An Accomplished Woman (48 page)

The other ray of light,
if it could be called that, was Hugh Hanley: in that he called often, never
stayed too long, and talked in his trifling, sparkling vein of trifling and
sparkling things. He was true to his word also — no longer quizzing Lydia about
his uncle’s intentions: not that she could have given him any information even
if she had wanted to. She saw nothing of Lewis Durrant. He was, she supposed,
much occupied in another direction. Not a supposition that gave her any
pleasure, but preferable to the alternative: that he had heard something about
her, something emanating from the Allardyce house, and was keeping his
distance. She wanted to think that Juliet would not speak against her — but
then, she was much attached to her brother; and besides, the loudest voice in
that quarter would be Mrs Allardyce’s, and there was no doubting what story she
would be telling. To imagine Mr Durrant believing
that
about her was
intolerable; but she lacked the heart to face him. Otherwise, she would have
gone and handed him his fifty pounds at once. Indeed so acute was her
consciousness of failure that she would have made it a hundred.

With Phoebe absent for
most of the days, Lydia busied herself with preparations for their departure.
At last came the visit to the coach-office, the bespeaking of a post-chaise for
five days hence, the booking of coach-places for the servants. There was
finality in this, but no satisfaction; and as she came away, and strolled idly
down Milsom Street, she found in the broth of her emotions one unexpected
flavour. Part of her would actually miss Bath. She had been rather happy at the
beginning, even if she had not been aware of it. Or was that not the definition
of happiness? If so, the discovery was as dispiriting as everything else. She
turned into Duffield’s, hoping that a draught of reading might revive her, as
wine was so signally failing to do lately; and on the table exhibiting the new
periodicals, a familiar title caught her eye: The
Interlocutor.

So, here it was, the
finished copy. Turning it over, she was unsure whether to admire Mr Beck’s
perseverance in completing it after the blow he had received, or to conclude
that the blow could not after all have been so severe. The poem with the
lacteous bucket and the hedger’s implement seemed to have been withdrawn, she
noticed with faint disappointment.

‘My dear Miss Templeton,
reading in a reading-room — how very gauche,’ Hugh Hanley said at her side.
‘Are there no bonnets to be stared at? No reputations to be impugned with a
wink and a whisper? The
Interlocutor.
Is that how you pronounce it?’

‘No.’

‘Looks dreadfully
earnest anyhow. Will you have a seat with me for a minute? I have been
sauntering
about the town so long it has quite turned my legs to jelly. Surprising energy
required for a saunter. Marching will be nothing to it.’

‘Do dragoons march?’

‘Only to the debtors’
prison. I risk the gloomy phrase, as I judge that you are in no better spirits
than I.’

‘You don’t look gloomy.’

‘The curse of an amiable
face! I could never play Hamlet, indeed, Miss Templeton: even when I got
stabbed I would look no more than mildly discomfited. Besides, I don’t really
run to full-blown gloom. Call it resignation to fate.’

‘The fate of the
debtors’ prison?’

‘Eventually, eventually.
Unless I thoroughly reform. I might give it a try. Virtue at least has novelty
to recommend it. Well, will you be surprised to know that my uncle continues
cordial? He secured me an invitation to dine at the Allardyce house with him
last evening. Very Queen Square there, isn’t it? Very genteel and just so. No
ice, and the port rather indifferent — though plenty of it, thank heaven, as
one must adjourn to listen to Madam Crocodile afterwards. I venture on the
disobliging sobriquet as I am certain, from what she was saying, that she is
not a favourite of yours.’

‘Well, what was she
saying? Oh, don’t tell me: I can guess. No doubt it will soon be all over Bath
in any case.’

‘No doubt — Bath being a
very small and very trivial world. From what I could gather, she had great
hopes of Miss Rae as a bride for her son, but now he has taken himself off, all
seems lost, and Miss Templeton is to blame. I think there was some talk of
lures and snares, which all sounds very county and game-keepery and not at all
like you.’

‘Thank you.’

‘You needn’t. I think it
must all be nonsense, not only because I doubt you would do any such thing, but
because that old reptile said it: but I know you don’t care for my opinion
anyway. I would willingly discount the other theme of her rather
relentless
conversation,
but there I fear the evidence is stronger. At the Dress Ball, you know, she
made a great to-do about a forthcoming engagement in her family, and very
neatly she is still contriving to do so. But on the distaff side.’

‘You mean — Juliet and
Mr Durrant?’

‘Who else?’ Hugh Hanley
drew out a pristine handkerchief and applied it to a speck on his boot. ‘Not
that there was any corroboration from
them,
you understand. He was as
about as easy and communicative as a sentry, and Miss Allardyce — well, you can
hardly expect me to be fair about her, but there is just a little too much of
the cat that got the cream for my taste. But certainly they are as thick as
thieves — heads forever together — handing her to this and that — and in short,
my uncle achieved his purpose. I went, I saw, and I confess myself conquered.’

Lydia tried to read his
expression. Difficult, as he said: but she thought she detected something chill
and stony in those long-lashed eyes. As for herself, she hardly knew how to respond
to the news.
It is wrong — it is wrong
— those were the words that
seemed to repeat themselves along with her quickened pulse. And yet, she
thought dully, who was she to say so? Who in their right mind would trust her
judgement?

‘There is nothing of
certainty in this,’ she said at last. ‘Mrs Allardyce is, as you say, a
boastful, loose-tongued woman—’

‘And a shocking liar, I
would add,’ he put in, freshening. ‘I fancy there are two kinds of nature that
would always see through her: natures equally dishonest, like mine, and natures
absolutely transparent, like Miss Rae’s. I was with the Vawsers’
exploring-party to Wells the other day — and aren’t they a fantasy? — there is
an endless fascination in their acquaintance, wondering at every moment whether
they are
real
— and Miss Rae spoke of you with unhesitating affection
and esteem.’

Lydia shook her head
slightly. She had a strong feeling that Phoebe’s opinion of her was much
altered; and if what Hugh Hanley said were true, she could not feel it deserved.
The whole subject was, indeed, too painful for her to pursue — which, observant
as ever, he seemed to perceive.

‘Heyo! Well, time will
tell, and all the same a hundred years hence, and every other wise saw you care
to mention. Tomorrow night I dine with the Vawsers, and expect entertainment
enough to lift the blackest cloud. Mr Vawser seeks my advice on the latest
fashion of tying the cravat. If you should see him parading the Pump Room with
his cravat wound round his head like a bandage, you’ll know that I gave in to
an
unpardonable
temptation.’

‘You intend staying in
Bath, Mr Hanley?’

He shrugged gracefully.
‘For the nonce, however long a nonce is. An immediate withdrawal in high
dudgeon — can one have low dudgeon, by the by? — would give my uncle, I fear,
far too much satisfaction. And what of you, Miss Templeton?’

‘We leave next week.’

‘Well, we two
dispossessed idlers are sure to run into one another before then — but if it
should happen otherwise, accept my wishes for a safe journey.’

Only when he was gone
did she remark that word ‘dispossessed’, and think it odd that he should apply
it to her: odder still, she found it, for no fathomable reason, entirely and
frighteningly apt.

Lydia hardly knew on
what impulse she said to Phoebe, that evening, that she had seen a copy of Mr
Beck’s review at Duffield’s. Probably because
not
to say anything would
be, in some measure, to hide something: and to hide something from someone
suggested that one thought it would be best for them not to know it: and if one
thought that, one was exhibiting a confidence in one’s opinion, which she had
forsworn . . .

Fortunately, Phoebe’s
reaction was much less complicated.

‘Oh, I am so very
pleased that he has seen it through! And Duffield’s have taken a copy — that
must be a good sign. They take only the best. I wonder if Godwin’s has it too?
I shall ask when I next go in.’ She found Lydia watching her, and smiled. Not
her old, radiant smile — that was gone — but a good try at it: a sketch from
memory. ‘I always wish Mr Beck well, Lydia, and do not mind talking of him.
Please don’t be afraid of that.’

Lydia smiled too:
reassured, yet mistrusting even reassurance. ‘I am afraid of everything
lately.’

‘Oh,
youmustn’tbe.Thatisthegreatestofmistakes.Iventure
to say that
that,
at least, is something I have learned.’

Lydia longed to ask her
more: but Phoebe soon sank again into quiet abstraction, broken only by neutral
remarks: amongst them, a reminder that she was pressingly invited to dine with
the Vawsers tomorrow, and would go if Lydia didn’t mind. There was no objection
Lydia could raise. Phoebe was probably right in feeling that they were better
off apart for a little; and Lydia’s self-opinion was so crushed that even the
idea of Phoebe preferring Mrs Vawser’s company to hers could only raise a thin
howl, like a cat trapped down a well.

It was three days later,
and Lydia was awake unusually early — actually up and stretching — when Mary
Darber came knocking with the hot water.

But no — not hot water:
Mary was holding out a letter.

‘Good morning, Mary.
What’s this? Never tell me you’re resigning because you want to stay in Bath. I
shall have to . . . Good God, whatever is the matter?’

‘Miss Rae’s not in her
room, Miss Templeton — and her clothes are gone — and there’s this.’

Lydia went forward to
take the letter, with the slow, treacly, dreamlike suspension — the curious
premonitory slippage of time that accompanies the receiving of bad news.

‘Mr Durrant? To be sure,
ma’am — only . . .’ The woman wiped her nose apologetically with her apron. ‘I
don’t know, ma’am, it being so early, whether he’s at home, as you might say .
. .’

‘Who the devil is it,
Mrs King?’ came Mr Durrant’s voice from a room down the hall.

Lydia spoke. ‘It’s me. I
must see you.’

He came out hastily, in
breeches and shirt-sleeves, towelling lather from his face. He met Lydia’s
eyes. ‘Mrs King, would you be so good as to brew some coffee? Bring it into the
drawing-room.’ He flung open a door on the other side of the hall and ushered
Lydia in. ‘Come. Sit down.’

Numbly she took in the
comfortably disordered appearance of his lodgings: books, a littered desk, his
old coat on a chair. She had imagined him marooned in rented sterility, but
this felt like Culverton.

‘What is it?’ His eyes
lit on the letter clutched in her hand, and he fell on his knee beside her.
‘News from home? Your father?’

‘No, no. It’s Phoebe.
She’s gone. She . . .’ Her voice faltered on the word, which should have been
absurd and was not. ‘She’s eloped.’

‘The devil she has! Not
with Beck? I didn’t think he . . .’

She shook her head.
‘Read it.’

He went to the window to
do so, while Lydia re-read the letter in burning memory.

Dearest Lydia

I hope you can forgive
me for what may appear a terrible desertion, and an ungrateful reward for all
your care and solicitude on my behalf — and that of my kind guardians the
Eastmonds likewise. Believe me, it is not meant so.

I am going away to be
married. Mr Hanley has declared himself in love with me, in the most urgent
terms. This is sudden — yes — though we have seen a good deal of each other
lately: and at a time when I have, I hope and believe, been very little
inclined to the idle dreams of romance. And yet now comes this — so
overpoweringly. And I have decided upon decision, if that makes sense.

Mr Hanley throws his
life at my feet. I am challenged to take it up, and I shall. I must no longer
doubt my heart — else I shall remain a vacillating fool all my life. That is
why we do it this way
—
running away to he married. To wait for consent
—
to listen perhaps to persuasions and arguments — is surely to court delay
and disappointment. Happiness surely must be seized, even at some risk. Of my
future happiness I have no doubt, and beg you to accept that assurance, and
rejoice with me: that is the one request I have to make of my dear friend, who
has already acceded to sufficient demands from me. I shall write Lady Eastmond
myself as soon as I am able, and hope in time to present my husband to both of
you
—
when, though my surname be changed, I shall remain as ever