Still She Wished for Company

by Margaret Irwin

  Chapter IV

  The Clares were for the most part a family of bucolic tastes, sluggish wits, but sturdy good sense, and an inclination to stoutness in middle age. These commonplace characteristics were in general enlivened only by furious tempers that had been pampered by long indulgence and lack of opposition, also by a certain pride that people of a former time seemed to have felt in their rages as though they were a testimony to their force and originality of mind.

  There had only been two outstanding exceptions to this character of the Clares since they had acquired Chidleigh.

  Chidleigh had ceased to be a royal residence after the death of Edward VI. It passed into private hands and was finally purchased by a certain Thomas Clare, one of the new gentry who had risen in Henry VIII’s time by dint of a judicious understanding of the flexibilities of religion.

  It was believed that his name was merely that of his birthplace, the village Clare in Suffolk, and that he had in early youth been gardener’s boy at the Priory. It was certain that he was afterwards the means of wrecking that institution and evicting the monks—a service to his sovereign which brought him great wealth and enabled him to buy the place of Chidleigh, in Berkshire, at a comfortable distance from his birthplace.

  This ignominious beginning of the prosperity of the Clares was soon forgotten. Thomas Clare’s sons served with distinction with Elizabeth’s armies in Flanders, his granddaughter, Lucy Clare, became a most notable beauty at the Court of James I. Later on, she became rather too notable, for she was accused of sorcery against the King himself, but conducted her defence in Court with such eloquence and majesty and, above all, with such a potent enchantment of beauty, that none of her judges would declare her guilty, despite the witch-hunting fury of King James. So that her life was spared, but she was disgraced and ruined, and, it was believed, left England disguised as a page in the service of the Duke of Buckingham, and disappeared.

  In the village of Clare in Suffolk, there were many who shook their heads over this downfall of the upstart family’s most brilliant member. They saw in it retribution for the fate of the. Priory, and remembered how they had heard tell of old Goody Crickle, Thomas Clare’s grandmother, who had been ducked for a witch by all the villagers when Thomas was a young boy.

  But there were no other serious aberrations to mar the peaceful and fortunate course of the Clares.

  As a family that owed much to royalty they fought on the side of King Charles in the Civil Wars, but contrived very early to come to an understanding with Cromwell after the Protectorate. They were equally prompt to understand the wishes of the country with regard to the Restoration.

  Under Charles II the head of the Clares cut something of a figure at Court through his extraordinary capacity for carrying liquor. This honourable distinction to his family was, however, tarnished by a miserable younger brother, a starveling, a “filthy toad,” who had become a religious enthusiast and wrote verses about visions, which some took to be allegorical, but others considered treasonable. He was put in prison where he made the acquaintance of a low fellow called Bunyan and became confirmed in his tedious notions.

  After his release he went abroad, no one knew where, and was believed to have become a kind of hermit, living in solitude and shunning all women. His family collected all the copies of his verses with laborious care and burnt them, and the matter was gradually allowed to pass into oblivion.

  His was the only example of eccentricity for more than a century. No other Clares wrote verses, even of the most light and worldly nature, nor plays, nor anything at all. Nor were they ever “enthusiastic” either in religion or in politics.

  Lucian Clare, the head of the family in Queen Anne’s reign, showed at a suitable moment an intelligent interest in the Hanoverian succession and was created First Baron Chidleigh.

  From that time on they remained staunchly and safely Whig in principle and Tory in spirit, lived on their estates, supported the Church and the local sports, hunted and drank a great deal, planted trees in the park, and occasionally had a hobby for gardening.

  Robert Clare, the late Lord Chidleigh, deviated slightly in his youth from the regular course by setting up for himself in a town house in the fashionable quarter of Soho. He did this primarily as the result of a quarrel with his mother, whose ferocious silence in anger had procured her the nickname of the Basilisk.

  Robert’s rages knew no such chilling restraints. He was a big, cheerful, floridly handsome man, popular enough in the town, where he was nicknamed Robin Goodfellow and known as a roaring blade, a good boy, a lad of mettle, and, with the ladies, by such endearing terms as filthy creature or agreeable toad. For, in this urban retreat from his mother, he proceeded, as he announced, to “harry the old b——” by his extensive dissipations.

  His mother’s counter-stroke was to prepare and educate a wife for him. She chose a healthy, high-coloured girl, with some spirit but more sense, one Harriett Clavering, whose family was older and more distinguished than the Clares, though not so prosperous, and instructed Robert that if he did not marry her, he should forfeit his mother’s fortune, no inconsiderable sum.

  Robert, like most of his family, had a sound instinct for the winning side. He capitulated to his mother and married Harriett, who thus enjoyed the distinction, envied by all her friends, of marrying a fashionable rake in order to reform him. A year after the event, Robert’s father broke his neck in the hunting field, a circumstance that annoyed his son, as he would not have surrendered to the women had he dreamed he would so soon inherit his father’s estates. He continued to live in the town and quarrel with his mother.

  The Dowager, however, was well pleased with her policy. She decided that she could not have made a better choice for her son. The new Lady Chidleigh modelled herself on her mother-in-law in all matters of careful housewifely management, in her sedate imperturbability when any of the males saw fit to lose their tempers and their senses, above all, in her superb air of indifference to all that she felt it better not to notice. She had need of this last quality in the early years of their married life.

  But Robert’s bitter disappointment in his first child, Lucian, brought him to his senses. His own sturdy health seemed to be no whit impaired by the life he was leading, but the baby was miserably weak and puny, a lifeless little object—“just like a little old man.” That was what his plain, silly, unmarried younger sister, Emily, kept saying in her high chirruping voice and laughing as though it were a piece of wit. “O, la, such an odd child, so shrivelled and fatigued, and won’t look at a rattle— just like a little old man.”

  “Emily, you are a fool,” said the Dowager, and Emily would offer up an assenting silence for five minutes and then say it again or some observation. equally exasperating to those concerned for the heir of Chidleigh. Robert’s chief hope for his heir was that it would die, but this it obstinately refused to do. In spite of doctors’ and nurses’ predictions, in spite of the medical treatment of the time, the baby went on living, though it cannot be said to have thrived.

  Robert let the house in Soho, where he had lived chiefly since his marriage, retired to Chidleigh, and reformed in good and almost sober earnest.

  He was rewarded by the birth of a fairly robust daughter. But what is a daughter? She was christened Frances and called Fanny at once by her mother, who made up her mind in the first week of Fanny’s life exactly what her future would be. Fanny would be her help and companion, Fanny would run by her side, hanging on to her skirts as she inspected the still-room and the linen room and went about her household duties, Fanny would prattle to her as she stitched at her first sampler, and repeat Watt’s hymns at her knee, and later on Fanny would make a good, comfortable match with a very worthy man who had not been a rake, and come and stay at Chidleigh with all her children.

  Fanny, an obedient girl, did all these things.

  Meanwhile, after two more years, George was born, and, a year later, Vesey—two fine boys, true Clares, fine healthy children who r
oared in their cots, and broke their toys and, later, each other’s heads. Vesey was a particular favourite. He was such a beautiful child, as large as George who was a year older, and with a sweeter nature. He was spoilt by everybody, but kept his pleasant sleepy smile and let George take and smash his things, with only rare outbursts of fury. “What a pity he is not the eldest,” everybody said, and Vesey thought it, too, though not as much as George thought it for himself.

  Lucian called them “the little boys” and refused to play with them. Nor would he play with his sister Fanny, though he once or twice frightened her into fits by telling her ghost stories. He was an odd, sneering, unchildlike being, secretly nervous of horses though no one ever knew it, and he overcame this before he was twelve years old.

  He had outgrown his early delicacy, and was never ill after the age of three. But his father had not outgrown his dislike of the boy as his heir. Lucian was not “a true Clare.” He remained slight and colourless, his hair of that dull hue which is called black because it is no other colour, but is really almost green, the greyish green of dead leaves. His eyes were of the same nondescript no-colour, and though often bright enough, they were small and slantingly set, unlike the large, clear-coloured, finely set eyes of the Clares. People called him ugly and “twisted-looking,” though his bright glance and quick, graceful movements often struck his mother as charming. But she did not say this to her lord, whom it would have certainly displeased.

  Juliana was not born until four years after Vesey. A good deal of attention was paid to her as the youngest and almost unexpected arrival; and later, because she showed greater promise of beauty than Fanny. Her father, whenever he happened to notice her, called her his poppet, his sweet angel, his pretty rogue.

  She was not as strong as her sister—a tiny, fragile creature, crying very easily, and as easily made to laugh through her tears, starting at noises, caressing and liking to be caressed, running about the great rooms and gardens, with her head thrown back, and her eyes gazing upwards at all the marvels above her head with an air of delight that was almost ecstasy.

  It was not an age of child-worship, but there were several who felt an involuntary catch in their breath when they saw that strangely rapt smile, as though it were enchanted by some secret vision of loveliness. Aunt Emily explained it by saying she was not long for this world.

  Young Mr. Daintree, of Crox Hall, was one of these admirers. He called Juliana his fairy and did his best to spoil her with presents of sugar plums and little books with pictures, in which all the good children died early but peacefully and all the bad ones died later but miserably. He gave her these long before she could read, so as to coax her into a glance at him. But she was very shy of visitors and would hide her face behind mamma’s skirts or sister Fanny’s shoulder, and only peep at him when she thought he was not looking.

  Before she was four years old, Mr. Daintree brought home a beautiful young wife to Crox Hall and ceased to pay his former sweetheart so much attention. Aunt Emily said a dozen times a day how much devoted he was to his wife. It was very sad that she died after two years, and now Aunt Emily said twenty times a day that poor Mr. Daintree was inconsolable.

  Grandmamma Chidleigh said he had seemed inconsolable for some time before his wife’s death, but that no doubt was merely the result of exasperation with her daughter’s repetitions. In any case, he did not marry again, which proved to everyone his devotion and inconsolability.

  Vesey’s nose was put out of joint to some extent by Juliana, but he never appeared to notice it and his good humour continued unabated. He frequently enjoyed having a little sister to patronize, and protect from George’s bullying inclinations. And Fanny adopted her as her especial charge from the very first. The equilibrium of Fanny’s nose was not disturbed by this new star. She had come already to fill her own place in the household at Chidleigh, a very necessary and ease-giving place.

  “Dear Fanny is so dependable,” her mother would say when Fanny had staved off bloodshed between her brothers, or rescued Juliana from the staircase, or heard the younger boys their lessons, particularly Vesey’s which required to be heard very often. Yet she was never fussy nor disagreeably “managing” nor a tell-tale.

  Once, indeed, she told, but it was on an extraordinary occasion, so extraordinary that Juliana, though very young at the time, always remembered it. She had been brought down to the drawing-room to play and was enjoying the glorious privilege of riding on papa’s foot while papa whooped with delicious, terrifying sounds as though he were calling to the hounds in the hunting field, and mamma chanted the necessary accompaniment—

  “Ride a cock horse

  To Banbury Cross

  To see a fine lady

  Ride on a white horse.”

  The door was opened quickly, but not flung open, and Fanny stood in the doorway, very pale, with a thin trickle of blood on her cheek, and said

  “If you please, papa, George is holding Lucian’s head in the grate and is trying to put it into the fire.”

  Papa sprang up with a roar like a bull, tossing Juliana into mamma’s lap where she buried her face in a sea of blue satin and wailed lamentably.

  Lucian’s head was rescued at a moment when it was all but touching the burning logs and his face was scarlet. George’s reason for his conduct was that they had fought because he had told Lucian he ought to be heir and he was going to be. Fanny’s cheek had been cut by the fender in her efforts to separate them when they reached the stage of rolling on the ground near to the fire. Vesey had refused to help her, because, he said, Lucian began it by teasing George “very unkindly.” Fanny, on appeal, admitted that Lucian had been extremely tormenting. Lucian said nothing.

  Papa flogged all three boys, giving the lion’s share to George. But it was Lucian who most disgusted him. Here was the boy, twelve years old, and George, at nine, had proved himself his superior in strength. Certainly George was right, and it was he who ought to be heir.

  Lucian, however, grew more tough and wiry as he grew older, though he never attained to the massive strength of his brothers. And as they all grew older, the quarrels between him and his brothers became less and less, though they did not grow to like each other any better. Lucian would still occasionally mock and torment them so that they became scarlet with confused rage, but they now very seldom attacked him. Also, it now appeared that George and Vesey avoided him rather than that Lucian avoided them. They said nothing against him, either behind his back or to him, but they were shy and sullen when asked about him and when they were with him.

  As for Juliana, Lucian took no more notice of her than of anyone else. He was a dull boy. He did not care for his brothers’ sports, but neither was he studious. His tutors all declared that he had “parts” and all despaired of his “application.” It was evident that there was nothing to which he cared to apply himself. He would sit at his lessons, weary and indifferent, paying no attention to his tutor’s words nor to his father’s rages when his conduct was reported to him, and apparently as indifferent to punishment as to anything else.

  During those long hours in the library, while George and Vesey would patiently exert their sluggish brains in a painful effort to master some part of their labours so as to leave them the sooner for the stables or stolen visits to the cock-pit, Lucian would sit motionless, not looking at his book nor at anything else, until his eyes had a fixed and glazed expression that made them appear as dull and blank as pebbles, set in a lifeless image.

  It made no difference that he was flogged, that he was made to stay in the library to do his lessons for hours after the younger boys had left. They would rush out through the long door-windows on to the lawns and down through the gardens, clearing the terrace steps in great leaps that sent them tumbling over at the bottom, shouting with joy at their release, calling to their dogs, to the grooms, to old Cousin Francis who was an old booby, an old put, but was still useful for making a mayfly or a whip lash, just as he had used to serve them in more childis
h days by making them boats and catapults. He would come grumbling out from his sheltered seat in the sun to meet their demands, but all the same, he liked these fine young animals who bullied him and ordered him about. He had not yet had his illness which left him tired and very old, too old to care about any young people except his own, who had died over thirty years ago.

  One day, when she was about nine years old, Juliana stood for a little while at a corridor window, watching the younger boys as they swaggered about in the sunshine and shouted their imperious wishes to the old man in the snuff-colored gown and turban, and then turned away and crept down the stairs at the end of the corridor, and saw Lucian sitting alone in the library, which his exhausted tutor had temporarily left, sitting alone at the table looking at nothing. She had stolen in with a cake under her apron, having heard that he was to have no dinner, and seeing him there she had turned and begun to creep out of the room again, afraid, she did not know of what. But he turned his head quickly and called her, in a quick low tone, and she came up to him and held out the cake.

  “For you, brother,” she said.

  At that, he gave her another swift, bird-like glance, and smiled, and it was just as though the stone satyr on the terrace had become alive, for the corners of his mouth, which always curled upwards a little, went up in a sharp curve, and his rather crooked eyebrows slanted quickly upwards, and the eyes beneath them twinkled so very brightly that it seemed they had only just come there for the first time in place of two eyes of stone. Her own eyes remained lowered, but she felt his upon her and wished he did not look at her so intently. He teased her to look at him, but she would not. Lucian had scarcely ever noticed her sufficiently to tease her. She wished she had not come.