Intermezzo (14 page)

“Becka needs you.” Then he smiled a kind of lopsided self-mockery of a smile and said, “And I’ve grown very addicted to your music. I should go mad without it, you know.”

Nurse came bustling in and, ignoring all the oddities of the scene before her eyes, set out an extensive breakfast for Adela. “Now young lady, this morning is the beginning of a new day and it will not do, not do at all for you to begin by fasting.”

To which his lordship added, “After all, as Miss Minerva Worthing pointed out, people in your position, Miss Trowle, cannot afford to be sickly.” Adela looked to see some sign of sarcasm, but his lordship was grinning widely and Nurse was clucking in agreement. Adela Trowle began a first tentative smile and answered, “Yes, my lord.”

Within a week Rebecka, blessed with the resilience of childhood, was blazingly healthy and running around in her accustomed scampish manner. Adela healed more slowly. She joined the family for meals and practiced diligently with Rebecka. For a time she seemed to favor the harpsichords rather than the piano, and the most mechanical of Bach’s music rather than Beethoven but no one seemed to notice. Convalescence for Adela was a long, slow process.

By common, unspoken agreement, those thirty-six hours of trauma were never mentioned. In truth, Adela scarcely remembered them. She could recall, clearly, only sitting by Becka’s bed crying and then waking up in her own bed crying. There had been so many tears. His lordship’s role in the whole was problematical and so Adela chose to ignore it. She simply would not believe that her stern cynical employer had been her nurse. It was too much to believe and so she closed her mind to the possibility as she had closed her mind to so many other possibilities. She knew instinctively that reality, if she was to keep any hold on it, must be assimilated gradually. Any severe complication now could overturn her slim grasp on sanity.

His lordship, on the other hand, did not forget those hours.
He
made no effort to forget. It had been for him the one illuminating experience of his life. He had, of course, held many women in his arms and some children, and although he now thought of Adela in both these capacities, he knew of a certainty that his experience those thirty-six hours was entirely different from anything that had happened to him thus far in his thirty-five years. He had agonized and he had wept. He had marshaled every ounce of will power, every ounce of his own vitality, to keep Adela. He cared—he cared so dreadfully much that, for a person who had never really cared before, the experience was almost unbearably painful. He had never known such pain before.

In a very few days Charles Beaumont had succeeded in
camouflaging
that caring but he made no effort to ignore it. Waterston knew that he had come to love a skittish little bird. And how do you capture a nightingale? You must speak very quietly and advance in imperceptible steps holding out your hand with a bit of honeyed grain until, with the bird either calmed or hypnotized, you can finally reach out and touch it.

So both Adela and Waterston returned to what they conceived of as normal. If they looked at each other more often than they had—particularly when the other was looking away—and if his lordship began to spend more time with Rebecka and Miss Trowle, no one mentioned it. Both Waterston and Adela refused to acknowledge the change. However, they had taken to addressing each other with a careful, almost archaic formality. A formality in no way justified by the increased closeness of the small family.

If they were deluding anyone, it was only themselves; Becka and the household staff among themselves acknowledged the difference straight away. And to the household at large it seemed a settled thing.

The staff, ever so slightly, had begun to treat Adela with a deference not at all commensurate with her official position as maiden cousin-cum instructor of music. Adela responded to this overture on the part of the staff with demure smiles and polite ladylike airs. She noticed the increased warmth in the atmosphere, but she ascribed it, as she did most other things, to her own new awareness of the outside world.

She and Becka, after a few days, began again to go wandering into the woods, picking flowers, playing tag, and often, bringing with them a picnic lunch and a book of poetry. On occasion, Becka would invite Uncle Charles to join them, and on those days, Adela would concentrate on picking flowers and avoid all hoydenish activities. With Charles, the luncheon would include a fine wine as well as cheese, cold meats, cakes, and poetry. The poetry would invariably be Pope or Milton. Never the Byron that Becka clearly favored. The luncheons were passed with a mock formality and an almost carefree impersonality. Adela continued to allow herself to be treated as a child, and while in the beginning she had resented that appellation, she now found that it was strangely comforting to be thought a child.

Becka, who could be convinced to be formal for only a very short period of time would bustle about after lunch chasing squirrels or rolling down the grassy hills. No one made note of the fact that the stay in the country had lengthened imperceptibly, because no one of them prepared quite yet to return to London.

Toward the end of the month his lordship announced that they
must
be returning to town. And although neither Becka nor Adela was enthusiastic about leaving the harpsichords and Ashleigh, they began to pack their bags and to take their leave of the country.

Ten

Apparently, life in the house on St. James Square had, in their absence, continued to its own stately music. As the carriage pulled up to the main door, Adela could almost hear the rhythm and the elegant cadences of a Mozart symphony. To Adela it felt as though a metronome had been ticking in the house through the whole month of their absence. Waterston, Rebecka, and Adela walked through the door and took up the theme without missing a beat, while Soames bowed them in as if he were a conductor and they were the string section.

The Hampshire interlude seemed like a dream and, like all dreams, an illusion. Adela wondered, almost plaintively, if Maestro Soames had realized that for the space of a few short measures his entire string section had drifted in and through a Requiem Mass. In this she underestimated Mr. and Mrs. Soames
—their
sense of timing was flawless. Within two hours of the arrival of the Waterston party, both the housekeeper and the butler knew that there had been irrevocable changes in the music of the house in St. James Square.

Superficially, little had changed. Rebecka continued her lessons with Miss Tucker in the morning and her lessons with Adela in the afternoon. Adela continued her music morning, evening, and night, with an occasional morning visit to Richard Brewer’s home or to the cemetery or an outing in the park with Nancy Owens. Still nothing was quite the same.

His lordship, around whom the house had always revolved, had, almost from the day of his return, thrown his servants into disorder. “Lord Waterston,” Mrs. Soames reminded the underservants, “Lord Waterston can always be relied on to act in a moderate and a consistent fashion, as befits quality.”

However, since his return from the country, Lord Waterston’s behavior had begun to vacillate unpredictably. He would at times be almost excessively formal, and then at other times, for no discernible reason, he would fly up into the boughs. His moods seemed, to the servants, unprovoked and unmanageable. Charles Beaumont spent far more of his time at home and far less of his time at the affairs of the ton, and his valet knew that he spent none of his time, at night, away from the house in St. James Square. Almost every evening Waterston retired after dinner to his library with a bottle and remained there incommunicado until midnight when he would emerge, more often than not, stone sober and in a perfectly foul humor.

Still, these changes, so obvious to the servants who had in fact to minister to his every need, went almost entirely unnoticed by Adela who was busy managing her own loss of balance.

Adela was aware of other modifications in the routine of the house, but in the total scheme of things, they did not seem significant. Mrs. Soames arranged for Molly to devote herself almost exclusively to the care and maintenance of Miss Trowle, and now, when his lordship was not in the house, Mrs. Soames regularly deferred to Adela’s judgment when a decision was to be made. Mrs. Soames even began to ask Adela’s opinion on the daily menu and the state of repair of the linens—although Adela could not understand why the housekeeper should ask when she was quite ready to humph in disapproval whenever Adela did make a suggestion. Adela had long believed that his lordship’s house, while run with precision and honesty, was nevertheless shockingly wasteful, and she could not resist pointing out various simple economies.

“Miss Trowle is a lovely lady, Mr. Soames,” the housekeeper confided to her husband one evening, “but she is excessively nip-farthing. I know you will be saying that her father never had feather to fly with and she
had
to be nip-farthing, but be that as it may, Mr. Soames, and I’m not denying it, the sweet thing is not very knacky at running an establishment of
this
sort. Her education has been sadly lacking if I must say so myself.” And without waiting for any response from her husband, she continued, “Of course, I know you have great faith in my abilities as an educator, Mr. Soames. Ah, but it won’t be an easy task—not an easy task at all.”

Eventually even Adela recognized that
all
the feelings of instability in the house could not be attributed to her own psyche. His lordship’s behavior, in particular, had become something of an enigma.

On the whole, Waterston was becoming noticeably sharper—almost ogerish. Once, after she had finished playing for the evening, she encountered Waterston in the hall and he appeared, to her untutored eye, to be slightly on the go. Not drunk as a wheelbarrow but definitely disguised. Adela hastily bid him good night, and as she turned to run up the stairs, he made her an excessively deep bow and said, his face a grim mask, “Pleasant dreams, Miss Muffet.”

His lordship, Adela decided, was not behaving normally and she warned Becka to treat him very tenderly.

“Uncle Charles snapped your nose off, has he, Adela?” Becka returned unperturbed.

“Not
precisely,
Becka, but his lordship, I believe, is a trifle
indisposed
—perhaps it is a touch of the influenza—in any case, he is a bit brittle tempered and likely to take a pet over the merest trifle.”

“Balderdash, Cousin Adela,” Rebecka answered unperturbed.

Adela, never firm in her own judgments of Waterston, conceded that perhaps she
may
have been embroidering on a single incident of aberrant behavior. Adela Trowle, she said to herself, you are in the process of acquiring a
morbid
imagination. Time to take some air. And so she sent Rebecka up to her lessons with Miss Tucker and went for a walk in the park and later to visit Richard Brewer and nibble his mother’s pastries.

The next morning, as Adela was starting up to the music room she was alarmed by a commotion at the front door. Descending the staircase she found Soames desperately attempting to fob off a woman who was, as desperately, seeking admission.

“No, madam, his lordship is not at home,” Soames was saying in an almost cracked voice.

Adela, recognizing the signs of his distress, came to the door to inquire whether she might be of assistance.

Soames was even more perturbed by her arrival.

“No, no, Miss Trowle, back Miss Trowle!”

Good God! Did Soames think she was a dog? The poor man was certainly in need of help.

As Soames attempted to deflect Adela, he left the entrance momentarily unguarded, and the door was swept open from the outside to admit a vision in forest green. Adela looked up into the face of the vision and hesitated only a fraction of a moment before welcoming Miss Jeanette Oliver into his lordship’s home. A very agitated Miss Oliver.

“I
must
see his lordship. I
must
speak to him.”

Adela tried to calm the other woman “Yes, yes, Miss Oliver, but he is truly not at home.”

Soames began to cough and send signals. Signals Miss Trowle chose to ignore.

“We have not been introduced, Miss Oliver. But I have seen you many times in the theater. My name is Adela Trowle.” And then oddly she found it necessary to add, “I am the relative who is instructing Miss Rebecka Beaumont on the piano.”

Miss Oliver, her eyes brimming over, simply repeated herself, “I
must
speak to his lordship.” Clearly the woman was beside herself with worry and Adela could not, in good conscience, cast such a distracted creature out into the street. Without hesitation, and without looking at Soames, she invited Miss Oliver to take tea with her in the music room and to await his lordship there.

When Miss Trowle finally did turn to Soames to request the necessary tea, that worthy had turned a shade of green which harmonized nicely with Miss Oliver’s gown. Soames was of course
forced
to restrain himself, but he seemed to be fairly bursting with disapproval. Very simply, and very ominously, he said, “Yes, Miss Trowle,” before turning in the direction of the kitchens.

Miss Oliver, slightly mollified, was seated in the music room and thanking Adela when one of the underfootmen entered with the tea. He would have lingered—perhaps to protect Miss Trowle, or to ogle the beauty—but Adela sent him packing with a “Thank you, Jones” uttered in the terrible flat civility worthy of his lordship. She ignored the familiar “humph” in the hallway.

Success with the footman having gone to Miss Trowle’s head, she settled back to enjoy her tea with the famous Miss Oliver.

“Beautiful weather we are having, Miss Oliver, isn’t it?”

“Yes, yes, lovely. Do you know
where
he is?”

“No, I do not but I do know that he said he would return for luncheon, which will be served in about an hour. Can you wait that long?”

“Yes, I’ll wait. I daresay you think I am behaving
very
strangely but I am
simply desperate.
It is excessively awkward, but I
must
see Lord Waterston.”

“And you shall see Lord Waterston, but please, I beg you, do not become even more agitated.”

“No, Charles does not approve of agitation, does he?”

Adela, electing to overlook the “Charles,” continued, “Quite right, Miss Oliver. Now, why don’t you sit back, take some tea, and try to collect yourself.”

“I wonder, Miss Trowle, if I might possibly have a bit of that brandy in the crystal bottle on the sideboard?”

Adela walked over to his lordship’s stock and began to pour as if she had been doing so for years. “Will you have brandy as well?”

“No, no, I thank you,” Adela said, and so as to avoid giving offense, she added, “It doesn’t agree with me, you know.” In truth the only two or three times she had taken brandy it had burned her throat and brought on a coughing fit. It most definitely did not agree with her.

While the vision sipped her brandy with rather more haste than delicacy, Adela politely studied the actress. Jeanette Oliver was exotically beautiful. Miss Oliver was a Titian Magdalena, her lips were full, her eyes like amber, and her hair cascaded freely about the perfectly oval face. She was, Adela thought, very much like a reclining jungle cat. The sensuality of the woman throbbed in the music room, seeming to convert that most chaste of domiciles, into a musky boudoir.

Having recognized, to some limited extent, her own attraction for Charles Waterston, Adela felt that she ought to feel jealous of Miss Oliver. But either because she was too wrapped up herself in the contemplation of this beauty, or because the beauty herself was so clearly in a state of great mental turmoil, Adela did not in fact experience even the smallest pang of jealousy. Still, if his taste ran to such beauties, and it clearly did, there was no hope for plain little Miss Trowle. Well, no matter.

The beauty had finished her brandy and began on her tea. Adela could see Jeanette Oliver almost visibly collecting herself, and in an attempt to facilitate matters, Adela began discussing the theater.

“I am a great admirer of your work, Miss Oliver.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I saw your
Hamlet
just last January.”

“Thank you. Are you a devotee of the theater? I noticed you just that once in his lordship’s box with a child.”

“Before I came to instruct Miss Beaumont, his lordship’s niece, I attended the theater more frequently, but I’m afraid you would not have noticed my friends and myself sitting at the top of the topmost gallery.”

The beauty smiled for the first time.

“Then you were among our
most critical
audiences.”

“Indeed, I was.
We
did not come to socialize and show off our new dresses. I’m afraid that none of us were quite a la mode, but I can assure you we loved the theater.” Adela began to think back, almost wistfully, to the days when Mr. Brewer, having saved a few shillings, would take her out to the theater and for one of her few sustaining meals. “But of course I never
threw
things. I was never ever
that
lost to all sense of propriety.”

Miss Oliver smiled again. “Yes, I was used myself to sit far up there looking down on the tiny actors, and actresses, and dreaming.”

“What were you dreaming about?”

“Why of becoming a great actress and dressing in silks and satins and talking like a lady to the manor born and all such silly things. And you, Miss Trowle, what were you dreaming of?”

“Of becoming a great pianist and consorting with poets, playwrights, and composers—of living in and for my art. I too had my silly dreams, but I’m not so certain I shall have my reality.”

“Reality?”

“Yes, Miss Oliver, you
have
become the famous actress with the silks and satins, while I have become a modified governess. I believe I envy you.”

“Good God, no, don’t
envy
me! My dreams played me false. I have the silks and satins and diamonds as well and, believe me, it doesn’t answer.”

“Surely you enjoy your work.”

“My work on the stage? Yes, I enjoy that but
not excessively.
I do not think I ever intended to become an actress in that sense. I wanted merely to
look
the part. Besides, the work on the stage is just a very small part of what it is to be a prima actress. Our costumes on stage are shams and even those shams are ripped from our backs in dressing rooms. Oh dear, I am making it sound quite dreadful, aren’t I. Well, it’s nothing of the sort. Only
it is
somewhat
empty.
One is expected to keep acting long after the theater has closed and to behave like a pretty widgeon to every, sort of real and aspiring gentleman.”

“Gentlemen like Lord Waterston?” Adela asked after a moment of deliberation.