An Accomplished Woman (35 page)

‘Just now, with the
pinch of the war, the fare is a little restricted. But a dish I was very fond
of was liver dumplings with sauerkraut, which is much nicer than it sounds. Not
that I am averse to plain roast and boiled now and then; nor indeed to settling
in England at last.’

‘And Mr Pitt — should he
be looking anxiously over his shoulder?’

‘Oh, I do not lack
respect for Parliament; though my respect would be greater if it were more of a
parliament, and less of a club. Nor do I doubt that I could learn to talk
endlessly in a see-saw voice while not believing a word I was saying: not much
different from training for the Church or the law, after all.’

‘Mr Allardyce, this is
shocking. You will be calling for reform next.’

‘Only politely. Reform,
in the sense of making better, is a very good thing: it is something I have
been urging on myself for years, but without much result; and if a man cannot
improve himself, he should at least be circumspect about demanding improvement
from others.’

‘Shocking again. Without
a little good firm hypocrisy, what is to become of decent private life? Of
course, without reform, it will always be a monstrous expensive business
getting into Parliament. It was once suggested to my brother, who calculated he
could hardly afford to do it and educate his children — much to his own relief

‘Ah, so you are an aunt,
Miss Templeton!’

‘I am, twice over,
though I cannot help it. Does that modify your view of me?’

‘Oh, it must do. There
is a certain gravity in the title of aunt — it suggests judicious good works
and sensible advice. Did you not feel these tendencies stealing over you when
the happy event took place?’

‘A little: I resisted
them. Though I do not know how I shall be equal to great-auntdom, if the day
should arrive. Nature, no doubt, will have supplied the
embonpoint
by
then, but there is the added requirement of being grand and formidable.’

‘I should not think
being formidable beyond you, Miss Templeton,’ he said, with a shrewd look.

‘Thank you: I shall take
that as a compliment, even if it is not meant so.’

‘It is certainly meant
so, though there are women aplenty who would shriek at it.’

‘Oh, I have not shrieked
since my fourteenth year, when I came across an error in the marginalia of
Religio
Medici.
But what about becoming an uncle? Does that entail a change in the
character?’

‘I fear so, and whenever
Juliet turns me into one, I must be ready. An uncle positively must have
creaking boots, and a jingling watch-chain, and no frivolity in his system,
alas: perhaps as a result of being, as a rich uncle, always applied to for
money Well, I appeal to you: did you ever hear of a poor uncle?’

Lydia laughed, reminded
of Mr Durrant’s complaints. Glancing over at him, she saw him still deep in
talk with Juliet Allardyce — actually laughing, with that rare boyish lift of
the mask, at a remark she had made; and for the space of five seconds, the
sight of them combined with Mr Allardyce’s words — happy events — uncles — to
produce the most peculiar vision. There was no other name for the unheralded,
unbelievable idea that sprang into her mind — except, perhaps, sheer absurdity.
She had recognised it as such by the end of the five seconds, and dismissed it.

‘People can hardly be
blamed for prejudice, when words are so full of it,’ Mr Allardyce went on. ‘Was
not a gossip originally just a god-sibling? Or is that an error to make you
shriek?’

‘It was,’ she said,
smiling. ‘And I wonder whether you felt any such prejudice when you learned
that Miss Rae was coming to Bath with a
companion!

‘If I did, I deserve
whipping — at least, not whipping — that would hurt: but some severe
punishment, like asking someone how they are, and then having them actually
tell you. But really, Miss Templeton, I hope I have never given you any reason
to—’

‘No, no — in truth I am
reflecting on my own feelings. ‘There was something about Mr Allardyce’s very
lightness of conversational pressure that encouraged frankness: just as she
would never have spoken of her feelings to Mr Beck, knowing with what a
ghoulish appetite he would fasten on them. ‘When Lady Eastmond first proposed
my being Miss Rae’s companion, I fear — I realise now it was just such a
prejudice that fed my reluctance. A part of me must have thought: Am I come to
this? Companion has a direful sound, does it not? But that was before I met
Miss Rae, of course.’

‘Of course,’ he said,
thoughtful. ‘I am trying to imagine myself in such a position. I think I would
have been alarmed. However informal, however warm the relation, there is a
degree of responsibility in it, after all.’

‘Exactly’ It was
pleasant to be so swiftly understood. ‘I felt, selfishly no doubt, that nature
did not intend me for a chaperon.’

‘Not nature perhaps —
though to be frank I have no high opinion of nature as a guide. Nature frames
us for little more than looking for our next meal, and does not object if we
make it out of our neighbour: it is civilisation that does that. But if not
nature, I would say education — accomplishment — good sense: these, I am
afraid, doomed you to your task, Miss Templeton. And to continue complimentary,
and at the risk of making you conceited, I may as well say you are doing it
very well.’

‘Am I? Just the right
combination of the governess and the Gorgon, would you say?’

‘None of either: but the
proper degree of care and caution. After all, you have just been establishing
my
bona fides,
in regard to Miss Rae’s future.’

Lydia hardly ever
blushed, and when she did it was as painful and incommoding as heartburn.
Glancing away, she found Mr Durrant across the table looking at her curiously,
which forced her to collect herself. ‘Again it is a question of terms,’ she
said stiffly. ‘I hope — Mr Allardyce, I hope nothing so obvious—’

‘You mistake me,’ he
said gently touching her arm. ‘I speak in admiration, and out of my own esteem
for Miss Rae. You would be no true friend to her if you did not have her
interests at heart, and I honour you for it. You have besides an obstacle to
judgement in my mother, who does have a deplorable habit of speaking for me,
and giving a full account of my intentions. At least, she
thinks
she
speaks for me, and I am too fond of her to disillusion her: but she does not, I
assure you. And please accept my word that neither you nor Lady Eastmond need
have any anxieties about the nature of my attachment to Miss Rae. Believe me,
there is nothing to fear on that score.’

‘Well,’ Lydia said,
floundering out of awkwardness, ‘I shall risk making you conceited also, Mr
Allardyce, and say that I really did not doubt it.’

‘Thank you. Look at
that, we have arrived at a very good understanding through mutual honesty of
dealing. If we represented two warring countries, who could doubt that the
soldiers would soon be sent home, and peace restored?’

‘A woman in the
diplomatic service — now there is a fabulous impossibility.’

‘More’s the pity: I have
always contended they would do it superlatively well. Many the wife of an
indifferent ambassador, indeed, carries a good deal of her husband’s burden,
and carries it easily. But tell me — you knew little or nothing of Miss Rae, I
collect, before Lady Eastmond introduced you. It was the
idea
of doing
the
office
of a companion, you have hinted, that was repulsive. But when
the introduction was made — when you saw and began to know Miss Rae herself —
was that the moment of change?’

‘I would not go so far
as to say a
moment,’
Lydia said, and then stopped: she had thought her
motives for coming to Bath very neatly established in her mind, but just now
she found them curiously disordered and obscure. ‘There were — many
considerations. But yes: not to quibble, I very soon found so much to like in Miss
Rae that the question took on a different aspect altogether.’

He was nodding eagerly,
though it seemed less in agreement with her than in some internal confirmation.
‘Yes, it is curious how life takes us by surprise — or rather, how it suddenly
reveals some surprise about ourselves.’ His look was so pensive that it caught
the attention of Mrs Allardyce: who, no friend to thought in any form, called
sharply out to him, and demanded his opinion on the vital matter of whether
buff breeches were acceptable as Court dress.

Lydia’s momentary
embarrassment was over, and she was not sorry to have acted upon her resolution
to be more the chaperon, and pin Phoebe’s suitor down a little. She had found
nothing in Mr Allardyce to suggest the fortune-hunter: only a seasonable
mixture of sense and feeling that seemed to promise fair for the prospects of
Phoebe, in whom the ingredients were less felicitously mixed. Not that she had
actually pinned him down on those prospects — the ifs, whethers and whens — but
she was satisfied that this was a man serious in intent, and scrupulous on the
occasion of declaration. A duenna could do no more — except actually say to her
charge, ‘This is the one to choose, and not the other’: and whatever her own
inclinations, Lydia thanked her stars she was not so foolish as to do that.

She was pleased again,
after dinner, to find that Mr Allardyce did not linger over the port, but
promptly rejoined the ladies, and devoted his attention to Phoebe — as if
Lydia’s talk had cleared his thoughts and concentrated his mind. Mrs Allardyce
and her pug had claimed the sofa, but Juliet placed a chair close to hers, and
as soon as Mr Durrant appeared invited him to it. Lydia looked on with an
inward, tolerant smile. Here was a very natural state of things: her gratitude
and obligation must be making Juliet attentive to Mr Durrant; and certainly
Juliet’s sensible, unaffected, even crisp manner was the sort he would respond
to. But Lydia doubted he could long bear the strain even of rational gallantry;
and her surmise seemed confirmed when presently Juliet rose and went to the
pianoforte. Either he had asked her to do so, or she had found his
entertainment so difficult she had proposed it. The hour had struck, and the
clock-figure was trundling back in.

Juliet began to play,
with such superb taste and execution that Lydia sat transfixed and hardly
breathing. She listened with the ear — and faint envy — of expertise, but
anyone must have felt the same, unless they had the sensibility of a pig’s
head.

Almost at once Mrs
Allardyce leaned over and began talking to her.

‘So, Miss Templeton,
your mother was a Holdsworth, I discover.’

Lydia could hardly think
of a reply to make that did not involve the fire-irons. ‘You are well informed,
ma’am,’ was the warmest she could manage.

‘Oh, I make it my
business to be so. Come, one cannot be too attentive to matters of family. The
Templetons also I have heard about: Heystead Priory is a very good old house of
its kind, I hear. For my part I am not fond of these Gothic places: they are
too often inconvenient. When my son settles, it must be in a tidy, newish sort
of property, suitable to his position. There must be sash windows and a proper
carriage-sweep. People are very wrong when they suppose these things to be
unimportant.’ Mrs Allardyce darted a glance of impatience at the pianoforte, as
if at a servant making a clatter with the crockery. ‘Well, I find your
neighbour Mr Durrant a very gentleman-like man. Not in the first flight of
fashion, perhaps, but these things do not matter as they do for a woman. He has
a very good property at Culverton, I understand — the largest in your
district?’

‘It is, ma’am, and much
improved — though I cannot swear to the sash windows.’

‘Oh, it’s no manner of
use making repartee with me, Miss Templeton: I take no notice of it: that’s the
way I am, and I don’t care who knows it. Now Mr Durrant has not been in Bath
before, that I can swear to. I would have remembered. There is nothing in Bath
that does not come to my ears, even though I seldom stir abroad now. The fact
is, no one can make an appearance in the Pump Room without my getting to know
about it. Is that not remarkable?’

The fact seemed less
remarkable to Lydia than the sheer vacancy of mind of which it was evidence. But
she contented herself with agreement, hoping that acquiescence might be the
shortest route to silence, so that she could hear a little more of Juliet’s
playing. She was allowed to hear the end of that piece, and the beginning of
the next, which Mr Durrant called for eagerly; before Mrs Allardyce turned to
Phoebe and remarked loudly: ‘Juliet will have done soon, Miss Rae, and no doubt
we must have Miss Templeton too.
You
are not all a-quiver to give of
your all, I think? Good for you. One can have enough of these women who are
always straining to show off their accomplishments.’

Very well, thought
Lydia: but the wife of Mr Robert Allardyce, diplomat, public man,
under-secretary and whatnot, would do well to possess certain accomplishments,
as Mrs Allardyce might perceive if she ever turned her gaze beyond the
visitors’ book of the Bath Pump Room. Which was not to say that Phoebe would
not manage very well. Her innocence was only a negative, a lack that could be
made up: whereas, as Mrs Allardyce proved, there was such a thing as positive
stupidity.