Mary Or The Perils 0f Imprudence

by Catherine Bowness

  Lord Marklye, observing how matters stood, immediately engaged Mrs Porter in conversation, pointing out the charming arrangement of trees gathered into a group whose combined leaves provided such a delightful area of patterned shade, the shape of which changed constantly as the slight breeze ruffled them.

  “I would I possessed such an enchanting place to sit on a hot afternoon,” he observed. “Unfortunately, trees take such a time to grow that even my grandchildren would not benefit from my planting such an arbour.”

  “No, but you have that little wood I noticed near the lake. You could probably achieve something similar by careful felling,” Mrs Porter informed him in her practical way.

  “I suppose that must be how it is done,” the Viscount agreed on a sigh. “But I own to being quite attached to my little wood. If I removed enough trees to make a space such as this, I fear I should spoil it.”

  “Oh, well, one cannot of course expect to make an omelette without breaking eggs,” Mrs Porter agreed comfortably and without much understanding of his lordship’s feelings.

  “No,” he agreed gravely. “That is certainly one way of looking at it. The other, of course, is that, once the eggs are broken, it is too late for new life to spring from them.”

  “If we did not eat eggs, the country would be positively overrun with hens,” Mrs Porter pointed out, faithfully following his argument whilst failing to understand any deeper meaning he might have intended.

  “Then we should be able to enjoy more chicken dishes,” his lordship said flippantly. “I was not only thinking of hens – there are other birds whose eggs we eat: quails, ducks and so on. But, in truth, I was not thinking of either: I sought only to stage an argument with you.”

  “Why?” she asked, surprised.

  “To give your daughter time to speak to Sir Adrian without being conscious of us listening. They make a well-matched pair, do you not think? He can speak to her without his neck aching and she can look up to him, which will very likely encourage her to admire him.”

  “Do you think her size such a serious disadvantage?” she asked, a frown appearing between her brows.

  “Undoubtedly – and so, I am persuaded, do you. If you do not, I wonder why you go to such pains to try to make her squeeze into corners which are too small for her.”

  “What in the world do you mean?” Mrs Porter asked, now well on the way to becoming annoyed with him as well as with her daughter.

  “I have noticed that she has an unfortunate tendency to trip over things or to miscalculate distances – as she did just now with her glass - and it’s my belief that that is caused by her misjudging her own size and the space she needs to move around. In the case of the glass, she tried to make a small movement, believing it to be more feminine, and consequently did not make one large enough to reach the table.”

  “That is absurd!”

  “Just so,” he agreed coolly and passed the plate of cakes to her.

  Susan, meanwhile, found herself standing in the shade a little way from the table with her host beside her.

  “It is only a glass,” he pointed out. “And it was empty so there is no harm done.”

  “Oh, but that poor girl has been obliged to sweep up and now I daresay your set of glasses is incomplete.”

  Sir Adrian was rather surprised by such a degree of sympathy being expressed for a maid and a little insulted by the idea that his set of glasses was so small that one would be missed. On the other hand, he could see that his guest was hugely embarrassed by the accident and - since he suffered horribly from a sort of generalised mortification himself, particularly in feminine company - he was not immune to feeling a degree of pity for the girl.

  “You must not distress yourself about it,” he said kindly. “I know that, when one does something like that, one is inclined to experience the most frightful pangs of guilt and regret, but really – from the other side – it is less than nothing. Come, the maid’s finished clearing up now, let us resume our seats, and indeed our tea.”

  He led her back to the table, poured her another glass of lemonade and proffered the plate of cakes.

  She glanced at her mother, who, she was relieved to see, was deep in conversation with Lord Marklye, and took one, eating it almost surreptitiously and exceedingly fast. One moment the cake was in her hand, the next upon her plate – she stuck firmly to the principle of not eating it directly – and almost immediately it was in her mouth. The joy of eating it unfortunately did not last for long and was succeeded, not unusually or unsurprisingly, by a wave of guilt for having succumbed so readily to temptation.

  She glanced at Sir Adrian, who was observing her with a sort of amused sympathy, and flushed uncomfortably. He grinned and took another himself, dispensing altogether with the plate routine and inserting it directly into his mouth.

  “Good,” he pronounced, swallowing. “I could easily eat the whole plateful. Will you have another?”

  “I should not,” she demurred, looking with longing eyes at the diminishing pile of confectionery.

  “Why not, if you like them?”

  “Because it is greedy and I am already too big,” she said frankly.

  “I don’t think you will get any smaller by denying yourself another cake,” he pointed out. “And, what is more, I am certain you did not become tall on account of eating cakes. I daresay your father is tall, is he not?”

  “Yes. Oh, I wish I were not so big and clumsy and ugly. I did not mind so much when I was younger but the closer it gets to my come-out the more I wish I could somehow shrink.”

  “My dear girl,” Sir Adrian exclaimed, no longer teasing and full of what to her was a most surprising and unusual sympathy. “It would be absurd for me to pretend that I had not noticed that you are indeed larger than the average female, but I cannot see why that should be cause for despondency. It is in any event outside your control: you were made that way. I am very large too – and sometimes clumsy; very likely that is connected to my size. The world – and particularly furniture and little cups and saucers and so forth – is fashioned by smaller people who have made things to suit them. But you are not ugly – not by any means.”

  “Am I not?” she asked in a small voice. “You do not have to be polite, Sir Adrian. I should not have said what I did: my tongue is as clumsy as the rest of me.”

  “No, you are not,” he said quite seriously, his blue eyes scanning her face as though he were trying to decipher a map. “You are a handsome young woman,” he said at last.

  “I wish I was pretty!” she cried on a despairing note.

  “Pretty,” he said in a scornful tone, “is a description more readily applied to something or someone diminutive – a child or a baby, perhaps. So, no, I would not describe you as pretty but you are most definitely handsome. Would you rather be a little doll of a woman?”

  “Yes, oh, so much rather.”

  “Well,” he said pragmatically, “it is useless to try to be something you are not; in my experience, it will only make you unhappy. You cannot make yourself smaller whatever you do and refusing to eat a cake because you think it will make you bigger, or because you are afraid of your mama’s tongue, will not ameliorate the situation one jot. Come, have another and enjoy yourself.”

  He held out the plate again and she, not much comforted by what he had said but perhaps a little more reconciled to herself, took one.

  “Still eating cakes?” Mrs Porter exclaimed, noticing, on the periphery of her vision, her daughter’s outstretched hand.

  Susan gasped, attempted to cram the remaining portion into her mouth and, swallowing too fast and in a state of panic, began to choke.

  Mrs Porter turned red with vexation. The two men jumped up to rescue the girl, who had begun to wheeze alarmingly as she fought for breath. Sir Adrian, who had been sitting beside her, reached her first and administered a sharp blow between her shoulders which did the trick. With a sound somewhere between a groan and a cough, the crumb was dislodged and Susan saved fr
om imminent suffocation.

  “Perhaps that will teach you not to be so shockingly greedy,” Mrs Porter exclaimed, barely trying to modify her voice. She took her daughter’s arm with a noticeable absence of gentleness, “We had better go home at once before you do anything else disgraceful. I must apologise for my daughter’s conduct,” she added to Sir Adrian ungraciously. “May we have our horses please?”

  “Yes, of course, but would it not be wise for Miss Porter to sit quietly for a moment to regain her composure?” he asked, hovering awkwardly beside them.

  “Take a sip of lemonade,” Marklye advised, refilling and proffering Susan’s glass.

  “I think she has had quite enough,” Mrs Porter snapped.

  Susan, who was now as white as she had been red and had begun to shake uncontrollably, shook her head wordlessly.

  “Come with me,” his lordship said firmly, detaching her without much difficulty from her mother’s grasp and leading her a little apart.

  Susan could not speak at all. She hung her head and began once more to wring her hands. “Dear child,” Marklye said gently. “It is not yet the end of the world. It would be best not to refine upon the incident too much. Drink your lemonade and we will go home.”

  “I cannot,” she whispered. “I am determined that no morsel shall ever pass my lips again.”

  “Pray do not give way to melodrama,” he advised briskly. “Drink it and let us have no more argument.”

  Susan bowed her head and submitted to his authority, taking a small sip.

  “Finish it all,” he commanded.

  Meanwhile Sir Adrian had ordered the horses to be made ready and, as soon as Marklye returned and set the empty glass upon the table, the party moved towards the front of the house where they found their mounts awaiting them.

  Somewhat perfunctory thanks having been conveyed to their host by Mrs Porter, courteous ones by the Viscount and muttered, shamefaced but nonetheless heartfelt ones by the now shrinking Miss Porter, the three mounted their steeds and set off down the drive, waved off by Sir Adrian.

  Once they were again in the fields, his lordship suggested a gallop, thinking no doubt that rushing off across fields at breakneck speed might help to clear Miss Porter’s mind. It did, but the sight of his lordship and her daughter flying off into the distance did not reconcile Mrs Porter to the prickling shame induced by Susan’s conduct and her own disproportionate response to it. Galloping across fields and flying over five-barred gates did not, to her mind, improve the girl’s chances of finding a suitable husband.

  When Lord Marklye had hinted that Sir Adrian might be looking on her daughter with more than passing interest, Mrs Porter had at first dismissed a mere baronet as not the sort of son-in-law for whom she was looking but, by the time they left, she would have been ready to consider him a good match. Unfortunately, the girl’s behaviour had, she was convinced, precluded the likelihood of his ever wishing to see her again. She did not recognise her own part in whatever damage had been inflicted on Susan’s chances when she drew attention to what would otherwise have been judged nothing more than a mishap.

  Lord Marklye and Susan did not abandon Mrs Porter but waited patiently for her to catch up at the end of every field as they had on the outward journey.

  By the time they reached home, Susan’s face had lost its crumpled look and the uneven colour, which had distorted it towards the end of their visit to Turnbull House, had vanished.

  As it was nearing the hour for dinner, Marklye parted from his guests at the top of the stairs.

  “I should not think you will be wanting any dinner,” Mrs Porter said as she and Susan walked down the corridor together.

  “I do not,” Susan agreed with dignity, resisting the urge to argue with her mother. “Indeed, I find I have the headache and believe I shall not come down this evening. Will you make my apologies to his lordship, Mama?”

  But this did not meet with approval. Mrs Porter had no intention of absolving her daughter from the necessity to sit at the table where, Susan knew, every mouthful she took would be scrutinised for its content and likely contribution to her undesirable size.

  “If you have the headache, it is no doubt on account of the combination of that helter-skelter ride as well as the shameful exhibition of greed to which we were treated this afternoon. It would be excessively rude to his lordship, who has been unfailingly patient, to insult him by failing to appear at the dinner table. You do not have my permission to remain in your room. I shall expect you to descend, properly dressed and in an appropriate frame of mind, in half an hour.”

  Mrs Porter did not look at her daughter as she spoke; probably, Susan thought, she could not bear to set eyes on her great lump of a child.

  “Yes, Mama,” she said meekly and, wishing to escape before she was subjected to further admonishment, went into her room, shut the door and burst into tears.

  Here she was found by Meg some ten minutes later.

  “Why, whatever is the matter, Miss?” The servant was the same who had been ordered to act as chaperone during Susan’s lessons the previous day and who had not endeared herself to the girl by her insulting fidgeting and barely suppressed giggles. That very morning she had been shamelessly flirting with the dancing master while awaiting his pupil’s arrival so that, if Susan had ever been tempted to confide in the woman, she no longer had the least desire to do so. Her treatment by her own sex had not disposed her to place much trust in their intrinsic kindness; she felt almost as reviled by the maid as by her mother for, although the servant was unlikely to dare to voice her opinion, her face was only too adept at expressing her contempt.

  “I stubbed my toe,” Susan offered by way of explanation, sniffing energetically. “I should like to take a bath before dinner. Please see that water is brought up at once.”

  “Yes, Miss. Do you think you have time, Miss?” This was probably as far as the maid would dare to go to undermine her young mistress’s command.

  “There will be plenty of time if you do not waste it arguing,” Susan snapped.

  “Yes, Miss.” The maid bobbed a little curtsey which, far from showing respect to her superior, implied a certain irony. “Signor Pontielli requested I give you a message,” she added, apparently as an afterthought, as she reached the door.

  “Yes?”

  The maid put her hand in her pocket, searched around as though she had a large number of letters in that capacious portion of her dress, extracted a folded piece of paper, looked at it – presumably to make certain it was the right one - and held it out without moving from her position by the door.

  Susan, longing for the message but determined to stand upon her dignity, remained where she was. “Give it to me then,” she said as the maid continued to hold it out as though trying to tempt a dog to come close with the offer of a morsel of food.

  The maid sighed almost imperceptibly, bobbed again and advanced to put the missive into the girl’s hand. Susan stood by her dressing table, unaware that her size, when allied to an implacable manner, was positively intimidating, but relieved that she seemed at least to have won this battle of wills.

  Chapter 15

  The letter was written on one sheet of paper so thin that it was almost transparent; not quite, fortunately, for, although Susan could see the shadow of a large, black, cursive script, she could not distinguish the words from the outside and hoped the maid had not been able to decipher them either.

  Aware of the impropriety of receiving a sealed letter from the music master and terrified of incurring the maid’s scorn, she took it to the window before opening it. Here she held it up against the light and was relieved to discover that she still could not make out any of the words inside although her name was clearly inscribed on the front. The confidence displayed in those firm strokes was oddly at variance with Signor Pontielli’s habitually diffident manner. Having no knife to hand, she was forced to open the flimsy missive with the back of a comb.

  “Dear Miss Porter,” she read,
“I waited in vain in the wood this afternoon for our singing lesson. At first I thought you must have been delayed by your mama or his lordship and understood perfectly how difficult it must be for you to slip away unseen but, as the hours passed, I realised finally that you were not coming. When I returned to the house, I learned that you had gone out riding and were not expected back for some hours. I hoped, still, that you would have found time to send me a message to cancel our appointment but have received none. If you did indeed send word, pray forgive me for my importunity. I understand that singing is not something which you enjoy – although I flattered myself that you derived some pleasure from yesterday’s lesson in the wood – but I had not expected you to treat a humble music master with such disdain. Yours, with disappointment, Vincente Pontielli.”

  Susan’s emotions on reading this curious letter fluctuated wildly between astonishment, anger and joy. She had not been aware until now that she had made an appointment with Signor Pontielli; their meeting the day before had been by chance and there had not been, so far as she could remember, any mention of a further assignation. Her surprise at being accused of reneging on an engagement to which she had apparently been a party was swiftly superseded by annoyance that he had the effrontery to accuse her of breaking her word when she was certain that she had not given it, indeed had not even been asked to do so. How dare he assume that she would consent to another such meeting without any mention having been made of it? He was, it seemed to her, censuring her for her conduct in much the same way as everyone else did, although his complaint concerned a subject of much greater importance than eating an extra cake or even dropping a glass: her word. It was apparently all her fault that he had been obliged to hang around in the wood by himself, waiting for a supremely untalented pupil - and one, moreover, whom she was certain he despised - to show up.

  But eventually the tone of the letter filtered through her unsettled emotions – already fragile and confused on account of the afternoon’s shame and her mother’s impatience with her – and she felt a little lift of the heart. It seemed that he had been more hurt than angered; ‘yours with disappointment’ implied that he had been looking forward to a repeat of the informal lesson in the wood; the reference to himself as a ‘humble music master’ induced in her a feeling of sympathy: everyone, except her papa and Lord Marklye, treated her as a person of little worth, a person who should expect nothing but contempt. The tone of Signor Pontielli’s letter was anything but contemptuous; it was almost pleading and, whilst complaining about what he judged to be her ill-usage of him, contrived at the same time to hint at his previously high opinion: he had not expected her to treat a humble music master thus.