The Land of Summer (8 page)

You are infinitely more beautiful than you think yourself to be. JA
.

After another distinctly uncomfortable evening in the company of the same unpleasant group, although this time with Julius among their number, Emmaline remembered the note with gratitude as she sat alone in the carriage the following morning on her way to her new life in Bamford. She straightened her change of travelling clothes. The pale grey paletot, the yellow-lined sash of her travelling coat, and the hat with the mixed feathers, had given her the confidence to realise that she could look stylish, that she was not just a drab female from across the Atlantic. She was the future Mrs Julius Aubrey,
and
never would she allow herself to look as the company at dinner the previous evening had looked, eccentric and strange, worn and careless.

Nevertheless, despite the fact that she had formed a resolve not to accept without reservation whatever was given to her, now she was finally travelling towards her new home she fell back to wondering where she had actually landed herself.

The more she thought about it the more she became convinced that Julius’s odd behaviour over the previous days was due to the magnitude of the task he had undertaken at Hartley Abbey, on behalf of his business. It had to be this that had made him seem so aloof, when in fact he was obviously merely preoccupied. She imagined the responsibility and weight of the work was distressing in the extreme, with the result that he was unable to concentrate on his own life and the fact that he had promised to marry her. There could be no other explanation for his erratic behaviour, for his seeming neglect, for a more different man from the one she had danced with that first night could not, surely, be found. Once she had accepted this idea she found she could relax a little, and she tried to enjoy her carriage ride through the quiet countryside. The sky, she noticed, was a soft mix of blue and grey – a mix that someone like Julius would do well to emulate. Everything was so small compared to America, as if England had been shrunk by some unseen process. She tried to imagine the Romans
in
their chariots coming out to their villas, making their way along the long straight roads they had so stylishly hewed – the very roads along which her own carriage was now travelling. She tried to imagine the sound of the horses’ harnesses clinking, the sight of the morning sunlight catching the tops of the Romans’ helmets, their eyes perhaps watching out for the fierce island people whose land they had invaded, who they knew might still be waiting in the forests to attack them.

The beauty of the scene, however, proved to be ephemeral, for she had hardly begun her long journey when the sun came out and a thaw started to set in, turning the countryside that had only an hour before been so picturesquely whitened into a damp and saddened sight, so that all too soon the view on either side of the carriage was only of dripping hedgerows and flooding roads. With this turn in the weather, Emmaline’s previously buoyed-up spirits started to sink. Supposing, despite his attempts to reassure her, Julius’s house was as damp and unwelcoming as the house that she had just left behind? The all too possible prospect did little to raise the morale of the young woman whose driver was even now being forced to slow his two horses down to a walk in order to try to negotiate the increasingly bad conditions.

Eventually, after what seemed like days, not just hours, Emmaline arrived safely at her destination late in the afternoon. The light had already begun
to
fade and the lamplighter was at work on streets ankle-deep in melted snow, where passers-by picked their way through the lumps of half-frozen slush that lay on the pavements while trying to avoid the mire thrown up by the passing traffic. From what Emmaline could see from the window of her carriage the part of town they were passing through had some fine stone-built houses, albeit lining steep streets, but of course they seemed too close to each other and surprisingly narrow after her own home town with its broad and generous thoroughfares.

She peered out into the increasing gloom as her carriage slowed at a road junction, and her eye was caught by a large sign above what was obviously a works entrance. Immediately above the main doorway, lit by a large lamp, she could make out the words
Julius Aubrey Ltd
. It seemed the board had been newly painted, for a sign writer was just descending his ladder, while the smaller plate at eye level in contradiction read
Aubrey & Aubrey Ltd
.

Staring at the signs, Emmaline called to the driver to stop. Had there been a death in Julius’s family? He had not worn any sign of mourning, no black band, nothing to denote the death of a close relative.

‘Carry on, driver, thank you!’

Shortly afterwards, the carriage stopped in a quiet street and the driver jumped down from his box to help Emmaline alight. As she stood with her skirts gathered up in her hands to protect
them
from the puddles formed by the thaw the driver knocked at the door of the building outside which he had drawn up his horses, and moments later Emmaline found herself inside a warm and welcoming lodging house, where fires were lit in every visible room, heavy curtains hung closed at the windows to keep out draughts, and gas lamps burned brightly everywhere.

The woman who showed Emmaline into the drawing room and served her with tea and cakes introduced herself as her landlady, Mrs Shannon.

‘I understand that you have entered into an arrangement with Mr Julius Aubrey, a gentleman to whom I am enormously grateful, since he has promised me more business in light of his plans. People will be coming here to see him concerning their homes, to inspect materials and suchlike. Bamford should be most grateful for him, for I understand from his manager Mr Ralph that many of the fine fabrics which were formerly made in Lyons will now be made up here, and will be used by Mr Julius Aubrey in his work, travelling as he does all over England, helping in the restoration of many fine houses.’

‘Yes, I understand that Mr Aubrey is more than brilliant at his line of work. He is even now restoring Hartley Abbey for Lord and Lady Parham.’

‘I would think that would be a task that will take until kingdom come.’ Mrs Shannon laughed. ‘The Parhams have not been noted for anything
except
eccentricity for many a century, although they are held in great respect, I believe.’

She stopped talking suddenly, and leaning forward she touched Emmaline lightly on the arm.

‘Are you feeling all right, my dear? You look a little pale.’

‘I am in perfect health, thank you,’ Emmaline told her even as a sudden wave of such homesickness swept over her as to make her feel almost faint. ‘Perfect health,’ she repeated, thinking that never had her mother, or her sisters, or Mary, or anyone back home, seemed more dear or more distant.

‘You are looking a little peaky after your journey, Miss Nesbitt, if you don’t mind me saying. I would say that you need a little bit of Mrs Shannon’s best looking-after comforts, really you do.’ Mrs Shannon leaned forward once more, and this time put a still motherly but more insistent hand on Emmaline’s arm. ‘Do not fret yourself at all, young lady. You will soon find your land legs in Bamford, really you will. My father was a seagoing sailor, never liked being on land, but even he found his land legs when he settled here. The town is steeply built, that I will grant you, and there is much to be done for the poorer section lower down by the river, but it is a pretty place, most of it built in the early eighteenth century when folk knew how to build elegant houses, not these grand places with every high-falutin’ inconvenience possible. No, the folk in the last
century
knew what was what. No grandeur, no splendour, just an elegant sufficiency.’

‘And Mr Aubrey’s own house?’ Emmaline enquired, as she accepted another slice of her landlady’s delicious sponge cake, more to please her than because she felt in the least bit hungry.

‘Of course, you’ll not have seen that yet,’ Mrs Shannon replied, ‘this being your very first visit. It’s in Park Walk, the very best of the avenues in Bamford. There are some exceedingly fine houses there, Miss Nesbitt, Mr Aubrey’s being perhaps the most notable. But no doubt you’ll be seeing it for yourself tomorrow, when Mr Aubrey calls on you here. I should imagine the very first place he’ll be taking you to will be your future home, and about time too, I expect you will be feeling by then!’

In fact, true to form, Julius did not put in an appearance the following day, nor indeed the day after, finally showing his face after dinner on the Saturday evening. During the intervening period, however, on the advice of the good Mrs Shannon, Emmaline made splendid use of his lack of attention by walking about Bamford and getting to appreciate the feel of it, before returning to the comfort of Mrs Shannon’s lodging house, not to mention her splendid home cooking.

‘It is the way of men, you know, dear,’ Mrs Shannon told her at one point. ‘Before they marry they can’t see any reason to think of the feelings of others, let alone the girl they are to wed. Mr Shannon did at least turn up at the church, but I
always
think my father had something to do with that.’ She gave a rich laugh. ‘There’s nothing like having a father who is a gunsmith to get a man to the church on time!’

At last there was Julius, looking tall and handsome, and beautifully dressed, reminding Emmaline exactly why she had consented to come to England to marry him. And yet, divine-looking though he might be, and fine though his manners undoubtedly were, nevertheless, deep down inside, she could not help feeling bewildered.

‘Was there no way of getting word to me that you had perhaps been delayed?’ Emmaline quietly enquired when they sat on either side of the fire in Mrs Shannon’s drawing room after Julius’s unannounced arrival, with Mrs Shannon placed discreetly at a table in the bay of the window playing a hand of cards with another of her guests. ‘It really is so strange not to know from one moment to the next what I may or may not be doing.’

‘Is that so? I am most apologetic,’ Julius replied, staring at the toes of his highly polished shoes. ‘Does this place not suit you, Emma?’

‘It suits me admirably, truly it does. But its suitability has nothing to do with your manners, Julius.’ Emmaline looked round discreetly to make sure her landlady was not visibly eavesdropping. ‘This is a very comfortable establishment and I am more than perfectly suited here, thank you.’

‘Then what is the cause of your unease, I wonder?’

‘The cause of my unease is that I am seemingly without purpose, Julius. As far as I can see I could well be sitting here waiting for you to arrive or not to arrive indefinitely, until the end of the world, until God himself appears on a cloud.’

‘I see.’ Julius nodded, tightened his mouth and breathed in slowly and deeply, before rising from his chair. ‘Perhaps your mind may become easier tomorrow when we attend church and the banns are read. I shall be here to collect you in plenty of time, have no fear. So until then, Emma, I bid you farewell.’

He leaned forward to take her hand and shake it, but then, with a quick look at the window, he raised his fingers and once again touched her cheek, a look of sudden longing coming into his eyes.

They walked to the church in company with what appeared to Emmaline to be the entire population of the town, all dressed in their Sunday best. On arrival, Julius and Emmaline were shown to the Aubrey family pew, one of a select number of box pews set to one side of the nave at right angles to the rest of the congregation, who were taking their places under the supervision of the churchwardens. Every seat in the large building was filled, the overspill having to stand at the back. To Emmaline’s surprise, and somewhat to her dismay, Matins was celebrated by the Reverend Archibald Welton, who, it transpired, had been invited to Hartley Abbey by the
Earl
and Countess of Parham in the mistaken belief that, coming from the same town, Julius must find their old friend as congenial as they did. Emmaline noticed that he adopted a completely different voice from the one he had used – albeit sparingly – over dinner at Hartley Abbey, conducting the service in a slow, high, monotonous quaver, a tone he sustained from start to finish of the service, including a twenty-five-minute sermon on the proper meaning and understanding of the Trinity. Emmaline did her best to follow the service, but due perhaps to the curious intonation of the rector she found it more than difficult, and of course her feelings of piety were somewhat distracted by Julius, who sat quietly sketching the church pillars in a small pocket book held low in the pew.

‘I hope you heard more than I did,’ he said cheerfully as they walked away from the church with the rest of the congregation, having shaken the hand of the rector as they left the building.

‘And I only hope, Julius, that you did not attract any attention to yourself,’ Emmaline told him in a low voice. ‘I am quite sure that you did, however, and now everyone will think that the banns, the reading of our banns, that is, is about as important to you as the poor rector’s sermon.’

‘Forgive me, Emma, but I have been subjected to that wretched man’s interminable homilies for longer than I care to remember. I attend morning service regularly, I give money to the church, I have – I hope now to have done well by requesting
that
our banns of marriage be read in that same church, but having done all that there is nothing to say, absolutely nothing to say, either in the ten commandments or anywhere else, that I may not sketch those columns. After all, the church was built to the greater glory of God, was it not?’

‘It must indeed have been since it is so beautiful, but you must know that to my ears it sounded as if Mr Welton might have muddled me up with someone else, so you may well be about to be married to quite a different lady.’ She laughed with sudden gaiety as Julius stared at her.

‘How do you mean?’

‘Only that it sounded as if he might have got my name wrong. Rather than Nesbitt it sounded as if he called me
Norbutt
– but at least he did get
your
name right, at least I think he did. I was so nervous that someone would stand up and object to the marriage that I hardly heard anything more than my own mispronounced name.’