When Letty nodded wordlessly, he went on, “His right arm was almost severed above the elbow but, by some miracle of the surgeon’s skill, he has it still although some of the muscles and nerves have been damaged and he cannot – at least at present – make much use of it.”
“That is bad enough,” the former soldier’s mother interrupted with what seemed to Aspasia to be a quite alarming degree of enthusiasm, “but it is his face which will make it impossible for any gently bred female to look upon him without shuddering! I have forbidden Miss Pottinger to visit just at present lest she take fright and abandon him!”
“Oh!” Letty exclaimed, horrified. “And he was used to be so handsome!”
“Just so,” her ladyship agreed with satisfaction. “I was not aware that you had met him, child!”
“Not …? Yes, I – I did meet him – some years ago now.”
“When you were both children, I suppose.”
“He was not – he is more than seven years my senior, my lady. He was a young man when I last saw him and – and very handsome.”
The Dowager, no doubt perceiving a new way to infuriate her stepson – and at the same time taunt the younger woman - said, “My dear! Have you held a candle for him ever since? Did he make your girlish heart beat faster?”
If there was derision in her ladyship’s voice, there was also a sort of wild elation in her face as she turned it full on to Letty’s so that Aspasia was convinced the old lady took pleasure in other people’s distress.
The Countess was still a handsome woman herself although she bore no resemblance to what Letty remembered of her beloved; he more closely resembled his half-brother so that it was to be assumed that both took more after their paternal parent than their maternal one.
She was a tall woman with very pale blue eyes, a narrow high-bridged nose and grey hair which, although there was no sign of its former colour now, had once been red, as could be seen from her portrait as a young woman which hung above the fireplace.
“I own he did, my lady,” Letty replied.
“And have you dreamed of him ever since, child? If you will forgive me, it cannot have been more than a fantasy on your part for he has never mentioned you and has indeed been paying court to Miss Pottinger for some time now; we had been hoping for an imminent announcement – until he was almost killed!”
Chapter 9
The dinner was exquisite; the silver and crystal sparkled and the china was ravishingly pretty but, in spite of these positive aspects, it was not a meal much enjoyed by either of the guests or indeed their host or hostess.
The Dowager sat on one side of an excessively large table, the Earl on the other with the guests placed at either end so that it was more or less impossible for all four to converse. Conversation was necessarily restricted to one of the hosts engaging one of the guests at a time.
It was many years since Aspasia had sat at a table with anyone other than Miss Watkin and, little though she wished to listen to her companion’s inane chatter, she could at least hear it and, moreover, because there was such a vast quantity of it, she had little need to stir herself a great deal to answer, a vague ‘hmn’ or ‘indeed’ being sufficient to enable the companion to believe herself to have said something either amusing or profound. Here, she was obliged to listen with great attention because both the Earl and Countess spoke loudly at the same time, one to her and the other to her niece, and had a distressing tendency to follow up a less than stimulating observation with a sort of interrogation apparently designed to reveal the inattention of the listener.
The dinner wound on in this fatiguing manner to its conclusion when the Countess rose and ushered the ladies out of the room.
If either had hoped that this would be the end of their torment, they were soon disabused of their optimism for they had barely entered the drawing room – a larger and more extravagantly furnished apartment than either of the two saloons they had so far seen – when the Dowager addressed Letty.
“I hope you will play something for us.” The tone in which this was uttered sounded more like an order than a hope.
“Oh, yes, of course,” Letty, subdued by the exigencies imposed upon her by the dinner and still disheartened by the reference to Miss Pottinger, agreed weakly. “Only I have not brought any music.”
“There is plenty here,” the Countess told her with grim satisfaction. “Pray look through the pile on top of the instrument. Mozart is a particular favourite of my son,” she added.
Letty, wondering which male Meridew liked the Austrian composer, began to shuffle through the sheets of music in search of something with which she was familiar. She was by no means a gifted pianist, having received very little instruction in the subject; indeed, she was extraordinarily ignorant in almost every aspect of education: her geography was sketchy, her foreign languages halting and her ability to draw and paint almost as poor as her capacity to play the pianoforte. The only subject on which she might have been able to hold her own was literature for, having spent many long hours confined to her chamber with nothing to do except open a book, she was extremely well read. She also possessed a sweet voice although she was ignorant of this, rarely having been required to perform except in the presence of her governess.
She chose a piece which appeared, at first glance, to be a little less taxing for an indifferent pianist than some of the others. Playing Mozart had always struck her as extraordinarily difficult if one possessed only ten fingers, none of which were particularly adept at finding the right keys with the sort of speed that the composer’s sonatas generally seemed to require.
“Would you like me to begin, my lady?” she asked, arranging it on the music stand and preparing to seat herself.
“You can practise, I suppose,” the Dowager said. “But there is little point in playing it properly until my son comes in. It is his lordship you should be studying to please.”
“Yes, my lady.”
Letty sat down abruptly, sliding on to the stool without moving it so that her skirt wrapped itself so tightly around her legs that she was unable to use the pedals. Her colour rising with vexation, she began to play, finding her fingers even more clumsy and disobedient than usual in the presence of an audience which she was convinced was only too eager to find fault with her performance.
She was not mistaken. She had barely completed a couple of bars before the Countess observed in a loud voice, “She does not play well.”
“I daresay she is nervous,” Aspasia suggested.
“She does not strike me as a female much given to nerves,” the Countess said. “She’s a bold piece, if you ask me.”
“I believe her to be determined not to give way to quite natural embarrassment,” Aspasia said. “She is a brave girl.”
“Brave? What is the use of being brave – especially for a female? She would be better to be a little more submissive; no doubt that would appeal to my son.”
Aspasia finding nothing useful to reply to this provocative statement, both women fell silent while Letty crashed through the sonata.
“Has she received any instruction?” the Countess asked at last in the same loud voice.
“I should think she must have done or she would not be able to read the notes,” Aspasia retorted.
“Do you not know?”
“I do not share my brother’s house,” Aspasia replied, “and did not think to examine either him or my niece on the subjects in which she had been instructed when she was a child. I was not aware,” she added, becoming quite heated, “that our visit here was on approval.”
“It is,” the Countess unexpectedly replied. “I wrote the letter inviting the girl to visit and informed Stonegate that he might be so foolish as to make an offer to a girl he had met only once but I wished to see her and make a judgment as to her suitability to take my place in the future.”
Aspasia was shocked by this confession. She was rapidly becoming so angry that for two pins she would have called for the carriage to be made ready
and taken Letty away before the Earl joined them. Why, she thought furiously, did he not come? How dare he spend so long over his port while his guests were browbeaten?
“Is it you, my lady, who is to marry my niece?” she enquired at last in an icy tone.
The Countess received this question with a little titter. “How droll!” she exclaimed. “I am exceedingly glad that my days of being married are at an end. Where, by the way, is your husband, Mrs Ripley?”
“I am not entirely certain.”
“Are you trying to be humorous or is it in fact the case that you do not know? Is he another, like my stepson, who spends most of his time with his mistress?”
“I am sure I do not know,” Aspasia snapped. She had intended only to convey that she was not her husband’s gaoler but was by this time so infuriated and so determined that Letty should not spend the rest of her life in this dreadful castle that she threw caution to the winds and began almost to seek to enrage her interlocutor.
While Aspasia and the Countess were crossing swords, neither was listening to Letty who, relieved not to be the subject of either the Dowager’s disapproval or her aunt’s pity, began to play with more confidence and a touch more legato. When she came to the slow movement she found herself curiously moved by the profundity of the composition and, for the first time in her life, tried – with not a great deal of success – to express what she thought the composer might have meant.
It was while she was negotiating this passage that the thought of the injured and now clearly lost – for what was she to make of Miss Pottinger? - Archie came to her mind and the pity of it, together with the heart-stopping arrangement of notes, sent tears coursing down her cheeks. She went on playing, oblivious to the argument behind her – she was after all only too accustomed to the sound of petulant differences of opinion – until she became aware that the voices had ceased and the Earl was standing beside her.
Her hands dropped from the keys and she bowed her head in a vain attempt to hide the tears which continued to flow unchecked.
“I see you like Mozart too,” he said.
“I did not know that I did – before,” she admitted. “And I cannot play – if my life depended upon it, I would not be able to produce anything that another person would not shudder to hear.”
“I found it moving,” he said quietly and handed her a clean, folded handkerchief.
She sniffed and wiped her eyes.
“Your mother told me to practise so that I would not make a complete hash of it when you were listening,” she explained.
“You did not; you were playing with feeling and, when that is right, the occasional wrong note is, to my mind, unimportant. Have those two been arguing since you came in here?”
“More or less. It began because your mother observed that I played badly, and my aunt attempted to defend me.”
“Good God! Poor Mrs Ripley – my mama can be unkind – I believe she considers it amusing and I suppose that, in the past, she has been encouraged by other people spurring her on. I have often noticed that people who, when young, were considered witty become waspish with age. I am sorry that she said something derogatory about your performance – it was entirely unjustified too.”
“Well, it was not; she was quite right; it was only once they began to dispute with each other and ceased to listen to me that I began to have a – to feel a slight connexion to the music, I think.”
“Perhaps we had better do something to engage Mama’s mind in a more positive manner. Shall we have a game of whist? My mama likes that – so long as she wins.”
“What happens if she does not?”
“She accuses everyone else of cheating.”
“Can you – purely of course in the interests of maintaining peace – contrive such a thing?”
“Oh, yes; that is not at all difficult; it is merely a question of careful shuffling of the cards beforehand. She will not, in any event, wish to notice so we can only hope that your aunt will not point out any discrepancies she notices.”
He moved away from the pianoforte, suggesting the game as something which they could all do together and, without waiting for an answer, went to an elegant bureau in the window and fetched two packs of cards.
“Do you enjoy whist?” the Dowager asked Aspasia.
“I own I have not played much in the last few years,” she admitted. “You see, on account of having been deserted by my husband, I lead a very quiet life with a single female to bear me company. We do not, of course, entertain.”
“Lud! It sounds perfectly dreadful. It is dreary enough living here when Stonegate is away but, when he does deign to visit, we often have a number of guests to while away the time. What in the world do you do to occupy yourself?”
“The usual things I suppose: I read, I sew a little, play the pianoforte, paint and draw and – when the weather is fine – I go on long walks around the country.”
“But all alone?” The Dowager, from having seemed inimical before the Earl joined them, now appeared to have discovered a strong vein of sympathy for her.
“I walk alone – and of course I read alone although Miss Watkin – she is my companion – frequently offers to read to me.”
“But you do not like that!” the Dowager concluded. “Do you find her company stimulating?”
Aspasia, who was often stimulated to extreme levels of vexation by her companion, could not help a little ironic smile playing about her lips as she replied, “I believe it is generally accounted a good thing to have someone with whom to exchange opinions.”
The Dowager, correctly reading between the lines of this statement, threw back her head and laughed loudly.
“Do you think,” she asked provocatively, “that her conversation is more to your taste than a husband’s would be?”
“I own I have never attempted to make such a comparison as I acquired a companion only after I had, so to speak, ‘lost’ my husband.”
The Dowager nodded. She said, with some bitterness, “My experience of husbands is that they rarely converse with their wives. They chatter endlessly to everyone else – including other women – but have little to say to their consort. But, from your attitude, I have the impression that your present companion is more irritating than soothing; why do you not dismiss her – something which is a great deal more easily accomplished with a paid subordinate than a husband - and find another more congenial?”
Aspasia smiled but said, “Miss Watkin is not the first such person to share my house; there have been a number and I own that I have found none particularly agreeable: some have been overpoweringly sweet and determined to look upon the bright side without the least discrimination - an attitude which becomes positively nauseating after a time - while others have inclined to sourness and viewed everything from a jaundiced perspective. There have been plain ones, whose dullness of feature is unfortunately frequently reproduced in their natures; pretty ones who have resented the necessity of spending their lives living with another woman in straitened circumstances when they believe themselves entitled to a life of receiving admiration from men; there have been one or two outright ugly ones on whose countenance I found I could barely endure to gaze – which I know is perfectly horrid of me - but there it is. There have been domineering ones who could not refrain from telling me what I should do and feeble ones who agreed with everything I said.”
While Aspasia was cataloguing her companions, the Earl had set up a table and drawn up four chairs. He was now engaged in shuffling the cards – and presumably fixing them in some way. Letty was gazing at her aunt in open-mouthed astonishment and the Countess had dissolved into girlish giggles.
“You sound like Leporello in the catalogue aria,” the Earl said, smiling. “Surely you cannot have had so many in such a short time – why you are scarcely older than your niece!”
“I am two and thirty and have been employing such persons for near half my life; some have barely laid their heads to rest before deciding they could not endure m
y company, others have been dismissed quite quickly because I have been afraid of losing my wits if they stayed a moment longer than absolutely necessary. The present one, Miss Watkin, has been with me a few years now; she is excessively well-meaning but – well, suffice to say that it is an almost heady pleasure to have left her behind for a little while.”
“Do you not think perhaps it may be time to dismiss her too?” he asked.
“I own I do think that several times a day, but then I realise that my impatience is very likely a sign of my own deficiencies of character and try to remember to be grateful that she appears so devoted to me.”
“I am persuaded it is not,” he said. “You must not despair. Did I hear you telling Mama that your husband has disappeared? Has an attempt been made to trace him?”
“Oh, yes, a great many attempts. I have a good friend who is the magistrate in my locality and I can assure you he has made every effort to discover what may have become of him – but so far without success.”
“Forgive me – I am not familiar with any of the facts – but has he been maintaining you all this time – which would argue that he is at least still alive?”
“Oh no; he vanished without trace some fifteen years ago and has not sent me so much as a penny piece since. It does make one suspect that he may indeed be dead but, as no body has been found, I cannot by any means be certain.”
“What will you do if you wish to marry again?”
“That is very much my friend’s attitude,” she replied, lightly, “but, as I have no desire to do any such thing, I cannot think that it matters – although I own I would like to know what has become of him.”
“Would you like me to make enquiries? I don’t suppose I will be any more successful than your friend, but I may have access to a different set of persons in authority. In fact, there is a Colonel Mott-Ripley living not far from here who might be a scion of the same family. I could begin by asking him - if he is not on some battlefield just at present.”
Letitia Or The Convalescent Heart Page 8