Friendship and Folly: The Merriweather Chronicles Book I

by Meredith Allady

  This withdrawal from its pleasures, by one who had so brightly adorned them, naturally provoked a storm of protest from the World. Lord G_____, perhaps recollecting having seen Miss Parry’s name on his wife’s list of those to receive invitations to her ball, and meeting with Lord Meravon on the steps of the House soon after it had taken place, graciously thought to congratulate him on how well his granddaughter had looked, appearing as fresh at the ending of the evening, as she had at the beginning, despite having never been allowed to sit down for even one dance. The Earl was highly pleased by this report, and triumphantly passed it on to the Parrys, who received it with modest incredulity, before hastily turning the conversation; agreeing solemnly among themselves, after he had departed, that a powerful imagination was really a desirable attribute in a minister of state, and that it would have been a rather remarkable occurrence, if Julia had been knocked up at the end of an evening, when she had done nothing more strenuous, than play a song or two on the pianoforte, and laugh till her head ached, over Mr. Parry’s reading of The Apprentice. And no less a personage than Mrs. D_____, happening to meet with Lady Frances at a Bazaar, playfully scolded her for missing a wonderful dinner, before launching, without pause, into a detailed description of those who had come, everything that has been said, and everything that had been served.

  Even Lady Thomasin was moved to note, that she did not recall having seen her great-niece at an assembly the night before, and to wonder how she could have missed her.

  “Very easily, ma’am,” replied Julia, smiling. “I was not there! We spent a most comfortable evening at home. Sir Warrington sang for us after tea, and mother showed Miss Denbigh how to make a new kind of stitch.”

  “This is gaiety indeed!” exclaimed the other. “Ah well, I suppose that those who spend most of their time in the country, have greater difficulty in adapting themselves to the more vigorous life of the town. Ha! I do believe it might have been so with me at the first--but now I can stay up all night, and never feel the least ill effects. Ha! Ha! It will be the same with you, I have no doubt. Each Season will see you accustomed a little more quickly, until one year you will find that you can arrive one afternoon, go shopping all the next day, and attend a ball that same evening, without any extraordinary weariness.”

  “Thank you, but I really do not think I have the constitution to support such a regimen of delights. We cannot all have your vigor. Besides, I have come to the conclusion that Mrs. More is perfectly correct, and that ‘no woman takes so little interest in the happiness of her real friends, as she whose affections are incessantly evaporated in universal civilities; as she who is saying fond and flattering things at random, to a circle of five hundred people every night.’”

  “Ha! Ha! What a wit that woman has! I remember I read her first play aloud to St. Bees, and we both agreed, that Sheridan could not have done better. Well, it is an art; it is an art, indeed. ‘A circle of five hundred’! Ha! I am sure I do not talk to half so many people, most nights! But there, St. Bees has never been quite the figure in society that I could wish--he cannot help it--I was saying to Julian just last week--But wait! My dear, I was forgetting your grandfather! He is certainly--Ha!--under the impression that you are gadding about town and spending his allowance to you in an appropriately wasteful manner, as befits a young lady making her come-out. Ha! Ha! And instead, here you are disporting yourself in frugal domestic comfort! He will not understand---he will shout--to be sure, he will shout!” The thought did not appear to alarm her unduly, for coming of the same stock, Lady Thomasin possessed the nerves, and lungs, both to withstand, and match, any display of her brother’s.

  “I do not see how he can justly complain,” replied Julia coolly. “I have come to London; I have spent his money (the dressmaker’s bills for that first month, must have been all his heart could wish); I have eaten countless dinners whose only recommendation was the appearance of the plate on which they were served; I have danced with any number of agreeable gentleman, and many more who were not; I have lost a great deal of sleep, and raised a positive courtyard of blisters, in the noble pursuit of amusement. And I have been given to understand, that I have even succeeded in making several persons extremely unhappy, at least for a time, by either refusing to do one thing, or unconsciously doing another. So it does not seem to me, that I have neglected any part of his program. I have now only to depart next month, leaving the inhabitants of London to recover from the shattering effect of my absence, as best they can:

  “’No more shall hapless Julia’sears

  Be flattered with the cries

  Of lovers drowned in floods of Tears,

  Or murdered by her eyes.’ ”

  She ended in a tone very dry indeed, for it had not escaped her notice, that even the Greenlings, who had almost to a man declared themselves to be so wholly devoted to her, as to be unable to survive a day without the sight of her to enliven them, had begun to trifle with their health in a most reprehensible manner.

  It has long been a source of grief, especially to the mothers of the world, that most reasonably hearty young men, can not be brought to believe in the fact of their own mortality, and expose themselves heedlessly on hunting fields and in gambling establishments, and all manner of hazardous entertainments. The Greenlings proved to be no different. Despite their acknowledged dependence on Miss Parry, most of them cared so little for their own health, that they could not long be bothered to direct their curricles and coachmen to Grosvenor, once she removed herself from the frequent notice of Society, and there was no longer any chance of her affording them gratifying occasions to crow over their rivals, upon the acquisition of a coveted dance, or her company at supper.

  Of course, it is possible that in saying this I do these gentleman an injustice, and the reason they gradually ceased to clutter up the drawing-room at Merrion House with their lovelorn persons, was that they actually did grow so rapidly enfeebled by her absence, as to be unable even to make their coachmen understand them, their last dying words, barely heard by the physician, being: “Tell John---Grosvenor!”

  But Ann, for one, did not believe it, for she read the newspapers with great assiduity, and had never seen any mention of a puzzling increase of fatal declines among promising young men of fashion.

  **

  Chapter XXX

  It was but a week or two after Lady Lenox’s dinner, that Major Merrion and Lord Merivale were both granted a brief leave, and Merriweather being destitute of relations, they proposed spending it in town, and more specifically, at Merrion House. The Parrys were all cast into a state delightful anticipation by this news; news that caused Ann, at least, to give thanks that Miss Denbigh’s aunt possessed such fixed notions on the duties of guests to allow themselves to be entertained. Ann had no objection to make regarding Mr. Hayden, whose only social flaw, as far as she could judge, was a tendency to tell rather long anecdotes, which might have been interesting in themselves, if he had not habitually included so many superfluous descriptions as to cause his listeners frequently to lose sight of the main point of his narrative; but subsequent encounters with his ward had done nothing to alter her initial impression, which was, that Miss Denbigh was a distinctly tiresome creature, who had been better left at home with her hens. Talk of books, of policies, of speeches and sermons, of abolition or inventions, or witty talk about nothing in particular--in short, the usual intellectual fare of the Parry dining and drawing rooms--held little interest for such a mind as hers. She continued to require, or at least secure, the support of Julia or Lady Frances or someone, lest she spend a “very dull time” at Merrion House. Clive had, perhaps, discovered the best method of dealing with her, for he took her measure at once, and thereafter, whenever he became trapped in conversation with her, was sure to find a way to lure Sir Warrington into it as well; waiting only to see them happily embroiled in some subject that suited them both, before eliminating himself from the equation.

  Ann did not doubt of Major Merrion (if not, perhaps
, his nephew) being able to dispose of Miss Denbigh in this same fashion; but far better, that he should not be plagued with her at all. She gave Mr. Hayden credit for the firm but genial fashion, in which he pleaded the prior claims of the barbaric aunt during the gentlemen’s projected stay, and was only rather sorry, that there was no hope of sweeping Sir Warrington out of the way for the duration of it at well; especially, as the mere mention of their coming, provoked him to loud and quite unaccountable anxiety. He could not disguise it--indeed, it was never noticeable that he even tried to do so--and bounded out of his seat, to walk about the room in a distracted fashion, ejaculating various phrases that began with “O”--as “O dhare!” “O murther!” “O hivvens!”--deaf to all entreaties for an explanation. At length, becoming aware that every eye was fixed on him in astonishment, he stopped, and grasping his hair as if it were a wig he was desirous of wrenching from his head, he exclaimed, “Oi mist tale Paddy!” and bolted out as if afraid someone would leap on him to prevent it if he departed at the normal rate.

  After a moment, Kitty put forward the suggestion, that perhaps he was upset because the visitors were “sodgers,” and it was cautiously admitted, that having lived through the uprising, he might possibly mistrust any one in a red coat--but no one found this very credible, and the discussion soon moved to the problematical Paddy. Since no one had ever liked to ask after him, and as they had waited in vain for Sir Warrington to mention the man again himself, they remained as ignorant of his status and person, as they had been the day of the baronet’s first visit to Merrion House.

  Sir Warrington returned at the dinner hour, full of unexplained sighs, and arrayed in a coat of unexampled insubordination, and a countenance of Learlike tragedy. All Lady Frances’s concerned inquires produced nothing but deeper sighs, and the intelligence that “Paddy” had proven singularly unsympathetic, his consolation consisting of a single phrase in an outlandish tongue, which, when translated for them by Sir Warrington, seemed to be a proverb to the effect that, “If a man reaches for the largest potato, he must expect to get stuck in the back of the hand with a fork.”

  They did not dare laugh in the face of his obvious misery, but the solemn tone in which he uttered this bucolic epigram made it difficult, and no one dared press the matter further to ask precisely what he or his Paddy meant by it.

  Mr. Lenox, arriving for tea, appeared undisturbed by whatever apprehensions beset his brother, though it was clear, from the deliberate normalcy of his behavior, that he knew all about it, and also, that he did not mean to share his knowledge with others, deeming it a subject best ignored. The Parrys were quick to follow his lead, and it would have needed a stronger temper than Sir Warrington’s to preserve his megrims in the face of such general complacency. He still sighed on occasion, and gazed at Julia as if she were the last flower of summer whenever he remembered to do so; but he no longer sat like Patience on a monument; and when Julia suggested he sing to her accompaniment, he agreed with no small share of his customary enthusiasm. The Parrys had long discovered his fondness for this pastime, and indulged it whenever they could, for he had a fine, large voice, which found the right notes without apparent effort, and his lack of instruction became manifest only in those passages where it is left to the ingenuity of the performer to discover a place to breathe, if breathe he must. Julia herself had only a modest singing ability, but she could play ballads and ditties by the hour in accompaniment, and never grew flustered when her vocalist began on the wrong measure, or forgot the words, and then foolishly tried to retrieve them. Sir Warrington made a slight difficulty over the choosing of the first song, but with the opening chords all captiousness fled, and thereafter he warbled with increasing cheerfulness of desponding shepherds and cruel-eyed maidens, and sweethearts returning nae maire.

  The gentlemen’s arrival next day, and their reception, were sufficiently characteristic to provoke Ann to amusement. Major Merrion sprang out at once without employing the step, as if his limbs, so long compressed, had suddenly uncoiled at the halting of the carriage, and ejected him; but though he was the first to emerge, it was Lord Merivale, descending in a statelier fashion, who received the mad, scampering rush of his young relatives’ welcome. It is true that Julia, coming with slightly more dignity, and not being immediately able to reach Lord Merivale for the barrier of her siblings, did, in fact, greet her uncle before her cousin; and that Clive paused to direct a “Howeryousir,” at Major Merrion before grasping his cousin’s hand and attempting to wring it off while he told him a hundred and one things in as many seconds. But it is doubtful if Kitty even saw her uncle standing there to the side; and as for the youngest children, not even the faithful instruction of their parents was yet sufficient to cause them to rate the claims of mere dutiful politeness over that of joy.

  Had it been anyone but Major Merrion who was thus slighted, Ann would have felt anxious and dismayed as she approached, sure of his displeasure. But he never seemed to think of his own deserts, and begrudged his nephew the younger Parrys’ affection no more than he seemed to begrudge him Lord Meravon’s title and estates. When he saw Ann approaching he stepped forward to meet her, laughing, and shook her hand heartily, asking what she thought of his notion, that next time his nephew intended a visit, lottery tickets ought to be issued beforehand, and then everyone granted access in strict rotation, as their numbers were drawn.

  In the excitement and joy of their coming, Sir Warrington and his proverb were temporarily forgotten. The fact that he himself was not present, pressing his gloomy face against the glass in conjunction with the rest, Ann put down solely to Mr. Lenox, who had implacably reminded him the night before, of their having a previous engagement; which she was privately convinced, of Mr. Lenox having engaged them for only just that moment in his head. The night following, however, Mr. Parry had persuaded them both to come to dinner, and then everyone remembered to be anxious, and to wonder, as they awaited the carriage, if Sir Warrington should have recovered his spirits. Major Merrion found their anxiety diverting, and declared his impatience to meet the fellow whose childish moping could put them all into such a pother. Had he seen a grown man come to dinner bringing along his uninvited gripe, he would have known what to think of him.

  “You do not understand,” said Lady Frances. “It is so unlike him! He is always the happiest boy!”

  Major Merrion looked askance at this denomination, for he had been given facts and figures, and was aware that the baronet was nearly two-and-thirty, five years older than he was himself. But Sir Warrington’s face, as he entered the drawing-room, was certainly enough to reassure the Major as to his sister’s judgment, for his expression and bearing was exactly that of a small boy who has been made to dress up nicely, and be civil to his aged relations, and pouting because he has been made to wash behind his ears. He scarcely had a glance to spare for the Parrys. Even Julia might have been an inkwell, from the way his eyes passed over her, and went straight to the Major, who was leaning against the mantle-piece, looking particularly striking in his scarlet coat. Aside from Sir Warrington, he was quite the tallest gentleman present, and Ann thought perhaps it was this circumstance that accounted for the look of hostility---or if not hostility, certainly something very like it--which immediately suffused the baronet’s face, and glared from his eyes. She wondered momentarily, if Kitty’s surmise had been correct after all, and felt a stirring of apprehension; a feeling evidently shared by others, for Mr. Lenox, coming through the door and seeing his brother’s truculent stance, laid a hand on his arm, even as Lady Frances bravely stepped forward between her brother and her guest, drawing Lord Merivale with her as she did so--possibly with the thought, that if anyone could find a soft answer to turn away wrath, it was he--and made haste to introduce them. Sir Warrington was so busy frowning at Major Merrion (who was, Ann saw, having difficulty in refraining from laughing; and probably, from getting into the spirit of the contest, by crossing his eyes, or taking a sight with fingers to nose), that he did not at fi
rst make any response to this presentation. Then, all at once, Lady Frances’s words must have reached that portion of matter between the baronet’s ears where the seat of intelligence is popularly supposed to reside, and his gaze shot around to her, and then, with a look of incredulity almost stage-like in its perfection, down at Lord Merivale. For a stark moment he was absolutely silent, and then he cried,

  “Ye’re Lard Maryvail? Not” (with another wary look at Major Merrion) “him?”

  And without waiting for their confirmation, he whipped around still further to face his brother in great excitement, and was beginning to utter who knows what horrific indiscretion in the relief of his feelings, when Mr. Lenox forcefully cut across his speech with “Yes, I can see that,” at the same moment that Clive, who was the only other person to understand any of the words contained in Sir Warrington’s aborted speech, exclaimed in astonishment, “Paddy! Does he call you ‘Paddy’?”

  As a diversion, it could not well have been improved upon. Confusion, explanations, further explanations, laughter, more explanations, were all the next ten minutes had space for, particularly as almost everyone in the room was concerned to bury the matter of one mistaken identity, as far as possible under the verbiage of the other.

  Mr. Lenox, being ignorant of all the speculations that had gone before, was at first slightly startled by Clive’s eagerness. “Yes, why should he not? It is my name--although it is true that my mother declines to address me by it, and has, I understand, extracted a promise from Warrington that he will not do so either, at least while we are in England, where it somehow strikes her as being particularly dissonant. If this is indeed the first time you have heard it, it would seem that he has kept his promise with quite remarkable fidelity.” Here Sir Warrington looked rather abashed, as though he felt the indignity of having made such a commitment, and knew it deserved the reprobation of his brother. However, Mr. Lenox’s tone held no censure, and he continued his explanation with apparent amusement, “You must not think that my mother’s antipathy for the appellation is of some trifling or recent origin, for it predates my birth. A few months before my arrival in this world my father’s half-brother returned from the West Indies and took an instant dislike to his very English sister-in-law. He set himself to be as Irish as possible, and also began to throw out strong hints that, should the coming child be a son, and this son named after him, he might feel very much inclined to make such a pleasingly-denominated nephew his sole heir. As he was a bachelor possessed of middle years, moderate health, and supposedly fabulous riches, my mother, after much heartburning, agreed that I should be called Padraig after him, and Edmund after one of her own brothers. Uncle Paddy, of course, insisted that his name should have precedence--and though I do not imagine that this trifling connection between us can have had any great degree of influence on his affections, he was always exceedingly kind to me, and did indeed make me his heir. However, as his fortune was discovered to be adequate rather than fabulous, I expect my mother would have considered my name an ill bargain at twice the amount.”