Friendship and Folly: The Merriweather Chronicles Book I (7 page)

Julia’s reservations concerning Miss Spenhope’s temper were not of such strength as to prohibit cordial relations between them, and of those whom the Parrys were to meet during their stay in town that year, the Spenhopes were among the few with whom they formed a friendship, the lifespan of which did not correspond to that of Parliament in its dissolution as well as its inception. In later years the Spenhopes habitually broke the long journey between London and Bell Hall at Merriweather; and it speaks much of their amiability, that on these occasions Kitty neither dreaded the date of their arrival, nor counted the days till they would be gone.

It was, perhaps, the experience of the Queen’s Drawing-room that served to fortify that first tentative regard. The feeling of goodwill that has been frequently observed to arise from a mutual adversity, is closely allied with that engendered by a shared aggravation. When one has stood hoop to hoop in a hot, over-stuffed room, with the ache in one’s head only second to that in one’s feet, surrounded by the lordly and impatient whose haughty stares seem to question the legitimacy of one’s presence, and wishing only for the peace of a homeward carriage--to glance up as yet another person attempts to squeeze past, and meet a look as rueful and weary as one’s own, and feel the brush of feathers as a head is dipped to murmur, “Dreadful squash, is it not? Were you ever in a more disagreeable crowd?”--this is to know the meaning of true
rapprochement
. It is a cold heart indeed that does not warm to so timely a sentiment, so aptly expressed.

In the weeks that followed, Miss Spenhope was to prove an ever-bubbling fount of apt and timely phrases, and from the circumstance of her family having been oftener in town, was always ready to offer opinions and advice on the subject, in an authoritative manner that daunted skepticism. I do not mean to imply that her assertions were in any way untruthful; but any doubt foolish enough to suggest that they might be somewhat unsubstantiated, was quickly put to rout by what Julia referred to as Miss Spenhope’s “air of
ex cathedra
.”

“London is intolerably stupid this year,” said she. “Somehow we contrive to go out almost every night, but that is only one degree better, or if you please, two degrees worse, than dozing at home--and it is only to dinners--there have been no assemblies, and I have heard of but one ball!”

Julia said that she had not yet been able to determine what turned a mere “party” into an “assembly.”

“Oh,” replied Miss Spenhope, “the existence of an assembly may be ascertained by whether or not one has room to stir; when you have plenty of elbow room from the thinness of the company it must be bad. A crush is always to be desired, for when you have no time for conversation, you fancy everybody is agreeable, and in fashionable life, trust me, imagination is always preferable to reality!”

Miss Spenhope and Lady Thomasin might lament the shocking “thinness” of town, but there were those who did not hesitate to call this paucity a myth, and to suggest that those who espoused it were the victims of hitherto unsuspected weaknesses in the brain.

“There are a great deal too many people in the world,” was Clive’s estimation, feelingly delivered one day, upon returning from a ride in the park, “and most of them seem to be in London.”

Nature had designed for Clive a disposition both good-humored and sociable: but his heritage had intervened, ensuring, by a simple ordering of features and complexion, that his childhood would be beset by humiliations and frustrations, and all manner of ills. No mother could have been more solicitous than Lady Frances; no father more protective than Mr. Parry; but even they had not the power always to save him from the inevitable consequences of the curse laid upon him at birth. His nursemaids
would
pick him up and cover his face with kisses while he was trying to examine those fascinating pebbles in the drive; visiting duchesses
would
ruffle his dark curls and call him the “sweetest, prettiest little boy” just when he had executed his best bow with some dignity. Years of this sort of treatment had left their mark upon Clive. He was not the friendly and confiding youth nature had intended; it was impossible that he should be. Behind his cheerful, easy manner lurked a wariness ever-ready to repulse familiarity. He considered compliments a display of bad taste; personal remarks of any kind an impertinence.

In the year five his fifteen years sat unconvincingly upon a frame devised for a man half-again as old, and a face that rivaled Julia’s for perfection; and if he had reason to complain that advancement down the Row was hindered by all the gentlemen desiring speech with Julia, it was more than likely that the gentlemen’s sisters had urged them to discover the name and direction of the young man who accompanied her. No one, however, was thoughtless enough to mention this probability to him.

“You have the soul of a hermit,” Julia accused him one afternoon, having listened, in considerable amusement, to a particularly inventive grumble.

“And you have the proclivities of a bee,” he replied. “If the Almighty had meant for mankind to live in a huddled mass, so that one cannot turn around without tripping over some fatuous drone, Eden would not have been a garden, but a hive.”

Ann thought this unusually misanthropic even for Clive, and suspected that he found their fatuity only insupportable because they were dangling after his never-sufficiently-to-be-esteemed sister. When quizzed on the subject, he admitted it without hesitation, but added that he was not, as was Kitty, unalterably against any gentleman who dared to approach Julia in a matrimonial spirit. He maintained, however, that a line must be drawn, a standard set, and he for one drew a line that very firmly excluded “any man who has cultivated a lisp in the extraordinary belief that serpentile mannerisms are somehow engaging; or whose garments fit with such nicety as to make it clear that he cannot dress himself without the aid of five strong men and a pound of butter.”

Lady Frances thought her son’s requirements perfectly sensible, but after overhearing a particularly scathing appraisal of one of Julia’s admirers, commented to her husband that she hoped Clive was not influenced by pride and the unchristian notion that no one was “good enough” for his family. “I do not fault him for thinking his sister worthy of nothing but the best—it is a sentiment I prize, particularly when I hear the disparaging fashion in which so many young men speak of their sisters these days; but he shows a tendency to
despise
some of these poor gentlemen, which I cannot like.”

Mr. Parry, who had less tolerance for the dandy set than did his wife, replied that he had a tendency to despise some of them himself, and that he was extremely grateful to his son for bristling at unacceptable suitors, as it saved him the trouble of doing so himself. Lady Frances then said, “that was all very well, but did he not think it probable that Clive, with his customary impetuosity, would bark with equal fervor at squirrels, burglars and the man who delivered the coal?”; and Mr. Parry replied that, with all deference to his wife’s opinions, his own feelings were, that as little as he wanted Julia to marry a burglar, did he want her to become attached to a rodent or a coal-heaver. At this Lady Frances closed her eyes as if praying for patience, and Mr. Parry, relenting, gave it as his belief that any man who allowed himself to be run off the estate by an overgrown puppy with a loud bark, was a paltry fellow who did not deserve to make it to the house anyway.

Julia’s own gratitude was somewhat tempered by frustration. As Lady Frances had divined, Clive’s zeal was indiscriminate, and attempts to correct this met with little success.

“You must not think,” she began, once, “that I do not appreciate the way you have of nipping undesirable invitations in the bud.”

“Always you underrate me,” said he, reprovingly. “Any one can slice the head off a plant foolhardy enough to show itself above the surface: my talent lies in my unique ability to freeze the presumptuous shoot while it is still merely
thinking
about emerging. You may call me,” added he, striking a dashing pose after the fashion of Reynolds’
Burgoyne
, hand curling negligently on an imaginary hilt, “Captain Blight.”

Kitty giggled into her fingers; Julia shook her head. “Captain Calf-lolly, you mean. You have, it is true, rescued me from many a tedious drive, and many a painful dance--let me give humble thanks for all at once--”

Clive bowed, and murmured modestly that he was “ever a dear happiness to women, who would otherwise be troubled by pernicious suitors.”

“However,” she continued, ignoring this, “my gratitude would be tenfold if you would consult my wishes before you begin withering invitations for me. There have been gentlemen whose requests I would have been pleased to grant, had you ever allowed them to see the light of day.”

As Clive appeared to be genuinely puzzled by this announcement, after a moment Julia offered an example: Lord Rocksham.

“Lord Rocksham!” Incredulity and revulsion resounded in every syllable. “The man is a shameless fribble!”

Julia conceded the irrefutable, but said that “his probable fribbility” did not concern her; his kinship with the Spenhopes did, and she would not willingly have him offended.

Clive replied that he had understood her to say that he had already done so; and he looked, as he said it, rather as the cat which, having already eaten the parrot, knows that it cannot be made to return it.

“No,” said Julia. “You did your best, I am sure, but his lordship is too good-natured, and you are too inept at discourtesy to really bring the thing off at the first attempt.”

Clive, not unnaturally, took umbrage at this horrid imputation. “I beseech you,” cried he, “do me this courteous office, as to know of the fellow what my lack of offence to him is: it is something of my negligence, nothing of my purpose.”

“Pray, sir, put your sword up, if you please,” said Julia, falling in with his play. “For he is a gentleman of noble parentage, of fair demesnes, youthful, and nobly train’d, stuff’d, as they say, with honourable parts.”

“O, he’s a lovely gentleman!” came the retort. “Romeo’s a dishclout to him. Good sister, wrong me not, nor wrong yourself, to make me brother to a tea-swigging, snuff-mad, hazelnut!”

Ann and Julia smiled at this ridiculously apt description, but Kitty did not, and Julia, seeing this, begged Clive to quit his nonsense, admit that there was not the least harm in his lordship, and promise to desist from any further efforts to affront him.

But Clive missed the glances directing him to take heed of Kitty’s troubled face, and replied severely, “As well the fear of harm, as harm apparent, in my opinion, ought to be prevented. He’s a rank weed, and we must root him out. But fear not--I will no further offend him than becomes me for your good.”

“Peace, wilful boy!” whispered Ann, whose own store of quotations tended toward very short, pithy adjurations; while Julia turned from him in half-vexed amusement, and sought, still somewhat entangled in Shakespearean cadence, to reassure Kitty, who was now thoroughly alarmed: “Darling, do not heed him. Clive’s tongue but curvets unseasonably! Lord Rocksham is no suitor of mine.”

This was no more than the truth. That distinctive gentleman paid desultory court to Julia merely to be fashionable. At the time he was enamored of the Spenhope’s flirtatious neighbor, who, according to Marianne, was the sort to look “beautifully cross” if she did not have a man near her, while scorning the devoted Rocksham, and complaining to friends how tiresome she found it to be obliged to dance with him more than once in an evening.

It was not to be expected, however, that Kitty would be easily persuaded that any man could prefer such a one to her beloved Julia, and it took many days, an abject disavowal from a repentant Clive, and the confirmation of Mrs. Spenhope, before Kitty could be brought to believe it so, and to witness his arrival at Merrion House with anything like her former moderate anxiety.

**

There is scarcely a family, that does not have in it persons which the other members are apt to regard with less than delight, and to be persuaded that, on the whole, it might have been better for family relations, had these persons been kidnapped at birth, smuggled aboard a merchantman, and shipped to one of the more obscure islands visited by Captain Cook.

Thus it was that the reception of a note, well-written and elegantly penned, evincing attachment and respect for the person of the recipient, and expressing nothing but an earnest and dignified desire to be of service should the occasion arise, aroused in Ann none of the sentiments that one might expect.

“I have received a note from my cousins,” said she, after she had retrieved the missive from the grate into which she had flung it in her first transports, and was capable of speaking on the subject with composure. “They have just learned of my being in town, through their ‘dear friend Lady Gl_____,’ whom we met at the
Theatre Royal
the other night.”

Neither frequent experiences to the contrary, nor the wry reminders of her husband, had contrived to rid Lady Frances of her belief that all relatives were the gifts of a benevolent Providence, designed to provide comfort in trials, fellowship in peace, and houses to stop the night at, when one was travelling and did not like the look of the inn. “How nice,” said she, looking pleased for Ann. “No doubt they wish to see you.”

Ann was prevented, by an undefined but inexorable feeling of family loyalty, from answering with the utmost frankness. She chose instead to read aloud that portion of the note which archly detailed the writer’s amazement that he should not have been informed of her coming; his alleged uneasiness lest the omission should be due to some offense on the part of himself or his family; and his poignant hope that it might be found convenient for her cousins to come and call on her one morning.

The Parrys, familiar with the implications of the looks and demeanor of Ann, hesitated. Questions and comments were restrained; Clive was checked by a warning glance from Julia, and a light touch upon his arm from Kitty. Then Mr. Parry kindly assured Ann, that she should look upon Merrion House as her own, and invite her cousins or any one she wished; and Lady Frances thought it would be an excellent idea to have them to dinner one evening, perhaps on Thursday.

It was one of Mrs. Northcott’s chief complaints against them, that the Parrys took too little heed of the honor due their consequence, and on this occasion Ann was, for the first time, impressed by the justice of her mother’s strictures. Bacon might say what he liked about the virtues of being “gracious to strangers”: hospitality could be taken too far. The presumption of a guest, who obtruded her relatives upon the notice of her hosts in such a way as to make the extension of an invitation almost unavoidable, should surely not be condoned. It should, rather, be promptly quashed, and that with severity. Meeting only a cold gaze and a vague murmur, the impertinent guest should be forced to send mortified regrets to her hopeful relations, learning, in the process, a well-deserved lesson in humility, which would undoubtedly make her a happier and wiser guest in future. Ann wondered that the Parrys could not see this. She did not, however, feel at liberty to point out to them their error in this respect, and merely thanked them, saying that she would write to her cousins at once.

Heaven having once again turned a deaf ear to Ann’s pleas for divine intervention, the proposed Thursday duly arrived and brought with it Mr. and Mrs. Robinson, Miss Robinson, and Miss Georgina Robinson. Miss Robinson was to come out the next spring, her sister to possess her soul in patience for another year; but Miss Georgina was the taller of the twain, and there was little to tell them apart as they sat side by side on a sofa.

Ann remembered them as sly, indulged children whose preferred pastime was hiding things from their governess, and then denying any knowledge of the article until she had been forced to obtain a new one, whereupon they would suddenly “discover” the original in some obvious place, and chide the poor woman for her carelessness. This winsome trick had been practiced likewise upon their cousin, but without success. Ann, not being dependent on them for her livelihood, and having a curious lack of humor where naughty children were concerned, had merely boxed a few ears, and warned them that if any more of her property went missing while she was there, be it only a hairpin, the consequences would be of the kind which linger unpleasantly in the memory. The Miss Robinsons, eyeing the visage of a Parry-deprived and subsequently morose Ann, had believed her assurance, and thereafter left her goods and chattels alone.

It was therefore with no less surprise than relief, that Ann observed the sisters to be pretty, polite young ladies, whose only conspicuous fault seemed to be chronic insipidity. Mrs. Robinson disclosed to everyone how delighted the girls were to see their dear cousin Ann again, and it was well that she thought to do so, for otherwise her daughters’ reluctance to display the extravagance of their joy in the reunion might have led those present to surmise that Miss Robinson and Miss Georgina had never before met Ann, and would not have cared two straws if they were never to do so again. Ann, not to be outdone in decorum, managed to curb her raptures as well.

Ann’s memories of Mrs. Robinson were more kind, for Mrs. Robinson had been kind to her, in an effusive, easy fashion, which required no other exertion than was involved in uttering excessive compliments, and various promises to do this or that which somehow were forgotten as the time for their fulfillment drew near. But Mrs. Robinson abandoned her integrity with the greatest goodwill imaginable, and laughed so tolerantly at herself as she exclaimed upon the poorness of her memory, and the constant trouble it caused everyone else, that few had enough fortitude to dislike her; and the few that had were they of her own household.

This was very hard on Mrs. Robinson, for it was clear to the meanest intelligence that she was filled with admiration for her husband and her daughters. Indeed, she overflowed with it, slopping it about on everyone who came near, like an ill-regulated fountain. But she had not the wisdom to know how to attach them in return. She talked
at
and
about
her daughters, rather than
to
them, extolling their accomplishments and beauty, and pestering all those around until they were compelled to mutter assent. Such, however, was the strength and elasticity of Mrs. Robinson’s mind, that these words of wrenched concurrence found themselves speedily contorted into spontaneous exclamations of praise, to be recounted, with suitable embellishments, for the encouragement of later acquaintances, who might prove backward in their appreciation. Her daughters sat silent under this adulatory gush, their faces stamped with small, empty smiles; but Ann, searching for embarrassment and finding only boredom, could feel little sympathy for them. Only once did she perceive a flash of feeling, as their fond parent voiced a particularly unlikely accolade--a look of utter derision, a sharing of contempt, conveyed by the flick of eyelids, and lips fleetingly curled, quickly straightened. Ann, herself suffering the pangs of vicarious shame at the continued flow of her aunt’s fatuity, could not blame them for it; but she could not like them for it either. She began to think almost with gratitude of her own parents’ well-bred disappointment.

Mrs. Robinson’s pride in her husband took another and more deferential form.
His
merits she sought to underscore by the simple method of agreeing with everything he said, be it a eulogy on the fish or a gripe against the ministry, and without regard to whether it was addressed to her or not. Her approval consisted mainly of short phrases of agreement--“So true!” “It is just as you have always said, dear!” “That is so, indeed!”--which seemed to Ann to have become so instinctive, that Mrs. Robinson was hardly aware of uttering them. She interjected them into the midst of her conversations with other people, tossing them toward her husband at select intervals, attending all the while to her companions with a warm smile on her lips, so that often they would hesitate, wondering at the reason for her sudden comment. The question of which conversation was actually receiving the use of the majority of her mind was probably immaterial; it was doubtful that either lingered in her thoughts longer than it took to make the correct rejoinders. As for Mr. Robinson, her approval, far from gratifying him, seemed to go unheard, or when heard, rather to vex him than otherwise. He never spared her a glance, and his sole response to her remarks was a brief, irritated compression of the brow.

It could not be supposed that any connection of Mrs. Northcott’s would fail to have a due regard for the Family Name, but Mr. Robinson’s pride was of the sort that is content with taking ready offense, perpetuating minor squabbles, and causing unpleasantness in his household if things did not go according to his wishes, and he did not scorn to sprinkle his discourse with “Lord So-and-so said this to me,” and “When we were dining with Lady Such-a-one.” Ann, who had in former years been unwillingly awed by his intelligence, was disconcerted to find, as the evening wore on, that the learning which had intimidated a very young and unhappy niece, consisted almost entirely of a stock of Greek and Latin aphorisms, with which he seasoned his talk whenever he ran short of lords and ladies.

“But then,” he said on one occasion, with a kind of ponderous airiness, “I was able to comfort myself with the reflection that ‘
felix qui potuit rerum cognomine causas
.’”

As Ann’s knowledge of Latin was confined to
tempus fugit
,
mollia tempora
, and
in vino veritas
, she could discern nothing wrong with this and the other phrases which served to make her cousin’s conversation periodically incomprehensible to most of the table; but Mr. Parry, whilst he had for the greater part of his life found Persian of more use than the dead languages conscientiously entombed in his head as a boy, was known to keep St. Augustine by his bed and Homer in his carriage, and with the progression of the meal he bent upon Mr. Robinson’s quotations an ever more quizzical gaze, in which surprise was superseded by exasperation, and that in turn by a sort of cryptic amusement.

Ann observed this succession of sentiments with disquiet, and entered the drawing-room a prey to numerous qualms. She felt little affection for her cousin, but dreaded any further strain upon his affability, for fear of what its disintegration might reveal. His good-humor had already been vigorously tried at dinner. A penchant for expounding, with the greatest assurance, statements and beliefs which were supported only by his own assumptions, and the writings of men whose names he could not quite remember, had brought him into repeated opposition with his host. Mr. Parry would not for the world deliberately discomfit a guest, but neither was he the man to let error go unchallenged. He found Mr. Robinson’s logic unclear, and his authorities insubstantial, and so did not scruple to state, very courteously, his total disagreement, and his reasons for it. Mr. Robinson, failing to see in this an invitation to buttress his arguments, and sharpen his wits on the iron of the other’s intellect, instead killed both the subject and his reputation stone-dead, with a pleasant nod and the words, “Oh, yes, I am in entire agreement with you on that head.”

Conviction without dispute was not at all what Mr. Parry expected; it was not what he was accustomed to, nor even what he desired. The first time Mr. Robinson so handsomely resigned every previous assertion, Mr. Parry had raised startled brows, and after a pause which spoke his bafflement, allowed his wife to turn the conversation. The second occasion provoked thinly-veiled disbelief, and the third, a dry look that dismissed Mr. Robinson as a disputant worthy of consideration. Ann, noting his polite smile and the inconsequence of his speech, could not doubt that Mr. Parry was saying to himself, “Shoddy, muddled thinking. Unsound judgment. Pray Heaven I need never again invite this shameless smatterer to my table!”

And Ann, sitting with lowered eyes, felt acutely all the humiliation for her uncle, which he did not appear to feel for himself.

The interlude before tea arrived was chiefly spent by Ann and Julia in an unavailing attempt to coax from the Miss Robinsons any reply other than demure monosyllables. Julia persevered cheerfully in her efforts long after Ann had resolved to abandon her cousins to their own vapidity, and at last succeeded in awakening in them a semblance of animation by encouraging them to describe to her the plot of Mr. Curties’ latest tale of persecuted virtue and immoderate sensibility. The vital questions of whether Unna was the wife of Uglio or Uberto, and if Sigismorn had been visited by the specter of his father on the first or second night after having nearly been murdered by his half-mad uncle, kept the sisters occupied in an almost lively disagreement with one another for a good three-quarters of an hour; and it was impossible to tell, from Julia’s face of sympathetic interest, that her own estimation of that gentleman’s literary merits, was at best indifferent. Having perused one of his earlier works at the urgings of a neighbor some years before, she had confided to Ann, of his being “the sort of author, who is never satisfied with one good, serviceable adjective, if there is the slightest possibility of cramming one or two more into the text. His much-tried characters are never ‘pale,’ or even ‘pale as death’: they are ‘pallid with the livid and ghastly hue of those unhappy wretches who have quitted this present earthly realm of sorrows to lie cold and waxen in the comfortless tomb.’”

The gentlemen came in at last, with Mr. Robinson’s insouciance intact, and Ann was able to exchange her uneasiness concerning him, for the more general anxiety caused by having all members of the Robinson family in one room again, with the consequent increased opportunities of vexing each other, and wearying their hosts.