Venetia Page 25

  ‘Of course it is!’ she agreed, a good deal amused. ‘I don’t scruple to say so either! But I have never believed it to be my duty to stay here on his account, you know. I remained for Aubrey’s sake – and pray don’t imagine that the least sacrifice was entailed, my dear sir! He and I are the best of good friends, and have kept house very comfortably together, I assure you.’

  He regarded her with bleak approval, but said, in his dryest voice: ‘You will hardly do so now that Mrs Scorrier has quartered herself upon you, however.’

  ‘No, indeed we shan’t! I had already realised that the sooner I make other arrangements for us both the better it will be. I fancy Mrs Scorrier has shown you her most conciliating face, so that you might find it impossible to believe how odious I find her!’

  ‘My dear Venetia, you have no need to tell me, for I am well acquainted with her sort! A very pushing, overbearing female, who wants both conduct and manner. Depend upon it, the unseemly haste of this marriage may be laid at her door! A very good match for her daughter she has contrived, upon my word! I am excessively displeased that Conway should have had no more sense than to shackle himself to such a dab of a girl, who has nothing to recommend her but a pretty face and an amiable temper. Her birth is no more than respectable, and as for fortune, I should doubt of her having above a thousand pounds settled upon her, and very likely less, for the Scorriers are not wealthy, and her father, besides, was a younger son.’

  This circumstance seemed to increase his disgust, and for several minutes he was unable to dismiss it from his mind. But when he had delivered himself of sundry pungent observations, and moralised briefly on the evils of impetuosity and improvidence he returned to the object of his visit, and in a manner that showed him to have formed the fixed resolve of removing Venetia from Undershaw immediately. ‘I do not wish to put you to inconvenience, Venetia, but it would be very agreeable to me if you could be ready to go with me tomorrow morning.’

  ‘But I could not! Even if – Dear sir, you must allow me time to think! There are so many considerations – Aubrey – Undershaw – Oh, sometimes I think I shall be obliged to remain here until Conway returns, for heaven only knows what that woman might not do if she were left in command here!’

  ‘As to that, it will not be in her power to overset your arrangements, my dear. I do not doubt that she has every disposition to do so, and so I thought it prudent to inform her that since Lady Lanyon has neither the authority nor the experience to assume the government of her husband’s affairs, all such power will be left in Mytchett’s hands. Indeed, I have already spoken to Mytchett, and all that remains to be done is for you to put him in possession of the necessary information, and to give him whatever directions you think right. I ventured to tell him that I hoped to bring you to his place of business tomorrow, on our way to London. For Aubrey, I should have explained to you that my invitation was naturally meant for him as well as for you.’

  She pressed a hand to her brow rather distractedly, for she really knew not what to say, or even what to do. To the objections she raised he returned calm answers that demolished them; and when she confided to him her scheme of setting up her own establishment he said, after a moment’s silence, that he would be happy to discuss future plans with her when she was living under his roof. He then told her kindly that he regretted to be obliged to hurry her so uncomfortably, but was persuaded that when she had considered the matter for a little while her good sense would enable her to perceive the wisdom of withdrawing from Undershaw, and under his protection.

  ‘I shall leave you now,’ he announced, rising to his feet. ‘I am, as you know, an indifferent traveller, and can never go above a short distance without bringing on my tic. Lady Lanyon will, I must hope, excuse me if I retire to my bedchamber until dinnertime. No, do not put yourself to the trouble of accompanying me, my dear niece! I know my way, and have already desired your excellent housekeeper to send up a hot brick when I ring my bell. A hot brick to the feet, you know, will frequently alleviate cases of severe tic.’

  She knew him well enough not to persist, and he went away, leaving her to try to collect her scattered wits. It was no easy task, and after a very few moments the only clear thought in her head was that before trying to reach a decision she must see Damerel. This put her in mind of his promise to visit her as near noon as might be, and made her look quickly at the clock. It wanted only a few minutes to one o’clock. She thought he might already be awaiting her in the library, and went there immediately. He was not there. She hesitated, and then, on a sudden resolve, left the house by the garden-door, and went swiftly back to the stables.

  Fifteen

  Nidd, who had served Damerel for almost as many years as he had Marston, accepted the charge of Venetia’s mare without betraying that he saw anything remarkable in the visit of an unattended lady to a bachelor’s establishment. It was otherwise with Imber, admitting her to the house with reluctance, and exhibiting by every means short of actual speech the utmost disapproval. He ushered her into one of the saloons, and left her there while he went off to inform Damerel of her arrival.

  She remained standing by one of the windows, but it was several minutes before Damerel came to her. The saloon seemed unfriendly, with no fire burning in the hearth, and the furniture primly arranged. They had never sat in it when Aubrey was at the Priory, but always in the library, and it still bore the appearance of a room that was never used. Venetia supposed that Imber must have led her to it either to emphasise his disapproval, or because Damerel had not yet finished his business with his agent. It was cheerless, and rather dark; but perhaps that was because heavy clouds were gathering in the sky, and it had started to mizzle.

  She had begun to wonder whether she had missed Damerel, who might have set out for Undershaw by way of the road instead of taking the shorter way across country, when the door opened, and he came in, demanding: ‘Now, what in thunder has your Empress been doing to drive you from home, Admir’d Venetia?’

  He spoke lightly, yet with a hint of roughness in his voice, as though her visit was an unwelcome interruption. She turned, trying to read his face, and said, with a faint smile: ‘Were you busy? You don’t sound as though you were glad to see me!’

  ‘I’m not glad to see you,’ he replied. ‘You shouldn’t be here, you know.’

  ‘So Imber seemed to think – but I didn’t care for that.’ She came slowly into the middle of the room, and paused by the table that stood there, drawing off her gloves. ‘I thought it best to come to you, rather than to wait for you to come to me. It might not be easy for us to be private, and I must consult you. Something quite unlooked-for has happened, and I need your advice, my dear friend. My uncle has come.’

  ‘Your uncle?’ he repeated.

  ‘My Uncle Hendred – my uncle by marriage, I should say. Damerel, he wishes to take me to London, and at once!’

  ‘I see,’ he said, after a moment’s silence. ‘Well – thus ends a charming autumn idyll, eh?’

  ‘Do you think that that is what I came to say to you?’ she asked.

  He glanced at her, his eyes a little narrowed. ‘Probably not. It is the truth, however. Unpleasant, I grant, but still the truth.’

  She felt as though the blood in her veins was slowly turning to ice. He had turned abruptly away, and walked over to the window; her eyes followed him, but she did not speak. He said harshly: ‘Yes, it’s the end of an idyll. It has been a golden autumn, hasn’t it? In another week there won’t be a leaf left hanging to the trees, though. Your uncle timed his coming well. You don’t think so, do you, my dear? But you will think it, believe me.’

  She still said nothing, because she could think of nothing it was possible to say. She found it difficult even to take in the sense of what Damerel, incredibly, had said, or to disentangle the wisps of thought that jostled and contradicted each other in her brain. It was like a bad dream, in which people one knew quite well beh
aved fantastically, and one was powerless to escape from some dreadful doom. She lifted one hand to rub her eyes, as though she had really been dreaming. In a voice that seemed to her to belong to nightmare, because it was so quiet, and in nightmares when one tried to scream one was never able to speak above a whisper, she said: ‘Why shall I think it?’

  He shrugged. ‘I could tell you, but not convince you. You’ll find out for yourself – when you’re less green, my dear, and know a little more of the world than what you have read.’

  ‘Will you think it?’ she asked. A faint flush rose to her whitened cheeks; she added humbly: ‘I shouldn’t ask you that, perhaps, but I wish to understand, and I suppose I’m too green – unless things are explained to me.’

  ‘I think it would have been better if we had never met,’ he replied sombrely.

  ‘For you, or for me?’

  ‘Oh, for both of us! The end of the idyll was implicit in the beginning: I at least knew that, though you might not. And also that the more enchanted the idyll the greater must be the pain of its ending. That won’t endure. Hearts don’t really break, you know. No, of course you don’t, but accept it as a truth, for I do know!’

  ‘They can be wounded,’ she said simply.

  ‘Many times – and be healed again, as I have proved!’

  She knit her brows. ‘Why do you say that? It is as if you wished to hurt me, but that can’t be so. I don’t feel that it can be!’

  ‘No, I don’t wish to hurt you. I never wished to hurt you. The devil of it was, my dear delight, that you were too sweet, too adorable, and what should have been the lightest and gayest of flirtations turned to something more serious than I intended – or foresaw – or even desired! We allowed ourselves to be too much carried away, Venetia. Did you never feel you were living in a dream?’

  ‘Not then. Now I do. This doesn’t seem real to me.’

  ‘You are too romantic! We have been dwelling in Arcadia, my green girl: the rest of the world is not so golden as this retired spot! Only in fantasy does every circumstance conspire to make it inevitable that two people should fall in love! We should hardly have been more isolated had we been cast on a desert island together. Nothing happened to disturb our idyll, no person intruded on us: for one magical month we forgot – or I forgot – every worldly consideration, even that there are other things in real life than being sunk in love!’

  ‘But it was real, for it happened, Damerel.’

  ‘Yes, it happened. Let us agree that it was a lovely interlude! It could never be more than that, you know: we must have come to earth – we might even have grown a little weary of each other. That’s why I say that your uncle’s arrival is well-timed; parting is such sweet sorrow – but to fall out of love – oh, no, what a drab and bitter ending that would be to our autumn idyll! We must be able to look back smilingly, my dear delight, not shuddering!’

  ‘Tell me one thing!’ she begged. ‘When you talk of worldly considerations are you thinking of your past life?’

  ‘Why, yes – but of other considerations too! I don’t think I should make a good husband, my dear, and nothing else is possible. To be frank with you, providence, in Aubrey’s shape, intervened yesterday just in time to save us both from disaster.’

  She raised her eyes to his face. ‘You told me yesterday that you loved me – to the edge of madness, you said. Was that what you meant? that it was not real, and couldn’t endure?’

  ‘Yes, that’s what I meant,’ he said brusquely. He came back to her, and grasped her wrists. ‘I told you also that we would talk of it when we were cooler: well, my love, the night brings counsel! And the day has brought your uncle – and there let us leave it, and say nothing more than since there’s no help, come let us kiss, and part!’

  She lifted her face in mute invitation; he kissed her, swiftly and roughly, and almost flung her away. ‘There! Now go, before I take still worse advantage of your innocence!’ He strode over to the door, and wrenched it open, shouting to Imber to send a message to Nidd to bring Miss Lanyon’s mare up to the house. He turned, and she saw the ugly, mocking sneer on his face, and involuntarily looked away from him. He gave a jeering little laugh, and said: ‘Don’t look so tragic, my dear! I assure you it won’t be very long before you will be thanking God to be well out of the devil’s own scrape. You won’t fall into another, so don’t hate me: be grateful to me for opening your beautiful eyes a little! So very beautiful they are – and about the eyelids much sweetness! You’ll make a hit in London: the young eagles will say you are something like – a diamond of the first water – and so you are, my lovely one!’

  The sense of struggling through the thickets of a nightmare again swept over her. There was a way out, so her heart’s voice cried to her, and could she find it she would find also Damerel, her dear friend. But time was slipping away; in another minute it would be too late; and urgency acted not as a spur but as a creeping paralysis which clogged the mind, and weighted the tongue, and imposed on desperation a blanket of numb stupidity.

  Suddenly Damerel spoke again, in his own voice, as it seemed to her, and abruptly: ‘Does Aubrey go with you?’

  She looked blindly at him, and said, as though trying to recall to mind a name long-forgotten: ‘Aubrey…’

  ‘To London!’

  ‘To London,’ she repeated vaguely. She passed her hand across her eyes. ‘Yes, of course – how foolish! I had forgotten. I don’t know. He went out. He went out shooting before my uncle came.’

  ‘I see. Does your uncle invite him?’

  ‘Yes. But he won’t go – I think he won’t go.’

  ‘Do you wish for him?’

  She frowned, trying to concentrate her mind. The thought of Aubrey steadied her. She pictured him in such a household as she guessed her uncle’s to be, flayed by her aunt’s well-meaning solicitude, bored by her attempts to entertain him, contemptuous of all that she believed to be of the first importance; and presently said in a decided tone: ‘No. Not in Cavendish Square. It wouldn’t do for him. Later, when I shall have made arrangements – I told you, didn’t I? I must hire a house – someone to lend me countenance – make a home for myself and Aubrey, for it is so stupid to say, as Edward does, that Aubrey ought to like what he detests, because other boys do. Aubrey is himself, and no one can alter him, so what is the use of saying he ought, when he won’t?’

  ‘No use at all. Let him come to me! Tell him he may bring his dogs, and his horses – whatever he chooses! I’ll engage myself to see he comes to no harm, and hand him over to that grinder of his in good trim. If he were here you wouldn’t fret yourself to flinders over him, would you?’

  ‘No.’ Her smile went pitifully awry. ‘Oh, no, how could I? But –’

  ‘That’s all!’ he interrupted harshly. ‘You won’t be beholden to me, you know! I shall be glad of his company.’

  ‘But – you are remaining here?’

  ‘Yes, I’m remaining here. Come! Nidd should have saddled up for you by now!’

  She remembered that he had sent for his agent on business which he had said was important; and wondered if he had discovered his affairs to be in a worse state than he had guessed. She said diffidently: ‘I think you never meant to do so, and that makes me afraid that perhaps the business you have been engaged in hasn’t prospered?’

  The sneer that mocked himself returned to his face; he gave a short laugh, and replied: ‘Don’t trouble your head over that, for it is not of the smallest consequence!’

  He was holding open the door, a suggestion of impatience in his attitude. The second line of the sonnet he had quoted came into her mind: Nay, I have done: you get no more of me. He had not spoken those words; there was no need: a golden autumn had ended in storm and drizzling rain, an iridescent bubble had burst, and nothing was left to her but conduct, to help her to behave mannerly. She picked up her gloves and her whip, and walked out of the saloo
n, and across the flagged hall to the open entrance-door. Imber was standing by it, and through it she could see Nidd, holding her mare’s bridle. She was going to say goodbye to Damerel, her friend and her love, watched by these two, and it did not seem to her as though she would be able to speak at all, because her throat was aching quite dreadfully. She stepped out into the open, and turned to him, drawing a painful breath.

  He was not looking at her, but at a black cloud looming to the west. ‘The devil!’ he exclaimed. ‘You’ll never reach Undershaw before that comes down on you! What chance of its clearing, Nidd?’

  Nidd shook his head. ‘Setting in wet, m’lord. Spitting already.’

  Damerel looked down at Venetia, not sneering now, but concerned, ruefully smiling. He said, lowering his voice to reach only her ears: ‘You must go immediately, my dear. I can’t send you home in my carriage: it wouldn’t do! If that woman knew – !’

  ‘It is of no consequence.’ She put out her hand; she was very pale, but the flicker of her sweet smile warmed her eyes. ‘Goodbye – my dear friend!’

  He did not answer, but only kissed her hand, and, holding it still, led her immediately to her mare. He tossed her up into the saddle, as he had done so many times when she had come to visit Aubrey, but today there was no lingering to make a plan for the morrow; he only said: ‘Take the short way, and don’t dawdle! I only hope you may not be drenched! Off with you, my child!’