Venetia

XV

Nidd, who had served Damerel for almost as many years as had Marston, accepted the charge of Venetia’s mare without betraying that he saw anything remarkable in the visit of an unattended lady to a bachelor’s establishment. It was otherwise with Imber, admitting her to the house with reluctance, and exhibiting by every means short of actual speech the utmost disapproval. He ushered her into one of the saloons, and left her there while he went off to inform Damerel of her arrival.

She remained standing by one of the windows, but it was several minutes before Damerel came to her. The saloon seemed unfriendly, with no fire burning in the hearth, and the furniture primly arranged. They had never sat in it when Aubrey was at the Priory, but always in the library, and it still bore the appearance of a room that was never used. Venetia supposed that Imber must have led her to it either to emphasize his disapproval, or because Damerel had not yet finished his business with his agent. It was cheerless, and rather dark; but perhaps that was because heavy clouds were gathering in the sky, and it had started to mizzle.

She had began to wonder whether she had missed Damerel, who might have set out for Undershaw by way of the road instead of taking the shorter way across country, when the door opened, and he came in, demanding: “Now, what in thunder has your Empress been doing to drive you from home, Admir’d Venetia?”

He spoke lightly, yet with a hint of roughness in his voice, as though her visit was an unwelcome interruption. She turned, trying to read his face, and said, with a faint smile: “Were you busy? You don’t sound as though you were glad to see me!”

“I’m not glad to see you,” he replied. “You shouldn’t be here, you know.”

“So Imber seemed to think—but I didn’t care for that.” She came slowly into the middle of the room, and paused by the table that stood there, drawing off her gloves. “I thought it best to come to you, rather than to wait for you to come to me. It might not be easy for us to be private, and I must consult you. Something quite unlooked-for has happened, and I need your advice, my dear friend. My uncle has come.”

“Your uncle?” he repeated.

“My Uncle Hendred—my uncle by marriage, I should say. Damerel, he wishes to take me to London, and at once!”

“I see,” he said, after a moment’s silence. “Well—thus ends a charming autumn idyll, eh?”

“Do you think that that is what I came to say to you?” she asked.

He glanced at her, his eyes a little narrowed. “Probably not. It is the truth, however. Unpleasant, I grant, but still the truth.”

She felt as though the blood in her veins was slowly turning to ice. He had turned abruptly away, and walked over to the window; her eyes followed him, but she did not speak. He said harshly: “Yes, it’s the end of an idyll. It has been a golden autumn, hasn’t it? In another week there won’t be a leaf left hanging to the trees, though. Your uncle timed his coming well. You don’t think so, do you, my dear? But you will think it, believe me.”

She still said nothing, because she could think of nothing it was possible to say. She found it difficult even to take in the sense of what Damerel, incredibly, had said, or to disentangle the wisps of thought that jostled and contradicted each other in her brain. It was like a bad dream, in which people one knew quite well behaved fantastically, and one was powerless to escape from some dreadful doom. She lifted one hand to rub her eyes, as though she had really been dreaming. In a voice that seemed to her to belong to nightmare, because it was so quiet, and in nightmares when one tried to scream one was never able to speak above a whisper, she said: “Why shall I think it?”

He shrugged. “I could tell you, but not convince you. You’ll find out for yourself—when you’re less green, my dear, and know a little more of the world than what you have read.”

“Will you think it?” she asked. A faint flush rose to her whitened cheeks; she added humbly: “I shouldn’t ask you that, perhaps, but I wish to understand, and I suppose I’m too green—unless things are explained to me.”

“I think it would have been better if we had never met,” he replied sombrely.

“For you, or for me?”

“Oh, for both of us! The end of the idyll was implicit in the beginning: I at least knew that, though you might not. And also that the more enchanted the idyll the greater must be the pain of its ending. That won’t endure. Hearts don’t really break, you know. No, of course you don’t, but accept it as a truth, for I do know!”

“They can be wounded,” she said simply.

“Many times—and be healed again, as I have proved!”

She knit her brows. “Why do you say that? It is as if you wished to hurt me, but that can’t be so. I don’t feel that it can be!”

“No, I don’t wish to hurt you. I never wished to hurt you. The devil of it was, my dear delight, that you were too sweet, too adorable, and what should have been the lightest and gayest of flirtations turned to something more serious than I intended—or foresaw—or even desired! We allowed ourselves to be too much carried away, Venetia. Did you never feel you were living in a dream?”

“Not then. Now I do. This doesn’t seem real to me.”

“You are too romantic! We have been dwelling in Arcadia, my green girl: the rest of the world is not so golden as this retired spot! Only in fantasy does every circumstance conspire to make it inevitable that two people should fall in love! We should hardly have been more isolated had we been cast on a desert island together. Nothing happened to disturb our idyll, no person intruded on us: for one magical month we forgot—or I forgot—every worldly consideration, even that there are other things in real life than being sunk in love!”

“But it was real, for it happened, Damerel.”

“Yes, it happened. Let us agree that it was a lovely interlude! It could never be more than that, you know: we must have come to earth—we might even have grown a little weary of each other. That’s why I say that your uncle’s arrival is well-timed: parting is such sweet sorrow—but to fall out of love—oh, no, what a drab and bitter ending that would be to our autumn idyll! We must be able to look back smilingly, my dear delight, not shuddering!”

“Tell me one thing!” she begged. “When you talk of worldly considerations are you thinking of your past life?”

“Why, yes—but of other considerations too! I don’t think I should make a good husband, my dear, and nothing else is possible. To be frank with you, providence, in Aubrey’s shape, intervened yesterday just in time to save us both from disaster.”

She raised her eyes to his face. “You told me yesterday that you loved me—to the edge of madness, you said. Was that what you meant? that it was not real, and couldn’t endure?”

“Yes, that’s what I meant,” he said brusquely. He came back to her, and grasped her wrists. “I told you also that we would talk of it when we were cooler: well, my love, the night brings counsel! And the day has brought your uncle—and there let us leave it, and say nothing more than since there’s no help, come let us kiss, and part!”

She lifted her face in mute invitation; he kissed her, swiftly and roughly, and almost flung her away. “There! Now go, before I take still worse advantage of your innocence!” He strode over to the door, and wrenched it open, shouting to Imber to send a message to Nidd to bring Miss Lanyon’s mare up to the house. He turned, and she saw the ugly, mocking sneer on his face, and involuntarily looked away from him. He gave a jeering little laugh, and said: “Don’t look so tragic, my dear! I assure you it won’t be very long before you will be thanking God to be well out of the devil’s own scrape. You won’t fall into another, so don’t hate me: be grateful to me for opening your beautiful eyes a little! So very beautiful they are—and about the eyelids much sweetness! You’ll make a hit in London: the young eagles will say you are something like—adiamond of the first water—and so you are, my lovely one!”

The sense of struggling through the thickets of a nightmare again swept over her. There was a way out, so her heart’s voice cried to her, and could she find it she would find also Damerel, her dear friend. But time was slipping away; in another minute it would be too late; and urgency acted not as a spur but as a creeping paralysis which clogged the mind, and weighted the tongue, and imposed on desperation a blanket of numb stupidity.

Suddenly Damerel spoke again, in his own voice, as it seemed to her, and abruptly: “Does Aubrey go with you?” She looked blindly at him, and said, as though trying to recall to mind a name long-forgotten: “Aubrey ...”

“To London!”

“To London,” she repeated vaguely. She passed her hand across her eyes. “Yes, of course—how foolish! I had forgotten. I don’t know. He went out. He went out shooting before my uncle came.”

“I see. Does your uncle invite him?”

“Yes. But he won’t go—I think he won’t go.”

“Do you wish for him?”

She frowned, trying to concentrate her mind. The thought of Aubrey steadied her. She pictured him in such a household as she guessed her uncle’s to be, flayed by her aunt’s well-meaning solicitude, bored by her attempts to entertain him, contemptuous of all that she believed to be of the first importance; and presently said in a decided tone: “No. Not in Cavendish Square. It wouldn’t do for him. Later, when I shall have made arrangements—I told you, didn’t I? I must hire a house—someone to lend me countenance—make a home for myself and Aubrey, for it is so stupid to say, as Edward does, that Aubrey ought to like what he detests, because other boys do. Aubrey is himself, and no one can alter him, so what is the use of saying he ought, when he won’t?”

“No use at all. Let him come to me! Tell him he may bring his dogs, and his horses—whatever he chooses! I’ll engage myself to see he comes to no harm, and hand him over to that grinder of his in good trim. If he were here you wouldn’t fret yourself to flinders over him, would you?”

“No.” Her smile went pitifully awry. “Oh, no, how could I? But—”

“That’s all!” he interrupted harshly. “You won’t be beholden to me, you know! I shall be glad of his company.”

“But—you are remaining here?”

“Yes, I’m remaining here. Come! Nidd should have saddled up for you by now!”

She remembered that he had sent for his agent on business which he had said was important; and wondered if he had discovered his affairs to be in a worse state than he had guessed. She said diffidently: “I think you never meant to do so, and that makes me afraid that perhaps the business you have been engaged in hasn’t prospered?”

The sneer that mocked himself returned to his face; he gave a short laugh, and replied: “Don’t trouble your head over that, for it is not of the smallest consequence!”

He was holding open the door, a suggestion of impatience in his attitude. The second line of the sonnet he had quoted came into her mind: Nay, I have done: you get no more of me. He had not spoken those words; there was no need: a golden autumn had ended in storm and drizzling rain, an iridescent bubble had burst, and nothing was left to her but conduct, to help her to behave mannerly. She picked up her gloves and her whip, and walked out of the saloon, and across the flagged hall to the open entrance-door. Imber was standing by it, and through it she could see Nidd, holding her mare’s bridle. She was going to say goodbye to Damerel, her friend and her love, watched by these two, and it did not seem to her as though she would be able to speak at all, because her throat was aching quite dreadfully. She stepped out into the open, and turned to him, drawing a painful breath.

He was not looking at her, but at a black cloud looming to the west. “The devil!” he exclaimed. “You’ll never reach Undershaw before that comes down on you! What chance of its clearing, Nidd?”

Nidd shook his head. “Setting in wet, m’lord. Spitting already.”

Damerel looked down at Venetia, not sneering now, but concerned, ruefully smiling. He said, lowering his voice to reach only her ears: “You must go immediately, my dear. I can’t send you home in my carriage: it wouldn’t do! If that woman knew—!”

“It is of no consequence.” She put out her hand; she was very pale, but the flicker of her sweet smile warmed her eyes. “Goodbye—my dear friend!”

He did not answer, but only kissed her hand, and, holding it still, led her immediately to her mare. He tossed her up into the saddle, as he had done so many times when she had come to visit Aubrey, but today there was no lingering to make a plan for the morrow; he only said: “Take the short way, and don’t dawdle! I only hope you may not be drenched! Off with you, my child!”

He stepped back as he spoke, and the mare, needing no urging to go home to her own stable, started forward. Damerel lifted a hand in farewell, but Venetia was not looking at him, and he let it fall, and turned sharply on his heel. His eyes fell on Imber; he said in a curt, hard voice: “Miss Lanyon is going to London. It’s probable Mr. Aubrey will come here tomorrow, to stay for some few weeks. Tell Mrs. Imber to make his room ready!”

He strode away to the library, and the door shut with a snap behind him. Imber looked to see what Nidd made of this, not that he was likely to say, because he was as close as Marston, and dull as a beetle. Nidd was walking off to the stables, so there was nobody to gossip with but Mrs. Imber, and she was in a bad skin, because her dough hadn’t risen, and only said: “Don’t come fidgeting me!” and: “Get out of my way, do!” Imber wished himself at Undershaw, to see what they made of it there, when Miss Venetia came in looking like she’d seen a ghost. Proper set-about they’d be, and no wonder!

But only three people at Undershaw saw Venetia upon her return, and neither the undergroom nor the young housemaid who waited on her noticed more than her dripping habit, and the ruin of her hat, with its curled feather hanging sodden and straight beside her rain-washed face. She went up the backstairs to her room, and opened the door to find the maid there, with Nurse, and the room a welter of silver paper, and trunks, with gowns and cloaks laid out on the bed ready to be packed, the linen in which her furs had been stored all summer lying in a heap on the floor, and the sour apples which had kept the moth at bay scenting the air.

Nurse broke instantly into angry scolding, while Venetia stood on the threshold, her eyes, with that blind look in them, wandering round the disordered room. Then, quite suddenly, Nurse rounded on Jenny, driving her out of the room with orders to fetch up a can of hot water, instead of standing there like a gowk, when anyone could see Miss Venetia was soaked to the skin, and likely to catch her death. She drew Venetia to the fire, still scolding, but differently, just as years ago she had fondly scolded a little girl, appalled by some catastrophe, until she stopped crying. The little girl had known that nothing dreadful could happen to her when Nurse was there; Venetia knew now that Nurse was powerless to help her, but still was a little comforted. Nurse stripped off her wet habit, and huddled her into a dressing-gown, and made her sit by the fire, while she herself bustled about, first trotting off to mix a cordial, which she made Venetia drink, then rubbing her chilled feet, tidying the room, laying out an evening-gown, and all the time talking, talking, but never waiting for answers, and only looking at Venetia out of the corners of her sharp old eyes. Let Miss Venetia sit quiet for a while: plenty of time before she need dress again! And no sitting up late, mind, with so much as there was to do, and Mr. Hendred wishful to make an early start! And no need to worry about Undershaw, either, not that she would do that for long, with all the exciting things she would be doing in London, and her aunt so kind, and new faces to see, and goodness only knew how many treats in store! It would seem strange, at first, and it stood to reason she would feel homesick, missing all the people she knew, but let her trust Nurse, and not fall into the dismals, because she would soon be better, never fear!

Venetia, understanding, tried to smile at her, and clasped her hand for a grateful moment.

“There, my poppet! there, my dove!” Nurse crooned, stroking her tumbled locks. “Don’t cry, my pretty, don’t cry!”

But it was Nurse who cried, not Venetia; and presently, seeing how calm she was, Nurse went away, hoping that she might drop off to sleep for a little while, so tired as she was.

When Nurse came back to help her to dress for dinner (for she would not let Jenny wait on Venetia tonight) she thought that she must have enjoyed a nap, for she had got a little colour back into her cheeks, and seemed more like herself, able to decide what must be packed to go to London, and what Nurse must store away in camphor and keep for her at Undershaw. She had made a list of the people she must see before she left, and the things she must attend to; and Nurse entered briskly into these matters, thinking: Anything to take her mind off, and least said soonest mended.

She had just fastened Venetia’s dress when a knock fell on the door, and was followed by Aubrey’s voice, demanding admittance. Venetia called to him to come in, but Nurse felt her stiffen under her hands, as she laid a gauze scarf over her shoulders, and said sharply, when he did come in: “Now, don’t come worriting Miss Venetia, Master Aubrey, for she’s tired, and has enough to think of without you adding to it!”

“I want to speak to you before you come downstairs,” he said, paying no heed to Nurse.

Venetia’s heart sank, for she knew by the look in his face that he was going to be difficult. She said, however: “Yes, love, to be sure! Did you have good sport? Were you caught in the rain? I was! Thank you, Nurse! I shall do now: no one ever dresses my hair as well as you! Oh, Aubrey, my head is in such a whirl! I feel quite distracted, and can hardly believe it is true, and I am really going to London at last!”

She sat down at her dressing-table, so that she was not obliged to look at him, and began to select from her trinket-box the ornaments she wished to wear. As Nurse shut the door, he said: “You mean to go, then?”

“Yes, how can you ask me? It is exactly what will suit me best, and you, too.”

“It won’t suit me to stay with Aunt Hendred, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“No, not that, although— Have you seen my uncle?”

“Oh, yes, I’ve seen him! I told him I shouldn’t go, unless you particularly wished for me.”

“Aubrey, you weren’t uncivil?” she exclaimed.

“No, no!” he answered impatiently. “I said what was proper, of course! I told him that Appersett having been away I was got behindhand, and must apply. He understood. At any rate, he didn’t care. My aunt would as lief I didn’t go, I know. That don’t signify! But he said you had told him of your scheme to set up house—wished me to promise I wouldn’t encourage you, since it wouldn’t do!”

“My dear, I hope you did no such thing! It’s quite nonsensical! That’s why I am so glad that this chance has come in my way. I had made up my mind to it that there can be no staying at Undershaw while Mrs. Scorrier remains fixed, and how can I find a house that will suit us unless I go to town? Do you dislike it? I won’t drag you away from Mr. Appersett, if you do, but when you have gone up to Cambridge, there will be the vacations, and—”

“That’s not it!” he interrupted. “There must be tutors to spare in London, or I could study alone. What I don’t understand—Venetia, does Jasper know of this?”

“Yes, I rode over to tell him—thinking that very likely you wouldn’t care to go to Cavendish Square, and wishing to be sure that—”

“What did he say to it?” Aubrey demanded, frowning.

“Need you ask? He said instantly that he would be glad to have you, and for as long as you choose to stay. Oh, and I was to tell you to bring your horses, and the dogs, and that reminds me, love, if you do that you must take Fingle as well. And make him understand that Nidd is head groom at the Priory: you know what he is!”

“Oh, for God’s sake—!” he broke in irritably. “I’ll take care of all that! Is Jasper willing you should go? I thought— Venetia, are you going to marry him?”

“Good gracious, no! Oh, you are thinking of a silly talk we had once! I wish you will forget it, for I fancy I shall never marry anyone. I thought at one time I might marry Edward; then I wondered if Damerel might not suit me better; and now—well, now I can’t think of anything but London, so it’s plain I am a hopeless case!”

“I thought you were in love—both of you.”

“Only flirting, stoopid!”

He stood looking at her for a minute. “Well, I still think it. I daresay I don’t notice a great deal, but I know when you’re shamming it!”

“But, Aubrey, indeed—”

“Oh, hold your tongue!” he snapped, his temper flaring up. “If you don’t choose to tell me, it’s all one to me, but stop pitching that gammon! I don’t mean to meddle: I detest meddlers!”

“Don’t be vexed with me! Pray don’t!” she managed to say.

He had limped to the door, but he paused, and looked back. “I’m not vexed. Not with you—at least, I don’t think so: I suppose you must know what you’re about. Only I hoped you would have settled it between you. I like Jasper. Oh, well!” He pulled open the door, and went away, banishing her, she thought, from his mind.