A Quiet Adjustment (29 page)

Annabella guessed that the credulity of her friend would never stretch to such high drama. It was the taint of the Byrons, Mary might easily suspect, to colour everything so richly; and Annabella began, carefully, to defend herself against the charge of exaggeration. ‘You know, my dear, how little I like to be dependent, and you may well imagine that I was capable of loving her only upon the condition of my own advantage. I had no doubt of my superiority in many respects, in virtue and understanding, though I could not with confidence build upon my sister-in-law's stupidity. You asked me what she is like. I will tell you. Gus, at least, is pretty enough
not
to be counted at first glance among the clever. (I am honest enough to admit that my own reputation proves on just which side of that equation my attractions lie.) There is an archness in her face and manner that suggests not so much self-consciousness as the ready wit of a shy, lovely girl who is used to attracting the good humour of men. Self-consciousness, in fact, is just the quantity in Augusta that baffles measurement. She possesses either a very great deal of it or none at all. As our friendship deepened, I inclined to the latter view. Her innocence was so delightful a phenomenon that it was a positive comfort to believe in it—especially since it might be supposed to allow to one the privilege of a guiding role. That, for her sake, is the privilege I intend to take up.'

‘But why have you come to me?' Mary could not keep out of her voice a kind of distaste.

Annabella met it with her most charming smile. ‘You may imagine that I have grown a little tired of acting on my own behalf.'

‘I don't suppose you are asking me to act on anyone else's.' Lady Byron felt for the first time in her friend the sheer front of opposition. It gave her something to press against, and the effect of such a meeting was practically an embrace of just what was hardest, least loving, most truthful in each of them. They had both at that moment in their minds the last piece of advice Mary had given her, three years before.
I only wonder whether your sins stretch quite as far as you fear, whether loving-kindness and patience and charity are not predominant in you . . . I do believe you wish to be a little less perfect than you are.
Mary, after all this time, looked sufficiently answered. She said: ‘What do you propose we should do?'

‘She must be stopped,' Annabella broke out, with renewed heat. ‘She must be made to confess.'

‘To confess what?'

‘My dear, have you really not heard?'

In the silence that followed, Lady Byron could almost trace in her friend the slow painful action of persuasion. The fire had sunk, but neither had the heart to build it up again; their tea had grown cold, but Annabella, at least, poured herself a fresh cold cup. Mary looked at her, and what emerged at last in her face was the strangest pity. It seemed to afflict her like a kind of pain. Lady Byron had opened again the book on her lap and held it out to Mary with her finger on the page. ‘Augusta,' she said, while her friend read. She watched the murmur in Mary's lips and repeated the name: ‘Augusta, Augusta, Augusta.'

‘Has she never confessed to you?'

‘We had a kind of understanding. But she never confessed, and now the understanding is gone; she plans to rejoin him. She must be stopped,' she repeated. And then: ‘I will not be a party to her ruin. I will not stand idly by . . .' Against the echoes of her own shrill outburst, Annabella offered at last a quieter assurance: ‘I could not be so cruel.'

There was a pause, the longest yet, and Mary closed her eyes against it. Perhaps she had aged. Annabella had been accustomed to treating her tiredness as a kind of ornament, the proper dress, as it were, to her character, in which the modesty of Mary's virtues, her patience, her curiosity, her capacity for amusement, showed to best effect. But she appeared now rather exposed in the light of fatigue, almost undressed by it. There was a comfort to be felt in her own superior energies, and Annabella was honest enough to admit to it. Her appetite for life was undiminished; she had the strength yet to satisfy it. Lizzy returned to remove their tea. She swept up into a little silver pan the crumbs that had scattered, and only when she was gone and the door had shut softly behind her did Miss Montgomery lift her head. ‘But what can we do?' she said. ‘What can Mrs Villiers and you and I hope to do?'

Lady Byron had her answer ready. ‘We can work on her.'

Chapter Seven

MRS VILLIERS WAS THE FIRST
to be ‘worked on', and she gave way with such alacrity to their persuasion that they almost regretted employing, for the sake of their purpose, so unsteady a prop. She was a small plump bustling woman of forty years, with pretensions, as Mary had said, to a youth and beauty that she had never had claims to possessing. Thin red clumps of hair crept out from under her wig; her pockmarked face truly suggested nothing so much as the violence of plucked feathers. She made a great show at first of supporting her friend. Miss Montgomery had invited the pair of them to take tea in her room, and Wilmot Street became, by a kind of tradition, the scene of their councils. But a word in her ear was enough (it was Mary who uttered it, in an elaborate hush that proved to her friend she had managed to draw, from their distasteful secrecy, her usual dose of amusement) to turn her quite the other way; and she directed at Mrs Leigh's reform the energies she had prepared to use in her defence. Annabella, for a moment, felt something like pity for poor Augusta—to see her surrounded on all sides by such good intentions.

They had decided—it was really delightful to gather each week in Mary's pleasant room, with such confederate purpose and such good cakes—to approach Mrs Leigh, in her difficult position, with what Annabella had called the threat ‘of withdrawing her favour'. Lord Byron himself lent his hand to their enterprise. In the first few months of his self-proclaimed exile, he produced a series of letters and poems that bore not only on ‘the separation question' but also, more particularly, on the peculiar and tender offices of the sister who had stood, it seemed, so firmly beside them both. It mattered not in the slightest whether they were published or not, so great was the private appetite among fashionable circles for the least effusion of his pen. Annabella (and she suffered, in fact, no sharper pang) was forced to endure, as the London summer wore on, the general exposure of his own fine fanciful view of their relations; and the worst of it was, that no one emerged more beautifully loving and clear from the wreck of their marriage than Augusta herself. She was painted, it practically seemed, in the pink of dawn and seated on the ocean-borne shell of his bright muse. There were times, indeed, as Mrs Villiers read out, too loudly, perhaps, for the comfort of their little salon, the latest of his brotherly professions, that Annabella almost regretted her decision to share amid such company so delicate a duty. It surprised her to find that she had not yet moved beyond the reach of pain, that there was something in her pride as his wife that she yet clung to. Rumours, meanwhile, of every description were flying; and Lord Byron's pen had at least the effect of making Augusta utterly dependent, for her continued station in high society, on the sanction of her sister-in-law's friendship. That was the dependency they counted on; that was the sanction they threatened to withdraw.

Mrs Leigh, however, was pregnant, and Miss Montgomery considered it a matter of what she called, with a conscious smile, ‘expedient decency' to suspend their ‘assault' until the end of her confinement. This had the advantage of giving them (which was really the opportunity that Mrs Villiers and Lady Byron took up with greatest gusto) the leisure to consider just what the object of their attempt at persuasion should be. Every Tuesday, at about four o'clock, the three of them gathered in the cosy front room at Wilmot Street and discussed, with a distinction that flattered Mrs Villiers' sense of being ‘in the know', their own more pressing version of the separation question. How could they be certain that Augusta was saved? This was the worry that drew from Annabella the richest, most selfless vein of her curiosity. How should her sin be expiated? Of just what miracles of reformation was the human heart capable? Or was there a taint so deep that nothing, short of death, could clear the blood of it? If Augusta denied her intention of joining Lord Byron abroad, Miss Montgomery suggested, then she for one was willing to let the matter rest. The past was awful enough; they might be allowed to confine their duties to the present and future. Lady Byron, however, contended that if any common avowal or casual intention could have kept them apart, it should have done so already; at which Mrs Villiers broke in, that Mrs Leigh would never be free of her sin and the desire it entailed unless she confessed to it. Confession, she continued, a full open unequivocal confession in the presence of witnesses, was the least of the assurances Augusta could give of her sincere remorse. Just, however, what the
most
might run to was the quantity that Lady Byron considered in the strong light of an intelligence not unacquainted with the frailty even of remorse.

Nothing would satisfy her, and, for a different reason, nothing would satisfy Miss Montgomery. In the course of their debate on the nature of the pledge or promise they might be persuaded to accept from Mrs Leigh, she remained, as Lady Byron was moved finally to describe it, ‘stubbornly ironic'. And so they proceeded (when they did at last, in Mary's phrase, begin their ‘assault') on a pale breezy afternoon in June, the scents of which blew into the opened windows of the parlour on Wilmot Street, with an object that remained to them as much in the dark as the means of attaining it were. Still, they contented themselves with the strength that one might, it was reasonable to suppose, accrue from ‘first steps'. Augusta had so far given the key to the tone they would take by letting it be known publicly, on behalf of her brother, how greatly she resented the intermeddling of certain third parties in the conduct of his and his wife's affairs. She had in mind, one presumed, not only the active involving spirit of Lady Milbanke but also the zeal of her supernumeraries, men no less distinguished than Dr Lushington. It would have taken, however, in the three women, a sum of blind confidence far greater than that possessed by at least one of the little party at Wilmot Street not to see in Augusta's remarks the thrust of a personal allusion.

A letter was drafted, made up of their composite intentions. It showed in consequence, as Miss Montgomery put it (she contributed, in general, nothing so much as her hesitations), ‘the awkwardness of walking on so many legs'. The line recalled to Annabella —she was at the time very sensitive to reminiscence—one of Lady Melbourne's sharper insights, uttered in the heat of a very different discussion, though it had also concerned the question of marriage and Lord Byron. Her niece, she had warned, had a tendency
to rise up on stilts
. Annabella was forced to concede to their hostess, who had got to her feet for once and stood staring out a window onto Wilmot Street, that they had been guilty of a certain stiffness in the style of their approach, which was inevitable, given the delicacy of the subject to be broached. But what she more privately reflected, as she moved to her friend's side, was only that, far from having the sense as she put pen to paper of ‘rising up', she had never so painfully felt the constriction of crawling on all fours. ‘Augusta had done nothing,' she said at last, to quiet the scruples of her friend, ‘to wound her more hurtful in the long run than compelling her to adopt, in all their relations, so contorted a sense of being in the right, that it was almost impossible to
keep
it
up
for very long.' This little attempt at persuasion had perhaps a greater effect than she intended. Miss Montgomery was finally moved, not only to concede the point and to agree to the sending of the letter, but even to a brief faint show of tears, which she turned on her friend with an earnestness that suggested the force of self-reproach.

This was the letter Lady Byron sent her sister:

Before your confinement I would not risk agitating you. But having the satisfaction of knowing you are recovered, I will no longer conceal from yourself that there are reasons, founded on such circumstances in your conduct as I am most anxious to bury in silence, which indispensably impose on me the duty of limiting my intercourse with you. I should more deeply lament this restriction to a relation that has at times been the spring, not only of comfort, when I needed it most, but of pleasure, when the necessity of comfort, for once, had ceased to be the first of our considerations, if your feelings towards me could give me the power of doing you any good. But you have not disguised your resentment against those who have befriended me and have countenanced the arts that have been employed to injure me. Can I then longer believe those professions of affection and even of exclusive zeal for my welfare, which I have been most reluctant to mistrust? And on this ground my conduct, if known, would be amply and obviously justified to the world. I shall still not regret having loved and trusted you so entirely . . .

That last phrase was wonderfully the invention of Mrs Villiers, who believed that there was nothing Augusta's quick feelings responded to more vividly than the reproaches of love. She was a being formed, as she said, to shape itself to the affections of others, as a vine might be said to shape itself to the side of a wall; she was clever only in her ability to grasp, as it were, at the cracks one offered for a person to cling to. It was necessary, in consequence—and Mary, to do their new friend justice, could hardly refrain from a burst of applause—for Annabella to offer just such a crack for Mrs Leigh to reach for. To approach her, then, with a surface scored by the failures of love would act on Mrs Leigh as the clearest of invitations to stretch forth in the full cleaving tenderness of her affections.

They posted the letter after one of their Tuesday sessions and met again the next day to consider the reply, but no reply came. They had, in fact, an anxious quiet week of it, which only brought out the tensions in the ties that bound them. Really, the blustering vanities of Mrs Villiers almost made the two old friends doubt the sanctity of their mission. But on the following Monday, Annabella received her excuse to summon them to another council at Wilmot Street. Augusta, cornered, had revealed to everyone's surprise, perhaps, but Lady Byron's, the sharpness of her dignity. As a summer rain beat against the glass and conveyed what seemed to them the almost pleasant pressure of a world they were only just keeping at bay, it was Mary who read out, with a relish that suggested a renewed faith in the free harmless play of her ironies, the response of Mrs Leigh:

As I always mistrust the first impulses of my feelings and did not wish to write under the influence of such as your letter could not fail to produce, I would not answer it by return of post. I cannot say that I am wholly surprised at its contents. Your silence towards me during so long an interval, and when all obvious necessity for it must have ceased, formed so decided a contrast to your former kindness to me—and to what my conscience tells me my conduct towards you deserved from you—that it could not but require some explanation.

To general accusations I must answer in general terms. No sister ever could have the claims upon me that you had. I felt it and acted up to the feeling to the best of my judgement. We are all perhaps too much inclined to magnify our trials, yet I think I may venture to pronounce my situation to have been and to be still one of extraordinary difficulty. I have been assured that the tide of public opinion has been so turned against my brother that the least appearance of coolness on your part towards me would injure me most seriously. I am therefore for the sake of my children compelled to accept from your compassion the ‘limited intercourse' that is all you can grant to one whom you pronounce no longer worthy of your esteem or affection!

‘Come.' It was Mary who broke the silence her own recitation had produced. ‘It is almost as a good as a confession. It is, in fact, the clearest she could reasonably make. She says what we all know to be true in such a way that makes the plainest appeal to our decent sense of what she cannot say. I had not expected so much from her. This is discretion brought to such a pitch of subtlety it is practically a virtue in itself. It is almost noble; it is certainly humorous.'

Mrs Villiers, however, was not so easily persuaded. ‘My dear,' she began, ‘it is easy for one who has not been practised upon as I have to believe her innocent affronted airs. But it is not a confession; I hope you will allow to me the privilege of frankly disagreeing. It is just the sort of thing she has always made. It is nothing. It is all hints and vagaries, which you trust in because you suppose her capable of dealing more plainly with her own private conscience.' Mrs Villiers, in the heat of her eloquence, had risen to take the letter from Mary's hands. She stood for a moment considering it in the light of a candle that burned on the mantelpiece. The windows were quite fogged up in the wet, and the room was as dark as dusk. ‘The fact is, such hints and vagaries make up the only language she knows—it is entirely the style of her private thought. I for one should like to understand what she means by acting up to her sisterly feeling etc. to the best of her judgement etc. She should never have consented to come to Piccadilly. I remember the whole affair. She asked my advice at the time, in the coyest of terms, and wanted to know whether a sister could decently intrude upon a brother's marriage to soften for his wife the effect of his ill temper. But who was the cause of his ill temper? who continued to excite it? I don't wonder he didn't go mad; she did her best to drive him to it. I can't entirely deny her good intentions. She has the sickness of the Byrons: she is the fool of her own affections and never supposes for a minute that she does any harm by acting on her instinct, which is quite unnaturally developed, to be loved. She led me to believe at the time, it was only at Lady Byron's urgent request that she came to live with them in Piccadilly. Lady Byron has told me it was not; and I have been made, unwittingly, an accessory to her doing the very things she ought most to have avoided. What a pretty piece of indignation this is! A situation of extraordinary difficulty! Who put herself in the middle of it? The truth is, she cannot leave her brother alone. She hasn't the least sense of the extent of her crimes, and until she does, she is lost to us—she is lost to all decent society.'