Still She Wished for Company

by Margaret Irwin

  He gave her hands a final rub, then kissed them. But she was sure she had never heard the story before.

  Juliana breakfasted in bed that morning, as was by no means infrequent with the ladies of the household. But Molly insisted that as she was so obviously sleepy she should stay in bed till three o’clock, when it was time to dress for dinner. Juliana accordingly slept soundly till one, when she woke much refreshed, and, ringing her bell, announced that she intended to get up.

  “You can’t do that, Miss,” said Molly who looked red and perturbed. “Her ladyship is just coming up to speak to you.”

  “To speak to me? But Molly, I must be up and dressed when she comes. Quick, quick.”

  “It’s no use, Miss. Her ladyship is on the stairs this very minute.”

  “Oh, Molly! Could you not have told me before?”

  To be spoken to when in bed by Lady Chidleigh was to be taken at such a serious disadvantage! She entered on the moment and Juliana, observing her mamma to be already stayed and dressed, sighed “I knew it,” within herself. When mamma had anything important (which generally meant something unpleasant) to say to one she never did it until she was fully dressed for the day.

  “I am sorry to hear you are indisposed,” said Lady Chidleigh.

  “Oh no, madam,” protested Juliana, feeling that she was committing an unpardonable error in her inability to rise as her mamma entered.’ ‘I am not indeed indisposed, only a little tired.’’

  She stammered something about the heat on the ride to the Hilburys yesterday. There was something peculiarly formidable about mamma this morning. What could be coming? Was it Mr. Daintree again?

  “Your brother, Chidleigh,” said her mother at last, “has spoken to me this morning on a subject that I admit has startled me. It appears that he has for some time entertained the prospect of a match between you and one of his foreign friends —Monsieur le Due de Saint Aumerle. Yet he has not consulted with me on this subject until this morning, and I fancy has only done so now because he has just had an express messenger from the duke to say that he is now in England and intends shortly paying us a visit. Has Lucian mentioned this matter to you?”

  Juliana wished she could lie. But she knew how little her face could do it.

  “Yes, madam,” she said hesitatingly. “I believe he did just mention it.”

  “You believe!” exclaimed Lady Chidleigh. “Is it possible you were not paying any attention to such a subject?” She added after a pause, “I would not have thought a son of mine could have done anything so indelicate as to speak of such a matter to a young girl without first consulting with her mother.”

  Her colour, always high, actually became a brighter red, and this, for Lady Chidleigh, was to produce much the same effect as if a statue had flushed. Juliana longed to vindicate her unhappy brother.

  “Oh, madam,” she exclaimed, “I am sure Lucian could not have intended an indelicacy. Indeed, he did not even mention his name,” she added, as though that proved it. “He spoke of it more in jest.”

  “Marriage is no subject for a jest,” said Lady Chidleigh, “especially between you and your brother Lucian. His way of life is not such as to render him fit either as companion or advisor to you.”

  Juliana’s cheeks flamed scarlet. She thought she knew better than to say a word. Nevertheless an instant later she found herself speaking.

  “I know nothing against his way of life, madam, since nothing in him, either as companion or advisor, has ever led me to suspect it. And I naturally have heard no criticism from others.”

  She kept her hands under the coverlet as she finished speaking, to hide their trembling. It was a beautiful speech, it was a speech mamma herself might have made, but how had she ever come to make such a speech to mamma! The silence was so dreadful that she looked up, though she knew well how that haughty stare of surprise would be fixed upon her. But to her amazement, mamma was smiling—a smile in which there was certainly surprise, but also some pride and a little tenderness.

  “That was well said, Juliana. If I have seemed to criticise your brother to you, it is in my concern for you. Any intercourse you may have together must be, I think, to his benefit. But you are at a period of your life when a delicate and important decision must be made, and I am naturally anxious when it can, legally, be finally determined by a young man who—but I will spare your loyalty. ’ A young man ’ by itself should be sufficient to justify my anxiety.” And she again smiled.

  Such kindness naturally overwhelmed Juliana. It was very difficult after it to follow really closely all that mamma was saying about the proposed match with Monsieur le Due de Saint Aumerle. She heard that it might be considered a very grand match by some, but that in Lady Chidleigh’s opinion a good old English family was more than equal to any foreign dukedom, that she could not say she cared for foreigners and, from Lucian’s own account, the French king kept up a very poor sort of state at Fontainebleau. A hunting lodge? Yes, but even a hunting lodge should be an indication of one’s standards. To have so poor a show of gold plate that some dishes were actually used to cover others!

  Lucian had made a great point of the families having known each other so well during the time when Juliana’s grandfather had been ambassador in Paris, but she herself had never met Madame de Saint Aumerle, the young man’s mother. She greatly disliked the idea of any daughter of hers going so far from her supervision; it was bad enough that James Daunt’s post at Court kept him and his wife so much in London, and that his country seat should be on the outskirts of the next county.

  She then spoke of Mr. Daintree.

  “You are my dear sweet pretty little sister,” hummed in Juliana’s head. And Mr. Daintree would shut her up in his great country house where she would never go to the town and have balls and parties and see the gay world. She did not want to hear of Mr. Daintree. But why had he looked at her like that when she had left him? So grave and anxious, so terribly anxious. But then he had always a grave air.

  “I assure you, madam,” she said in the pause that called for it, “that my only wish is to please you.”

  Chapter XIV

  Monsieur le dug de saint aumerle arrived two days later. He arrived in a coach drawn by six cream-coloured horses, with pictures of the Graces painted on the doors. The coach was lined with blue silk, stamped with golden fishes, for there was a fish in Monsieur le Due’s coat of arms. Four servants in the ducal livery of blue and gold preceded him on horseback, two rode behind him, then came a wagon to contain all the clothes. The cavalcade drew up in the courtyard, a footman sprang down and flung open the coach door, a hand in a cascade of ruffles appeared on a carved ebony cane, and Monsieur le Due stepped out with deliberate cat-like steps.

  Lucian and his brothers were waiting in the courtyard to receive him, the sun shining on their bare unpowdered heads. Vesey’s hair was positively ruddy in the sun, as she noticed with affectionate pride. The guest embraced Lucian warmly on both cheeks, then turned to be presented to the brothers, to whom he bowed beautifully; low to George, a shade less low to Vesey. Juliana could not hear what they were saying (need it be said that she was watching from an upper window?). She could hear Lucian’s voice, quick, low and merry, and once or twice the deeper and slower tone of Vesey, the harsher one of George, and interspersed among them, a thin rivulet of sound, persistent, monotonous, from Monsieur le Due de Saint Aumerle.

  An hour later she met him in the drawing-room when he was presented to Lady Chidleigh and the rest of the family. He was as bland, as smooth as his miniature, not quite as beautiful. He sat with elegance and ease in one of the high-backed arm-chairs, his fingers playing perpetually with the knob of his cane, which was carved in the semblance of a negress’ head, grinning to show two rows of seed pearls for teeth. It was an invention of his own of which he spoke with simple pride. No, it had not yet become the fashion, even in the French Court. It was too new, too daring. He ventured to prophesy that it would not be for twenty, thirty, perhaps even fifty y
ears, that the world would be ready for such an innovation. Then all mankind would carry Ethiopian canes, and he, the inventor, who had been the first to see how its proper carriage set off the length and whiteness of the fingers, the turn of the wrist, would be forgotten. It was the way of the world. Yes, he was something of a philosopher, but all the world now was philosophic. In France, now, they talked of nothing else— philosophy and the return to nature. For his part he thought nature very pretty in her proper place. The maternal instinct was quite charming but it was a pity to encourage it too much. Half the young mothers of the French nobility now were nursing their own babies. In consequence, half the babies were dying of insufficient nourishment. A pity, a great pity.

  Lady Chidleigh thought it a pity for a young man to talk of such matters at all within half an hour of his presentation to the ladies of the household. No doubt it was the result of a different standard of delicacy, but that in itself was another example of the inferiority of the nobility of France.

  Lucian joined in the conversation and was asking questions of his guest, who answered readily and crisply. They were talking of events and people that Juliana did not know. She ceased to listen, and she discovered that the longer she watched the Duke’s face, the less it appeared like a face and the more like a large white egg. She could not tell if he had ever looked at her or not.

  The big enamelled and ormolu clock ticked and ticked. Monsieur le Due and his host talked and talked. Lady Chidleigh bowed, occasionally smiled, occasionally made an observation. George and Vesey concealed their yawns, but not their glances of contempt and aversion. Cousin Francis nodded sideways over his stick; he often fell asleep now in company. Aunt Emily fidgeted nervously, not knowing whether to wake him or not. Grandmamma Chidleigh stared before her, remote, forbidding.

  How long had they all sat like this? Not very long. An hour, perhaps an hour and a half. Why did it seem so inexpressibly tedious? It occurred to her that all the figures in the great white and gold room were like dolls in some mechanical contrivance, that spoke, and looked and bowed when moved by wires—all except Lucian, and he was not there, but behind them, laughing at them. What an absurd fancy! She shivered and looked again at Monsieur le Due. Had he looked at her or not?

  She knew she should not look at him so much, but he did not appear to notice her, so it could not matter. She looked at the clock and this time noticed the hour. It wanted nearly two hours to dinner. And then there would be conversation again after dinner, all the evening. She looked again at Monsieur le Due and wondered if she liked him better than Mr. Daintree. She did not know. She did not know what she thought of him. She did not know what they were saying. Was she always as vacant as this? How long his face was, and how white. No, of course she meant how red. And how round—as round as the clock. He must have dropped his cane —what was that short black stumpy thing he held in his hand. “Look here, Milly,” Monsieur le Due was saying in a loud rasping voice, “when I say I’m going to smoke in the drawing-room, I’m going to, do you hear?”

  It was not Monsieur le Due. Who was it? What was this crammed, pink place? There was the clock surrounded by Cupids just the same on the mantelpiece, tick, tick, tick, tick— but oh! what were those two monstrous pink and white vases on either side of it? And where were all the family? She saw vaguely a woman’s figure seated by the fireplace; but looked, not at her, but at the man who sat in Monsieur le Due’s chair. Yes, it was the same chair, and the room was the same though so different. And the man—there was no longer any doubt about it. He was the stranger whom she had once before encountered in the courtyard.

  As before, he was looking in her direction but did not appear to see her.

  “It’s all nonsense,” he was saying, louder and louder. “All damned nonsense. We’re exclusive enough, aren’t we, feudal, old world? Shutting the gates at nine o’clock and all the old feudal customs. And don’t see a soul——”

  “I’m sure I wish we could, Oswald,” interposed the other figure, “but there’s not a soul to see. Not a soul that is a soul, as you might say.”

  “Well, there you are. What do I say? Exclusive enough, you bet, even if it isn’t only us that does the excluding—and yet there you go on and on——”

  He had stopped and his face changed; it turned from ruddy to purple, and the eyes became glazed. The knuckles grasping the arms of his chair had turned to round white knobs, and the fingers swelled below them.

  “Oh, Oswald,“said that thin, weary voice again, “you’ve gone and dropped your pipe. On your chair. And it’s one of the things that went with the house—a real antique. Whatever’s the matter, Oswald? You look as though you’d seen a ghost.”

  Juliana felt herself quail before the abject terror in the man’s face. An agony of fear beset her, unreasoning, unknowing fear. She put her hands before her eyes, rose slowly and tremblingly and walked out of the open French window on to the lawn outside. She heard a strange, harsh whisper behind her.

  “Milly,” said the man who sat in Monsieur le Due’s chair, “did you see anyone go out, Milly?”

  She walked across the lawn, not looking back at the house. When she had entered one of the paths at the side of the lawn, she began to run. She ran till she had left the gardens and was in the drive, and then she walked slowly again, holding her hands against her side and looking from right to left. There was no doubt about it, the drive was different.

  And now she was sure that there had been differences in the gardens as she came through them. Surely there had been a strange flower bed, scarlet and blue, under the great cedar; and the fountain that her father had brought from Italy, had she passed it at the end of the cypress walk? There had been a grey and crumbling stone that she had hardly noticed among the dark trees; that could not have been the Italian fountain she knew, whose delicate shape shone so white in the sun. But she could not go back and make sure; no, she could not.

  She went over the little stone bridge; that at least was the same, the same as when she had seen the small fair boy in Tudor dress, sitting astride the parapet, looking at the fishes in the stream below.

  That had not frightened her, but she did not want to think of it now. She entered the drive again; it was her own dear drive, it could not be different; the gardeners had neglected it of late, that was all. Yes, they had neglected it shamefully, the branches needed cutting, but she had noticed that before. She remembered noticing that before. And the ragged robin had been allowed to grow all over the edge of the drive. How pretty it was, even though it was a weed. She stooped to pick one or two of the longer stems, saying to herself, “Yes, it is all the same, it is precisely the same.”

  She walked on and on, not conscious of any weariness, though now she had come nearly to the end of the drive. There were the lodge gates in front of her. Yet it was odd that she should have come to the end of the drive. Had she missed Nurse’s cottage while she was picking flowers? Yes, it must have been so. She stood still, deciding that she would go straight back and find it. At that moment, she saw a figure reclining under one of the trees at a little distance, a slight brown figure, the back turned towards her.

  Juliana clutched the ragged robin, twisting the stems between her fingers. She knew at once that it was the girl whom she had seen before, from the windows of her closet, then in this drive, and then in the courtyard talking to the man whom she had seen but just now, in Monsieur le Due’s chair.

  She would speak to her, she would ask her who she was, what it all meant. She would be brave. Even if she were an apparition, she could not hurt her. And then she had liked her in that first glimpse of her on the lawn, before she had had time to notice how strange was her appearance—yes, she had liked her and wanted to know her. She remembered now how that had been her first thought before she had even observed her clothes. She had seen the clear, frank, gaze, the eager mouth, the delicate eyebrows. She had seen these things first.

  But Sophia and Miss Hilbury had not seen her, and Sophia had looked straight
at her. She must be an apparition, then. “Oh, I must speak, I must, I cannot bear it,” thought Juliana, rolling up the stems of the ragged robin between her fingers.

  She approached the figure very softly. She did not want her to look round and see her coming, she did not know why. But the girl in brown never looked round, though Juliana now stood close behind her. She lay at full length on her side, reading, her bare head propped on her shapely though sunburnt hand. Juliana looked down on the brown hair drawn loosely back from the face, allowed to flop a little over forehead and cheek, and rolled up at the back of the head. She lay in that loose, shapeless brown coat, or whatever it was, as freely and as carelessly as a boy, and, lying thus, it reached only a little way below the knee. Juliana was so close to her that she could have touched her shoulder; she leaned forward, meaning to speak, now, at once, but unable to think what she should say. As she did so, she saw over the girl’s shoulder, and saw what she was reading.

  Juliana stood there, poised, her hand a little outstretched, her head bent down over the recumbent figure. Her breath had stopped, a black mist swam before her eyes, she wondered if she were fainting—if she had fainted some time ago and were only dreaming all this that had happened since. The black mist swam away, and with it the sensation of sickness that was making her eyes water and smart. Yes, she was coming to herself, she would find that she had only fainted, and dreamed the rest.

  But she found that she was still standing there, poised, over the recumbent figure, her hand still a little outstretched, her head bent down, still gazing at the handwriting, though brown and faded, of her own journal.

  Chapter XV

  Juliana stirred and put her hand up to her forehead which felt cold and wet. It was a great effort to do so, and before it had reached her forehead it was seized from behind and covered with kisses—eager, hasty, breathless kisses. She tried to move her head and found it was resting on somebody’s knee, and a wet handkerchief on her forehead.