Instead of the Thorn

  Instead of the Thorn

  by Georgette Heyer

  ©2020 Dancing Unicorn Books

  Instead of the Thorn is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, locales or institutions is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except for brief quotations for review purposes only.

  ISBN 13: 978-1-5154-4305-6

  To Joanna Cannan

  My dear Joanna,

  There was once a Sealyham whom you named Elizabeth. The rest you know, and why I dedicate this book to you who so strangely inspired it.

  But there are other reasons for my dedication which I think your humility will not let you see. You and I have discussed the fortunes of Elizabeth Arden not once but many times, and good counsel have you given me, and sympathy in moments of depression. Step by step you have followed the book’s growth until at last I put it into your hands, all in cold type, and you read it, and gave me a criticism that was careful, and shrewd, and very kind.

  So because of these things, and because of the pleasant hours I have spent in your garden, and the delight I have felt in reading your work, I send you my book, such as it is, in admiration of your pen-craft, and with my love.

  “Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir-tree. . .”

  Isaiah; 55, 13

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter One

  When she was seven Elizabeth asked Mr. Hengist to come and play with her in her bath, and Miss Arden, who was Elizabeth’s aunt, said:

  “That’ll do, Elizabeth.”

  Elizabeth knew by the way Miss Arden kept her eyes on her crochet that she ought not to have asked Mr. Hengist to come and see her in her bath, and quite suddenly, and for no tangible reason she felt that she had been naughty, and was ashamed. Only Mr. Hengist, who was Father’s friend, did not seem to think that she ought not to have said it. He smiled in a friendly, comfortable way, and said that he was much honoured. Only he did not come to the bathroom after all. Elizabeth thought that he would have come if Aunt Anne had not looked so forbidding.

  Later on, when she was older, Elizabeth discovered that a great many of the things one did, like cutting one’s toe-nails and wearing a thicker vest in winter, must never be mentioned, except to Aunt Anne. Elizabeth could not understand this, and it seemed that Aunt Anne was unable to explain. She only said that you must not ask questions, and that nice little girls did not want to talk about underclothes and things like that. Elizabeth tried to tell her that she didn’t exactly want to talk about them, they were not interesting, but they were so ordinary and they formed such a large part of your life that it seemed strange not to be able to speak of them if the conversation turned that way. Aunt Anne just said that she hoped the conversation never would turn that way, and that Elizabeth had better run along and play with her doll.

  Elizabeth was tired of her doll, but she did not tell Aunt Anne that. She still loved the doll—in a way—but she was growing too old for it. She would rather have a puppy, only Aunt Anne was not fond of dogs. Then, too, Aunt Anne was never pleased when you grew out of your toys and thought them babyish. It was just as if she expected you always to be the same age and to like the same things. She wanted you to enjoy all the things she had enjoyed when she was little, and when you rebelled, as you had done at Cromer when you said you thought digging sand-castles was dull, she did not see that it was because you were growing up, or because you were “different” but said either that you were showing-off, or that she did not know what present-day children were coming to. It was useless to explain to her that instead of playing with a doll or digging sand-castles, you would prefer to read a book. She seemed to think that you ought not to feel like that; it worried her, and she disapproved.

  She was never unkind; she loved Elizabeth more than anyone else in all the world, because Elizabeth was the only thing in the world that was really her own. Her brother was Elizabeth’s father, but Elizabeth did not belong to him. He kissed her before he went to business each morning, and when he came home he kissed her again and asked her what she had been doing with herself all day. That was all: he was not interested in Elizabeth, she was not interested in him. Miss Arden was glad that this was so, very secretly, but she would have been shocked if Elizabeth had told her that she did not love her father. She did not even realise that she did not want Elizabeth to care for Lawrence; it would not have been nice to face this fact, so she put it behind her and pretended that Elizabeth was just as fond of Lawrence as she should be. On the only occasion when Elizabeth had ventured to criticise her father, Miss Arden had told her that it was wrong, and that she was a silly little girl. Elizabeth never tried to discuss her father again; she had discovered that whatever you thought must be kept secret, because most of your really interesting thoughts were shocking and precocious. Only it didn’t make matters better between her and Lawrence.

  Too many things hurt Elizabeth: Aunt Anne’s disapproval, consciousness of wrong-doing, and the cat’s kittens being drowned. If you fell short of Aunt Anne’s ideal of you, she was grieved and worried, and her annoyance made you feel worm-like and unhappy. It was better to pretend always, even to yourself, that you liked the things Aunt Anne wanted you to like. She was convinced that skipping was a pastime that should appeal to you. If you thought it dull, then you were extraordinary, and unchildlike, and you had to bring your brain down from the heights to which it had climbed, and force it to enjoy an amusement it had outgrown three years ago.

  So to please Aunt Anne Elizabeth did this, and all the other things that were expected of her, and she did not allow herself to think that they were silly, or that she disliked them, because it was evident that she ought not to think that.

  She did not go to school; she had a governess who taught her that Alfred burned the cakes, and that if one straight line stands on another straight line so that the adjacent angles are equal, they are both right angles. Her knowledge of literature was always defective, because there were so many writers of whom Aunt Anne disapproved. Shelley was banned because his private life did not bear inspection; Swinburne was a modern, and therefore unreadable; Byron had written a very disgusting poem called “Don Juan” (Miss Arden had not read any of Byron’s poems, but she had heard that this was so) and therefore Elizabeth was forbidden to read his works. Wordsworth and Tennyson were given to Elizabeth, and the copy of Tennyson was well-worn and had the more trite passages underlined in pe
ncil.

  When Miss Arden was a girl everyone was rapturous in praise of Dickens, though of course it was a pity he had written such a horrid book as “Pickwick Papers.” Elizabeth was given the “Old Curiosity Shop” to read, with assurances that it was a sweet tale and one that would make her cry. Elizabeth did not cry, because she did not think that little Nell was at all pathetic. She preferred Dick Swiveller, but as Miss Arden evidently expected her to rave over the tragedy and the general sugariness of little Nell, she said that she thought it was lovely. Gradually she cheated herself into believing this, so that when she read “Dombey and Son” she managed to feel quite a lump at the back of her throat at the death of Paul. If she had not felt this lump Miss Arden would have said that she didn’t know how Elizabeth could read those passages without a tear, and further, that she shuddered to think what the younger generation was coming to.

  Thackeray was no more than a name to Elizabeth; he had written a book called “Vanity Fair,” which was not at all a nice book, but Scott rivalled Dickens in desirableness. Then there was Louisa Alcott and Charlotte Yonge, and L. T. Meade, and a host of well-meaning women who wrote books for girls especially designed, it seemed, to induce a morbidly sentimental frame of mind. Miss Arden labelled them all “pretty tales.”

  Mr. Hengist gave Elizabeth the “History of Henry Esmond” on her fourteenth birthday, but Miss Arden intercepted it and said gently:

  “I think there’s plenty of time yet for that, Mr. Hengist.”

  Mr. Hengist said, Stuff and nonsense! very gruffly, but Elizabeth was not allowed to read “Esmond.”

  She had friends, not many because most other girls were at school and had other interests, but a few, of whom Miss Arden approved, and Mr. Hengist.

  She thought how she had loved Mr. Hengist when she was seven years old. She only liked him now, and she thought him queer sometimes and brusque. Aunt Anne was not fond of Mr. Hengist; she was polite to him because he was Father’s friend, but she remarked occasionally to Elizabeth that he was a very strange man. He called Elizabeth Prunes and Prisms, which hurt her dignity, and he advised her not to be a little humbug when she told him how miserable the death of Paul had made her feel.

  “My dear good child,” he said, polishing his eyeglasses on a large silk handkerchief, “for heaven’s sake cultivate some independence of thought! Don’t repeat your aunt’s views; let’s hear your own. They’re the only ones that are worth having from you.”

  Elizabeth thought he could not have heard Aunt Anne say that it was unbecoming for a child of her age to air her opinions. Either you were silent, or you agreed with what your elders said. She looked at Mr. Hengist and wondered why he said such funny things.

  “Tell me what you really think,” he said. “What about Dick Swiveller and the Marchioness?”

  “Oh, they’re very clever, aren’t they?” she answered at once. “Of course they’re not sad, like Nell and her grandfather.”

  “Why should they be?” he retorted, which was quite incomprehensible.

  To Lawrence he said more, forcibly and often, but Lawrence wore a superior smile and replied that it was very easy for a bachelor to propound theories on a girl’s education.

  “And it’s easy for a married man to shelve his responsibilities on to a spinster’s shoulders”: Mr. Hengist said quickly.

  Nothing disturbed Lawrence. He raised his eyebrows and still smiled.

  “My dear Hengist, are you insinuating that Anne is incapable of bringing up Elizabeth?” he asked banteringly.

  “Yes—no, I’m not insinuating, I’m saying it point-blank. Good God, Lawrence, don’t you know that Elizabeth is being hopelessly mismanaged?”

  “No, I can’t say that I do.” Lawrence was maddeningly amused. “Anne is a woman; she ought to know.”

  “She may be a woman, but she didn’t bear Elizabeth,” Mr. Hengist snapped. “Only an exceptional spinster ought to have sole charge of a child. I don’t want to be rude about your sister, but she’s not at all exceptional.”

  “I hope not,” Lawrence said, more gravely. “I detest your exceptional woman. Anne is a good woman. I have no qualms.”

  “Evidently not. You don’t realise that there’s nothing more dangerous on this earth than your really good old maid.”

  Lawrence looked at him very much as Elizabeth had looked, and thought what a queer chap he was.

  “What an extraordinary thing to say!” he remarked. “No one could call Anne dangerous, poor old thing!”

  Mr. Hengist got quite excited, and banged the arm of his chair with his fist.

  “Of course she’s dangerous!” he said loudly. “All the more so because she’s Mid-Victorian! Already she’s taught Elizabeth to be careful that her skirt doesn’t get above her knees.”

  “Well, I don’t see anything wrong in that,” said Lawrence, pondering it. “I don’t approve of this modern tendency to show your knees.”

  “I’m not talking about her knees!” shouted Mr. Hengist.

  “But you said—”

  “Don’t be so damned literal, Lawrence! That’s only an example. Not that there’s anything wrong with Elizabeth’s knees. Far from it. That covering of them up is illustrative of the whole system. Cover ’em up if you like, but don’t be for ever morbidly anxious that they should be covered. It’s heading straight for a covered up mind. Mid-Victorianism. If a thing’s true it’s beastly, so don’t face it. Cover it up! Pretend it isn’t there!”

  Lawrence became pompous, and crossed his legs.

  “I consider that there’s too much license permitted these days in speech. When I was a boy girls didn’t—”

  “Shut up. Don’t talk drivel. Supposing they didn’t? We’re progressing, aren’t we? You didn’t do the same as your father in his youth, did you?”

  This was difficult to answer. Lawrence uncrossed his legs.

  “Well, I still maintain that all this freedom of speech doesn’t lead to any good. I should be very sorry to think that Elizabeth was setting herself up against her elders, or talking immodestly.”

  “You’re no better than a decayed turnip,” said Mr. Hengist flatly. “If a girl of Elizabeth’s age is always careful not to mention something that might be considered improper it’s a fairly sure sign that her mind’ll be a sink by the time she’s thirty—unless some man marries her and knocks the nonsense out of her.”

  “Really, Hengist, I can’t see that—”

  “No, because you don’t want to see it. Probably you don’t know that Elizabeth is fast becoming a humbug. She hasn’t got a mind of her own; she echoes her aunt. She pretends to like things her aunt thinks she ought to like, she can’t develop because her aunt won’t let her. She isn’t even allowed to read what she likes.”

  “You can’t seriously be advocating an unrestricted library for Elizabeth!” said Lawrence, very sarcastically.

  “No,” Mr. Hengist had paused, and considered, frowning. “No. But surely it’s easy enough to keep the books she isn’t old enough to read out of her way? There are jolly few, anyway.”

  “My dear Hengist, some of these moderns—!”

  “She wouldn’t understand ’em. Better let her read modern realism than morbid sentimentality. For God’s sake teach her to face facts!”

  Lawrence thought that it was time to put a stop to the discussion. Hengist was talking nonsense, of course, but it was rather disturbing.

  “As I said before,” he smiled, “we all know that you bachelors have eccentric notions on the upbringing of children. I think we can trust Anne to look after Elizabeth,”

  Chapter Two

  Elizabeth at sixteen made a great discovery, that Men were fascinating, much more so than girls. Hitherto she had known no Men, only Father and Mr. Hengist, and people like the doctor and the dentist and shop-assistants. Somehow they did not seem to be Men, at least, not with a capital M. They were creatures who wore trousers; there was nothing exciting about them.

  But Marjorie Drew’s brother Tony was
something entirely new and thrilling. He was twenty-two and had just come down from Cambridge. He thought Elizabeth was pretty, like a wild-rose. Marjorie laughed, and said, no, a prim-rose, and Tony was quite angry with her. He said Elizabeth was a little shy violet, or perhaps a snowdrop, until Marjorie grew tired of hearing horticultural similes, and left him.

  Until he met Elizabeth Tony had rather thought that he was passionately in love with an attractive lady of thirty-three, living at Bedford, but now he began to think that he had mistaken his heart. The lady, one Mrs. Lambert, treated him as a boy and made him run errands for her; Elizabeth looked shyly up at him and was all admiration. It was rather refreshing, but of course Elizabeth was only a kid.

  So Elizabeth, who had never known a school-girl’s passion for one of her own sex, plunged into her first love-affair, and hugged it to her, and sighed, despaired, rejoiced and fluttered.

  Luckily for her peace of mind Miss Arden knew nothing of the tumult that raged in her niece’s bosom for six short weeks—Tony went to Scotland then, and by the time he came back the fickle flame had gone out. Miss Arden would have been shocked beyond measure if she had known of Elizabeth’s passion. She was not altogether pleased when Elizabeth, in an expansive moment, confided that she liked men. To be sure, there wasn’t anything exactly wrong in liking men, but it was not at all the thing that Miss Arden would have said when she was a girl. On the contrary, she had always affirmed and would still affirm if directly questioned that she disliked men. It was a poor compliment to her father and brother, and it was naturally untrue, but she did not know that. She would have found it hard to believe that men did not like her, and if anyone had had the courage to suggest it she would have been indignant at the impertinence of the male.

  She knew nothing about men, but she was fond of generalising. Elizabeth learned that woman was superior to man always. Men had to be snubbed and kept in their places; they lived strange lives, and were a nuisance about the house. Even Father caused a deal of trouble, dropping cigar ash on the carpet, and never standing the cork-mat in the bathroom up on end.