A Radical Arrangement

by Ashford, Jane

  “If they were willing to work hard,” began Margaret.

  “Work?” Keighley shook his head. “What do you know of work? Have you ever bent in the fields or been shut in a dark factory for sixteen hours, and for a sum that would not purchase the buttons on that gown? And those are the lucky ones. Many don’t even have work. There is no work for them.”

  His vehemence confused Margaret. Her father had never talked of these issues in such an impassioned tone, nor had Philip. Nonetheless, she ventured, “A great many men have made fortunes in trade. There are opportunities…”

  “Oh, stop this. You haven’t any idea what you are talking about. You have never seen a truly poor man in your life. You are just like all of Society, blind to the realities that surround you. You live in London without the least glance into the noisome slums that abound there. It was the same in Brussels during the war. They held balls—balls—while men were fighting and dying not five miles distant. And in London one hardly knew a war was going on. Despicable! But it is unlikely to last much longer, I can tell you. If the so-called ruling class does not allow some reforms soon, it will be overwhelmed by what lies beneath.”

  Margaret gazed at him, silenced. Whatever she might think of his opinions, his vehemence had impressed her. It was obvious that these ideas were extremely important to him. She had not thought him capable of such serious feelings.

  Seeing her astonished expression, Keighley laughed harshly. “I see you share everyone else’s opinion of my beliefs,” he added. “My aunt, my grandmother, most of my former friends, even my political allies find me far too radical. Why can people not see the inevitable?”

  Margaret had no answer to this or, indeed, to any of his statements. But before her silence could grow noticeable, they were interrupted by a brisk knock on the open door and the entrance of Jemmy Appleby, carrying a gigantic, glistening fish. “Ma says to ask if you’ll have this for dinner,” he said, dangling the creature by its tail before them. “I caught it myself, just now,” he added proudly.

  Margaret stared at the silvery scales, only inches from her eyes, with awe. The fish’s round, dead eye returned her gaze. And suddenly, without warning, Justin Keighley began to laugh.

  He laughed until he had to put a hand to his shoulder to ease the pain, until tears ran down his cheeks, until Margaret and Jemmy frowned at him in perplexity. And when he finally brought himself under control again, he was worn-out with laughter and had to sink back on his pillows in exhaustion.

  “Won’t it do?” asked Jemmy uneasily. “It’s a fine one, a flounder. Ma said she’d bake it nice.”

  Keighley started to laugh again, more weakly.

  “It will do very well,” answered Margaret, seeing Sir Justin’s tiredness. “Come, let us go and tell your mother so.” Putting a hand on Jemmy’s shoulder, she guided him out of the room. “I will be back at dinnertime,” she said to Keighley, who simply nodded.

  But as she walked down the stairs she puzzled over the new facets of his personality she had seen today. She would never have predicted the passionate interest he had shown in the poor, and his hearty laughter had been still more surprising. She recalled his face as he laughed. It had been nothing like the Keighley she had been told about and thought she had met. Indeed, she could not reconcile that burst of humor with anything she knew about the man. It was exceedingly odd.

  With this thought, Mrs. Dowling’s words recurred to her. Apparently the old woman was right. Men were odd, very odd. Margaret felt another flash of the curiosity those words had engendered. She would see Mrs. Dowling again soon.

  Eight

  Sir Justin napped through the late afternoon, worn-out by his earlier exertions. But when dinnertime came, he roused and flatly refused to remain in bed for the meal. He would get up, he insisted, and he would even come downstairs and eat at table like a civilized man. Margaret, Annie, and Mrs. Appleby argued with him, but he was adamant, and finally Mr. Appleby was summoned to help him dress and come down.

  Margaret waited anxiously at the foot of the stairs and followed the pair into the parlor, where a table had been set for them. Keighley was leaning heavily on the innkeeper, and she still thought he was making a mistake. He sighed when he was settled in his chair. “Weak as a kitten.” He leaned back. “Blast it.”

  “You should stay in bed for…” began Margaret.

  “Please. Spare me. We have been through all that. Let us talk instead of coats. I have, of course, only my riding coat with me. With one shirt, and so on. Is there any place in this village where I may add to that store?”

  Margaret shook her head. “It is a very small place. There aren’t any shops except the greengrocer and…”

  “I see.” He surveyed her blue cambric gown. “You at least have a change of clothes, I suppose?”

  “Yes. I brought three dresses with me.”

  “Yes.” He sighed again. “Well, I shall have to ask Appleby to send someone to the nearest town.”

  “Jemmy will go.”

  “That boy with the fish?” Keighley smiled slightly.

  “Yes. He does all the errands. He is very resourceful.”

  “Somehow that does not surprise me.”

  At this moment Jemmy himself entered the room, weighed down by a large platter upon which rested his fish—baked and garnished and looking splendid. “Ma said I could bring it,” the boy informed them. “It looks prime, don’t it?” Setting the platter in the center of the table, he eyed his catch complacently.

  “It does,” agreed Margaret.

  “Did you get it in the bay?” asked Keighley.

  “’Bout a hundred yards beyond the mouth. I caught three, but this is the biggest.”

  “You must have a tight boat. The seas were high today.”

  “Aw, she’s all right.” Jemmy surveyed Sir Justin with a shrewd air. “You have a boat, I guess.”

  He smiled and nodded. “I keep her at Southampton.”

  The boy leaned forward eagerly. “Forty-footer, I’ll bet.”

  “Not quite so big, but she’s a neat little thing.”

  “I daresay.” Jemmy proceeded to pelt Keighley with questions about his boat, its anchorage, and a great many other nautical matters. Margaret was lost almost immediately in a welter of sloops and ketches, gaff rigging, spars, sheets that did not seem to bear any relation to bed linen, and other terms she could not even begin to translate. When the rapid conversation finally slowed, the light of hero worship had appeared in Jemmy Appleby’s eyes, and Keighley was looking both amused and kindly. “I’ll show you my boat anytime you like,” promised the boy. “She ain’t much to look at, but she rides well for a dinghy.”

  “I should like to see her,” agreed Keighley solemnly. “We shall have to wait until my arm is better. Then perhaps you can take me out.”

  “Yes, sir,” replied Jemmy fervently.

  “Now, however,” interrupted Margaret, “we had better try this splendid fish, or it will be cold.”

  Jemmy started, just as his mother’s voice was heard calling from the kitchen. “Lord, I’ve got to fetch the potatoes,” he exclaimed and ran for the corridor.

  Keighley laughed, as did Margaret after a moment. He picked up the serving piece and said, “May I give you some of our friend’s excellent catch?”

  “Yes, indeed. He is a nice boy, isn’t he?”

  “Very engaging.”

  Jemmy brought the rest of the dishes at full speed. He showed some inclination to linger after the last, but his mother called him again, and he went reluctantly.

  Margaret and Sir Justin ate in silence for a time. He was looking tired, and she hardly knew what topic to begin that would not cause friction. At last, however, she felt she must speak, so she said, “I have been thinking about what you said this morning.”

  He looked surprised. “Have you?”

  “Ye
s. About the poor. I am very sorry for them too, you know, and so is my father.”

  Keighley looked skeptical.

  “He is! But the poor will not be helped if the landowning classes cannot sell their corn for a decent price. And their rioting and machinery breaking will do them no good. Indeed, it only makes people angry.”

  Her companion sat back with a sigh. For a moment it seemed that he would not reply, then he ran a hand over his eyes and said, “It certainly does that. But those people make no effort to understand the desperation behind the riots and protests.”

  “Yes, but…well, this very year there was that riot in London. They looted shops and burned a building.”

  “Their purpose was to present a petition of grievances to the Prince,” said Sir Justin. “Surely an acceptable one.”

  “But—”

  “But it got out of hand and turned to violence—yes. I cannot deny that. I would say, however, that such violence arises out of the frustration felt by those whose petitions are, at best, ignored. No one listens to them, you see.”

  Margaret pondered this. She knew how it felt to have one’s opinions ignored, but she could not imagine setting fire to a mill or attacking a constable as a result.

  Her expression must have mirrored her thoughts, for Keighley added, “I realize you don’t understand. So few do. It continually amazes me; it seems so obvious.”

  “Your own ideas are always obvious, seemingly,” she replied, a bit piqued. Did he think he was invariably right? “Do you ever listen?”

  He looked startled. “Actually, I do—quite often.”

  “But not to someone like me.” She gazed at him. His hazel eyes met her blue ones with bemused puzzlement.

  He sat back again and examined her carefully. Something had happened to the timorous, wearisome girl he had met at the Mayfields’ dinner. That girl would never have spoken to him so or stared so challengingly. Indeed, he was not certain any woman had ever fixed his eye in just that way. “What have you been up to?” he asked. “You have changed all out of recognition.”

  Margaret’s stare became perplexed, then her eyes dropped and some of her shyness returned. In her interest in the subject, and in Keighley’s very unusual opinions, she had almost forgotten who he was and where they were and why.

  “Can shooting me have brought out this new character?” he added, half teasingly. “If so, I hope it does not become fashionable.”

  She flushed, keeping her eyes on her plate.

  “Please do not retreat into your tedious former persona. I’m not certain I could endure it.”

  A spark of anger made Margaret look up.

  “That is better. Shall I insult you further? Will that make you speak?”

  “You are a dreadful man.”

  “Aren’t I?” he agreed cordially. “Perhaps you would prefer to insult me?”

  “I should greatly prefer it, but I am too well-bred to do so.”

  “Now where, Miss Mayfield, did you find that riposte? You must tell me. I would swear it was not in the head of the whining chit I met at your parents’ home. Or are you the most skilled dissembler in the realm? I don’t believe it. Something has happened to you.”

  Margaret considered him frowningly. What right had he to talk to her in this way? Yet she could not deny that he was right. She repeatedly astonished herself with the things she found to say, particularly to him, recently. Where did they come from? And what had happened to her? “I…I don’t know,” she stammered finally.

  Keighley regarded her with more interest than he had shown, or indeed felt, in the whole course of their acquaintance. “Do you not?” he said meditatively. “I wonder.”

  A silence fell. Margaret eyed her companion nervously, but he seemed lost in thought.

  “Tell me,” he said finally, “when we were talking just now, why were you so eager? What were you thinking of?”

  “I was interested in what you were saying.”

  “Yes?” he encouraged her when she stopped.

  “That is all.”

  “But have you never been interested in what someone was saying before?”

  “Well, of course I have, but…” Margaret paused. When her parents and Philip talked of the Corn Laws or other political issues, they never seemed as engrossing as when Keighley had spoken about them today. And it was the same when the Mayfields had political gatherings at the house. She had not, in fact, been interested in hearing them. She thought of other conversations—during the season or with her mother about household matters—and was astounded to realize that she had probably never been so caught up by a topic as she had been today. Why? She reexamined her memories. Philip and her parents made things so dull, and so did her mother’s friends whom she had met in London. Usually she had shut off her mind after two or three exchanges, and since few ever addressed her, she had spent most of her social encounters in a kind of dream. Margaret blinked. Perhaps she had spent most of her life in a dream. This idea was so unsettling that she shivered.

  “What is it?” asked Keighley, who had been watching her curiously.

  “Nothing.” She was not going to tell him these thoughts.

  He gazed at her.

  “Why do you talk as you do?”

  “What?”

  Margaret flushed again. “I mean, what made you believe as you do? You are so…so vehement in your opinions. Why?”

  Keighley put his chin in his hand and frowned. Margaret followed each move. She was intensely interested in the answer to her questions, though she had not known this until she voiced them. From their first meeting, she had been puzzled and unsettled by Keighley’s emotional effect on her. He had made her react in unaccustomed ways and with unheard-of passion. And now he himself had shown feelings deeper and more moving than anyone she had known before.

  “I suppose,” replied Sir Justin slowly, “that it was my father.”

  “Was he also…” She paused in confusion.

  “A radical?” He chuckled. “In his way, I suppose he was, though not as I am. He was much more respectable.” Keighley’s smile lingered. “He was inspired by the French Revolution in the beginning. That will shock you. He was an idealist who thought he saw his theories coming to life, only to be forced to watch their failure. That would have discouraged many men, I imagine, but not he. He carried on.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Oh, all manner of things. He wrote pamphlets and books. He spoke wherever they would have him. He even went abroad to see conditions for himself, and very nearly did not get back, I understand.” He grimaced. “I have never seen my mother so angry as when she speaks of that incident.”

  “Was he in Parliament?”

  “No, indeed. He was not the sort of man to attract votes. Most of his neighbors thought him a bit mad.” Keighley’s tone was warm.

  Margaret wondered at it. He sounded like a very odd sort of father. “He was busy with your estate, I suppose. It is large.”

  “Passably. But he never concerned himself with it for more than five minutes at a time, as far as I know. My mother managed everything, superbly. She is amazingly sharp. I have always thought that my grandfather must have chosen her for his son because of her wits, though she was not bad-looking.” He chuckled again.

  “They were a pair, my parents. I’m certain they were very attached to each other. I remember them so. My mother took care of all the practical details of living while my father spent his days dreaming in his study, and sometimes writing. When they met at dinner, each was remarkably happy, having passed the time as he wished. And the conversations at that table! I always joined them when there were no guests, from the very first, and I can remember endless, passionate debates about everything under the sun. They were both people of strong opinions, and they loved airing and defending them. Sometimes I think they took opposite sides just for the joy
of battle. My sister and I plunged headlong into it as soon as we were able.”

  Fascinated, Margaret compared this vivid vision to the dinner-table conversations of her childhood. The contrast was marked.

  “Do your parents never debate politics?” asked Keighley curiously. “Among their friends, I mean. I would not expect them to do so with me.”

  “They do,” responded Margaret doubtfully. “But not in the way you describe.”

  “Ah?”

  “They all seem to agree from the start. I mean, they do discuss things, but they only say how right their position is and how wrong that of the others. There isn’t any…battle.”

  “I see.” Keighley’s tone was dry. “Well, I think that answers your question. I was taught that no idea is right until it is proved against the strongest and cleverest opposition. That is why I ‘talk as I do.’ I am championing my position against all comers. I cannot help throwing every resource at my command into the effort.”

  Margaret nodded slowly, taking this in. He watched her, wondering for the first time what it must have been like to grow up in the Mayfield household. For him it would have been hell. Or would it? He would not have known anything else, as Margaret had not. He tried to imagine such a life, and could not.

  “What did you talk to your parents about?” he asked her.

  She looked up, startled. “I?”

  “Yes. You must have had other topics besides politics.”

  “Well…they always asked about my studies, when I was younger. I had a governess, and they would review my progress at the end of each week. A special time was set aside for it. And, of course, my mother taught me a great deal about running a household and…and that sort of thing.”

  “And you had friends in the neighborhood, I suppose.” Keighley strained to recollect. “The Camden girl, and so on.”

  Margaret shrugged. “I was very busy with my studies. Mama felt that they were more important, though my governess and I took ample outdoor exercise.”