An Accomplished Woman (29 page)

‘But may not a person
genuinely change for the better?’ he said, faintly smiling.

‘Seldom, I think,
outside the pages of religious tracts. After all, would you be in Bath now if
you believed that a suppressed heart of gold beat beneath Hugh Hanley’s silk
waistcoat?’

He screwed up his face
in a sniff. ‘Oh, as for me, I make it a rule to expect no good of humankind at
all. That way one is never disappointed. Misanthropy, indeed, is the true
recipe for happiness. Every time a fellow walks by without kicking you, you
experience a delightful surprise. But come, what is this information you seek?’

‘Oh, merely how you came
to know Mr Beck, that’s all.’

‘I see. He, I collect,
is one of your Miss Rae’s admirers. Well, good luck to him. There seems nothing
much amiss with him except foolishness, and I’m sure she is his equal there.
And on that subject, Miss Templeton, you must confess that I am a little nearer
winning our wager.’

‘How? What do you mean?’

‘Dear me, I had no idea
fifty pounds meant so much to you,’ he said, with a narrow look. ‘I mean that
you are already growing tired of constant chaperonage — is that the word?
Constantly being at your charge’s side, I mean. Quite understandable — but it
gives me hope that you will admit defeat at last.’

‘Oh, Phoebe has only
gone to the dressmaker’s, and will be meeting me here presently. You cannot
count that as dereliction of my duty.’

‘Not that. I mean
allowing her to meet our friend Mr Beck alone. Again, it seems to me quite
understandable: there can be nothing more tedious than making a third to a pair
of drivelling lovers. Still, it promises—’

‘Mr Durrant, what
do
you
mean? Phoebe has only met Mr Beck when I . . .’ Lydia felt her own face fall.
Her mind’s eye presented, with a mocking flourish, the image of Mr Beck
scribbling an alteration on a page of the
Interlocutor.
Alteration, or
assignation? ‘You mean you have seen them alone together.’

‘Late last afternoon, in
the abbey. I turned in there for a little peace, not knowing it was such a
popular trysting place I might as well have been in the Dark Walks at Vauxhall
Gardens. When I saw them, I assumed . . . Hm. It seems I assumed wrongly.’

‘I did not know.’ Lydia
was assailed by such a host of feelings that she could say nothing more: as for
Mr Durrant’s inevitable triumphing over her, she could only sit numbly and
submit to it.

After studying her for a
moment, however, he said quietly: ‘I am always prepared, of course, to be
thought poorly of by you, and indeed I should be quite disturbed if it were
otherwise. But in this case, Miss Templeton, I hope you will believe I did not
speak with any intention of mischief.’

She blinked. ‘Yes — yes,
I do believe you, Mr Durrant. Not that it is any great matter, to be sure. I
did not know, but no doubt Phoebe intended to tell me, and besides I think
those strict notions of propriety are the greatest nonsense . . .’ She felt the
shabbiness of this, but could only hope that, like a torn petticoat or a
pimple, it would go gallantly unnoticed. ‘In the abbey, you say?’

‘Aye, walking arm in arm
and talking in that chap-fallen loverish way, as if the world is about to end;
and well chaperoned by a dozen others, a verger and any amount of funerary
monuments. My only thought was that Miss Templeton must be having a welcome hour’s
respite from nonsense — and, yes, that I might be on my way to winning the
wager. Tell me — you don’t doubt the honour of Mr Beck’s intentions? For what
it’s worth, when I met him I thought him rather choke-full of honour, fine
sentiments, and whatnot, even to a bilious degree.’

‘Oh, yes, he is — full
of it, certainly.’ Late yesterday afternoon. When Lydia took her usual walk
alone. How had it gone? A scribbled note:
When can I see you without the old
dragon in attendance?
And Phoebe’s reply, smuggled out to him somehow . . .
Lydia found her foot rapidly tapping.

‘Well, I say if Miss Rae
is struck with him, let them go on as they like, and give it up and go home,’
Mr Durrant went on. ‘Yes, I am trying to press my advantage and win the wager,
but I am serious also.’

‘So am I,’ said Lydia,
equipping herself with a smile. ‘Thank you for the information, Mr Durrant; and
yes, so am I.’

She had betrayed
nothing, she hoped, when Phoebe had rejoined her at Duffield’s: she had been
calm, natural, she had enquired pleasantly about the fitting at the
dressmaker’s, and in the same easy way she had asked if Phoebe minded going
home alone, as she simply must pay a courtesy call on one of those prosy ladies
and have it over with, and she certainly did not intend putting Phoebe through
the ordeal as well . . .

Phoebe had gone away
looking only a little perplexed. Very good: though Lydia, after what she had
learned, felt she could no longer take the transparency of Phoebe’s expressions
on trust.

In fact she was only mildly
disappointed with Phoebe. If she had had to choose just one word from the
dictionary to describe the girl, it would have been ‘suggestible’; and she had
no doubt that the tryst in the abbey had been Mr Beck’s proposition, to which
Phoebe, being Phoebe, had acceded in good faith. It was such a small request
after all, and he would have been so hurt if she had refused, and so on — and
Lydia was sure that when William Beck was hurt, everyone knew about it. He
would be baring his breast to the lightning. It would be King Lear on the
blasted heath.

No, if she was angry, it
was with Mr Beck — for the image he had made of her. Two brief meetings had
apparently been enough to convince him that she was an obstacle to be evaded —
the vinegary old protectress out to trample with her great flat feet on love’s
young dream. Fury sang in her head. Did he really suppose she gave a tinker’s
damn about love’s young dream? She had a thoroughly interesting and rewarding
life waiting for her, when she had finished with this tedious interlude. She
was not hovering harpy-like over a succulent romance, ready to stoop and tear
the heart out of it.

But that was how he had
treated her, by persuading Phoebe to a secret meeting. And she did not like it.

The coffee-room of the
Christopher was empty except for a family in travelling-cloaks, arms full of
parcels, waiting for the Gloucester coach that was making ready in the innyard.
Leaving Bath. Lydia suffered a stab of envy for them, but her indignation
quickly smothered it. No, she was not going to turn tail and run. She had
undertaken this task, and she would damned well fulfil it.

‘There is a Mr Beck
staying here,’ she said, to the waiter who attended her. ‘Would you see if he
is in his rooms, and tell him there is a lady downstairs who wishes to speak to
him?’

The waiter pocketed the
shilling. ‘What name, ma’am?’

‘No name. Just — no,
wait a moment. Miss Rae.’

She had hardly seated
herself before Mr Beck burst heroically into the coffee-room. Such speed seemed
hardly possible, unless he had slid down the banisters. She thrust away the
entertaining thought.

‘Mr Beck.’

He glared wildly all
about the room before allowing his eyes to rest on Lydia. (Not that Mr Beck’s
eyes could ever really be said to
rest.)

‘The man must have been
mistaken,’ he muttered. ‘I thought to see Miss Rae.’

‘Well, never mind.
Perhaps you can make do with me instead. Will you sit down?’

He sat at an angle to
her, nursing a well-filled hessian boot, glowering and suspicious. ‘I think you
have played me false, Miss Templeton.’

‘Shocking of me, I know.
But I thought we should have a little private talk — and the name of Miss Rae
certainly brought you in haste, Mr Beck: you were very ready to meet her. Even
without having made a secret arrangement beforehand.’

‘Ah. So, we are
discovered.’ He rolled it out with lugubrious satisfaction. ‘No doubt, ma’am,
you have your spies.’

‘This is precisely the
sort of melodramatic nonsense I expected. Bath, sir, is hardly the sort of
place where spies are needed. Everything is remarked by everyone. And nor is
our situation — Miss Rae’s situation — of the kind that entails spies, and
assignations, and hole-in-the-corner meetings. You know full well that you are
welcome in our society: that you have Lady Eastmond’s leave to pay your addresses:
in short, that there is no necessity of treating Miss Rae as if she were a
captive in a Gothic castle.’

‘There are many forms of
captivity,’ he said, with a shrug.

‘To the over-active
imagination, no doubt there are. But my prosaic imagination cannot conceive why
you should insist on a secret meeting in the abbey with Miss Rae — it
was
your
idea?’

He tossed his curls.
‘Certainly.’

‘Then I cannot conceive
what dreadful prohibition you were seeking to evade, Mr Beck — except myself.
And really I had no notion I was so formidable. I gave up wearing snakes in my
hair and carrying a spear when the master of ceremonies pointed out that they
were inappropriate for formal evenings, and I have got quite out of practice at
curses and hexes. You must have formed your conclusions about me on quite other
evidence.’

‘Miss Templeton, what
would you have?’ he said, with a twitch of his massy shoulders. ‘I do not deny
— I have made no attempt to deny — that Miss Rae and I met in the abbey. Nor do
I deny that to a certain class of mind this must appear a fearful
transgression—’

‘You presume a good deal
too far, sir, in ascribing to me that class of mind, or
any
class of
mind. You know nothing of me.’

‘Very well,’ he said, pursing
his lips, ‘let us proceed on the evidence. You are here to reprove me for
meeting Miss Rae in secret. That means, surely, that you disapprove: also that
you do not understand the reasons for it.’

‘Explain them to me,’
she said icily.

‘There you are, you
see,’ he cried, with his barking, impatient laugh. ‘It must be explained to you
why two people, between whom there exists the most tender and sacred
attachment, should wish to meet alone, without all the miserable meddling fuss
of chaperonage. Lord! What hope is there?’

‘Obviously, sir, you
have already satisfied yourself as to my position here as well as my
sentiments. It hardly seems worth attempting to put my own side of the case —
but perhaps you will humour me. I undertook to accompany Miss Rae to Bath at
the request of her guardian, Lady Eastmond: out of respect to that lady, and
also, perhaps more importantly, out of the firm friendship I have formed with
Miss Rae. The fact that she is young, and inexperienced in the ways of the
world, does not alter the character of that friendship: it does not turn us
into schoolmistress and pupil, nor even gaoler and prisoner. It does, perhaps,
intensify that element of protectiveness which is present in any friendship. It
does not, decidedly not, render me a mere dummy of straw, to be thrust aside as
an encumbrance, incapable of feeling.’

Mr Beck gnawed his lip.
‘I did not suppose you any such . . . But surely, Miss Templeton, the matter
need hardly concern you. You do not, as you say, stand as any sort of guardian
to Miss Rae—’

‘Nor am I an
irrelevance, Mr Beck. And I cannot help but wonder, if you can prevail on Miss
Rae to meet you in secret, what other commitments you might prevail upon her to
enter.’

‘Now you do me an injustice,’
he said, with the alacrity of someone who likes that best in the world.

‘Do I? If you had not
seen fit to go about things in so underhand a manner, I would be better able to
judge.
Have
you persuaded Miss Rae to enter some sort of secret engagement?’

‘There you are, you
see,’ he cried again. (She would allow him two of those. At the third, she
would break her parasol over his head.) ‘The way you speak of her — as if she
had no independent mind of her own. But I will answer your question. No, I have
not. Nor would I do so. It would be a profanation of what should be pure and
true and open. All I have done, Miss Templeton, is lay my heart at Miss Rae’s
feet. It is there for her to take — or to scorn and spurn and trample on — as
she chooses.’

Mr Beck’s voice was
loud, and the lady waiting for the coach peered over her shoulder with
interest. Scorn and spurn, forsooth. Lydia couldn’t be sure, but she believed
she had never before heard a person not actually on the stage use the word
‘spurn’.

‘And I know very well,’
Mr Beck pursued, taking her silence to mean she was impressed, ‘that I am not
the only aspirant for Miss Rae’s hand. How could that be, indeed, when one look
at her — one word from her lips . . . But I know, and accept, there is another
gentleman in Bath who is paying his addresses to Miss Rae. Yes, we have no
secrets from one another.’

‘None at all? Really, I
should keep a few, else you will be bored with each other within a
twelvemonth.’

That remark seemed so
perfectly to suit his conception of her that he smiled, pityingly. ‘Well, well.
I think I see my way clear now. Very revealing. You, Miss Templeton, are this
other gentleman’s advocate. He has, as it were, a friend at court, while I am
out in the cold. Isn’t that it?’