An Accomplished Woman (15 page)

‘Indeed! You do well to
doubt.’

‘Thank you,’ she said,
eyeing him as he lounged back with folded arms, and an infuriating look of
absolute knowledge. ‘Thank you, that is, for agreeing with me for once: though
I am sure something disobliging will follow.’

‘Oh, as to that,’ he
said, after a moment’s abstraction, ‘I speak only the plain truth, which you
have acknowledged yourself. You would not enjoy it: you would resent it: and
you and I have at least this much resemblance, that when we resent something,
we cannot hide the fact.’

‘True: the sole difference
being that you do not even try to hide it.’

He ignored that, or
carelessly concurred in it; and went on, with what was for him a kindly look:
‘And, of course, as you have admitted, you would not be good at it. You would
not be good for any such girl as you describe; and altogether it would be
disastrous.’

‘I would not go so far
as
disastrous
,’she answered. ‘It would be tedious for me, and no doubt I
would ill conceal my impatience with the vacillations of a silly girl over her
suitors, who I imagine are both equally insipid, but—’

‘Yes — there you have
it, you see. The role of the chaperon must always be secondary: she must cease
to think of her own interests and inclinations, and subordinate them to those
of her young charge — which may be so different from her own, that the effort
of sympathy at last becomes intolerable.’

‘The — the effort of
sympathy,’ she said haltingly, with a perplexed feeling as if she had been
offered a hand to shake, and then found it snatched away, ‘to be sure: not that
it would be beyond my abilities. It is an effort I simply do not wish to make.’

‘Exactly’ Mr Durrant
said, with a shrug. Yes, it was an odd notion of Lady Eastmond’s altogether.’

‘You are not to suppose,
Mr Durrant, that I refused from any selfish attention to my own comfort. I was
thinking only of the young woman — Miss Rae — and what would be best for her.’

‘Quite so, and I honour
you for it. You have referred the question to your self-knowledge, where many a
woman would have consulted only her vanity. Your father is opening the
pianoforte: you will be wanted, I think.’

‘Yes.’ She rose, and as
he rose with her it was as if he translated his laconic superiority of speech
into that aloof, uncompromising height. How he likes being up there, she thought,
where everyone must strain a little to look at him and speak to him. ‘You will
allow me, then, some proficiency in music, despite my other incapacities.’

‘You are the most
accomplished woman I know,’ he said, conducting her to the pianoforte; and then,
as he released her arm: ‘But even the most accomplished woman must admit that
there are some things she is not good at.’

In place of a last word,
she struck a
fortissimo
chord as he walked away, and had the
satisfaction of seeing Lewis Durrant jump, a little.

A rule of life: any
dreaded event will turn out to be at least three times as bad as you expected
it to be.

This rule, ever since
she had invented it, had stood Lydia in good stead; but it was powerless
against the coming of Lady Eastmond and Miss Rae. In a short but effusive note,
like a small firework, her godmother announced her safe arrival at Osterby, and
appointed the inevitable morning for her descent on Heystead with her ward in
tow. Now the morning was here, a pearly and beautiful one after a night of
drumming rain — but to Lydia, a morning that blinked at her, sickly and
sinister, like a lizard’s eye.

She could not entertain
herself. She sat at her harp, trying over a new
canzonetta
she had
brought back from London: it would not go. For a few moments she was aware,
through the back of her neck, that her father was standing in the parlour
doorway — listening, or watching; but he said nothing, and moved on. The harp
sounded in her ears like a stick against railings. She went out to walk in the
gardens, and was back in three minutes. At last she resigned herself to sitting
stiffly in the parlour with her father, listening out for the dreaded chock of
hoofs and mumble of wheels.

The dread, she
reflected, was partly of herself: of the feelings she might betray. The poor
girl would surely see that her entrance into Lydia’s life was an unwelcome one
— would sense her unwillingness and resentment. Probably there had been a grain
of truth in what Lewis Durrant had said the other night: though Mr Durrant did
have a habit of saying excessive things merely to provoke. It was a deplorable
failing.

‘Ah, here come our
visitors,’ said Dr Templeton, standing at the window — and then with supernatural
swiftness Lady Eastmond was in the room, almost trampling down the maid, and
talking at a great rate.

‘Here we are, you see —
bless you, Mary, you needn’t announce
me,
such a drearily familiar old
body as I am at Heystead, quite the bad penny or family ghost if you like,
wailing and clanking its chains, not that I have ever quite understood
how
a
ghost can carry chains about, being one supposes incorporeal and without
substance or at best rather
wafery
— you, Dr Templeton, could no doubt
explain it perfectly, not that the answer would lodge in my poor noddle for
very long — so let me shake your hand instead. Oh, my dear sir, it always does
my heart good to see you — not to mention
you,
Lydia — standing there
like patience on a whatsname — let me kiss you, my dear — and let me have the
pleasure, the very great pleasure of introducing—’

Miss Rae: entering the
room shyly, though not with that shyness which seems to offer an apology for
existence: she smiled, she looked about her as if ready to be pleased. Tall:
nearly as tall as Lydia, who recognised that consciousness of height which made
Miss Rae give a precautionary dip of her head as she passed through the ancient
low-lintelled doorway. She was very beautiful — and her beauty was more than a
simple fact, it demanded a response, whether admiration or envy, or sheer
wonderment at what it must be like to carry such beauty around. Her grace of
movement was part of it: a particular, tentative, long-limbed grace, which
Lydia would have called doe-like if she had allowed such a miserably trite
simile into her mind.

‘Miss Rae. My poor dear
Phoebe, you have heard me talk of these people so much I dare say you are quite
sickened of them — but of course you will
not
be once you know them — my
very good friend Dr Templeton — my goddaughter Miss Templeton.’

‘Miss Rae, you are very
welcome, how do you do?’ Dr Templeton was prompt with his old-fashioned
courtesy. ‘I hope you had a fair drive of it from Osterby. It rained rather
heavily last night.’

‘Oh! the road was
tolerable all in all,’ cried Lady Eastmond, ‘only a little churned up this side
of Burton Coggles, and John always has the sense
not
to slow down at
such places, but to take them at the lick — one bumps about a little but not in
any disagreeable way . . .’

‘Miss Rae,’ Lydia said,
while Lady Eastmond talked on, ‘I am so very glad to meet you at last.’

Miss Rae smiled by way
of reply. And such a smile truly was a reply, Lydia inwardly admitted, with a
fresh apprehension of the young woman’s beauty. The hair — well, hair as rich
as that was never simply one colour: there was chestnut and gold and everything
in between. Pale complexion, creamy not waxen: clear dark brows: long-lashed
eyes of the penetrating brilliance that makes you fancy for a moment that either
they or yours are slightly squinting. Simply but elegantly dressed — though of
course she could have carried off a coal-sack. Yes, the enslavement of her two
suitors was amply explained. Now it remained only for her to talk, and to
reveal herself as a twittering idiot. Lydia could not help regretting what,
with those looks and fifty thousand pounds, was a sad inevitability.

‘And how does Sir Henry
do?’ asked Dr Templeton.

‘He does as he does,’
said Lady Eastmond, with a significant grimace. ‘If I cannot say better, at
least I can say no worse. His
temper
is somewhat improved for which I
have dear Phoebe to thank — she is quite a favourite with him, and has
developed an admirable knack of ignoring those odd things he tends to say after
dinner. I’m sure you manage him a good deal better than
I
can, my dear.’

‘Oh, Sir Henry has been
very kind to me,’ Miss Rae said, in a soft voice agreeably lined with Scots. ‘I
could not have wished for a kinder guardian. I had gained rather an unfortunate
impression, from reading novels, that guardians were always villainous and
locked you up in a tower.’

‘Lord!’ cried Lady
Eastmond. ‘I should like to see poor Henry lock up anything nowadays, short of
a tea-caddy’

‘You have read Mrs
Radcliffe, I collect, Miss Rae,’ Dr Templeton smiled.

‘Yes, sir —
Udolpho,
and
also
The Italian,
and
A Sicilian Romance
—indeed I have read them
all.’ She hesitated, glanced around with shy humour. ‘Shall I leave now?’

Dr Templeton chuckled,
Lady Eastmond hooted, and Lydia was forced, behind her smiles, to such a rapid
review of her preconceptions as left her quite stranded in perplexity.
Prettiness she had been prepared for: the pleasantness of disingenuous youth
also, perhaps; but she had not expected to be charmed. It was delightful — but
it made everything more difficult.

‘Oh, I was a great
novel-reader in my youth,’ sighed Lady Eastmond, ‘but we had no Gothic horrors
in those days. Sentiment was all the fashion — and
Tristram Shandy,
which
I could not endure for five pages together — only I dared not say so as
everyone was crying it up — what sad sheep we mortals are! Not
all
of us
to be sure — thank heaven there are those who will think for themselves, like
you,
my dear Lydia, and not be swayed by every piece of nonsense.’

‘Thank you, Lady Eastmond
— though I fear some would say that thinking for oneself amounts to being
awkward, cross-grained and selfish; especially when the thinker is a woman.’

‘Oh, pooh — who would
say such a thing about you?’

‘About
me, many I’m sure,’ she
said, smiling, ‘though if they were say it
to
me, no doubt I should fire
up and give them a dressing. Whilst admitting to myself, deep down, that I
sometimes thought so too.’

‘Ah, but that’s because you
have a brain in your head, my dear!’ said Lady Eastmond, her broad face all
shining with admiration. ‘And you have
kept
it there, instead of letting
the heart drive it out. Now this is what I say to Phoebe. The heart is a very
good thing for a person to have — is it not, Dr Templeton?’

‘Indispensable, I would
say professionally’ he rumbled.

‘You dry old thing — I
love you for it — the heart, I say, is a very good thing to have, as long as it
stays in its place.’

‘A balance, I think, is
needed,’ Dr Templeton said judiciously, ‘between head and heart: nothing easier
to say: nothing harder to achieve.’

A rattle from the old
ghosts - they had never really gone away — gave Lydia a shiver, and jolted her
into speech; anything would do. ‘Miss Rae, how do you like Lincolnshire?’

‘I like it very well —
though I have seen so little of England. Except London, of course. And after
Mama died I was staying with relatives in Durham for a time, which I did not so
much like, though I think that was partly my coming from Scotland and some
people there not being able to get over it somehow, and forever saying, “Well,
miss, this makes a change from porridge, hey,” and so on.’

‘Such prejudice,’ Lydia
said, amused again (but this must stop), ‘and you from Edinburgh — surely the
most cultivated city in the kingdom . . .You must miss home,’ she found herself
adding with sympathy (which must stop also).

‘I fear I shall sound
unfeeling when I say I do not greatly miss the
place.
We lived such a
very retired life there that Edinburgh for me has few memorable associations —
except those of family, of course, and those one takes everywhere — in the
blood, you might say. I do so much enjoy seeing new places — I’m afraid I am
quite greedy for them, and I must tire Aunt Harriet’s patience.’

‘The eagerness of youth
for life, my dear — who could reprove it?’ Lady Eastmond said. ‘She has been
all agog to see Heystead, you know — a real priory, all redolent with the past
and whatnot.’

‘I hope you are not disappointed,
Miss Rae, to find that we do not live in a romantic ruin,’ said Lydia, trying
by asperity to deny the warmth she felt towards the girl.

‘Oh, the Priory is all I
had hoped,’ Miss Rae declared solemnly. ‘It is so very solid and genuine. In
Durham there was a family who lived in an abbey, and made much of it, but it
was only a modern house built where there used to be an abbey, with a bit of
crumbled wall attached. Which seemed to me a little like the old broom that has
had two new heads and three new handles.’

‘Oh, my dear, I know
that sort of gingerbread taste,’ Lady Eastmond said. ‘In my day there was a
fashion for grottoes. Henry even talked of setting up a grotto at Osterby. What
would he do with it, I wanted to know. “Sit in it”, quoth he. Well, my dear,
anyone who knows the effect on Henry of even a
draught
would share my
amusement at the idea of the poor fellow sitting in a grotto. But he had it
fixed in his mind, and I had to go to the very limits of persuasion to prevent
him, though that’s a tale for another time . . .’ She fixed on Lydia her usual
look of devouring benevolence: but, Lydia realised to her fleeting shame, Lady
Eastmond was also rather nervous. ‘Well, Lydia my love, I hope you are fairly
settled back at home, and not finding the country dull after town — not that
you could ever be dull anywhere, good heavens, with your accomplishments. Such
talents and refinements of mind — I wish you could hear Miss Templeton play,
Phoebe, you would be in transports — and then her drawing — that admirable
half-length figure above the mantelpiece, I believe, is hers—’