Friendship and Folly: The Merriweather Chronicles Book I

by Meredith Allady

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  Chapter XXXI

  For the first part of the evening Sir Warrington had a rather frustrating time of it, longing to expound on the reasons and results of his mistaking one Merrion for the other, and mysteriously unable to do so. He alone seemed to realize that the matter had not yet been fully resolved and clarified, and that if only everybody would not distract him at the very moment when he had settled in his mind how he meant to do it, he could put it all behind him and think on something else.

  Clive at length took pity on him, and allowed the guilt-ridden baronet to shepherd him into a corner of the drawing-room and confide and excuse to his heart’s content; concluding the interview by somehow impressing on him the pointlessness of ever referring to the matter again. Clive did not, of course, feel himself bound by his own injunction, and recounted the substance of the baronet’s disclosure to a number of interested persons, first of whom was Ann, who summoned him almost directly afterward to her side with an imperative look, and a cup of sweetened tea. She, in turn, recounted it to Major Merrion, who disappointed her, by finding the explanation as amusing as Clive had done.

  “Come now,” said he, at her pensive look, “you cannot suppose she meant to mislead him. Why, Kitty is the quintessential worm-bewailer. She would no more set out to make a man suffer, than I would go canvassing for a Grenvillite. You know how fond she is of Merivale; I daresay she was merely extolling him in a universal way, and the fellow misunderstood her.”

  Ann was doubtful if even Sir Warrington was simple enough to listen to one girl’s praise of her cousin, and come away with the conviction that the girl’s sister was all but engaged to that cousin, without there being some sort of intention; but she did not like to argue with Major Merrion, and so conceded that Kitty was entirely too kind to have done such a thing on purpose.

  “It is no manner of use your murmuring dulcet agreements at me,” said he, “if in your head you are scribbling away at provisos. You may as well show ’em to me at once. I am a great hand at objecting.”

  Ann smiled, and replied, “It is only, that I think Kitty must have given him some reason to believe her cousin a rival. Could she not have done it in the belief that she was doing him a kindness, in preparing him for his inevitable disappointment? Or perhaps her own wishes in the matter manifested themselves to him, without her even knowing that they had done so.”

  He appeared rather surprised. “Does she wish for such a match, then?”

  “Oh, yes! That is, I suppose she would greatly prefer it if all her sisters were to remain unmarried, that they might one day set up a school together, after the pattern of the More’s and the Lees’; but I think she must have been forced to realize the unlikelihood of Julia continuing to evade the matrimonial net, with so many eager fishermen in the world; and from one or two things she has said to me since his return, it is clear that her cousin comes closer to meeting her standard for What Julia’s Husband Must Be than any other gentleman of her acquaintance.”

  “That is a fine compliment for any man,” said he, smiling. “Such standards must be exceedingly rigorous.”

  “Indeed, yes. He must, first, be heir to the property on which his wife-to-be and her family are living; secondly, have no intention of ever living any where else; thirdly, have no objection to her spending as much time with her family after her marriage as she did before; and fourthly, be so compliant as to fall in with the wishes of any one who will take the trouble to express them in his hearing.”

  She immediately felt rather ashamed of herself for this speech, and hastened to add, that this was merely her own estimate, that Kitty had never been explicit, and that after all Lord Merivale knew nothing of the matter and so it did not signify. Then, as Major Merrion was still looking at her in a speculative fashion that she did not at all care for, she looked across to where Kitty sat listening to a conversation between her cousin and her mother, and said, that she hoped a way could be found, to keep from Kitty the reason for Sir Warrington’s distress, which any one could see, she was entirely ignorant of having caused. “Not to mention the discomfort of others! Poor Lord Merivale! To be so immediately dismissed as a rival worthy of apprehension!”

  “’Poor Lord Merivale’ will not regard it in the least,” replied her companion; “you need not be concerned for him. What you may need to take heed of, is the behavior of Master Deauville, should it ever come to his bellicose ears that his hero was adjudged less of a threat then myself, on the basis of a few paltry inches.”

  Ann could not help smiling at the imputation that the Major’s height was the only distinction between himself and his nephew, the only feature to make the difference between arousing or appeasing a rival’s fears; but she said only, that she would go herself and warn Clive not to speak of it to Gerard.

  Clive may or may not have paid heed to her warning, which was in any case rendered entirely superfluous by Sir Warrington, who, in continued wonder at his deliverance, could not resist making, at least with his eyes, frequent and obvious comparisons between himself, or his brother, and Merivale; his beaming smiles pronouncing always his satisfaction in the result, to the depreciation of the latter. Such open narcissism would have disgusted Ann, had he not seemed as much, or more, gratified by the contemplation of his brother’s inches and appearance, as he was by his own; convincing her that his comparisons had less to do with vanity, than with heartening himself to pursue a journey, by contrasting the fleetness of his own transport, to the sorry condition of the footpad at the side of the road. His temper kept pace with his confidence, and it was not long before, being fully restored to his usual benevolence, he began to pity the hopeless state of his supposed rival, and to treat him with such marked compassion, that had it been anyone save Lord Merivale, he could not have helped but take offense.

  Illustrative of this was Gerard, who failed entirely to take Ann’s palliative view of the baronet’s behavior. Moderation was not a word with which he had much acquaintance, and he had for years irritated Margaret, by his extravagant devotion to her cousin; the question of that gentleman’s stature alone accounting for more than half-a-dozen battles with Warwickshire youths of more valor than discretion, before Lady Frances took it upon herself to lay the situation before Lord Merivale, entreating him to intervene. The result had been a letter from Hythe, inscribed to “His Impetuosity, Gerard Deauville, Duke of Valiance, Duke of Temerity, First Prince of the Bloodied-Nose, Knight of the Down-trodden, Grand Master of the Order of Thumping Ruffians, of Insolence Chastened, and of Sniggers Retracted,” which no one but its recipient was ever allowed to touch, or know the contents of, and which brought about an immediate diminution of howls and bruises in the environs of Merriweather.

  But though he had abandoned all attempts to defend his demigod’s reputation with his fists, this was not to say that he had ceased to be jealous for it. Years of being surrounded with Parrys had hammered a semblance of civility onto his outward form; but he had several times to be reprimanded for saying discourteous things about Sir Warrington after that gentleman had departed, disparaging his person and attributes in comparison not only to Merivale, but also to Mr. Parry, Major Merrion, and indeed, any created being much above the level of a garden snail.

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  Chapter XXXII

  I trust that none of my readers will have imagined, that because I have not bothered them with the doings of Lord Meravon, that he displayed the same forbearance to the Parrys; or that his abrupt departure from this narrative in chapter three, had any corresponding reality in the lives of my heroine and her family. I have before spoken, however, of the duties and privileges of authorship, and in electing to stay with his sister and her husband, in preference to Merrion House, the Earl most conveniently removed himself from the range of my concern.

  Not that he did so with any distant notion of obliging me, or any other chronicler. No, his motivation was the more immediate one, of his own comfort. The Earl suffered from a rather particular digestion, and if
he was not allowed to explain to everyone at the table, precisely how the Foxites were Ruining the Country with each remove, and follow it up with at least a minor squabble, he was forced to spend a miserable night repenting of his abstinence; or at least, so Major Merrion had once avowed, after a singularly taxing evening spent in the unalloyed company of his father.

  Furthermore, the Parrys only obeyed the unwritten law of society that children should be summoned to the table only after everything but the most unsuitable viands had been removed from it, when the number and identity of their guests rendered it prudent. For the rest of the time, they continued to take their meals as was their custom at Merriweather, as a family complete--and this did not at all suit Lord Meravon, who had rather poetical notions on the subject, and “did not consider that a person should be asked to sit down to dine until he was unable to serve as an illustration for the lines, ‘the feet hung dangling down, Anxious in vain to find the distant floor.’”

  As the owner of Merrion House, he could, it is true, have ensconced himself, and arranged everything to suit his own desires; but having succeeded (as he saw it) in getting his granddaughter to London, it cannot be wondered at it that he was reluctant to adopt a course of action that would have seen her whisked back to Warwickshire within days of her arrival.

  And so it was, that the privilege of entertaining him for the length of his stay was granted to his brother-in-law, or, more correctly, to Lady Thomasin. This suited that lady excellently well, for she yearned to be a political hostess, as some women long to be mothers, but had been given neither the spouse, nor the disposition, necessary to fulfill her ambition. Even after his frantic abandonment of science, Lady Thomasin had failed to persuade Mr. St. Bees to take any interest in attempting to personally manipulate affairs of state, or even in feeding those who did so. This was hardly surprising, given the fact that nature, habit, or domestic competition had rendered him largely inarticulate--for even when she was not present to explain what he meant by his half-framed mumblings, long years of having his slightest “mmmph” interpreted, had left him disinclined to go to the trouble of completing a sentence for himself. As for the second impediment, Lady Thomasin was not aware of its existence, as she discounted as mere jesting, any suggestion that men engaged in political matters are not the most likely class of men to flock to a place where their own eloquence, like the Egyptian’s Rods, would inevitably be swallowed up by that of their hostess. Thus, she could bemoan the disappointment of her ambition, not only free of the discomfort of feeling herself to be in any way directly responsible, but even able to forgive her husband for it. Living in a state of perpetual magnanimity, and consequently knowing herself to be a pattern-card of a wife, could not but alleviate Lady Thomasin’s chagrin; and as Mr. St. Bees did not seem to mind being regularly forgiven, it was a happy resolution--at least for them. Lady Thomasin’s chosen victims did not, however, come so well out of the matter, for, in light of her failure to lure them to her table, there was not a minister, M.P., general or admiral she did not feel at perfect liberty to buttonhole, and extract what intelligence she could, in the few minutes before he pleaded an old acquaintance or a prior appointment, and made good his escape. Nor did she make any distinction between party: she pursued both Whig and Tory with admirable impartiality, knowledge being her only requisite.

  But Lady Thomasin was no devotee of the Hunt, and she viewed all this vigorous chasing about as a poor substitute for having a statesmen trapped in a chair by courtesy and five removes; most especially, as her own method was only successful if she was so fortunate as to see her quarry before he saw her, and there did not happen to be a doorway through which he could vanish before she made her determined way through the press of people, across whose heads she had just invoked, in clarion tones, his reluctant attention. She was, therefore, always prompt to invite herself to Merrion House, whenever her brother was in town, so that her presence at Lord Meravon’s table was a risk acknowledged by all who accepted his invitations. Even so, few cared to refuse the Earl’s rather casual offers to dine, from the knowledge that both his cook and his cellar were superior, the liveliness of the company and conversation assured (though not, perhaps, its agreeableness), and also, that Lord Meravon never forgot those who declined his hospitality, and if one did not proffer a very good excuse indeed, it was highly unlikely one would ever receive another opportunity to do so. And there was always the possibility that Lady Thomasin would not choose that particular night to grace Merrion House with her person.

  But all this is merely to explain the ordinary tenor of Lady Thomasin’s activities during the Season. The year of Julia’s Presentation, was, for her great-aunt, perhaps one of the most satisfactory in her social career. Her brother was, by his own choice, resident at Pettering House, and, being himself, felt as free to issue invitations to his brother-in-law’s table, as to his own--and would have taken it just as amiss, if they were refused. Therefore, Great Men blenched, and accepted, and made sure to bring their wives and daughters, if they possessed them, in hopes of deflecting, at least to some degree, the force that was Lady Thomasin. Lady Thomasin, for her part, dusted off her husband, plotted the most magnificent dinners, and gave herself over to the full enjoyment of vying with her brother for the title of Table Imperator.

  Thus, Lord Meravon, happily employed with arguments in various houses, both Parliamentary and private, had only called on the Parrys occasionally, like a general assuring himself his troops are in order; keeping them abreast of the progress of this or that bill, of this speech or that, and relating various flattering reports of Julia which had come to his ears, always being careful to give them every opportunity to congratulate him on having been the one to bring her forth into such discerning society. Kitty’s adventure he had heard of with passing indignation, and once he had even met Sir Warrington; but it was not a meeting much marked by rapport, as its only effect on the baronet, had been to inspire him to dash off to the stronghold of the nursery to play games with Louisa and Idelette, whenever there was the slightest danger of his encountering “th’ ould lard”; and the old lord did not remember having met him at all, when his having done so was mentioned on a consequent visit. His interest in the family was briefly aroused upon the discovery that he must have been at school with Lady Lenox’s father, but further cogitations having called to mind, that he had regarded the baronet’s forebear as “a sad muffin-faced wart,” he had lost all interest in pursuing an acquaintance with his old school-fellow’s descendants.

  The coming of both his son and his heir brought a temporary end to this liberal ministry. At first, they were both pressed to come stay with the St. Bees, his lordship urging on them the blessed lack of all “nursery-clap” in that establishment, and the superiority of “intellectual discussions of national importance” over the “milky fireside twaddle” habitually served at the house in Grosvenor. Major Merrion, who professed always to come away from visiting his father with the urge to plunge his head into a bucket of icy water, was adamant, though polite, in his refusal; but Lord Merivale, who appeared to have little preference in the matter, displayed a rope-like willingness to go with whichever side pulled most vigorously, and was therefore directing his baggage to Pettering House soon after their arrival.

  The Earl allowed himself to be appeased by this arrangement, though why he should have done, Ann did not know, since Lord Merivale could never be brought to contradict any body about any thing, let alone made to quarrel:

  “Dubious is such a scrupulous good man--

  Yes, you may catch him tripping--if you can.

  He would not with a peremptory tone

  Assert the nose upon his face his own;

  With hesitation admirably slow,

  He humbly hopes--presumes--it may be so.”

  The Parrys, however, were all excessively disappointed. Lady Frances sought to retrieve their loss in some measure, by proposing a family dinner the following evening; but the Earl, no doubt thinking of dangling toe
s and the disquieting proximity of lemonade, proposed that his son, the three eldest Parrys, and Ann, should come instead to Pettering House. This counter-offer was accepted with some reluctance, and Lady Frances afterward consoled herself by making private arrangements with her aunt, that Sir Warrington and Mr. Lenox should be invited as well.