Still She Wished for Company

by Margaret Irwin

  Then he pulled towards him a book that lay open on the table and translated a sentence to her. She was too confused to notice the words, but he read them again and made her repeat them. Twisting her flowered silk apron round her fingers, blushing, miserable, she repeated hesitatingly in a whisper, that “the passions and affections of the soul may have a powerful effect through the eyes and glance upon other persons, that some men hurt little and tender children by looking at them, that it is even possible one might injure oneself by reflection of one’s gaze.”

  “Do you, then, agree with Plutarch, and so refuse to meet my eyes?” said he. “But according to him your glass is equally dangerous. Well, Juliana, where then will you look?”

  She looked into the roses and apples on her apron and two tears fell down into it. She only knew that Lucian was being very unkind.

  “My sweet fool,” he said, and kissed her.

  But as soon as she could, she ran out of the room.

  Not long afterwards, it was decided that Lucian should travel and see if the grand tour would succeed in displaying those “parts” which so far he had managed to conceal. He was taken to the town and came back a few weeks later with the appearance of a grown man. His lank, dull hair was curled and powdered, Lady Chidleigh noticed with pride that his hands, now they were well-tended, rivalled her own; he held his head high with an assured and easy air of command; his dress, though sober, was rich and curious. He had a fondness for dark or neutral colours, grey or green, or purple that was nearly black, that contrasted with his father’s and brothers’ love of bright colours. Vesey, who had begun to pay attention to his good looks, was particularly fond of reds and light blues, showing off his clear, ruddy skin. He was the handsomest of the family and meant to live up to it. But when Lucian returned from London, everyone, while still calling him ugly, admitted he was elegant.

  “Vastly elegant,” twittered Aunt Emily, “more elegant than his brothers,” and never noticed Vesey’s deep flush of angry jealousy.

  It was surprising what a few weeks in the town could do. What would not travel do?

  So he departed on his travels, followed by a good many hopes, expectations and fears, by some ill wishes and by the new, submissive tutor, who seemed so singularly inappropriate in his capacity of bear-leader at the heels of this superb youth.

  He departed, and a sigh of relief went up after him. The house was much quieter, as even a child like Juliana could observe, after the quietest person in it had left.

  Lord Chidleigh still went into rages over people like the traitor and profligate, Mr. Wilkes, but that was not nearly so disturbing as his former constant outbursts against his eldest son.

  George and Vesey lost the embarrassed, half-worried, half-furtive air they had occasionally had as boys, and grew up into splendidly stupid young men. They still frequently quarrelled and came to blows, but this did not prevent nor embitter their constant companionship.

  Fanny and Juliana had lessons with an elderly tutor and a French governess, read and sewed with mamma, played and drew and rode together and with their cousins, Charlotte and Sophia.

  The household was peaceful and happy, not much disturbed by Cousin Francis’s long illness, from which he unexpectedly recovered. Everyone was surprised to see him about again; it seemed that death, like everyone else, had overlooked him.

  Lord Chidleigh’s gout increased so much that he often could not leave his chair for days together and grew exceedingly stout. He became greatly concerned with the immorality and irreligion of the present day and swore blasphemously in his indictments of it.

  It was thought that the apoplectic seizure that brought about his death was due to his fury at the reports he had received of Lucian’s conduct. These were the cause of that terrible spectacle already mentioned, the spectacle that Juliana would never forget, of her father hobbling into dinner at a time when the gout did not really permit him to walk, in order to denounce his eldest son to all of them, and tell them that he had forbidden him the house for as long as he lived. That proved to be less than a fortnight.

  Shortly before that denunciation he had startled his wife by the remark that he was afraid she might sometimes have found him hasty, and he had smiled at her in a tentative fashion as though hoping she would contradict him. She, of course, immediately did so, but with a sense of alarm at so unprecedented a statement or, rather, enquiry. It seemed to her afterwards as a certain warning of his approaching end.

  On that event all the rooms were plunged in semi-darkness, the hatchment was put up in front of the house, Fanny and Juliana wore deep bands of crepe on their dresses and mourning rings of black enamel and pearls, enclosing a tiny lock of poor papa’s hair.

  They escaped as often as they could to Nurse’s cottage, as they could pay no other visits for some time. It was very comfortable to find Nurse just the same except for a black dress, baking bread or pies, or brewing delicious sweet concoctions, all precisely the same as usual.

  “Well, Miss,” said Nurse, when Fanny once commented on the fact, “poor folks haven’t as much time to attend to death as rich folks. I expect that’s it—perhaps it don’t mean as much to them either, not when it comes natural.”

  Juliana was struck by this. It had not occurred to her that death was a natural event. She felt that until that moment—in spite of the many warning Sunday verses on the subject—she had never really understood that all must die. She looked at Nurse bustling about them with her sleeves turned up over her comfortable red arms, she looked round at the neat cottage and the bright garden outside the small square window, and tried to believe that one day, however far hence, Nurse, cottage and garden would be no longer there.

  “A cure for gaping!” cried Fanny suddenly, and popped a cherry into Juliana’s mouth, which, it must be confessed, had remained slightly open since Nurse’s remarks.

  A magnificent monument was erected in the chapel to Robert Lord Chidleigh; his portrait bust, severe, Roman, and unrecognizable, surmounted by a classic urn, looked down in apparent disgust on two very fat weeping cherubs who supported a scroll enumerating his public and private virtues. His first cousin, a bishop, wrote the epitaph and informed the reader that Lord Chidleigh’s

  “Religion was that which by Law is

  Established,

  And the Conduct of his life shew’d

  The power of it in his Heart,”

  a somewhat ambiguous phrase which misses the warmth of the later tributes to his generous condescension, charity and hospitality, although we can hardly be intended to take quite literally the statement that

  “Though naturally enclined to avoid the

  Hurry of publick Life,

  He was careful to keep up the port of his

  Quality.”

  The monument was not yet finished when Fanny married Mr. Daunt. This occurred rather more than a year after papa’s death, and they all went out of mourning.

  “It is distressing it should be so soon,” said Lady Chidleigh, “but one cannot have mourning at a wedding, and I should be sorry to ask Mr. Daunt to show any further patience.”

  “Dear Robert always liked bright colours,” said Aunt Emily, with her head on one side, murmuring instead of chirruping, since dear Robert was dead. She was wondering if she should wear her crimson paduasoy or the puce-coloured sarsanet. Perhaps the puce colour would be in better taste since they had so recently been in mourning, but there was no doubt that the crimson suited her better—a reflection that had induced her last pensive remark.

  “Emily, you are a fool,” said her mother. “It can make no difference now what Robert liked, since he is dead.” Emily decided it would be wiser to wear the puce colour.

  Fanny’s marriage made a much greater break than papa’s death.

  And now Lucian had returned. Juliana wondered what difference that would make.

  Chapter V

  The excitement of Lucian’s home-coming did not last long. Juliana soon found that she saw as little of him as of h
er other brothers, and ceased to wonder why he had come and for how long. He appeared to be very busy about his estates; after so long an absence there was no doubt much that claimed his attention. Perhaps he has even decided to settle down at Chidleigh, in any case it did not seem as though it would make much difference to her. Indeed, her life seemed rather emptier than usual just now, for Lucian had expressed a wish not to have any guests and parties until he had settled certain matters on the estate which were occupying all his time. He took no notice of her, nor did she again encounter at table that bright, piercing glance that had so much baffled and surprised her. His return is recorded in her journal, at the end of her entry for the 1st of May, without any trace of the fleeting emotion it had caused.

  “This day my brother Chidleigh arriv’d from France by way of London. His House in Soho was shut up, so he drove to my sister Fanny’s in Hill Street, but finding her and Mr. Daunt away on a Visit, he lay at the Coch and Horses for that night and so on to Chidleigh.”

  The weather, after its early promise of summer, had returned to winter, many days being too cold and gusty for Juliana to venture out of doors at all, so that she had long hours to spend in her closet, and the next letter from dear Fanny seemed the only event left to live for.

  Then suddenly it turned quite hot, and one morning she sat again under the great trees at the side of the drive, her journal in her lap and a pencil in her hand. The sunshine made a flickering checkwork on the wide skirts that flowed out in billowing folds of pale lilac on either side of her. Bluebells and ragged robin grew thick round her and stretched away into the open sunshine where they shimmered in a bright haze of colour, and above them the bees hummed noisily.

  In the drive itself was a cool green darkness that seemed to remove it from the outer world. No birds sang under those great arches, and no bees hummed.

  She heard a step come up the drive behind her, and turned her head to see her eldest brother crossing the bridge over the brook in the full sunlight. He saw her at the same moment and came quickly towards her into the shade of the drive again. He leaned against a tree just by her and looked down on her, scrutinizing her so closely that her head drooped and the white, blue-veined lids nearly shut over her eyes.

  “Put back your head,” he said, “how can I see you under that Brobdignagian hat?”

  She obeyed him, but with some annoyance, for she hated to feel she had been put out of countenance; also, she had not read Gulliver and imagined Brobdignagian to be some strange oath. So she put back her head with just a suggestion of a toss, and looked gravely at him. The smile that she had remembered had come into the corners of his mouth; it did not appear to be in his eyes.

  “Juliana,” he said, “why are you afraid of me?”

  “I—I don’t—I am not afraid of you, brother.”

  He laughed very softly.

  “Very well,” he said, “we will leave it at that and change the subject. You have refused to say what you think of me, so shall I tell what I think of you?”

  “Pray do.”

  “I think you are a rebel and an adventuress. Has anyone told you so?”

  She was staring now in her astonishment.

  “None, brother. I did not know it myself.”

  “That is not necessary. And I think something else of you.”

  “What is that?”

  “That you have a pair of delicate eyes. And how many have told you that?”

  “No one,” she said in a very small voice, for she had turned extremely shy, and he would now have had no opportunity to consider her eyes.

  “What! Am I so happy as to be the first? But not the last I’ll wager.”

  She had flushed with pleasure at his compliments, which had been uttered gravely, unlike the careless badinage which George and Vasey occasionally vouchsafed her when in a specially good humour.

  “Have you come to live at Chidleigh?” she asked. “I hope you have.”

  “Why do you hope so?”

  She knew it was because he had admired her eyes, and called her a rebel and an adventuress, and was ashamed to give these as reasons, so she hung her head.

  “What is that book on your lap?” he asked suddenly.

  “My journal.”

  “Your journal! What do you write in it?”

  “I don’t know. Very little, I fear.”

  “Is there then so little to write?”

  She sighed and smiled at the same time. “I find it so. Mamma says that an industrious and well-filled day gives one more to fill one’s journal than a crowd of amusements. But I— yes, I sometimes find it difficult to think of anything to write about.”

  “That is a serious fault in a journal,” said Lucian gravely. “We must see to it that you have something to write about.”

  A slight tremor that might have been pleasure or excitement, or even fear, ran through her at this very ordinary remark. She looked up at him again and wondered if he had ever really worshipped Satan and Venus. The sunshine through the branches danced up and down on his face; his eyes, fixed on hers, looked very bright and merry. This time she did not look away but continued to meet his gaze, so long that she forgot what she had been saying or thinking of, forgot even what she was looking at, for the eyes she had thought so bright just now, seemed to have become two motionless points, devoid of light or colour. She said at last—

  “I was walking down the drive once when I saw a little boy sitting on the stone bridge there in the sunshine. He wore odd clothes, a plumed cap fastened with jewels, and a jewelled dagger. He was looking down at the fishes and didn’t see me. I didn’t like to speak to him, but I was not afraid.”

  “Who was he?” asked her brother.

  “King Edward VI. As you know, this house was re-built for him to come and stay here.”

  ”Two hundred years ago,” said Lucian softly. “Did you ever see him again?”

  “No.”

  “Nor anyone else?”

  “No one like that.”

  He must have moved his eyes from hers, for she saw the green of the trees again, and through them, hot and dazzling in the sunshine, the old bridge where she had seen the boy sitting on the low parapet. A hot rush of amazement fell on her that she should have told such a thing to Lucian. She had never told it to anyone.

  Once she had asked Fanny if she believed in apparitions, and dear Fanny had been certain that God would not permit a departed spirt to return to this world. She, therefore, could not have seen an apparition, which was consoling, for the fair, delicate looking little boy, sitting astride on the bridge, his scarlet silk knees shining in the sun, and his head bent in absorbed attention to the fishes below, had not seemed in the least like an apparition.

  She had long ceased to wonder about it, even to think about it, supposing vaguely that she might have dreamed it. And now she had told Lucian, the most critical and sceptical audience that she could have chosen, and told it as though she believed it, whereas, of course, she did not believe she could really have seen it—well, it was certainly impossible that she should have done so. Her face was burning, and she looked steadfastly at the grass beside her. She heard at last his voice above her, as cool and quick as usual and not at all amused.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I was hoping you would have something of interest to tell me. I asked you at dinner, the day of my arrival, you may remember, but you did not take my message.”

  “I—I don’t remember your asking me anything, brother.”

  “No? Think again.”

  She did, and said, “You looked at me once, but you were talking to George.”

  “Yes. Well, remember in future that when I look at you, it it to you I am talking. This is a tedious hole, but the description would do for most places. I am here, as you may imagine, from necessity rather than choice, and the same reason I fancy applies to your sojourn here. Shall we enter into compact, my pretty sister, to make it as little tedious as we can?”

  “We, brother!——”

 
; Juliana was looking full at him now in flushed and perplexed astonishment. He flung back his head and laughed, a funny, crackling laugh that disconcerted her.

  “Yes, we, sister. Is this modesty or scorn? Do you reject me as an ally, or do you think I would rather join with George or Vesey in such a compact? Is there anything I can do with them that I have not done a thousand times before? To hunt, fish, drink and make love to village girls who giggle like pea-hens— are you shocked that I should occasionally tire of such distractions?”

  “No. But I cannot see what distractions I can offer.”

  “No? Perhaps you think that noisy young hoyden Charlotte could offer better? And do you also see no possibility of my power to afford you any distraction?”

  “Oh, as to that,” said Juliana, smiling, “I am aware I do not know all your capabilities.”

  “Then you do not despair of my capability to amuse you? Come, shall it be a bargain? You have shown me what I had suspected, that you have certain qualities and powers which might be of considerable use to us both in helping to pass the time here. Let us see what we can do together.”

  He held out his hand to her to help her rise. They walked across the bridge and down the drive in silence. Lucian left her in the gardens to turn towards the stables, and Juliana went up alone into the house. As she passed through the hall, still too much surprised to think clearly, she noticed the ugly old portrait of her ancestress, Lucy Clare, stiff and wooden as a dummy in the uncompromising dress of a Court lady at the time of James I, and wondered, as she had done a thousand times, how that could have been the portrait of a beauty.

  Juliana was fascinated by all she had heard of that amazing lady, who had been accused of sorcery by the fanatical witch-hunter, King James, and had had such strange adventures. She had always felt an envious thrill when she thought of this ancestress, which shows, perhaps, that Lucian may not have been entirely wide of the mark when he called his sister a rebel and an adventuress.