A Quiet Adjustment

by Benjamin Markovits

  This, with several digressions, was the story Annabella heard in the course of a housebound week. The London rain had followed them north, where it turned to snow. It fell in a clatter from the roof and piled up outside the sitting-room windows, which were fogged and wet to the touch, in drifts as high as the lintels. The room (she gave Sir Ralph her opinion) was simply too large for the fire to heat it—the truth of which was vividly illustrated one morning when the maid had to stand on a chair to sweep cobwebs from the ceiling with her broom. Judy had decided to take the house in hand again and presided, from the comfort of her convalescence, over a fever of activity, which drove her husband to the dusty quiet of his study. In fact, he was glad to be relieved, for once, of the duty of keeping Lady Milbanke cheerful, on which Doctor Kendall had particularly insisted. When Ada cried, Mrs Clermont brought her in to feed. (Her present trouble, Judy confided, began when she was encouraged to drink porter while nursing.) Otherwise, Anna-bella had her mother to herself. She pushed two armchairs to the foot of the hearth, and they baked and froze together, taking it in turns to warm each side. Annabella never once said to her, though the words were constantly on her lips: I have left my husband; he has sent me away.

  Instead, she endured silently her mother’s misplaced admiration. Lord Byron, Judy understood now, was an image of the kind of man one ought to marry if one hoped to cut a figure in the world. It was no use angling for decency or common sense; these qualities brought one at last to Seaham or Kirkby Mallory. She had done what she could in Seaham to shape a role for herself in the little society she found to hand. She liked to think that, until her troubles (that was her phrase for it), she had made a success of it—as great, at least, given the poverty of local resources, as the success his sister had had at Melbourne House. Sir Ralph couldn’t abide Elizabeth, and Judy blamed the modesty of his political ambitions on the contrast he hoped to suggest between himself and Lady Melbourne. It had lately become a source of consolation to her mother that Annabella had decided to follow the example of her aunt’s career. A woman could only get on in the world, she had learned, by playing a part behind the scenes of public life. But one needed something to work with—one needed a scene, or a stage. It was no use sitting at the heart of a web like Seaham. She had run, quite simply, out of things to do.

  How grateful she was for once to have so much time on her hands. They could talk properly, as they used to when Annabella was a girl. Tea was served them and buttered cakes, set down on the table between them. As a girl, Judy continued, lifting a piece to her mouth, she had never been told that what one depended on a husband for, in the first place, was the scope he gave to one’s talents. A woman, of course, has no other scope. She touched a napkin to her chin. Scope, if she might call it that plainly, rather than riches or love, was what one should marry for. Though the quality, as such, had this to be said against it: it was harder to measure than riches, harder even than love. A fool might offer scope; Lady Melbourne had married a fool. Sir Ralph, she granted, was none, and there had been a time, before the last election but one, when she supposed herself on the brink of his great career. She called for more hot water. They had almost beggared themselves to make a name for him, but Sir Ralph, it turned out, was just the kind of man that names don’t stick to. He is the kind of man whom other men trust in his private rather than his public capacity—they will listen to his jokes and not to his advice. Hot water came; she filled the pot and waited, then poured herself a fresh cup. Annabella refused one. Not the least of her regrets over the whole affair was the fact that it left them, as far as Annabella’s dowry was concerned, a little short of pocket. She only hoped that money matters had not cast their shadow over the first year of Annabella’s marriage.

  ‘No,’ Annabella assured her, mindful of Dr Kendall’s warning. ‘Not much.’

  Each day, after lunch, they returned to the same two chairs by the fire and the same themes. As the week wore on, Annabella, who said little by comparison to her mother, began to insist on keeping her daughter beside her. I have left my husband, she thought; he has sent me away—and the confession, unspoken, kept her from exchanging other more commonplace intimacies. She had nothing to say but that, and she did not say it. Her baby, however, its mere presence, and the habits Annabella exposed while nursing it, struck her as a kind of confession of her new life, of her new role; at least, it was the only one she made. Sometimes Ada slept between them on the floor to catch a little of the hearth’s heat. When she cried, Judy took her on her lap and made faces. Annabella could never remember seeing her mother so unconscious of her dignity. Perhaps she was really improved. Although, of course, an indifference to her own dignity had been one of the signs, her father had said, of the last stages of that illness or nervous indisposition whose history she had, in her own way, been attempting to give.

  Sometimes, indeed, the conversation brought Judy’s confession to a sharper point. ‘Your father’s career,’ she said (she had lost her shyness of repetition), ‘has not been entirely what I could have wished it. For one thing, it has afforded less employment than a woman of my capacities requires to occupy them.’ Then she went on, and Annabella pricked up her ears: ‘I have gone to this honest extreme, of composing a trouble of my own making.’ Her mother stared at the fire; she would not look at her daughter, and the heat of it had reddened entirely one side of her face. Annabella held her tongue and hardly breathed. She had hoped for some time to hear from her mother the clearest admission; it might bring relief. There were secrets, of course, that she kept herself, and she needn’t look far to determine from whose lips she had learned the habit of concealment. ‘Well,’ Judy continued, with a laugh, ‘it has kept me busy these last few years, which is something to be grateful for, particularly as you have, by degrees, begun to give me less trouble. I found it very painful to watch you slip the reins in search of a career that I myself had had the ambition, but not the luck, to pursue. You have made a name for yourself, at least. It will “ring through the ages”; Lord Byron will make sure of it. I don’t like to think,’ she turned to her daughter now and smiled, ‘of the names he will give to me.’ After another pause, she added, ‘though I don’t suppose I was ever as drunk as I pretended to be—I mean, at my worst.’

  Annabella took up, from this strange bold speech, the quieter word. ‘I don’t pretend to understand you.’

  ‘Oh,’ her mother answered, ‘you needn’t fear for me now. At my best, I know perfectly well, I was bad enough.’

  Her own confession, in the end, depended on a respite from her mother. Sir Ralph had intimated to a few of their friends that Lady Milbanke was well enough to receive familiar visitors. Company would do her good, he wrote. She was growing tired of Sir Ralph, and Annabella, perhaps, was growing tired of them both. On Sunday, after church, the Gosfords paid their respects and stayed to lunch. It was the first time Annabella had dined in the dining room, whose views, over the gardens behind, were a little spoilt by the hothouse adjoining it. It was a house, Judy was complaining as they sat down, in which every modern convenience had been awkwardly added on without the least consideration of taste. In fact, one found in its design only a show of convenience. The kitchens had been rebuilt too far from the dining room. French doors had been added where they were not wanted; consequently, the sitting room was as cold as the cellar. The grounds themselves, which had been arranged according to the most expensive fashions, were large and variable and as bleak as a mountainside. Eight months a year they were too muddy for any respectable woman to walk in—excepting perhaps the coldest depths of winter, when the paths froze over. Annabella had guessed, by the end of this discourse, the purpose with which her mother had embarked on it, and could not help but admire her: she had wanted to set her guests at ease, that she was her old unhappy critical self entirely and required no special kindness.

  Lady Gosford had such natural tact that one never suspected her of using it, and she was perfectly willing to disagre
e with everything that Judy said. She much preferred a modern house and could scarcely recall how they ever got on without Kidderminster carpets and hob grates. Sir Ralph, meanwhile, attempted to interest Lord Gosford in parliamentary speculations. He was hopelessly behind-hand in such matters and was eager to hear etc.—a strain of talk that excluded Annabella, happily enough at first, until she began to feel in her continued quiet the rising absurd voice of neglected egoism. One might have supposed, she told herself, that a greater share of the conversation would have devolved to her: a reflection whose truth she had every reason to regret when it finally was. Lady Gosford sensed Annabella’s exclusion. As a childless woman, she declared, pleasantly enough, that she had no right, and consequently no intention, of inquiring into what she called the commonplace particulars. Such as, how often the child fed, and other questions less fit for mixed company. Instead, she wished simply to know, did the girl look like her father? How well she remembered, it was but three years ago, at their house in Piccadilly, where Annabella had been staying, their . . . excitement at dinner over the fact that one of their party had made the poet’s acquaintance. Speaking of whom, she had heard that day from the vicar’s own lips the voice of a general anxiety: when might they expect such a famous addition to their humble society? Annabella, dry-throated, just managed a tearless reply: business would oblige him to remain in town indefinitely. She kept her eyes fixed firmly on Lady Gosford; her mother was looking at her.

  Later, a due parade was made of Lord Byron’s daughter. Ada, wrapped in a blue cloth that brought out the brightness in her eyes, was handed about in the sitting room. Mrs Clermont hung unquietly back, to relieve anyone of the burden should they tire of it, until Annabella sent her away again. She was happy for once to preside as Ada’s mother. The child fell asleep in her arms, and her face, in sleep, contracted in such a way as to exaggerate her resemblance to Lord Byron: the faint scornful puckering of his lips, the stubbornness of his chin, his fresh colour. Judy, by now unaccustomed to company, was on fire with talk; at least, she was too restless to stare (as she said) at babies. She had resumed, if nothing else, the show of her old assurance and offered to lead Lord Gosford on a tour of the hothouse, the care of which had been her particular consolation in the months preceding. When Ada awoke, loudly, with her tongue in the O of her mouth searchingly stretched, Sir Ralph volunteered (quick as usual to recognize the duty of his absence) to leave Annabella to nurse the child in peace. ‘He had always been very awkward,’ he said with a laugh, ‘about babies, when they cried. He would try to reason them into tranquillity, but they preferred milk to reason.’ Lady Gosford offered to sit with her, and he helped her to push the two armchairs, which had been pulled out for company, back to the foot of the hearth.

  When they were alone together, she confessed the great pleasure it gave her to see Annabella’s mother restored. ‘It was a terrible affliction. No name did it justice; there is something shameful in the names.’ There was no shirking about Lady Gosford—that is, she wished intimately to convey that she saw no need for any shirking. Her plump shapely hands lay folded across her lap. She shifted her feet now and then to relieve her legs from the heat of the fire. Ada was nursing steadily, with that blind selfishness which always moved in Annabella the tenderest feeling of pity. What she thought was: ‘You mustn’t depend on me, little thing. You mustn’t depend on me.’ She hardly heard what Lady Gosford, who seemed determined to speak frankly on the subject, was saying—which was only that she had never admired Lady Milbanke more than she did now. ‘It must be a great comfort to you, to be reminded of the strength of purpose of which your mother is capable. I am glad to see you taking after her. Your father is the most amiable gentleman of my acquaintance. His virtues are entirely, if I might put it this way, of the winning kind. There is a softness in his manner, a willingness to please, which is, I believe, generally considered the virtue of our sex. I regret to say, however, that we have need of sturdier qualities. It is only the gentlemen who have the luxury of gentleness. Women depend . . . but my dear, what’s the matter?’

  Annabella had begun, silently and without the least air of hurry, to weep. She had never in all her life, she believed, been so talked at; and she was conscious, as she gave way to tears, of hiding behind them. Lady Gosford had retreated into the dimness that lay outside the small quiet light of her own misery. Even at the heart of it, though, Annabella knew quite well that she was raising, as brightly as she could, the flag of her surrender. They must all, she supposed now, come rushing to her; they might never let her alone. Ada continued to nurse and she continued to feed her: Annabella’s supply of milk, of tears, seemed equally deep. Lady Gosford had risen, and she sensed her approaching now, awkwardly enough, to relieve her of the child—repeating helplessly, ‘My dear, you must let me help. What’s the matter?’ It was a cruel, selfish comfort not to answer her. Annabella guessed that she might never again feel so simply, so sweetly her own affliction: she hoped by her silence to draw it out just a little longer. And Lady Gosford, at last, despaired of consoling Lady Byron herself and went out to find her mother.

  Chapter Three

  IF HER MOTHER HAD COMPLAINED previously of a ‘want of occupation’, Annabella was struck by how quickly Lady Milbanke recognized the rich seam of activity that her daughter had now opened up to her. First, the Gosfords were sent home under the cover of Lady Byron’s exhaustion. She had only just arrived from London. She was tired, and there is a kind of fatigue that can, of itself, produce an appearance of misery. Judy turned frankly to Lord Gosford in the doorway: she had learned in the past few months that one may make a habit of tears. Annabella, who overheard her, was persuaded for the first time of her mother’s complete recovery by the fact that she was willing, coldly, to make use of it as an example. Their delight, Lady Milbanke continued as she ushered them into the parlour, in Annabella’s company had led them to overindulge in it. What she wanted was nothing more than quiet and rest . . . Although, once the Gosfords were gone, Lady Milbanke dispatched Sir Ralph to his study and refused to allow her daughter to retire until she had heard from her ‘a full confession’. She had lately favoured her daughter with the most intimate confidences (there was a note in her voice both of reproach and self-reproach), and these perhaps had drowned out the gentler noises that Annabella had been trying to make. Had she been holding something back?

  Just what a ‘full confession’ would require of her was the problem that Annabella, in the midst of her distress, was forced to confront; and she was still sufficiently the wife of Lord Byron and the sister of Augusta to keep from Judy the secret of her worst suspicions. To admit to these might, in any case, deny her the luxury of a reconsideration. Fortunately, Lord Byron’s conduct had furnished her with enough material for a reasonable account of sincerest sorrow, and that is, to the best of her ability, the account she gave. Her husband had, from the beginning, freely expressed how little he was suited to the part his vows required of him, and his subsequent behaviour had only justified these professions. He had never actually beaten her. That is, he had never done so intentionally; but their great pecuniary embarrassments, and the strains on the marriage produced by her condition and, subsequently, by the birth of their child, had reduced him to a kind of madness in which the threat of violence against her was really the least of the fears she laboured under. They had practically ceased to hold any common intercourse with each other. They communicated chiefly by notes, but his state of mind was so disordered that it announced of itself, in the most explicit manner, the chaos of his unhappiness.

  She did not wish to go deeply into particulars, but she was willing to cite, as an example, the fact that during her confinement he had relieved his anxiety by breaking soda-bottles against the ceiling of his room, which lay directly under her own. She had heard them crashing beneath her; she thought they were gunshots. Annabella did not mean to suggest that his intentions towards herself had ever been murderous. It struck her on the whole as
more likely that he would injure himself. His sister’s presence in their household had the effect of goading him into a kind of intimate and demonstrable confession of the viciousness of his character. His was the sort of conscience that reproached itself as deeply for what he had imagined doing as for what he had actually done. Although—to be fair to Augusta—her patience, her gentleness, her formidable common sense, more than made up for the . . . the pressure her company produced on their mutual relations. (It was throwing Augusta, just a little, in Lady Milbanke’s way. In spite of her protestations of love, Annabella could not refrain from exposing her sister-in-law to the brunt of her mother’s curiosity. She had lifted no more than the edge of that veil—who knew what would happen if the wind caught hold of it?) In the end, that pressure had grown intolerable. She could not with any certainty declare whether she had of her own free will escaped that unhappy home, or whether her husband had deliberately dismissed her from it. These were ‘the gentler noises’ which, she discovered, in spite of her reddened eyes and sore-tipped nose, it was something of a relief for her to make.

  Supper brought the three of them together again. Sir Ralph was particularly subdued, and just shy enough of his wife’s more intimate knowledge to resign to the women the tenor of their table talk. Annabella had left it to her mother to lay at his feet the list of Lord Byron’s abuses—his menaces, furies, neglects and infidelities—and was surprised to find that nothing had yet been said. Only Judy showed much signs of an appetite, and Annabella retired, leaving her pudding untouched and pleading as excuse the fatigues, as she put it, of her ‘sudden display’. She had dined, she said with a brave ironic smile, on tears; and Sir Ralph, who disliked such airs, gave her an impatient look, not unmixed by the pain of his exclusion. She supposed it might drive him at last to make inquiries of her mother, and was gratified to hear him, after the necessary interval, storming through the house to find her, where she had decided to wait for him, in the tidy back parlour by the fire. She listened with a little smile of indulged love. ‘Bell,’ he was calling, opening and closing doors, ‘Bell, Bell, Bell,’ until he found her, with his large kindly face so puffed up that the unshaved hairs of his cheek stood on end.