An Accomplished Woman (39 page)

‘How d’you do, Mr Beck,’
Mr Durrant said blithely, with a little wave.

Lydia said: ‘Mr Beck, if
you will just sit down a moment and—’

‘Sit down, Miss
Templeton, I have no intention of ever sitting down again,’ Mr Beck cried
heatedly; and then, after a moment’s visible thought: ‘That is, if sitting down
is to be equated with rest — that rest which I shall never find this side of
the grave. But no matter — I only came to say that you will not be troubled
with my presence any longer. I shall leave Bath today.’

‘I’m sorry you are
leaving, Mr Beck,’ said Mr Durrant, courteously. ‘Where do you go — to Bristol?
Please give my compliments to your father if so.’

‘Bristol, yes. First.
Then — heaven only knows. There are ships aplenty at Bristol docks, and I’m
sure one will find a berth for me. And so — goodbye.’ Mary Darber — an
accomplished listener — had appeared soundlessly behind Mr Beck, tactfully
holding his hat. He turned, jumped, and then with a drop from drama to
naturalness thanked her. Mary smiled, and it occurred to Lydia, randomly, that
she was in a room with the only two men she had known aside from her father who
treated servants as fellow human beings. She was about to make a last appeal to
reason, but he forestalled her with a guttural ‘Say nothing, madam: for once,
say nothing,’ and was gone.

They sat for several
moments silently contemplating the teacups.

‘Well,’ said Mr Durrant,
‘he seemed to take it pretty well, after all.’

Lydia glared at him.
‘You might have helped me.’

‘I might, if it were any
of my business.’

‘Even so — you heard him
insult me — traduce me . . .’ She winced: Mr Beck’s language was catching.
‘There is such a thing, Mr Durrant, as chivalry on behalf of a lady,’

‘No, there isn’t: it
always conceals a design. No knight ever swept a lady from a dragon’s lair
without expecting something more in return than a thank-you and a ribbon to tie
on his helmet.’ He coughed. ‘As it were. You have too high an opinion of the
male, Miss Templeton.’

‘I assure you, my
opinion of the male was never lower.’

He grinned. ‘Besides,
you defend yourself very ably. Not, of course, that there is anything that
needs defending in your conduct. It’s not as if you have done anything wrong,
is it? Anything to cause you to reproach yourself?’ He rose, stretching. ‘And
Beck will get over it.’

‘To be sure he will.’
She hesitated. ‘If I had any doubt of that . . .’

‘No, no.’ He came and
stood by her chair a moment. ‘If there were less bombast, there would be more
concern. Believe me, the men who run away to sea are very seldom the ones who
talk about it. Well, I dare say you’d better go to Miss Rae, so I’ll leave you.
I must say, this has taken the dullness off the morning call.’

When he had gone Lydia
sat for several minutes nerving herself to go up to the drawing-room. Never
before had a flight of stairs appeared so imposing, and never before had she
felt the weariness of tackling them alone.

There had been tears,
and though they were over now, Phoebe’s eyes shone drily with perplexity and
grief.

‘I never thought these
things could be so difficult — so painful. I fear I have been a great fool from
the beginning. In London — it was all so delightful, and I was flattered, and
none of it seemed liable to come to any great issue. But of course I should
have known. I have been careless and selfish.’

‘These things are
difficult, certainly, and there is something surprisingly — contorted about
them,’ Lydia said: nudged by her own memory of a November day at Heystead, the
sound of hoofs crunching away on gravel, her eyes smarting as she huddled
closer to the fire. ‘But you should not reprove yourself, Phoebe. You have done
nothing wrong.’ She stroked her friend’s fingers. ‘Nothing wrong.’

‘He was so very
disappointed — so very bitter in his expressions. If I had known he would be so
stricken, I would have . . . Well, no. That is not the way to think. I must
remember the thief and the purse.’

‘He is very disappointed
now: but the feeling must moderate with time, as all feelings do; and perhaps,
quite soon, he will begin to understand the reasons behind your answer, and
even concur with them.’

‘I hope so — indeed, I
did
hope so: that is, I thought I could help him to understand, because we
would still see each other — remain on friendly terms. I did not think he would
go quite away.’

‘It is a frequent wish
at such time,’ Lydia said, ‘the wish to remain friends, and go on as you were —
but I am afraid it is very rarely managed.’

‘But — but, Lydia, what
about you and Mr Durrant? You managed it admirably — indeed I think I always
took heart from that.’

‘Well, that was
different. In the first place, we were neighbours, and there was a family friendship,
and so inevitably . . . And then, you know, Mr Beck and Mr Durrant are very
different people. Mr Durrant’s temper is not so — impetuous.’ Her own speech
gave Lydia varying sensations of discomfort. Not so impetuous — was that
another way of saying Mr Durrant simply hadn’t cared so much? Certainly she
hadn’t expected him to run away to sea; but the sang-froid with which he had
resumed his life after her refusal might be seen as deeply unflattering. It was
strange, and disturbing, to feel the touch of her own hurt and resentment
across the years, like coming across some painful, half-forgotten, unanswered
letter in a drawer. And now, besides, she had led herself to the unpalatable
admission that Mr Beck
did
feel deeply.

Oh, but he was so theatrical
— surely there was as much pose as genuine emotion, as Mr Durrant had
suggested. Lydia shook herself. ‘But everyone says strong things in the heat of
the moment, Phoebe; and Mr Beck’s
saying
he will go away does not mean
he will, at least not for any length of time. Indeed I think it is not unwise
for there to be a little separation between you for the present: to meet now
would only be to raise an agitation that can do no good on either side. Now,
you do not wish him to be unhappy, because you care for him: is that not so?
Then assuredly, if he cares for you, he would not wish
you
to be
unhappy. It is hard, I know, to lift your spirits at such a time; but do not
abandon the hope that they will rise, and sooner than you think.’

Lydia persevered: she
could not have applied more effort of persuasion and ingenuity to soothe
Phoebe’s distress of mind if it had been her own; and she was rewarded at last
with at least the appearance of composure in her friend, and a declaration,
apparently heartfelt and wholly sensible, that she would not dwell on the
matter any more, as it could do nobody any good. It was almost more than Lydia
had hoped, that Phoebe would then pronounce herself ready to go out ontheir
daily walk: but so she did, with a certain impatience from which Lydia
concluded that the house itself, with its painfully fresh associations, was
oppressive to her. There remained the possibility that, going into the town,
they might happen to see Mr Beck; but this was an evil that must be faced.

There was one other
resource on which Lydia could call, and she employed it sparingly and
judiciously as they took their walk. It was another serenely fine day, and she
remarked on the fair prospects for their country expedition with the Allardyces
tomorrow. Phoebe did not say much, but her face brightened, or at least
something of the shadow receded from it; and Lydia had hopes for the
restoration of her spirits from the thought of this, and still greater hopes
from the event itself.

They reached the South
Parade without incident — or, specifically, without Mr Beck materialising in
the middle of any thoroughfare, cloaked, cadaverous and reproachful; but once
there, Lydia suffered a start as a male voice called out: ‘Miss Templeton!’ Not
Mr Beck, however: a young man who might have figured as an illustration of his
opposite, as he came forward with studied grace and negligent elegance to make
his bows.

‘Mr Hanley, how do you
do? Your uncle told me you were arrived in Bath. Let me introduce Miss Rae: Mr
Hanley, Mr Durrant’s nephew.’

‘Miss Rae: delighted. I
knew
you
were in Bath from the same source, Miss Templeton: my uncle
actually found room to mention it in one of his sadly abbreviated letters. To
be sure, I had a
hint
of it when we last met, at Vauxhall. But then the
matter was undecided.’ A bright, feline look passed from one to the other, then
dissolved into a disarming smile. ‘And now, most curiously, here we all are!
And it’s not so very bad, is it? Quite a deal of company here — and not
all
dowds
and dowagers. London just now, you know, is a very desert. Not a soul there.’

‘Not a soul?’ Lydia
said. ‘Good heavens, who is minding the shops and sweeping the streets?’

‘Oh, I have been keeping
bad company, in which it is taken for granted that those sort of people do not
possess souls. Now, please, allow me to be your escort to wherever you are
going, which in Bath hardly matters, as no one goes anywhere to any purpose.
One perambulates only to be seen.’

Certainly the figure of
Hugh Hanley dazzling in red coat, buff facings, sash, silver buttons, white
breeches and iridescent boots, shako easily cradled under his arm, was one that
attracted many glances as they passed along the South Parade; and Phoebe seemed
a little in awe of him. Lydia felt no such thing: she thought he looked well in
the uniform, in the way that a very convincing actor would: but she supposed
she had better congratulate him on his commission, and the achievement of his
desire.

‘It is obliging of you
to notice,’ he said, with a mock-modest glance down at himself. ‘In truth I am
not really empowered to adorn myself thus until I properly join the regiment at
Brighton — but it all cost such a pretty penny, or confoundedly ugly penny,
that I feel I ought to get the maximum wear from it. Miss Rae, have you ever
heard of Schweitzer and Davidson’s?’

Phoebe murmured that she
had not.

‘Well, you can find them
at Cork Street, just off Bond Street. I offer the information in case you
should ever need to perform a daring robbery, or even just take a fancy to it:
for by the price they charge for tailoring this uniform, I dare swear they are
worth a mint of money. And whoever your
modiste
may be, be assured she
never did so much hissing and primping, so much sighing and tweaking, and
altogether making you feel rather dismally conscious of your shape as those
gentlemen. Now tell me, what are the excitements I can look forward to in Bath?
I observe there is a Dress Ball at the New Assembly Rooms on Monday, and intend
to subscribe at once — but what other pleasures should I anticipate?’

‘That depends on how
long your stay is to be, Mr Hanley,’ Lydia said.

‘I have not the least
notion,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I came to see my uncle, and to try to work out
what curious freak has got into his head to bring him here; and he is such a
hard study that I scarcely know how long it will take to get to the bottom of
it. Can you help me, Miss Templeton? Is it some rare distemper, and can the
waters cure it?’

‘It is not for me to
answer your question, Mr Hanley — it is for Mr Durrant alone; and knowing him,
I feel sure he has already done so, in the plainest terms.’

‘Exactly —
knowing
him,
which you do, I think, as well as anybody; and I am certain you must
have seen something of him in Bath. Old acquaintance, after all, is the only
acquaintance he can bear. I know he is seeking, or says he is seeking, a wife,
but I am not sure how to take this astonishing information. It is rather as if
one heard that the King has been discovered to be an impostor, and that all
these years the throne has been occupied by an illiterate costermonger from
Battersea.’

‘The information is
correct, as far as it goes,’ Lydia said with a reluctant smile, ‘but perhaps it
should not be so astonishing, Mr Hanley: perhaps it only proves that you do not
know him as well as you suppose.’

‘I have never known him
as well as I could wish,’ Hugh Hanley said, with a slight frown. ‘He is my
nearest family beside my mother and sisters, and though a father, of course,
can never be replaced, I have been accustomed since his death to look upon Mr
Durrant with something of the same regard. For all our differences, which I do
not deny for a moment, I have always tended to look up to him. Oh, yes,’ he
went on, at Lydia’s glance, ‘though I have often taken pains not to show it —
perhaps from a young man’s awkwardness — perhaps also from a contrary feeling
that he is rather too used to being looked up to. Still, the feeling is there:
and one would be glad to convert it to something warmer, if only there were
some sign of will on the other side. You are acquainted with my uncle, I’m
sure, Miss Rae: I hope you will not think me disrespectful when I say that to
be always looking
up
tends to produce a pain in the neck.’ He looked at
her closely. ‘But this heat is excessive, and my dry talk is making it worse.
Let us cross to the shady side — and then, if I may presume to dictate,
refreshment is in order, and I know the very place.’

He led them on, up to
York Street and into the town, talking volubly and lightly of other things, and
requiring little in the way of reply: a style of company that, Lydia reflected,
was fortunately suited to distract and divert Phoebe just now. At Gill’s, the
pastrycook’s, he was fastidious about their seating, and then as the
serving-man hovered he held up an admonishing finger.