Friendship and Folly: The Merriweather Chronicles Book I (33 page)

Sir Warrington and Mr. Lenox did not, after all, come to dinner. Scarcely had the memory of their being expected returned to further unsettle the girls’ minds, than a footman from Berkeley Square arrived with a note, and put their flutterings to rest. Mr. Lenox, of course, knew nothing of the latest upset to the household. He knew only his brother’s report, of Miss Northcott’s inability to return with him due to Miss Kitty’s indisposition; but this knowledge was sufficient to suggest to him, that the presence of two guests, at such a time, might easily be dispensed with, and caused him, greatly to Sir Warrington’s dismay, to send round a note proposing as much. This proposal being accepted, with much gratitude and a carefully worded explanation by Mr. Parry, it was not until the following morning that Julia and Mr. Lenox first saw each other in the new light provided by the baronet’s astonishing disclosure.

It was not the sort of dramatic encounter beloved by novelists, even good ones. Mr. Lenox did not start to his feet upon her entrance, turn pale, and clasp her hand, exclaiming, “Can it be true, my lovely angel? Are you indeed Mine?” He did rise, of course, but only to shake hands as usual, and ask how she did; and Julia did not faint, though it may hearten my more romantic readers to be told that she did, in fact, look a trifle unwell, which was likely the reason for the added concern in his manner, as he asked after her health.

It was Ann’s belief, that the hope which had come to her friend, had been too swiftly followed by the disappointment of realizing that no obstacle had really been removed, only transferred and enlarged; and together they had overset the fragile balance of peace, which Julia had previously maintained only by the utmost vigilance of soul. Even so, she might have regained her equilibrium in the time allowed her by the postponement of the dinner invitation, had not her emotions been thoroughly wrung out and disordered by Kitty’s violent spell. Small wonder, then, if she should look rather wan, and be unable to respond with anything but the faintest resemblance of her former manner.

Ann, having been present at each stage of this painful progression, had little doubt of reading her friend’s symptoms aright; but it could not be expected that Mr. Lenox would be able to discern in them anything other than the anxiety and fatigue natural to one who had been attending to the needs of a sorely afflicted sister. If he came with any hope of being able to perceive in Julia some indication that what his brother claimed was actually true, that her heart, incredible as it might seem, did indeed incline toward him (and to Ann it did not seem possible that he could come without such a hope), then it was a hope of such exceedingly modest proportions, as scarcely to deserve the name. Ann fancied that the first look he directed at Julia was perhaps a trifle more searching than was common with him; but then, reading in her weary countenance and smile of resolute friendship no hint of encouragement, he at once folded hope neatly away, and pocketed it out of sight, as if he had only brought it along on a whim, and had never any serious expectation of its being received.

Sir Warrington, I am confident it will not astonish my readers to learn, was by no means satisfied with this turn out of events. He gazed from one to the other, with such open disappointment and perplexity, that Ann at once saw the necessity of attaching herself to him for the remainder of the call, in order to keep him from declaring every thought in his head. She fell to marveling again, that he had ever managed to refrain from making his brother know his real intention in coming to London, with such a ‘babbling countenance’, with so little ability to dissemble at his command; and at length came to the conclusion, that perhaps Mr. Lenox was himself responsible for his continued deception, from his clear dislike of discussing the matter. Being against the whole idea of the journey, he had probably referred to it as little as possible, and gone about securing his brother’s safety from ambitious maidens with the same unspoken efficiency with which he frustrated Sir Warrington’s design of imperiling his neck on a high-spirited mount.

Thus, in this quiet manner, did the momentous meeting pass away, with sentiments and prospects still clouded by uncertainty. Ann confessed within herself to being privately as dissatisfied as Sir Warrington had openly shown himself to be, but her case was the better, in that, knowing the cause, she was able to entertain some expectation of its removal. She was even sanguine enough to anticipate, that every day would see an improvement in Kitty’s health, and that every mark of improvement in her body, would be accompanied by a similar strengthening of her mind, which would soon enable her to withstand the expansion of her sister’s affections, and subsequent “loss,” with no more than a reasonable display of misery. Great, then, was Ann’s consternation, when the next morning saw no amelioration of the invalid’s condition; nor yet the next. She suffered no more attacks, it is true; but the one had so entirely deprived her of vitality, as to introduce the suspicion that this forbearance was merely the result of her frame being, for the moment, incapable of summoning the necessary force to generate another. She did not weep, she did not utter reproaches or pleas, or in anyway seek to persuade her sister to one course of action over another: she only lay in the bed, as still as a corpse prepared for burial, and said “please” and “thank you” and “so very sorry to give everyone such trouble,” looking as if her spirit remained in any way attached to its earthly temple only by clinging desperately to the ribbons on her night-dress, and that the slightest disturbance would waft it straightway into Heaven.

Julia made very sure that there should be no such disturbance. She had recovered her peace, and though she uttered no word of renunciation, Ann became more and more convinced, that her friend had once again given up Mr. Lenox in her heart, and had no longer any expectation of seeing a happy resolution to her attachment. Had he lived in the next county, or even on the same island, there might have been some hope of their eventual union; a mere five or six years might have proved sufficient space for Kitty to adapt to the horrid novelty of the situation. But Burndall laid claim to Mr. Lenox, just as Merriweather did to Julia, and Ann perfectly understood her friend’s reluctance to meet Mr. Lenox with any sort of openness, knowing that the euphoria of any divulgence of feeling must shortly be followed by such a declaration as, “I am certainly glad this has all been made plain between us. Now, if you will be content to return home for half a dozen years or so, I promise to write you directly I am persuaded anything can come of it without endangering my sister’s life.”

Julia might be calm in the face of such a disappointment, such a dismissal of her dreams, but Ann could not be. Her mind felt like a lion roaming about, seeking whom it could devour: she wanted to pounce on the situation, and shake it to pieces, in the process rending all the constricting bands that pulled Julia along her present self-denying course. But one could not be cross with Kitty. In the past, Ann had often made the attempt, only to abandon it in the end, as an impossible task; one could be cross, even enraged, with the results of Kitty’s weaknesses, but not with herself. Julia clearly could not, sitting hour after hour at her sister’s side, reading to her, seeking to make her comfortable, to persuade her to eat something; making all the while special efforts to appear as complaisant if she had no other thought in her head, but to see Kitty over this slight indisposition, that they might all return the sooner to Merriweather.

Once only, did Ann approach the subject with Julia, wishing to share with her the frustrations of her own heart; not from a belief that such an exchange would accomplish any particular good, but because prowling emotions must always seek out a vent of some sort, be it only a brief testing of the bars set up against them. Seeing Julia look more than ordinarily pensive, she boldly asked her what it was she thought on.

For a moment Julia appeared rather taken aback by this sudden query, but after a pause she replied, with a small smile, that she had been thinking on a blackberry patch.

This reply, not unnaturally, at once destroyed any notion Ann harbored, of how the conversation was to proceed; though further inquiry revealed, that the subject was not as unrelated to her purpose as she at first assumed. The berry patch in question was not just any one, but a patch of particular location and history, once found in the garden at the back of the Parrys’ house at Clapham. Julia explained that she had been remembering a time when she was quite small, and had wandered away from all adult authority, to eat her way slowly and unheedingly into the very midst of this rather large accumulation of thorns and fruit. At length realizing her position, she had attempted to extract herself from it, only to be caught and held more tightly with every movement she made. In a very short time she grew so frenzied with rage and frustration at being thus circumscribed, that she began to lash out blindly at the branches, tearing and pushing her way to the edge of the thicket, until at last she tumbled free. Victory, indeed, had been won, but at the cost of arms, face, and ankles, all scratched and bloodied; her dress plucked and torn in a hundred places; and her hat, lost in the melee, now triumphantly held captive in the thick of the enemy.

“But you were free,” said Ann.

“Yes, I was; but several of the wounds became inflamed, and I was miserable for a week. Grandmama Merrion, who was staying with us at the time, because Clive had just been born and Mama was rather ill, held me on her lap while all the thorn-splinters were removed, and after she had dried my tears she told me that she wished me to remember this, when I grew older, and was tempted to fight my way free from some difficulty. She pointed out that my father had heard my cries for help, and if I had only been patient for a few minutes longer, he should have found me, and he and the gardener could have used the hedge scissors, and freed me. I was no more than four at the time, but I have never forgotten the sound of her voice as she talked to me that day, and how she would not let the nursemaid hold me, and said she did not care if her dress was ruined: she proposed, said she, to comfort her granddaughter, and her garment would simply have to bear up under the knowledge that it was not of primary consideration with her. It is, indeed, almost the only memory I have of my Grandmama Merrion, for she died not four months afterward.”

This short history had somehow the effect of banishing from Ann any desire to acquaint Julia with her own impatience. She resolved that if her friend could subdue herself to stand quietly in the midst of thorns, awaiting deliverance, in whatever form it took (and Ann knew Julia well enough to be sure that it was no simple, physical rescue that she anticipated), then she, Ann, could surely shut up her own lions: or at least, keep them from growling.

She had beforehand been rather loathe to sit with Kitty, for fear her impetuous tongue would say something it ought not; but after this conversation she felt competent to withstand any such temptation, and accordingly persuaded Julia and Lady Frances, in many instances, to give over this more sedentary occupation to herself, that they might be freed to perform the many other more taxing duties, which all seemed to be coming upon them as their departure neared. It struck Ann as a trifle odd, that it should suddenly have occurred to so many of their Warwickshire neighbors, that the Parrys, in the last week of their stay in town, must have so much time on their hands, as to stand in need of further requests for obscure items that were only to be found in London, in order to fill up all the hours; but so, apparently, it did.

Kitty said nothing about the change in companions, but accepted Ann’s care with as much weak gratitude as she had her family’s. She did not seem to mind what was done, or not done, for her; and though she never complained, Ann often thought, that she would have been just as satisfied, had they left her entirely alone with her own troubled thoughts--which thoughts, Ann was tolerably assured, were what she privately entertained, whenever she appeared to be respectfully listening to whatever volume was being read to her. Ann did not object to being thus discreetly ignored, but she could not help wondering, if the fault perhaps lay with the volumes chosen.
Pilgrim’s Progress
and
Camilla
were all very well, but it was Ann’s belief that a volume of sermons directed particularly toward the value of unselfishness in sibling relationships, might prove to be more arresting to the attention of the invalid. But though she found an unaccountable number that talked of the wickedness and futility of discontent at the ways of Providence, for some reason, she discovered that the clerics of the past and present had preached precious few messages against young ladies who prevented their sisters from getting married by becoming ill and politely declining away to nothing beneath a counterpane.

If Kitty had difficulty in holding her thoughts to what was being read, Ann had as much; and one morning, having gone through an entire chapter without being able to recall one incident in it five minutes later, she decided, that if it was a matter of indifference to Kitty what words were diffused into air, then she, Ann, might as well choose something that held her own interest, and forthwith she rose and went to the desk where Lady Frances had been earlier writing letters, and had left a stack of those to which she had been replying, under a weight. Ann wanted particularly one sent the past week, by Major Merrion, which had been read aloud to everyone in the drawing room one evening, before going to reside in Lady Frances’s workbasket. It had been a letter of singular interest to Ann, for it related some rumors that changes might soon be made to the location of the regiments, and she had longed to read it again for herself. Knowing there could be no objection, she now fetched it, and resuming her seat, began to reread the letter (which covered many sheets) silently. She had almost done, when she was interrupted by a quiet query from the bed, where Kitty had apparently but just noticed the cessation of the novel. She explained the substitution, and upon Kitty’s request, willingly undertook to start again from the beginning, and read the letter aloud. When she had done, she looked up to find Kitty’s head turned on the pillow, and her eyes fixed on Ann, in a peculiar fashion. Quite startled, she asked sharply if anything was the matter; if Kitty felt another attack coming on? Kitty seemed not even to hear her, but actually raised herself up a little in the bed, and still with her eyes fixed in that odd way, said, in a low but urgent tone, “Ann, Ann, we must tell Stacey.”