by Joan Aiken
Fortunately at this moment Lord Egremont himself appeared unceremoniously at the entrance to the house, thrusting aside the butler and a couple of footmen. As usual he was impeccably dressed except for a somewhat battered hat resting comfortably on the back of his head.
“Why!” he exclaimed good-naturedly. “Do I find my whole assembly taking place in the garden, and I not present at it? Come in, come in! I would recommend that we hold our discussions out of doors—but that I have a deal of maps spread out on the library table—which would all fly away in the breeze—and Liz has I do not know how many cakes and strawberry syllabubs and cold fowls prepared for the ladies. For that matter, I daresay even the gentlemen will not refuse a cooling glass. But come in, come in! Faith, it’s as hot out here as the Earl of Hell’s kitchen!”
At these hospitable words there began to be a general move toward the door of the house. Lord Egremont stood by the entrance, greeting his friends without ceremony.
“Ha! Milsom, is that you? It is good of you to come such a long way on such a hot day. Lady Mountague, Liz will be happy to see you! She has been depending on your advice. Now you may have a snug coze together. Captain Holland, how d’ye do? How does that leg go on? Famous, famous. Mrs. Johnstone, pray step in, out of the glare; ay, ay, Liz will soon find you a cool seat and a glass of sherbet or shrub. Lady Susan—Mrs. Whitaker—Miss Louisa Whitaker—what news of your husband, ma’am? He has left St. Vincent’s fleet and is sailing to the Mediterranean with Nelson? Well, well, now that poor fellow has recovered from his wound and returned to action, I daresay we shall soon hear of some lively work! Tickle Boney on his underbelly, that is what I say, then he will have less inclination to come bothering us here in Sussex. Not but what we shall be rare and ready to give him a warm welcome if he does come!”
Then, setting eyes on Thomas, who with his female encumbrances was still hesitating at the edge of the group, Lord Egremont walked forward to him very cordially, saying:
“Why, here you are, Paget! I am delighted to see you. And Mrs. Paget too, and Miss! I believe I am to congratulate you, Mrs. Paget, on a recent happy event. Ay, ay, Liz will be wishful to hear how you go on. But”—hastily recollecting himself—“Paget, let me make you known to Milsom here, and Captain Holland, and Sir Archibald King—Captain Paget is to command our troop, Milsom, d’ye know—but come along, come this way into the library—now, Paget, what do you say as to uniform—helmets with feathers, do you think, or hair cockades? Or bearskins? And if we have a scarlet jacket—as I believe we should—need the lapels be of the same color?”
So talking, he thrust Thomas ahead of him into the library, while the butler, with more decorum, ushered the ladies, of whom there were fewer in number, to a large cool dining room with handsome paintings all around the walls and a table spread with a variety of cold meats, cakes, syllabubs, and beautiful pyramids of fruit. Many of the guests immediately clustered around the table. Fanny, who was both hot and nervous, sank down onto an exceedingly uncomfortable little straight-backed Venetian chair. Here she would have remained, despite the impatient looks Bet was giving her, had she had not been sought out by Liz Wyndham, who came floating up to them, her laces and gauzes quivering with suppressed laughter, her eyes sparkling.
“Why, my dear—my very dear Mrs. Paget! And Miss Paget! Miss Paget, pray let me make you known to Miss Sefton, I dare swear you two girls will have a great deal to say to one another—” And having thus rapidly disposed of Bet, she turned back to Fanny and whispered to her; bubbling over with laughter.
“Is not this famous? I was bound to see my dear friend somehow! And I knew how it would be—I told Egremont! ‘Depend upon it,’ I said, ‘Paget will never be able to resist such a bait! Being appointed commander of the town troop—even his surly contumacious nature must have some weak spot by which its defenses can be breached.’ And, you see, I was right! But how do you go on, my dearest creature? Are you in plump currant again? You are dreadfully thin! Quick, let me feed you. No, do not rise. Remain there—you look weary—I will bring you some strawberries—or would you prefer a wing of chicken?”
And, despite Fanny’s protests, she fetched with her own hands a quantity of good things and placed them near at hand on a French giltwood table. “Is not this pretty? George brought it back from Paris in 1772—along with Mademoiselle Duthé, his first mistress! Now I have shocked you—I keep forgetting. I am so delighted to see you! But tell me, how is your baby? Chilgrove says he is very big, and beautiful as an angel. Do you love him very much? Or,” sinking her voice to a whisper, “does he too much resemble his papa?”
Fanny could not help laughing at Liz’s nonsense and being greatly cheered by her warmth and affection. She wished that it had not been necessary to meet in the midst of such a public gathering, for she had two troubles that she longed to divulge to this lighthearted yet practical and unshockable creature. One was the corselet. She would have wished to know Liz’s opinion, to hear her comments about this indignity. Just to disclose her own horror, her humiliation, to an understanding friend would be an incalculable relief. But that she could certainly not mention in such surroundings as these. And the other distress was, in a way, even worse, because it revealed Fanny to herself as a heartless, unnatural monster; this one she thought she must confess, even at the risk of being overheard.
“Truly, Liz, you did not—did you?—really persuade Lord Egremont to appoint Thomas as head of the troop—just so that he could be persuaded to come here to Petworth House?” she breathed in horror.
“Truly I did!” Liz said, laughing. “Egremont was not at all certain that he would make a good commander, but I overbore all his objections! ‘It will get the man away from his house more,’ I said, ‘so that poor persecuted little angel can have a bit of respite from him.’ And—who knows?—if he is inveigled into meeting a few more people of ton, perhaps he win learn a little how to go on, and that a man ought not to treat a wife as a mastiff treats a bone, to be growled over in the back of his kennel.”
This image was so apt that Fanny could not repress a shudder.
“But now you have provided a son and heir, is he not at least delighted with that? And are you not delighted?”
“Oh, Liz!” Fanny said wretchedly. “I cannot love the baby as I ought! He is big and beautiful, it is true, but I find I—I do not like babies! Indeed I find I can hardly love him at all. To me he seems just a big, damp bundle, smelling of milk—I cannot feel that he has ever been part of me. Am I not dreadfully wicked?”
Tears trembling on the tips of her lashes, she looked piteously up at Liz, who replied roundly:
“No, my dearest creature, you are not in the least wicked. How could anybody, situate as you are, love anything that derived from that man? I daresay in your case I should have been tempted to strangle the little monster.”
“Liz, Liz, hush, how can you! But you love your children.”
“Ah, true,” said Liz, and a most characteristic expression came over her face—tender, teasing, fond, resigned, dispassionate, reflective, indulgent, mischievous—as she added, “But then, I have the good fortune to love George.”
“Then—then you do not think me heartless, unnatural?”
“No, my poor child, I think your heart is full of good and faithful feelings, and it but requires the right occasion—perhaps the right person—to bring them out. Meanwhile—do not utterly despair of coming to love your brat,” Liz added cheerfully. “You may find he improves as he grows. Myself, I must confess I loved mine better as they began to walk and talk and behave like civilized beings. Now I fear that, for the moment, I had better leave you and perform a few of my duties as a hostess, or all my acquaintances will become jealous of you. Do not be afraid, though”—smiling at Fanny’s look of alarm—“I will not allow you to remain alone in this throng, or undefended. Come with me and I am going to introduce you to one who, I hope, will prove a kind friend to you as she has
to me.”
And, with something more of formality in her manner than she had hitherto shown, Liz took Fanny’s hand and, leading her across the room to where an elderly lady was seated in a velvet armchair, said:
“Ma’am, allow me to make known to you my friend Mrs. Fanny Paget, whose husband, Captain Paget, has been chosen by George to lead our troop of volunteers. Mrs. Paget is a dear neighbor of mine whom I see much less than I would wish to,” and to Fanny she said, “Fanny, this is Lady Mountague, who resides at Cowdray and knows, I believe, every soul in the countryside, so it is very shocking that she does not yet know you!” and smiling, blowing a kiss to Fanny, she floated off to replenish the plates of a hungry-looking trio of ladies in the corner of the room.
“Come and sit by me, my dear,” said Lady Mountague, patting a velvet seat beside her. She was a kind-looking, gentle-faced person, very pale, dressed in black, with a quantity of soft gray curls, rather haphazardly arranged under a widow’s cap. “I have been looking at you across the room for the last ten minutes and admiring your beautiful carriage! I only wish their governesses could have instilled such deportment into my daughters when they were your age. But—forgive me—you are a married lady, though you hardly took old enough for it. Now I am going to be very inquisitive and find out all about you.”
Lady Mountague was as good as her word. In five minutes she had elicited all the Herriard family history and discovered a second cousin of her own who was related to Fanny’s mother’s eldest sister’s husband. After that she went on with the same eager interest to a review of the Paget family ramifications. “Paget, Paget, was there not a branch of them at Romsey? General Paget of course I know all about, and his brother the other general, Sir Henry (no better than he should be, that one, I may say!), but your husband was from the Romsey branch, I understand? Did not his mother remarry on his father’s death and have another son by her second husband?”
“Yes, ma’am, but he is dead. I believe he perished in rather sad circumstances.”
“Ah yes—that was it. I believe I heard that there was something rather discreditable about his end—or that your husband did not do his part as a brother, was that it?”
This was news to Fanny, though not surprising, but she said simply:
“I know nothing about it, ma’am.”
“Very properly said, child; my indiscreet old tongue tends to run away with me. But now tell me about the wealthy cousins who let you have the house—and are there not some more cousins out in India, children of that old rip, General Sir Henry?”
“Yes, indeed, ma’am, and they may be coming to live with us,” responded Fanny, eager to get away from the subject of Thomas’s past wrongdoings. She and Lady Mountague enjoyably discussed the possible ages and dispositions of Carloman and Sarah, as Lady Mountague believed the twins to be called. She had heard they were in their late teens, whereas Fanny tended to think of them as children.
“I wonder if they will really come? It is such a long way to India! And if Buonaparte is really in the Red Sea—they must come all the way around the Cape of Good Hope—”
“Well, they are young; when you are young, travel is a pleasure, not a fatigue. My husband was a great traveler, even to a late age. Unfortunately he fell into the river Rhine and was drowned,” Lady Mountague disclosed matter-of-factly. “So, having no house and no husband, I must e’en occupy myself nowadays with my neighbors,” she went on, turning her deep-set gray eyes on Fanny and smiling with a sudden unexpected radiance. “I live in a small house in Cowdray Park, where I go on very comfortably, and I hope that you will come to visit me there as soon as possible, Mrs. Paget. Will your husband allow you to visit me?”
“Oh yes, ma’am, I am sure he will,” murmured Fanny, remembering Thomas’s homily to the effect that Lady Mountague “might prove a most useful patron and neighbor.”
During the next two hours the more energetic of the lady guests, or those who had a talent for organization, tore up old sheets and rolled them into bandages, as a long-term precaution against the possible siege and bloody defense of Petworth. A plan was prepared whereby, if the French army were to be seen advancing over the Downs, all the families who resided in outlying farms should be informed by courier and transported to the comparative security of Petworth House.
Fanny was introduced by Lady Mountague to numerous other guests—Mrs. Holland, Mrs. Milsom, Lady Sefton, Lady Susan Coates; presently she was able to sit down comfortably beside kind Mrs. Socket and help to make a list of provisions to be stored in the church.
Lady Mountague presently declared herself tired and called for her carriage, bidding a kind farewell to Fanny and declaring that she should soon give herself the pleasure of inviting her young neighbor to come and spend the day. Fanny likewise would gladly have gone home but could hardly do so without Thomas, who was still closeted with most of the other males in the library. She looked for Bet, but the latter had found a handful of congenial younger people, visitors and relatives of the house; they were playing games together and she was not at all anxious to leave.
“Oh, gracious me, Stepmama, why in the world should you wish to go home?” she demanded impatiently. “We are all just about to take part in an archery contest!”
Indeed the younger members of the party had all strayed out through the French windows onto the grass.
“Where is Mrs. Wyndham?” Fanny inquired, thinking that she might ask Liz if it would be in order to send a message to Thomas in the library. Perhaps he would give permission to her to walk quietly home by herself.
“Mrs. Wyndham went into the garden to order targets to be set up,” somebody said. “She went up toward the Grecian Pavilion.”
Wearily, Fanny walked out to look for Liz. The cooler atmosphere outside, and a chance to be by herself, refreshed her; she turned to her right, following the direction indicated, and strolled toward the end of the house, where there was an informal pleasure garden with clumps of rhododendron and lilacs, and larger trees. Liz was nowhere to be seen.
“Why—as I live and breathe—it is George’s lovely neighbor—the bewitching Mrs. Paget! What a surpassing piece of good fortune that I should have become fatigued by all those wiseacres in the library and escaped for some fresh air! Dearest Mrs. Paget, you look precisely like some delicious wood nymph—a dryad, slipped out from the trunk of one of the trees to take a turn among the narcissus and the lilies—which you so much excel in beauty!”
Fanny spun around, startled out of her wits by this address. Confronting her, having come strolling around a big clump of pink rhododendron, was that Major Henriques whom she had seen on two previous occasions, once at Petworth House, once walking with Liz Wyndham. “A shallow-minded fellow—never trust him,” she remembered Liz had said of him. Indeed Fanny herself had felt an instinctive dislike and distrust of him—there was something disconcertingly cynical, far too knowing, in the expression on his swarthy face; his eyes, as they studied her, seemed full of a rather unpleasant amusement, as if he had caught her out in some discreditable activity.
“How—how do you do, sir,” she stammered. “I—I was looking for Mrs. Wyndham.”
“Of course you were,” he agreed, the laughter in his voice wholly belying his words. “You were out among the trees looking for our dear hostess, and not at all hoping that some woodland god would come galloping down the glade for a little charming sylvan dalliance! But will not I serve instead? Truly I am only too anxious to serve you, Mrs. Paget—in any way I may—and have been, I promise you, ever since I first set eyes on your enchanting countenance!”
“Pray, sir, pray do not be talking so,” said Fanny, greatly disconcerted. “Indeed I am not used to it and do not like it—it—it is most improper! I—I would remind you that—that I am a married woman—you should not be addressing me thus!”
Indignantly she pulled away the hand that he had taken and had been about to raise to his lips
.
“Now come, come, what’s all this to-do about?” he said teasingly. “A married woman? Of course you are! That is why I did not expect such missish airs from you! For heaven’s sake, my sweetest creature—my angel—where is the harm in my taking your hand, in my telling you that the charms of your person have stirred up such a fire in my heart that I cannot rest until I have expressed it thus—”
So saying, he attempted to repossess himself of her hand, but Fanny, with an inarticulate exclamation of distress, broke away from him and turned back toward the house. She could not run—she could not even walk fast, her corselet was too miserably constricting and uncomfortable; the reminder of this indignity, and the thought that Thomas, did he know of her present situation, would consider it just the sort of scrape to be expected of her—had even anticipated it—made her all the more desperate. She was half sobbing as Henriques came up with her in two strides and barred her escape.
“Nay, my charmer, you do not evade me as easily as that!”
“Sir, pray, pray leave me—indeed I wished to find Mrs. Wyndham—somebody said she had gone this way—”
“Find Mrs. Wyndham!” he mocked her. “Why, you sweet simpleton, can you not be aware that dear Liz invited you to the house for my sake, because I told her that I so longed to get a glimpse of you at closer quarters? Liz and I, you must know, are very good friends!”
Really stunned at this, appalled at such a revelation of duplicity, she stood stock-still, staring at him, while the blood drained from her face.