Medora now? he asked. ‘Not yet one,' Augusta quietly answered. ‘She was born last April?' he asked; his sister nodded. ‘Aye,' he added, turning towards the door, ‘and got, I remember, in that summer of revelry, 1813.'

Augusta, deferent to his wife's claims, sat very quietly where she was. It was left to Annabella to attempt a restraint. She seized him by the hand, entreating. It was only a question of waiting till morning; surely, he could wait as long as that. Mrs Leigh would hardly thank him for putting her to the trouble of getting the child to sleep again. ‘As for that, as for that,' he repeated, inconsequently, ‘he had had enough, for one night, of the kindness of women. It was the worst thing imaginable for a child to be left in female company. God knows, he had suffered for it himself.' In shaking her off, with the violence of impatience, he caught her a blow with the back of his hand. She fell into a chair, and he took the occasion to escape. For a minute the women sat in silence, listening. Annabella never forgot how quietly Augusta had endured this outbreak of her brother's temper. Mrs Leigh breathed audibly through her clasped palms, less in horror, however, than calculation: she was following from the noises overhead Byron's progress through the house, through her children's rooms. There was a general disturbance. He did not know the bed he sought for, and then, a minute later, as he made his way downstairs, one sharp particular cry grew clearer and louder.

He was weeping himself with the weeping child in his arms when he pushed through the open door. ‘Is it Medora?' he said to his sister. ‘I could not be sure; I believe it is.' The child was hysterical. The blood in her face gave to her cheeks a purple translucence; the noise her lungs poured forth was enormous. Annabella felt, at any cost, the desire to silence it. She imagined closing her hand over its mouth and winced a little as, in her fancy, the child bit into it. Byron, helplessly, kissed the girl's eyes, which were as blue as his own; their tears ran together. Augusta said only, ‘Yes, you have found Medora.' She remained on the sofa. It surprised Annabella that she played in the scene so passive a role. For her part, she had never seen Byron so tenderly repentant. She was almost grateful for the exhibition in that it offered such a vivid reminder of her husband's capacity for sincere remorse. At last, from a consciousness of futility, he resigned the child to its mother's care (it had grown almost too breathless to shout). ‘Console it, console it, console it,' he repeated and sat down himself beside her, just as Augusta was rising to return the baby to its bed. ‘I suppose you despise me?' Lord Byron said to his wife, when they were alone together.

‘Not at all,' Annabella said, careful as always against the noise of his violent feelings to express herself with something like exactness. ‘I pity your sufferings and pray for their relief. There is so much original goodness in your composition that your indulgences afflict no one so painfully as yourself. Only, you lack the power of regulation, which would concede to the better part of your nature the control of the worse. The violence of the contest between them is, I believe, the chief cause of your distress.'

Augusta, after an interval of ten minutes, returned to a room in which the expression of feeling had considerably dried up. No direct mention was made of the interlude preceding. Byron rose to offer them all a drink. They demurred, and he poured a glass of brandy for himself. ‘Have you ever, Gussie,' he said, holding his wife by the cheek, ‘seen such an angel's face? Not the prettiest angel, certainly, but without doubt the best. I have never known anyone so good; she is quite implacable with goodness. She watches her own heart as jealously as a miser his millions and counts over, from time to time, her good intentions.' Annabella cast on her sister-in-law a glance that conveyed with unmistakable pride how much she endured. ‘There is nothing she will not forgive me,' he continued. ‘Not even you, Gussie, could forgive so much, although you have never had the occasion. Except, perhaps, for a single particular offence, sometimes repeated, in which your part, I believe, was not entirely guiltless—even if I have suffered more for it in the end. Do you know, Gus, that on our honeymoon I practically shot at her? I was terribly provoked, though, by those letters you wrote her, with scarcely so much as a note to poor old B. Now that was not right, that was not fair, was it, my dear?'

One of the effects, Annabella found, of the siblings' company was subtly to hush her; they had, after all, a deeper habit of conversation. In the course of his ramblings, however, Augusta endeavoured to keep up a quiet sort of under-conversation with her brother's wife. ‘Do not imagine,' she turned and said to her at one point, ‘that I have forgotten our first meeting. It was at a waltzing-party in Melbourne House, just at the beginning of that rage. We were all hopelessly behind-hand; I dared not dance with anyone but my brother. How the ladies admired you! You seemed to pick up the trick of it at once and put the rest of us to shame. There was a little German man, our instructor, who singled you out for praise; I blushed with envy. The Byrons, you know, are terribly shy. We cannot bear a general attention, but we long for it and fear it in equal measure. You will forgive me, my dear sister, if I hated you a little for dancing so well?'

Annabella blushed in turn, acknowledging both the compliment and the ambivalence, she believed, it had just failed to conceal. Despite their sisterly protestations, she sensed in Augusta a jealous reserve. Gus held, as it were, a hand out to each of them, to husband and wife, in order to comfort them and to keep them apart.

‘It was one of my particular conditions,' Byron broke in, ‘that my wife should waltz. I expressed myself exactly on that point and directed Lady Melbourne to make inquiries. The answer came back, and I have since found the truth of it justified. Pip dances beautifully, as you say—quite like an elephant, by crushing.'

‘I don't know what you mean by that, I'm sure,' his sister replied.

‘You will learn.'

At ten, a clock rang out behind her. Annabella later remembered the awkwardness of their conversation by the fact of the silence that allowed her to count the chimes. Lord Byron, in whom drunkenness produced a sort of cruel watchfulness and strong ironic sympathies, began to give a voice to the whisper in her lips. ‘Seven eight nine ten,' he said, and then: ‘you needn't stay up on our account.'

He was sitting by Augusta on the sofa; his hand rested on his sister's, which lay on the cushion between them. Annabella had not supposed herself capable of fresh suffering, but the thought of being sent away from them afflicted her with the most childish anxieties. ‘I am not in the least fatigued,' she insisted, blinking back tears.

‘You have had a long journey,' he said, ‘particularly for one in your condition.' Augusta looked up sharply, and he continued: ‘She is too innocent to guess the cause of it, but there have been certain restrictions in our personal intercourse. A kind of resistance or awkwardness in that respect, as you and I know, my dear, often prefigures the grosser show. You can see for yourself, Gussie, how changeable her temper is, and the least kindness or cruelty sets her off.' It was all Annabella, who hadn't the least notion of being
enceinte
, could do to keep back her tears and turn on the pair of them a smiling, shining face. ‘Not at all, not at all. If I have fallen quiet, it is only out of admiration. I suffered, you know, very much in my childhood for want of a sister. It is a relation that has always had a peculiar fascination for me, and to see each of you so happy in the other's affection does my heart good. I am guilty, I know, of slipping at times too easily into the role of observer; but I am perfectly cheerful in it, though it makes me a dull silent staring sort of companion.'

‘You say that always,' Byron broke in, ‘with a great air of confession, as if you had not said it an hundred times before. I can never imagine anyone wanting a sister quite so much as you pretend to do. We choose not to believe you.'

‘Perhaps,' Augusta said, with an air of true kindness, ‘you had really better retire. Your journey has been long and the best sleep is always the sleep of arrival. We have, as you say, a comfortable fortnight in which to deepen our acquaintance. I'm sure, in the course of it, you will observe more than you wish to of the little humours of a brother and sister. I'll see that your husband follows shortly after.'

Byron, however, took this as just the proof of alliance he was seeking. His drunkenness had climbed over the sullen foothills into a kind of windy elation, which was no less savage. ‘Come, come, we don't want you, my charmer. Now that I've got Augusta, you'll find I can do without you in all ways.'

She must in the end give in. Annabella hardly trusted herself to utter another word. Augusta, all gentleness, lit a candle for her and promised, in the open doorway, to soften Byron into something like sobriety before she sent him to bed. As she made her way up the shadowy unfamiliar stairs, Annabella resented, as much as anything else, her own childish weakness. She had meekly obeyed those from whom she sought comfort, in spite of the fact that what she submitted to was nothing more than their desire to be free of her. In the tally she began that moment to keep, she conceded to her new sister the opening point. As she undressed, however, in the cold strange room, the misery she felt seemed both simpler and harder to measure. The bed was lumpy and smelt of children, of their peculiar sweetness gone rather pleasantly stale. She found a stray brown curl against one of her pillows and rubbed it off between her palms. What if Byron was right? Sitting at the edge of the bed with her feet hanging free, she crossed her arms and held them against her middle. It seemed a lonely sort of burden to be growing within her.

Only by lying on her back could she settle the mattress into any sort of quiet, and quiet is what she wanted. She was listening with the full still fierceness of her considerable attention to the restless silence of a large country house—from which at last emerged a low inarticulate current of conversation. They were talking together, but their voices, by the time they reached her ears, had been thickened by the floorboards between them into hums and ahs. What she heard was a language reduced to its simplest sound and repeated; what it conveyed, eloquently, was only the fact of comfort, of intimacy. He had rested his hand against the back of hers on the cushion between them. Her face was the mirror of his, only softened, it seemed, by a dullness (almost silvery) in the reflection. From time to time a burst of laughter startled in Annabella the sense of lying awake. It sounded all the sweeter for the muffling of distance. ‘I only want a woman to laugh,' Byron had said to her. ‘I can make Augusta laugh at anything.' Laughter, she reflected, is just what one cannot, with the best will in the world, put on. A great shame: she trusted in nothing so much as her strength of will. But the laughter dried up, and she struggled in the darkness to keep track of the time that had passed—could it have been as long as an hour? had she fallen asleep?—before she heard her husband's uncertain footstep on the stairs.