An Accomplished Woman (50 page)

He hesitated, then
briefly pressed her hand. ‘That is more than I can promise. But I shall do what
is in my power.’

Back at Sydney Place
Lydia moved in an air of unreality. She eyed the familiar furnishings with a
faint suspicion, as if someone had crept in and moved them around. Phoebe gone:
Phoebe gone with Hugh Hanley: an elopement. Here was the greasepaint whiff of
unreality: the stuff of stage comedies and schoolgirl gossip. It happened,
though. Where there was a word for a thing, there must be a thing. It happened,
and it seldom turned out propitiously.

And Lewis Durrant gone
after them! Stranger yet, but undoubted: very soon after her return, he had
sent a stable-boy with a note. Hugh Hanley had hired a post-chaise from the
York yesterday, its destination Worcester, on the north road. Mr Durrant had
done likewise. That was all. She must wait.

Wait, and think. There
lay the terrible task of endurance. Without thought, there would only have been
the stretched ache of tension: but thought was a rain of needles. She tried to
sit, to rest herself — to read: she followed Mr Durrant’s advice with the
trustful submission of a patient to a physician, and took up the
Interlocutor.
She tried and failed to anchor her mind in a fathomless essay on the
metaphysics of the sublime. Leafing, she came across a poem: this must be the
substitution for that regrettable rustic effusion. Her heart sank when she saw
the heading:
For
p**
R**.

The infant who would
clutch the flower

As roughly as a favoured
toy

This lessons learns: his
puny power

May what he most desires
destroy.

The traveller who with
holy greed

His flag plants on the
heathen strand

Doth nothing but a
desert breed

Where slaves and
sickness blight the land.

I saw a vision — oh, so
bright,

So sweet and fair — I
could not wait:

I seized it
—
and it vanished
quite.

 My fault, my loss,
my fitting fate.

Lydia laid down the
paper with trembling fingers. Such an exchange for the lacteous bucket . . .
yet she could almost wish the absurdity back. Had Phoebe seen these verses? It
was likely: she had said she would look for a copy. The thought of their effect
on her — the adding of this tender regret to the bitter sum of her late
experience — was, like every thought now, unbearable. She recalled Mr Durrant’s
first exclamation on hearing that Phoebe had eloped:
Not with Beck?
And
if it had been bearable, she would have thought:
If only so!

Had she been asked for
just one word to define Hugh Hanley, that word would have been ‘untrustworthy’.
This did not rule out other qualities — charm, wit, good temper — and she could
even imagine a woman being happy with him. But it would have to be a woman of
his own shrewd, worldly sort, who could match him at every turn. That was not
Phoebe. Lady Eastmond’s brown, plain, kind face swam before her. Lady Eastmond
who had not asked much of her, after all, as her father had gently suggested:
only what was due to a woman who had been such a staunch friend to her mother.
Her mother — who had run off with a handsome soldier. The wheel coming round.
Elopements never propitious. No comedy here. Dear God. Unbearable.

By six o’clock it was
literally so. Lydia packed a carpet-bag, put on her bonnet and spencer, and
left the house.

The York could not
oblige — not an equipage left for hire — and the Christopher did not seem to
want to. The waiter fetched the livery-stable keeper, and he chewed his lip and
hawed over her request. There was a chaise for hire, to be sure — but then
there was the question of the lateness of the hour: how far was she going?
There, you see — he would need to know, on account of driving at night.
Stagecoaches were always leaving at night, she countered. Ah, but it was different
driving post, and there was the question of a postilion: he had better speak to
the hotel-keeper . . .

He left her fuming in
the coffee-room, where presently a gentleman entered with an armful of papers, nearly
dropped them in surprise, and cried out: ‘Miss Templeton!’

‘Mr Beck.’ Well, yes,
let it come: let the bolts and the brimstone fall on her.

He came forward,
wrestling with his papers, blinking rapidly. ‘Miss Templeton, I — I am very
glad to see you.’

She waited for this to
be elaborated with some titanic irony and scorn. When it was not — when he
smiled tentatively, and asked if she would sit down — she felt as if the world
had momentarily turned inside out.

‘Miss Templeton, this is
most favourably met. I had thought of calling on you — supposing you still in
Bath — which, of course, you plainly are. I arrived here yesterday on business
to do with the
Interlocutor,
and I thought ... I wondered, but then I
hesitated. Oh, Miss Templeton, what I wanted to say is’ — he spread out his
arms with the old exultant glow — ‘you are Canidia!’

Now the world had turned
the other way. ‘I am what—? Mr Beck, I . . . Oh! good heavens, that.’ Her
letter about the translation of Horace: it seemed an age ago, across a great
sundering gulf of experience.

‘Yes —
that —
that
most superb, penetrating, valiant defence of poetry against the defacement of a
self-conceited literary vandal. Those noble lines tricked out into so much
versified lace to trim a fine gentleman’s cuff — I remember throwing the
impudent book across the room — oh, but you put it much better than I could. It
was stirring, Miss Templeton. I have only just come across it: my printer found
me a back copy of the
Universal Review
at last, though Mr Durrant told
me about your being Canidia some time ago.’

‘Did he?’

‘Oh, yes, he was always
talking about you. And I was very interested — but then various events
intervened, and when I left Bath I fear I was ... a little disaffected towards
you, and dismissed it.’ Mr Beck blushed, as richly as a girl. ‘This — this is
an opportunity also, I hope, for an apology. I fear I was a little intemperate.
My passions master me, as they will do, and it was — I think it was not
handsomely done.’

Lydia waved a hand
weakly. ‘There are much worse things, Mr Beck: much worse.’

‘I think not,’ he said,
with the familiar strenuous assertion. ‘I have been inclined to dismiss manners
as a mere superficiality, but it is borne in on me that they soften and
civilise human intercourse just as much as the affections. Indeed I have an
article in mind for the next issue of my review . . . But now this also is what
I wanted to ask — to request. Miss Templeton, you must write something for it.
If Canidia could only grace its pages—’

‘Mr Beck, I am very flattered,’
she said, half laughing, half tearful, ‘and at any other time I should think it
a thoroughly interesting project. But just now I — I have a terribly important
matter on hand—’

‘Good God, what’s the
matter?’ He peered into her face. ‘Tell me.’

Well, let it come: there
had only been a postponement of the brimstone, after all. She told, as briefly
as she could, wishing the hotel-keeper would come, wishing she could be gone,
wishing Mr Beck’s liquid eyes were not so desperately attentive.

‘So you see: this —
unfortunate news is all the recompense I can give you for your courtesy, Mr
Beck. And now if you want to be intemperate again, I shan’t blame you.’

He gazed for some
moments at the window, where a mockingly pink sky exhibited itself. ‘Intemperate?
No. I am shaken . . . shaken with pity for Miss Rae. She cannot have been
herself to have done such a thing — oh, I don’t refer to the man, I can’t speak
there — but to have left her friends, to have thrown everything at hazard: it
is not her. It is not her nature to give pain. And this, Miss Templeton, is
something you can never have intended.’

‘Dear God, no,’ she
groaned, ‘but it has happened, and I feel my responsibility. I think of what
might have been. Oh, Mr Beck, I read your verses. You still care for her
greatly, do you not?’

‘Oh, I shall love Miss
Rae to the end of my life,’ he said, almost conversationally. ‘And besides
that, I cannot think ill of her. When a man has been refused, I think he often
finds a salve for his disappointment in turning against the woman who refused
him: but I cannot do that.’ For a moment he was lofty: then a shadow touched
his face. ‘This gentleman — this Hanley — you doubt his sincerity: his
integrity?’

‘I fear I must do: still
more does Mr Durrant, which is why he makes such haste to follow them.’

Mr Beck folded his
large, well-shaped hands, which were not quite steady; and seemed to pick his
words carefully, delicately, as if they were twigs caught in a fast, swirling
stream. ‘Then I pity her the more. If I had heard she were engaged to someone
else — someone of her true choice, worthy of her — well, no one could be that;
and of course I should not like it, I should hate it with all my being — but
still, it would be different.’ He looked up at her in perplexity. ‘I thought —
I thought if there was a rival, it was Allardyce—’

‘No.’ Lydia shook her
head, unable to say more. ‘No.’

He seemed to draw back
from some new and dizzying height of surmise: then made a fist, and said: ‘Then
God speed Mr Durrant, I say! And you are waiting here for news? This is the
distillation of agony! Let me wait with you — or at least let me order you some
tea—’

‘No, no. I am waiting to
hear if I may hire a post-chaise. Mr Durrant said I should stay at home, in
case any news came there, but it is intolerable. I feel — I feel I must be
doing something.’

‘You mean to follow
them?’

‘I know it sounds
absurd. But I might get a fair way up the Worcester road tonight — find out if
there is any news at the post-houses on the way. It would be—’

‘Better than this, yes.
And there are servants at Sydney Place, after all, if any news comes there.
Yes, why not?’

It was rather a relief
to be with someone who would never urge her to be sensible. ‘The only thing
that prevents it, I am afraid, is that the livery-stable is reluctant to hire
me a post-chaise. Something about night travelling, and postilions—’

‘Oh, there is nothing
more thrilling than driving in the dark,’ he said, very Mr Beck. And besides, this
is a matter of utmost urgency. By your leave, Miss Templeton, let me go and
speak to them.’

He went quickly away,
and was quickly back, moving with a sort of modest swagger. ‘The chaise is
being made ready,’ he announced, ‘and there should be a moon later, so we may
get along pretty smartly.’

‘Thank you . . . We?’

He flushed again. ‘I
should not presume — but I shall. Miss Templeton, this affair does not perhaps
concern me as immediately as it does you, yet I simply cannot stay and linger
about, any more than you can. As Miss Rae’s devoted, eternal well-wisher — if
no more —’ his magnificent Adam’s apple bobbed convulsively ‘— I wish to help.
It will be sad work for you travelling alone, in such anxiety. I shall only add
that if you refuse, then I — I fear I shall become intemperate again.’

The realisation took a
moment, but with his awkward smile it could not be denied: Mr Beck was being
humorous. If the world were to keep turning inside out like this, she would be
too giddy to travel. ‘Well, that would never do,’ she said; and part of her
confessed that she did not want to go alone. ‘And thank you, Mr Beck, for
persuading them. However did you do it?’

Her thought was that he
had probably made a radical appeal to the stable-keeper as a fellow-man bound by
the sacred ties of human fraternity: but he replied with a shrug, offering her
his arm: ‘Oh, I gave them a bribe. It always works, alas. At least until the
perfectibility of human nature is achieved . . .’

Soon they were in the
post-chaise and climbing the steep road north out of Bath, with several
pleasure-carriages bowling past them in the other direction. Country picnics:
even that innocuous thought touched Lydia’s mind like a goad, as she recalled
the outing with the Allardyces, and her complacent attention to Mr Allardyce’s
talk of marriage, of the disposition he sought in a wife, and his hesitations
in approaching his candidate . . . How blithely she had assured him that his
suit would prosper — that he need only ask the question! A barouche passing by
reminded her of the abominable Vawsers.
There
had been the means of
bringing Phoebe and Hugh Hanley together. If only she had dissuaded Phoebe from
accepting Mrs Vawser’s friendship — but then had she not wisely given up trying
to influence Phoebe altogether? Besides, she suspected now that Hugh Hanley had
set his sights upon Phoebe from the night of the Dress Ball. No, there was no
comfort to be found in any reflections, and she was glad when Mr Beck emerged
from his own pensiveness and began to talk.