Agnes Or The Art 0f Friendship

by Catherine Bowness

  “Mama and I are planning to give a ball soon,” Louisa told Agnes one afternoon. Agnes was sitting by the lake with her sketchbook.

  “Shall you like that?” Agnes asked curiously for she had the impression that, while Mrs Newbolt was excessively keen on parties, Louisa was less so.

  “It will keep Mama happy.”

  “Is that why you have consented to it? She is bound to hope that you will form an attachment.”

  “Yes, of course she is; that is why she is compiling a list of plain dull females and gentlemen wilting under a superfluity of titles,” Louisa said.

  Agnes could not help laughing at this but said, “She will be very disappointed if you do not favour one or two.”

  “It would be little use my favouring more than one,” Louisa replied. “I can only, I suppose, marry one unless I am so fortunate that he falls off his horse and breaks his neck soon after we have made our vows, when I suppose I would be permitted to try my luck with a second.”

  “I sometimes wish that you would not make a jest of matters which would likely break your heart,” Agnes complained mildly although she could not suppress a shudder.

  “I own I am surprised at you,” Louisa replied. “Are you not a woman of God? If so, you must trust that, if one of my suitors should break his neck, he would be accommodated in a better place.”

  “But that would not be of any use to you, would it?” Agnes asked. “If you do form an attachment – which I suppose you must eventually – I cannot conceive how you would find the poor man’s demise soon after merely an opportunity to choose a second. Surely love is not like that, is it? One cannot choose a husband in the same way one would choose a dress – that, if it should prove to have sold out or not to fit – or not to suit – one can simply substitute one of a different colour or size and not much harm will have been done?”

  “It’s my belief you are taking the matter a deal too seriously,” Louisa argued. “It almost sounds as if you know what it feels like to fall in love. Is there something to which you have not owned that you should perhaps, in the interests of friendship, divulge at once?”

  “Nothing. But I cannot help remarking how exceedingly cast down poor Lady Armitage is on account of losing her husband. It is not a matter for levity.”

  “No, but she has been married for aeons so I suppose she has grown more attached to him than one would have been after only a few weeks or months – and then it is not easy to find a replacement at her age. But I should imagine that a large part of her distress is in fact caused by her knowledge of her bad son’s conduct and the loss of her house – and everything that goes with it.”

  Agnes looked at her friend’s stern profile as the other stared out across the lake and reflected that, almost certainly, there was more than a grain of truth in this analysis.

  She turned over a page in her sketchbook and began to draw the profile. Louisa had a remarkable face with prominent bones which the smoothness of the young flesh could not altogether disguise but, as she sketched them, Agnes realised that, even when the soft curves had shrunk and the skin was less elastic, those bones would remain unchanged; Louisa’s looks, which were considered by many to be a touch masculine in their uncompromising lines, would stand the test of time better than many a more rounded cheek.

  After a few moments of silence, Louisa turned to look at her friend and saw what she was doing.

  “I thought you were drawing the trees on the other side of the lake,” she complained.

  “Yes, I was, but then I thought that, if I wanted to catch your likeness, I should do it while you are still. Now you have spoiled my picture. Will you look over the lake again just for a moment while I get the form right?”

  “I am not sure I wish to be drawn,” Louisa said but she turned back to her contemplation of the water.

  Chapter 6

  When Agnes returned to Lady Armitage’s side, she had the outline of a portrait of her friend as well as a sketch of the lake but it was the likeness at which she kept looking, so much so that her employer at last questioned her.

  “What is it that you keep going back to?”

  “Oh, it is nothing – a picture of Louisa – or the beginnings of one.”

  “May I see?”

  “It is not much – but she has a fine face to which I am afraid I have done less than justice.”

  Lady Armitage, however, begged to differ.

  “You have caught her expression most exactly,” she said. “Although she is looking away I would recognise her anywhere. Have you been used to draw portraits?”

  “No; I sketched my father occasionally while he read – and sometimes while he wrote his sermons. Mostly, I have been inclined to draw landscapes and flowers – that sort of thing. They are not in a position to complain about the execution.”

  “I would be surprised if anyone could find fault with the execution but it is not unknown for people to dislike seeing themselves as others see them. Why do you not turn your considerable skill to portraits? If you would like to practise, I would not object to sitting for you.”

  Agnes, delighted, exclaimed, “Would you truly not mind my essaying a likeness?”

  “Not in the least; it would give us both something to do. I should not feel so guilty for sitting and doing nothing and you can bear me company while doing something which you enjoy. Indeed, if you do not mind portraying me full-face, I can watch you as you draw – and I own I find that fascinating.”

  “Do you?” Agnes asked, surprised.

  “Yes; you look so very serious and it is the only time, except when you are playing or reading, when I see your face reflecting your real thoughts; mostly, you see, you are such a considerate young woman that you arrange your features in an interested expression even when I am persuaded you find the other person tedious.”

  “I think you should do the portrait-painting,” Agnes said.

  “I was used to enjoy sketching,” her ladyship admitted, “but I have somehow fallen out of the habit since I married. There always seemed to be something else which had to be done – and then, when I did have a moment, I generally did not have my pencils to hand.”

  “I did not know that,” Agnes said. “Pray forgive me for never having asked.”

  “I cannot imagine why you should,” Lady Armitage said. “I did not ask you either but, now that I have seen something of your work, I believe you should do more of it. Why, if you were to do some likenesses of Louisa’s guests, you might be able to sell your work and perhaps, in time, become a fashionable artist.”

  “You will make my head swell if you say much more,” Agnes said with a smile.

  “Well, you are only a little thing and excessively modest; I don’t think a little swelling would do you any harm at all, my dear.”

  And so Agnes began on a picture of Lady Armitage.

  “Please do not feel that you have to flatter me,” her ladyship said.

  “No, I promise I will not,” Agnes agreed although she was a little anxious about drawing precisely what she saw, which was a sad and disappointed woman. On the other hand, knowing that Lady Armitage herself had some talent with the pencil, she did not suppose that a flattering image would pass muster.

  “I think,” she said the first time her ladyship had arranged herself in a chair with her face towards the light and her hands idle in her lap, “that I would like to essay a miniature if that would be acceptable, my lady.”

  Lady Armitage smiled. “Is that because you hope that, by keeping everything exceedingly small, you will be able to show me in a more realistic light?”

  “No; it is because I have always wanted to paint miniatures – the sort of tiny picture which a person can keep about them as a reminder of someone much loved but absent. It is also, I think, because my style – rather finicky and over-controlled – lends itself, I believe, to extremes of discipline.”

  “Were you intending to miniaturise the sketch of Louisa?”

  “Yes, but now that you have voluntee
red, I believe I will see what I can achieve from scratch.”

  The drawing of the picture and the mutual interest and pleasure in sketching brought the two bereaved ladies together more effectively than any amount of sitting beside the fire embroidering would have done. Both had spent a good deal of time sewing, and both were good at it, being the sort of people who liked to take trouble over detail and who enjoyed the employment of their hands as an expression of their minds, but sketching was for both a deeper experience.

  Autumn was approaching and the leaves were beginning to change from the rather coarse, dull green of late summer to the gentler hues of September. When the sun shone and the wind dropped, both women went into the small garden and, sitting side by side, drew the few late roses which were still blooming for, her ladyship suggested, they could hone their portrait-painting skills perfectly well throughout winter but the flowers and leaves outside would not be there much longer. They dusted off Lady Armitage’s neglected paints, had the estate carpenter make them a couple of easels and pursued their new interest with enthusiasm.

  They did not see quite so much of Louisa during these early days of September because she was busy planning the entertainments for her guests but they were happy in their employment and growing comfortable with each other when a letter arrived.

  Agnes, coming down the stairs early one morning, answered the door and, on payment of the fee, had it thrust into her unwilling hand. There was something about its unmistakeably official air which filled her with foreboding. It had been delivered first to Armitage Hall, whence it had been redirected by the tenants who, she presumed, had also been obliged to pay a fee to hold it in their hands for long enough to readdress it and send it on its way.

  She hoped that it was not bad news concerning her ladyship’s elder son, Sir John, and reminded herself that, although he was in a place of grave danger somewhere in southern Africa, the letter had been franked - and posted – in England. But it troubled her all the same.

  She went into the room at the back, which served as both dining and morning room, and placed the missive beside Lady Armitage’s plate.

  Curiously disturbed, she moved to the window and gazed out at the garden. It was going to be a beautiful day; the rising sun was already casting a glow over the damp grass and the cobwebs strung between the roses glittered as though sewn with tiny diamonds. But Agnes’s heart was not soothed; she feared that what she had laid upon the table held bad news.

  She opened the door and went outside where her light kid shoes were soon soaked as she walked across the grass to bury her nose in a late rose. They did not, she noticed, smell so sweet in September; it was as though they had used up all their energy earlier in the year when the bees were busier. Now, the insects often seemed comatose and the flowers had ceased to bother to attract them.

  In spite of her apparent concentration upon the roses, she heard the door open into the morning room and knew that her employer had entered. She lingered a few moments longer outside, wanting to give Lady Armitage time to make herself mistress of the letter’s contents in privacy.

  Not hearing a cry – or even a sigh - she thought that she might have exaggerated the appearance of the thing and that perhaps it was no more than the usual sort of correspondence from a son to his mother, which had been brought from Africa in a bundle and posted in England, but, when she turned and came back inside, she saw that her first instinct had been right. The horrid thing undoubtedly held news of an unwelcome kind.

  Her ladyship was sitting in her accustomed place; the letter lay almost exactly where Agnes had left it but she could see that the seal had been broken and that the paper was now crumpled as though it had been opened in a hurry; her ladyship’s face had aged ten years in as many minutes and she was white to the lips.

  “My son is gravely ill,” Lady Armitage said even before Agnes had stepped inside. “They are sending him home.”

  “That is bad news indeed,” Agnes said inadequately, approaching the table but pausing a few yards away. Somehow sitting down seemed disrespectful.

  “This letter,” Lady Armitage picked it up and held it out as though it was contaminated, “was written by General Somerset at least a month ago. In it, he refers to another he wrote in April telling me that John had been wounded; I never received that one and had no idea that anything was amiss with him. This one informs me that John was still recovering from his injuries when he was struck down with something called dengue fever. He says – but pray read it for yourself.” Her ladyship waved the letter at Agnes as though annoyed that she had not taken it already.

  Agnes took it and sat down. She unfolded the single sheet and read the polite but stark words to which General Lord Charles Somerset’s signature was appended although she did not think that he had necessarily written it himself.

  It seemed that Sir John had been badly wounded during a battle in April to which the writer referred without giving a great deal of detail as to how he had come by his injury – supposing, presumably, that Lady Armitage already knew that – and that he had not recovered as well as had been expected. Indeed, his wound had become infected and he had battled for some weeks to hold on to his life. In May he had been afflicted by dengue fever, the symptoms of which were a mystery to Agnes. It was not until the end of the month that he had been put on to a ship bound for England. This letter had travelled on the same vessel so that, if the letter had arrived first at Armitage Hall, Sir John’s appearance at their door could not be long delayed.

  “I am afraid he will not have survived the journey,” her ladyship said.

  Agnes did not know what she could say to this melancholy forecast for she rather agreed that the likelihood of an exceedingly unwell man surviving a four-month journey at sea was not high.

  “I suppose,” Lady Armitage continued when Agnes did not speak, “that he will be carried to Armitage Hall – whether dead or alive. It will not be agreeable for our tenants to be asked to receive the body of their landlord. What do you think we should do?”

  “I think we should write to the tenants to warn them. I suppose it is too late to inform the army of your change of address?”

  “Very likely, but I will do so all the same.”

  “Would you like me to do it for you?” Agnes asked.

  Her employer sat slumped in her chair, her face almost grey with hopelessness. “Why has he turned out so – so …” Words failed her and she raised her eyes to Agnes’s face in a look of the most heartrending supplication.

  “It is because you love him so much,” she replied softly.

  “Have I spoiled him?”

  Agnes thought that she had but she had not intended to hit the poor woman with such a harsh judgment.

  “I cannot say,” she replied seriously, “but, whether you have or not, he can neither have been wounded nor succumbed to the dengue fever on that account. I did not mean to imply that the circumstances which took him to Africa were in any way a result of his upbringing; I meant only that because you love him you are bound to suffer horribly when he is hurt.”

  “Yes. I suppose I must be thankful that Sir James did not live to endure this latest upset.”

  Agnes was, to her relief, prevented from replying to this desolate conclusion by the appearance of the maid with a pot of coffee.

  She had been engaged to join Louisa at the big house later that morning but did not like to leave Lady Armitage so sent a note explaining that she could not, after all, keep their appointment. She gave no reason, deeming it impossible to communicate the news her ladyship had received that morning in any manner which would at once preserve the older woman’s privacy and give the younger some warning of the possibly imminent arrival of her erstwhile suitor. In any event, she did not think that Sir John would be delivered to their door in any but a moribund condition; such news should be conveyed by word of mouth if at all possible, not written in a letter.

  She wrote to the tenants and to the army headquarters and presented both drafts to L
ady Armitage to make sure that she had said all that was needful.

  “Yes, that is the best you can do in the circumstances. I am afraid the tenants will still be put out but at least we have warned them.”

  Agnes sealed both letters and asked her ladyship if she would mind being left on her own for a short time while she took them to the post. It was as she was putting on her hat and pelisse that her ladyship called her back.

  “I must write to Charles to let him know what has happened,” she said. “Will you wait while I do so and then you can take that to the post at the same time?”

  Agnes nodded and went back into the garden so that her ladyship could compose the letter to her younger son in privacy. The composition took much longer than she had expected and it was not until nearly midday that the letter was completed.

  “Perhaps you would prefer to wait until after nuncheon before you go out,” Lady Armitage said apologetically.

  “No, I think I should go at once for we do not want to miss the post. I will be as quick as I can,” Agnes replied, buttoning up her pelisse again and setting her hat upon her head.

  It was a couple of miles to the village and she set out briskly. She knew that Louisa had sent an invitation to Mr Armitage, that more reliable younger son of her employer, inviting him to be one of the house party, and she wondered what he would do now – or even whether he was already on his way. Would he still stay at the big house or would he feel obliged to reside in his mother’s cottage instead in order to keep her company? And what if the older brother were to be delivered, moribund but still requiring a bed, while the younger was in residence? There were not enough bedchambers. Indeed, she had already decided that she would have to give up her own to the invalid, oblige the maid to share with the cook, and take the maid’s small attic room herself. If both brothers were to be in residence at the same time, could the younger be accommodated in the other’s chamber? She did not know and resolved to discuss the matter with her employer immediately upon her return.