The Regency (52 page)

‘
So she will need that new gown after all,' she murmured
aloud, with a private smile.

 
Everyone said afterwards that Patience Keating's wedding
was one of the nicest they had ever been to. Though Mrs
Keating had wanted to to take place in the fashionable
St Michael-le Belfry, she eventually gave in to Mary Skelwith's
desire that her son should be married at St Helen's — largely
because Mary Skelwith threatened otherwise not to attend the
wedding at all.

This slight unpleasantness having been got over, there was
nothing else to mar the pleasure of the happy couple or the
guests. The Keatings were extremely glad to see their daughter
well-married, especially when, at twenty-two, she had looked
likely to be left on their hands. John Skelwith was a fine
young man, and his fortune was even finer, and the Keatings
were not so high themselves as to object that it came from
Trade.

Patience had accepted John's proposal with pleasure not
unmixed with relief, and though she might have some doubts
as to the congeniality of her future mother-in-law, her pros
pects of comfort and happiness as John's wife were so bright
that she began to look almost beautiful, especially when
dressed in her wedding finery. Mr Keating was glad to spare
no expense on such a unique occasion, and Patience was
arrayed in the first style, white satin with a lace veil and her
mother's pearls, just as if it had been a London wedding.

Mathilde was her bridesmaid, in pale yellow jaconet
embroidered all over with tiny white daisies, which became
her excellently; and John Anstey's eldest daughter Louisa,
aged ten, preceeded them up the aisle scattering flower petals
in their path from a basket, which everyone thought a very
pretty conceit. John Skelwith looked pale and serious in a new
blue coat and a white waistcoat embroidered with silver
threads, his fox-brown hair newly cropped and brushed into a
shining pelt. He was attended by Tom Keating, who was red
faced and merry, and whose wedding-favour was on upsidedown. He had been pressing John all morning to bolster his
courage with brandy, and tormenting him by pretending to
have mislaid the ring. When the moment came in the
ceremony, he found he really had mislaid it, but after a frantic
few minutes' search, it was discovered nestling in the bottom of
Tom's tortuously tight fob-pocket, where he'd put it because
‘he was sure it couldn't fall out from there'.

After the ceremony, the couple were seen off in a ribbon-
bedecked post-chaise for Scarborough, where they were to
stay for a month at the house of Patience's paternal aunt,
who had a fortune to leave and no-one to leave it to. Every
one else retired to the Keatings' house in Blake Street, where
the wine flowed, an excellent cold feast was spread on a
buffet, and there was a promise of dancing later, and cards for
the gentlemen.

Mathilde found herself at the centre of one group of young
people, some of whom were anxious to know whether she now
regretted having rejected John Skelwith, as she was popularly
thought to have done. No-one, of course, was bold enough to put the question quite like that, but Mathilde knew what they
were thinking, and by her cheerful demeanour hoped to make
it plain that she was very happy for her friend, and regretted
nothing. It was inevitable, however, on such an occasion that
she should wonder a little about her future. She was amongst
the oldest of the young women still unwed, and she had no
fortune; she was not precisely worried, but she would have been glad to know that she would be addressed by a man in
respectable circumstances within a twelvemonth.

Fanny was at the centre of another group, the younger
generation of unmarried girls, some of whom were out, and
others, like Fanny, who were not. Not being out did not stop Fanny from feeling superior to them all, and behaving as the
leader of their society. Who, after all, was there to come
before her? She had birth, beauty, and fortune, all three; and
she hoped Roxane Grey and Edys Cowey noticed how Tom
Keating — who was absolutely twenty-five years old —
drifted away from the group of older girls in order to hang
about Fanny's elbow and offer to fetch her lemonade.

Though she was not out, and could not therefore attend
formal balls or assemblies, Fanny had already collected a court of fervent admirers, most of whom were too young to be anything but contemptible in her eyes, even though they were
necessary to her. It was already becoming the fashion
amongst the younger males like Horace Micklethwaite, Jack
Appleby, and Edmund Somers to worship Fanny Morland, and she was happy that they should do so; but in company
with her female contemporaries she referred to them loftily as
‘scrubby boys', and asserted that only older men were
interesting to her. Tom Keating was no great catch, and a
notorious flirt, but he was indisputably older, and it was a
matter of intense satisfaction to Fanny that the man who had so
recently been paying marked attentions to Mathilde was now
disposed to pay them to her.

James had joined a group of his former cronies in front of one of the fireplaces. It amused him to watch Fanny, across
the other side of the room, queening it over her contem
poraries, and half his mind was occupied in the perennially
fascinating speculation of a future match for her. He was
therefore listening only half-heartedly to the conversation
about the frame-breakers who were causing trouble in
Nottingham.

‘
In my view, they ought to call out the military, before
things get out of hand,' Edgar Somers was saying. 'It's a
damn' disgrace that these rioters should be allowed to get away with it scot-free. The penalties aren't by half severe
enough, that's the truth of it.'

‘
Fourteen years' transportation for frame-breaking, isn't
it?' said Isiah Keating easily. 'Hardly scot-free, old fellow.'

‘
You wouldn't say that if it were your livelihood at stake,'
said his brother-in-law crossly. 'A man ties up all his capital
in expensive machinery, and these damn Luddites, or what
ever they call themselves, come along and smash them to fl
inders! It should be made a capital offence. The rope's what
they need!'

‘
On a diablement peur de la corde,'
James murmured.
The others ignored him. There was a time and a place for
speaking French, they thought; and besides, they didn't have
French wives to keep them in practice.

‘
You'd still have to catch them first,' Arthur Fussell said with the detachment of a man two generations distant from
the origins of his fortune. 'I've heard these Luddites hang out in Sherwood Forest. You'd never find them in there!'

‘
If frame-breaking were made a capital offence, the militia
could shoot them on sight,' Somers said fiercely.

‘
Wouldn't it be better to capture them alive? Then you
could torture them, to find out who their leader is,' James
said, straight-faced. 'This "King Ludd" they talk about.'

‘
I don't believe there is a "King Ludd",' Keating said. 'He
sounds like a mythical character to me. Like Robin Hood —
why else would they say he lives in Sherwood Forest? Fairy
tales!'

‘
Enough of the labouring poor believe he exists,' said
Henry Bayliss, the newspaper proprietor, quietly. 'It really
doesn't matter whether he does or not.'

‘
But I don't understand why these people smash the frames
in the first place,' said Keating indifferently. 'What do they
hope to gain?’

The lower orders don't reason,' Somers said sharply, 'they
simply destroy. There are always enough ignorant brutes
ready to act against their own interests, once they're whipped
up by a few fanatics. Catch the ringleaders and hang 'em,
that's what I say.'

‘
Very well, but why do the ringleaders want to smash the
frames?' Keating insisted.

‘They don't need a reason,' Somers snorted.

‘
In this case, they have a very good one,' said Bayliss. He
was often better-informed than the rest of the Maccabbees
club members, and always more reasonable.

‘
I'd like to know what could be a good reason for wanton
destruction,' Somers began, but James, tired of his fulminating, interrupted.

‘
Do you know something about this, Bayliss? Let's hear it,
man.'

‘
Yes, as it happens, I do. My brother, you know, is a
stocking manufacturer in Nottingham, so I hear about it from
him.'

‘
And has he your liberal tendencies, too?' Arthur Fussel
asked, hoping to stir up an argument, but Bayliss ignored
him.

‘
It's the stocking-knitters who are rioting, because their
livelihood's being destroyed. Stockings, as you probably
know, are knitted on narrow frames. The cloth knitted on wide
frames was mostly made into pantaloons, and the Continent
was the biggest market for them. Well, now the war and
Boney's embargo have closed the market, the wide-frame
manufacturers are in trouble. So to keep their looms busy,
some of 'em are cutting up the cloth and sewing it into stock
ings and gloves. These cut-ups, as they call 'em, fall to pieces
in no time, but they're cheap, and they're ruining the market.
The narrow frames are idle, and the stockingers are out of
work; so they strike back by smashing the wide frames.'

‘
And what good do they think that will do them?' Somers
said contemptuously.

‘
It's hard to see what else they can do,' Bayliss observed. ‘Would you stand by and see your wife and children starve,
and do nothing?’

Somers coloured dangerously. 'Are you suggesting there's
some similarity between me and a member of the lower
orders?'

‘
The lower orders are still sentient beings,' Bayliss argued.
‘Like us they feel hunger, despair, paternal love —'

‘
You talk like a damn' Jacobin!' Somers said angrily.
‘Sympathising with rioters and revolutionaries! What are you
— some kind of Reformer?'

‘
I say, steady on, Somers,' Keating murmured. 'Only a
friendly discussion, old fellow. No call for abuse.'

‘
There's a good deal of sympathy for the stockingers in the
county,' Bayliss went on, unmoved. 'Yes, even amongst the
manufacturers! Oh, not for their methods, of course; but the
cut-ups are ruining master and man, and there are enough
narrow-frame owners in and around Nottingham who would turn a blind eye to frame-breaking if the cut-up trade could
be stopped.'