Venetia Page 8

  Fulfilling Aubrey’s behests was an even more difficult task, for he wanted not only such simple matters as a supply of paper and several pencils, but a number of books as well. He had told her that she would find his Phaedo on the desk in the library, and so she did; but Guy Mannering was only found after an exhausting search, a zealous housemaid, to whom the sight of a book lying open on a chair was an offence, having wedged it, upside-down, into a shelf devoted to text-books and lexicons. Virgil presented no problem: Aubrey had certainly asked for the Aeneid; but Horace blandly offered a choice of several volumes, and Venetia was quite unable to remember whether Aubrey wanted Odes, or Satires, or even Epistles. In the end, she added all three to her collection, and Ribble bore off the pile to the waiting tilbury, where Fingle, the middle-aged groom, received them from him with the cheerful prognostication that the next thing anyone would know was that Master Aubrey had studied himself into a brain-fever.

  Feeling that she had acquitted herself in a manner worthy of a scholar’s sister, Venetia then drove off to the Priory, where any hopes she might have cherished of earning encomium were speedily dashed. ‘Oh, you need not have brought them after all!’ said Aubrey. ‘Damerel has a capital library – a first-rate affair, large enough for a catalogue! He found it for me last night, and brought me up the books I particularly wanted. I warned him, when I saw what a splendid collection it is, that he would find it hard to be rid of me, but he says I may always borrow any volumes I choose. Oh, is that you, Fingle? Good-morning: have you taken a look at Rufus? Lord Damerel’s groom has him in charge, but I daresay you’ll wish to see that foreleg for yourself. No, don’t set those books down: I find I don’t want ’em!’

  ‘Odious, odious boy!’ Venetia said, bending over him to drop a kiss on his brow. ‘When it took me half-an-hour to find Guy Mannering, and I brought all your Horace, because I couldn’t remember which volume you wanted!’

  ‘Stoopid!’ he said, smiling up at her. ‘I’ll keep Guy Mannering, though, in case I want something to read in the night.’

  She withdrew it from the pile Fingle was still holding, nodded dismissal to him, a twinkle in her eyes which caused him to cast up his own expressively, and ventured to ask Aubrey how he had slept.

  ‘Oh – tolerably well!’ he replied.

  ‘There is no truth in you, love. I collect that you spurned the syrup of poppies Nurse was so careful to bring with her?’

  ‘After the laudanum Damerel gave me! I should rather think I did! He agreed I should be better without it, too, so Nurse went off to bed in a miff, which I was heartily glad of. Damerel brought up a chess-board, and we had a game or two. He’s an excellent player: I won only once. Then we fell to talking – oh, till past midnight! Did you know he had read classics? He went to Oxford – says he has forgotten all he ever knew, but that’s humbug! I should think he had been a pretty good scholar. He has visited Greece, too, and was able to describe things to me – things worth describing! Not like that fellow who stayed with the Appersetts last year, and had nothing more to say of Greece than that he couldn’t drink the wine because of the resin in it, and had been eaten alive by bed-bugs!’

  ‘So you enjoyed your evening?’

  ‘Yes – but for my curst leg! However, if I hadn’t taken a toss I daresay I might never have met Damerel, so I don’t regret it.’

  ‘It must be very agreeable to be able to talk with someone who enters into the things you care for most,’ she agreed.

  ‘It is,’ he said frankly. ‘What’s more, he knows better than to ask me, a dozen times in an hour, how I feel, or if I wouldn’t like another pillow! I don’t mean that you do so, but Nurse is enough to throw a saint into a pelter! I wish you had not brought her: Marston can do all I need – and without putting me in a bad skin!’ he added, with his rueful, twisted smile.

  ‘My dear, I couldn’t have kept her away from you! Tell me once how you find yourself this morning, and then I promise – word of a Lanyon! – I won’t ask you again!’

  ‘Oh, I’m well enough!’ he replied shortly. She said nothing, and after a moment he relented, and grinned at her. ‘If you must know, I feel devilish – as though I had dislocated every joint in my body! But Bentworth assures me it’s no such thing, so my aches are of no consequence, and will soon go off, I daresay. Let us play piquet – that is, if you mean to stay for a while? You’ll find some cards somewhere – on that table, I think.’

  She was fairly well satisfied, although upon first entering the room she had thought he looked pale and drawn. It was not to be expected, however, that a boy of such frail physique should not have been badly shaken by his fall; that he was not in one of his testy, unapproachable moods encouraged her to hope that he had not suffered any very serious set-back. When Nurse presently came in, to put a fresh compress round his swollen ankle, Venetia saw, at a glance, that she too was taking an optimistic view of his situation, and was still more cheered. Nurse might show a lamentable want of tact in her management of Aubrey, but she knew his constitution better than anyone, and if she, with years of experience at her back, saw more cause for scolding than for solicitude an anxious sister could banish foreboding.

  Upon Marston’s coming into the room with a glass of milk for the invalid Venetia drew Nurse into the adjoining dressing-room, saying, as she shut the door: ‘You know what he is! If he thought we cared whether he drank it or no he would refuse to touch it, just to teach us not to treat him as though he were a baby!’

  ‘Oh, yes!’ said Nurse bitterly. ‘Anything Marston or his lordship tells him he’ll do, just as if it was them that had looked after him from the day he was born! For all the use I am I might as well be back at home – not that I mean to leave this house until he does, nor ever did, so his lordship could have spared his breath!’

  ‘Why, did he try to send you away?’ Venetia asked, surprised.

  ‘No, and I should hope he knew better than to think he could! It was me saying to Master Aubrey that if he preferred to have Marston to wait on him I’d as lief pack up and go – well, miss, he was so twitty and troublesome last night that anyone might be excused for being put out! But as for meaning it, his lordship should have known better, and no need at all for him to remind me that it wouldn’t do for you to visit here without I’m in the house! I know that well enough, and better you shouldn’t come at all, Miss Venetia! It’s my belief Master Aubrey wouldn’t care if neither of us came next or nigh him, not while he can clutter up his bed with a lot of unchristian books, and lie there talking to his lordship about his nasty heathen gods!’

  ‘He would very soon wish for you if he were to be really ill,’ Venetia said soothingly. ‘I think too that he is just at the age when he’s not a child, but not quite a man either, and excessively jealous of his dignity. Do you remember how uncivil Conway was to you at very much the same age? But when he came home from Spain he didn’t care how much you cosseted and scolded him!’

  Since Conway held the chief place in her heart Nurse would by no means admit that he had ever conducted himself in any way that fell short of perfection, but she disclosed that his lordship had said much the same thing as had Venetia about Master Aubrey. She added that no one understood better than she Master Aubrey’s hatred of his disability, and his passionate desire to show himself as hearty and as independent as his more fortunate contemporaries: an unprecedented announcement which furnished Venetia with a pretty accurate notion of his lordship’s skill in handling hostile and elderly females.

  There could be no doubt that he had succeeded in considerably mollifying Nurse. She might resent Aubrey’s preference for his society, but she could not wholly condemn anyone who, besides showing so proper a regard for Aubrey’s well-being, managed to keep him in cheerful spirits under conditions calculated to cast him into a state of irritable gloom.

  ‘I’m not one to condone sin, Miss Venetia,’ she said austerely, ‘but nor I’m not one to deny anyone thei
r due neither, and this I will say: he couldn’t behave kinder to Master Aubrey, not if he was the Reverend himself.’ She added, after an inward struggle: ‘And for all he’d no need to tell me what my duty is to you, Miss Venetia, it was a sign of grace I didn’t think to see in him, and there’s no saying that the Lord won’t have mercy on him, if he was to forsake his way – not but what salvation is far from the wicked, as I’ve told you often and often, miss.’

  This lapse into pessimism notwithstanding, Venetia was encouraged to think that Nurse was fairly well reconciled to her sojourn under an unhallowed roof. Aubrey, when regaled with the passage, said that her change of heart could only have arisen from Damerel’s having ridden off to Thirsk for the express purpose of buying a roll of lint.

  ‘As a matter of fact, it was no such thing: he went on some business of his own, but when Nurse started grumbling about the lint – it’s for my ankle, you know! – he said he would procure some, and she took it into her head he was going to Thirsk for no other reason. Up till then she wasn’t talking about his kindness, I promise you! She said he roared in the congregation.’

  ‘She didn’t!’ Venetia exclaimed, awed.

  ‘Yes, she did. Do you know where it comes? We could not find it, though we looked in all the likeliest places.’

  ‘So you repeated it to Damerel!’

  ‘Of course I did! I knew he wouldn’t care a rush for what Nurse said of him.’

  ‘I expect he enjoyed it,’ Venetia said, smiling. ‘When did he set out for Thirsk?’

  ‘Oh, quite early! Now you put me in mind of it he gave me a message for you: something about being obliged to go to Thirsk, and hoping you’d pardon him. I forget! It was of no consequence: just doing the civil! I told him there was not the least need. He said he thought he should be back again by noon – oh, yes! and that he trusted you wouldn’t have gone away by then. Venetia, pray look on that table, and see if Tytler is there! Nurse must have moved it when she bandaged my ankle, for I had been reading it, and only laid it down when you came in. She can’t come near me without meddling! Essay on the Principles of Translation – yes, that’s it: thank you!’

  ‘I think, if you should not object very much to my leaving you, that I’ll take a turn in the garden,’ said Venetia, handing him the book, and watching him in some amusement as he found his place in it.

  ‘Yes, do!’ said Aubrey absently. ‘They will be plaguing me to eat a nuncheon soon, and I want to finish this.’

  She laughed, and was about to leave him when a gentle tap on the door was followed by the entrance of Imber, announcing Mr Yardley.

  ‘What?’ ejaculated Aubrey, in anything but a gratified tone.

  Edward came in, treading cautiously, and wearing his most disapproving face. ‘Well, Aubrey!’ he said heavily. ‘I am glad to see you looking stouter than I had expected.’ He added, in a lower voice, as he clasped Venetia’s hand: ‘This is unfortunate indeed! I knew nothing of what had happened until Ribble told me of it half-an-hour ago! I was never more shocked in my life!’

  ‘Shocked because I took a toss?’ said Aubrey. ‘Lord, Edward, don’t be such a slow-top!’

  Edward’s countenance did not relax; rather it seemed to grow more rigid. He had not exaggerated his state of mind; he was profoundly shocked. He had ridden to Undershaw in happy ignorance, to be met with the alarming tidings that Aubrey had had a bad accident, which had made him instantly fear the worst; and hardly had Ribble reassured him on this head than he was stunned by the further news that Aubrey was lying under Damerel’s roof, with not only Nurse in attendance on him but his sister also. The impropriety of such an arrangement really appalled him; and even when he was made to understand that Venetia was not sleeping at the Priory he could not forebear the thought that any disaster (short of Aubrey’s death, perhaps) would have been less harmful than the chance that had pitchforked her into the company of a libertine whose way of life had for years scandalised the North Riding. The evils of her situation were, in Edward’s view, incalculable; and foremost amongst them was the probability that such a man as Damerel would mistake the inexperience which led her to behave so rashly for the boldness of a born Cytherean, and offer her an intolerable insult.

  A level-headed man, Edward did not suppose that Damerel was either so foolhardy or so steeped in villainy as to attempt the seduction of a girl of virtue and quality; but he was very much afraid that Venetia’s open, confiding manners, which he had always deplored, might encourage him to believe that she would welcome his advances; while the peculiar circumstances under which she lived would certainly lead him to think that she had no other protector than a crippled schoolboy.

  Edward saw his duty clear; he saw too that the performance of it was more than likely to involve him in consequences repugnant to a man of taste and sensibility; but he did not shrink from it: he set his jaw, and rode off to the Priory, not in such a spirit of knight-errantry as Oswald Denny would have brought to the task, but inspired by a sober man’s determination to protect the reputation of the lady whom he had chosen to be his bride. At the best, he hoped to bring her to a sense of her impropriety; at the worst, he must bring Damerel to a precise understanding of Venetia’s true circumstances. This task could not be other than distasteful to one who prided himself on his correct and well-regulated life; and it might, if Damerel were as careless of public opinion as he was said to be, plunge him into just the sort of scandal his disposition urged him to avoid. He was by no means deficient in courage, but he had not the smallest wish, whatever Damerel’s offences might be, to find himself confronting his lordship early one morning with a pistol in his hand and twenty yards of cold earth between them. If it came to that it would be because Aubrey’s recklessness and Venetia’s incorrigible imprudence had forced him into a position from which, as a man of honour, he could not draw back, even when he considered her to have courted whatever ill might befall her by stepping beyond the barriers of strict propriety, and so giving such men as Damerel a false notion of her character.

  It was therefore not with romantic ardour that he rode from Undershaw to the Priory but with a sense of outrage and an exacerbated temper rather hardened than mollified by being kept under rigid control.

  His arrival almost coincided with that of Damerel, from Thirsk. As he dismounted, Damerel came striding round the corner of the house from the stables, a package tucked, with his riding-whip, under one arm while he pulled off his gloves. At sight of Edward he checked, in surprise, and for a few moments they stood looking one another over in silence, hard suspicion in one pair of eyes, and in the other a gathering amusement. Then Damerel lifted an enquiring eyebrow, and Edward said stiffly: ‘Lord Damerel, I believe?’

  They were the only rehearsed words he was destined to utter. From then on the meeting proceeded on lines quite unlike any for which he had prepared himself. Damerel strolled forward, saying: ‘Yes, I’m Damerel, but you have the advantage of me, I fear. I can guess that you must be a friend of young Lanyon’s, however. How do you do?’

  He smiled as he spoke, and held out his hand. Edward was obliged to shake hands with him, a friendly gesture which forced him to abandon the formality he had decided to adopt.

  ‘How do you do?’ he responded, with civility, if not with warmth. ‘Your lordship has guessed correctly: I am a friend of Aubrey Lanyon – I may say a lifelong friend of his family! I cannot suppose that my name is known to you, but it is Yardley – Edward Yardley of Netherfold.’

  He was mistaken. After a frowning moment Damerel’s brow cleared; he said: ‘Does your land lie some few miles beyond my south-western boundary? Yes, I thought so.’ He added, with his swift smile: ‘I flatter myself I am making progress in my knowledge of the neighbourhood! Have you been visiting Aubrey?’

  ‘I have only this instant arrived, my lord – from Undershaw, where I was informed by the butler of this very unfortunate accident – He told me also that Miss Lanyon w
as here.’

  ‘Is she?’ said Damerel indifferently. ‘I’ve been out all the morning, but it’s very probable. If she’s here she will be with her brother: do you care to go up?’

  ‘Thank you!’ Edward said, with a slight bow. ‘I should like to do so, if Aubrey is sufficiently well to receive a visitor.’

  ‘I daresay it won’t do him any harm,’ replied Damerel, leading the way through the open door into the house. ‘He’s not much hurt, you know: no bones broken! I sent for his doctor to come to him last night, but I don’t think I should have done so if he hadn’t told me that he had a diseased hip-joint. He is none too comfortable, but Bentworth seems to be satisfied that if only he can be kept quiet for a time no evil consequences need be anticipated. Once he had discovered the existence of my library I saw that there would not be the least difficulty about that.’

  There was a laugh in his voice; none at all in Edward’s as he answered: ‘He always has his head in a book.’

  Damerel had moved to where a frayed bell-pull hung beside the stone fireplace; as he tugged at it he shot a swift, appraising glance at Edward. The gleam of amusement in his eyes was pronounced, but he said only: ‘You, I apprehend, are too well-acquainted with him to be astonished by the scope and power of his quite remarkable intelligence. I, on the other hand, after sitting with him for some hours last night, my forgetful and, alas! indolent brain at full stretch to bear me up through arguments which ranged from disputed texts to percipient mind, retired from the lists persuaded that what threatened the boy was not a crippled leg but an addled brain!’