“Why, if it is not Cousin Ann!” it cried. “Girls, look, it is your dear Cousin Ann! How delightful to see her again so soon! And to think that you did not even wish to come today!”
Ann perceived that she had no choice but to emerge, and make the presentations with as good a grace as could be managed. Lady Thomasin, knowing nothing of the Robinsons, and being always pleased to extend the number of her auditors, saw no reason to fling a few civilities and then rush off as speedily as the crush would allow. Instead, coming to a halt which much incensed those who were striving to achieve the door in her wake, she was as much prepared to converse at length, as if she were in her own drawing-room.
Mrs. Robinson was all cordiality. The unequalled bliss of meeting more of Cousin Ann’s dear friends, was the only thing that could possibly have exceeded their enchantment with this charming lecture; Barbara and Georgina had been quite transported with it, and had said over and over again, what a pity it was that Cousin Ann and her delightful friends were not present to hear it as well: and now, behold, here they were after all!
The shock of this unexpected fulfillment of their most ardent wish was so great, that Miss Robinson and Miss Georgina were rendered speechless by it; and being, apparently, quite unable to find words in which to adequately express their pleasure, they made do with looking about them in a disinterested fashion, as if wondering when their mother would be done talking, and allow them to move on.
Lady Thomasin said every thing that was unexceptionable, and then took command of the talk for a time, to speak with long-flowing relish of certain interesting facts interpreted (most inaccurately, so she claimed) by Mr. Davy, giving Ann an opportunity to deduce, that if Mrs. Robinson had actually attended to the lecture at the time, she had successfully cleared its contents from her mind the moment it was over. She was not one, however, to allow her complete ignorance of a subject to deter her from expressing hearty concurrence whenever a pause allowed it, and Ann could only respect the neat fashion in which her cousin eventually ran Lady Thomasin aground, by demanding of Kitty, if she did not think her aunt a very clever woman. And when Kitty, quite horrified at being singled out in this manner, breathed her faltering assent between rapid changes of color, Mrs. Robinson was not slow to grasp the opportunity offered, but smiled and said, “She knew just how the young lady felt, having been shy herself at one time! One grew out of it, of course, but really, she thought it almost a pity--there was something so very engaging about timidity when it was attached to a pretty young girl! Did not Lady Thomasin agree?”
It is not to be supposed that Lady Thomasin’s forthright, gregarious spirit felt any real degree of sympathy with Kitty’s timid ways, but she allowed rather grudgingly that she did--if it were not taken to excess--adding, more robustly, that she had always thought it a great piece of folly for “shy, ignorant young misses” to be suddenly thrust from the schoolroom, when they were “no more fitted to carry on a sequential conversation than the nursery parrot.”
Mrs. Robinson could hardly contain her gratification. Their ideas coincided so exactly! It was quite marvelous! She appealed to her daughters for confirmation, but fortunately did not wait for them to provide it before she hastened to expound her meaning: Barbara and Georgina were so excessively shy, that she could hardly convince them to say a word for themselves, even before Family! (Those two young ladies, hearing themselves so described in accents whose mild indulgence rendered it more a commendation than a complaint, eyed their hands, and looked obligingly bashful.) All example and encouragement, continued their mother, had been in vain! They remained unremittingly modest! She was at a loss. Could she, as a loving parent, bring herself to force them out into the hurly-burly of Society when the time came, knowing as she did that such a course of action must cause their gentle, unworldly spirits untold anguish? She had almost resolved that it could not be, and that all her fond hopes in that direction must be abandoned, when her dear friend Mrs. M_____, with whom she shared her despair, had conceived a scheme whereby timid young ladies might be enabled to, as it were, dabble their feet in the shallows of society, in calm, protective surroundings, which would obviate any fear they might have of plunging in over their heads!
Lady Thomasin was civil enough to ask for particulars of this splendid scheme, and receive a rhapsodic depiction of select gatherings at which desperate families of ton, afflicted with impossibly shy daughters, assembled together in a series of informal Music Parties, fashioned after those for which Mrs. Crewe was so justly noted, in the hope that a regular exposure to strangers might bring them some relief from the more violent symptoms, while simultaneously informing their musical taste. Her exposition of the benefits derived from these gatherings was somewhat marred by her eventual admission that the first one had yet to take place, and was indeed scheduled for the coming Tuesday. A small concert was to be held at the large and elegant home of the ingenious Mrs. M_____, and the entire Robinson family was, of course, to be present.
It was upon the utterance of these last words that Mrs. Robinson was suddenly inspired to a consummate piece of officiousness, and exclaimed that she had just had the most famous notion! Would it not be wonderful if Miss Kitty were to make up one of their party? Would she not like that?
There can be no doubt, that Kitty would infinitely have preferred immediate death surrounded by flaming faggots; but even as some have infirmities which prevent them from walking, so Kitty gave every indication of having at some point contracted a wasting disease of the will, by which she was made unable to refuse a direct invitation, no matter how distasteful it might be: the word “no” need never have been invented, for all the use she made of it. The best she could do, was to whisper that “she did not know---her parents--” and direct a number of frightened glances toward her great-aunt, as if pleading for that intrepid lady to deliver her from the situation in which she had become so innocently entangled. But Lady Thomasin, lacking the imagination necessary for true sympathy with one so entirely dissimilar, remained amiably obtuse, waiting for Kitty to select her own fate.
Mrs. Robinson was too entranced by her benevolent designs to notice the acute wretchedness which they had produced, and she chattered on in reply to Kitty’s feeble equivocations, assuring her that every member of the family was welcome to come--an invitation she felt perfectly at liberty to extend, as she had been so closely concerned in the affair’s inception, that she was almost as much its hostess as Mrs. M_____, to whom, in any event, she was practically a sister. Ann could not help wondering if these last assertions contained any more truth than the one regarding the shyness of the Miss Robinsons; but Kitty, revived by the thought that, if go she must, it need not be alone, was at last betrayed by them into a disjointed, halfway definitive sentence, which might conceivably have been construed to mean that she would come if she could.
Ann fell to estimating how long it would take her cousin to persuade herself, that Kitty had begged to be allowed to join them.
**
Chapter XVI
The ride back to Merrion House lacked animation. Ann was submerged in gloom by this further instance of having been the means of bringing trouble upon her friends. Kitty was likewise silent, doubtless caught between her growing apprehensions, and her fear of appearing to insult Ann by giving voice to them. Only Lady Thomasin, irritated by the dispirited atmosphere, spoke at all, and that but to say, variously and at length, that next time she took them some where it would be to a funeral, so that she might see how their behavior differed; and to express her opinion that it would do Kitty good to go about and meet more people, and lose some of her die-away airs. Lady Thomasin “would not criticize Kitty’s parents for the world, but it had often seemed to her that they were far too lenient with Kitty’s myriad tears and swoonings! She did not mean to be harsh, but some problems must be faced, and to her mind this invitation might prove to be just the thing!”
At any other time these inopportune, but on the whole, temperate, comments would have resulted
in their proceeding along the streets to an accompaniment of quiet sobbing. But it seemed that Kitty was too engrossed by a contemplation of the dreadfulness of her future, to pay her great-aunt’s censures any but the most surface attention, and so the journey ended in tri-cornered silence.
I see no reason to dwell on the pitiful scene that followed upon Kitty’s learning that the evening in question was already promised, as far as her parents and Julia and Clive were concerned, to the family of the distant relation who had called that day, and that no hope of its being altered could be entertained, due to the limited nature of the relatives’ stay in town. All reasonable counsels by her family, that she had only to explain the prior engagement and decline the invitation with civility, were met with the desolate reminder that she had “told Mrs. Robinson that she would go if she could; and the could being still existent, she had no honorable reason to cry off.” No one, save Kitty, saw in the murmurs of conditional agreement that had been wrested from her trembling lips, a binding promise to attend Mrs. M_____’s party. She was urged to reconsider the matter; Ann was particularly earnest to persuade her that there could be no benefit to her going, when it would bring nothing but agitation to herself, and at best only a mild satisfaction to the Robinsons. Ann did not scruple to utterly sink her cousin’s reputation, by saying that Mrs. Robinson’s graciousness was all the work of a moment, a twist of paper in the fire, quickly lit, quickly extinguished: no sooner had she done pressing an invitation, than it entirely flew from her mind, and occasioned her great surprise if it was later taken up. Kitty was not at all affronted by the implication that she was easily dismissed from mind, but she would only shake her head in response to all that was said, and whisper sadly that Ann did not understand, which was no more than the truth. The pleas and expostulations of her siblings met with similarly obstinate hopelessness--and Ann began to suspect that Lady Thomasin’s homeward censures had, after all, reached Kitty, even in her misery. Had Mr. Parry or Lady Frances taken the business into their own hands and told Kitty they did not think it wise for her to go, and forbade it, Kitty would have wept with joy and gratitude at having the matter so happily resolved for her; but Mr. Parry had made inquiries, and having ascertained that Mrs. M_____’s parties were well-known for their unexceptionableness, and the respectable nature of her guests and entertainment, he perhaps deliberately left his daughter to the mercy of her own will.
Ann, being privately convinced that Kitty had been rendered more than ordinarily incapable of resistance by the memory of Lady Thomasin’s aspersions, and a subsequent feeling that to withdraw now must reflect ill on her parents, decided to confide her (Ann’s) suspicions to Lady Frances. She had every reason to suppose that her words were heeded, and Kitty reassured; nevertheless, no interdict was issued, and Kitty continued to make preparations for the day, as one disposes of one’s goods, when facing a ride to Tyburn. It at length occurred to Ann that perhaps Kitty’s parents were engaged in one of their sporadic attempts to convince their daughter that Decisiveness was not one of the Seven Deadly Sins, and that the world would not come to a sudden fiery end upon the utterance of the words “No, thank you.”
Ann came to this conclusion with dismay, for she saw clearly that, as the one whose lamentable connections had precipitated the crisis, it would be her duty to accompany Kitty as Chief Protector and Hedge, and defend her against all the appalling dangers of the evening, such as being obliged to speak to someone she did not know, or give an opinion. Faced with this dreary prospect, Ann indulged in the shameless hope that Kitty’s fears would, in the end, triumph over her principles.
Alas! Fear, for once, did not carry the day. Ann made her offer, very disappointed and cross, but concealing it to perfection--and suffered the discomposure, of being fervently embraced, and thanked as the best, the kindest friend in all the world.
And in her confusion, she entirely forgot the advisability of sending round to her cousin’s household her own acceptance of his wife’s indiscriminate invitation.
**
Chapter XVII
I come now to a portion of this narrative for which I must beg from my readers not only leniency, and the employment of a charitable spirit, but also the determination to suspend for a moment that critical faculty which is so prone to check one in the full course of fictional enjoyment, with objections such as: “It is highly improbable that the Black Monk could have strangled Aurelia in the library and five minutes afterward have been seen in the inner chamber. It is against several natural laws which at the moment I cannot quite recall. In short, I do not find this at all credible; this cannot have happened precisely as the author would have me believe.”
Now, I do not ask my reader to believe in sinister, sepulchral monks--or even in a young lady who would agree to marry a gentleman, fully understanding that he desires to wed her only that he might talk to her with greater frequency of his dead sweetheart: I merely request that when I state that the morning before Mrs. M_____’s party was spent by the Parry’s and Ann at Exeter Change, and that Ann, in her eagerness, stood and walked for many hours with no thought of the consequences, that my reader give place to both charity and credulity, and impute to her only the possession of a faulty memory, or a foolish optimism, and not a Machiavellian heart.
Often did the Parrys ask if she was tiring, and on several occasions, even when she denied it, shortly afterward Lady Frances or Julia would be quietly overcome by fatigue, and seek a chair, bearing Ann along with them to keep them company; but always was she fidgety, convinced that they rested but for her, and very soon would persuade her companion to rise and press on to the next shop, or go in search of this or that object she had heard about. She became conscious of her indiscretion before even they left the Change, but the discomfort was not yet bad, and from unwillingness both to confess her folly, and to curtail any projected pleasure of the day, agreed cheerfully, when applied to, that a necessary concomitant of spending a good deal of their own and others’ money---for they had quite two pages of articles to be purchased on behalf of those Warwickshire neighbors who seldom came to town--was a visit to a confectioner’s (Perry’s, of course), and afterwards, as they happened to be passing within a street or two of it, a brief foray into a circulating library. There, after a considerable search, Mr. Parry discovered a neglected but quite fascinating volume, and a fair quantity of dust (both of which he took back to Merrion House), Lady Frances and Julia found several acquaintances, and Ann found a seat. But it was not a very comfortable one, and in any event it was too late for a mere chair to bring much relief. It was here that she became aware of the full extent of her foolishness. It was not that she had ever forgotten her commitment for that evening: this would have been almost impossible, for the entire outing had had as its unacknowledged origin, the Parrys’ desire to divert Kitty from the contemplation of her coming ordeal. Knowing this, Ann realized the absolute imperativeness of appearing in all respects perfectly well, at least until the next morning, when her outraged frame might take what vengeance it liked.
In accordance with this resolve, when she was summoned from her abstraction by the intelligence that Mr. Parry was actually ready to depart, she rose with alacrity; stepped into the carriage with the tolerable assumption of a spring; and joined gaily in the chatter all the way home. Once at Merrion House she did allow herself the luxury of a sofa, but was always careful to keep her work, or a book, as an excuse for her position, and not to recline in an exhausted fashion, or shift about overmuch, which would have given her away at once. The result of all this careful dissembling, was that when she eventually arose, and announced brightly to Kitty that she thought it was approaching the time when they ought to dress, Lady Frances snipped off a thread, and said that if by “dressing” Ann meant for them to understand her intention of finally retiring to bed, she thought it an excellent plan; but that if Ann had any notion that she would be allowed to dress for anything else, when she could scarcely hold up a book from being in pain, then she could dis
miss it at once. Ann protested; I may even say she protested vigorously; but as she was enabled to speak only a few sentences before bursting into tears of weariness and chagrin, her protests were perhaps not very convincing. Certainly they were not heeded.
Kitty uttered no word of reproach or complaint; she accepted Ann’s apologies with gentle phrases, automatically kind. But she sat very still, and turned very pale. Bolstered by Ann’s promised company, she had been bearing up fairly well in the face of her swift-approaching trial, but at this development all her alarms returned tenfold. Once again she was urged to cry off, and eventually heartened her family by murmuring a number of syllables indicative of weakened purpose. These, however, required much more time to harden into outright denial, than was vouchsafed them in the hour or so before the arrival of the Robinson’s carriage.
Kitty’s only support was in remembering the loquacity of Mrs. Robinson. In this, she placed all her hope of getting through the evening with any sort of comfort. If she could only stay in that lady’s shadow, she thought it might be possible to reach the end of the evening, without ever being called upon for any thing other than the occasional nod of agreement.
What was her astonishment and dismay, then, upon entering the carriage, to perceive, not the dependably effusive woman whose invitation had occasioned all her distress, but only the Miss Robinsons, with whom she had not exchanged one word, and whose company she had dreaded, deeming them to have even less conversation than herself. She was never so close to retreat as in that moment when first she saw the interior of the carriage, for even under ordinary conditions the smallest change in plan was abhorrent to her; but she was already in, and the door was shut, and they were rolling away before anything could be said or done. Had the driver not been so impetuous, had he waited only an hour or two before starting, it really seems not unreasonable to suppose that Kitty would have made up her mind to stay home, and this history have had a very different ending.
Friendship and Folly: The Merriweather Chronicles Book I Page 11