Venetia

VI

He entered to find Aubrey still seething with annoyance, his eyes overbright and his thin cheeks flushed, and said, in an amused voice: “Well, you do accord your visitors Turkish treatment, don’t you?”

“Where is he?” demanded Aubrey.

“Abiit, excessit ...”

“What, already? Vae victis! Did you kick him out?”

“On the contrary! I invited him to treat the house as his own.”

“Oh, my God, no!”

“No, that’s very much what he thought—though he didn’t phrase it so. I fancy he doesn’t like me above half—but nothing could have exceeded his civility.” He turned his laughing eyes towards Venetia. “Worthy was exactly the right epithet!”

She laughed back at him. “Oh, did you guess?”

“Of course I did! Poor man, I was heartily sorry for him!”

“Sorry for that—that windsucker?” exploded Aubrey. “Wait till you see how little need you had to give him leave to treat your house as his own! He has been doing so with ours ever since my father died! Meddling and moralizing! I tell you to your head, Venetia, if you do marry him I’ll have nothing more to do with you!”

“Well, I don’t mean to marry him, so stop fidgeting yourself into a stew!”

He stirred restlessly, wincing a little. “I’d as lief live with Conway! No, by Jove, I’d prefer Conway to that bumptious, prosing piece of self-consequence that never crossed anything but a slug in his life! He to talk of giving me lessons—! Why, he has the worst seat and the worst hands of any man in the county, and will go half a mile out of his way to find a gap in a hedge his horse might have taken in his stride! You’d take him for a pad-groom! And as for his curst presumption, walking in here to scold and moralize, you may tell him, Venetia, that I might take that from Conway, but from no one else!”

“Good God, he’ll be demanding satisfaction of me next!” exclaimed Damerel. “Mr. Lanyon, allow me to offer you my most humble apologies!”

Aubrey turned his head on the pillow, and looked at him in some impatience and a good deal of suspicion. “Are you roasting me?”

“I shouldn’t dare! I am begging your pardon for having had the curst presumption to scold you. How I can have had so little conduct—!”

“Gammon!” snapped Aubrey crossly, but with the hint of a reluctant grin. “All you said was that I was a damned young fool, and had more bottom than sense, and I don’t care for that!”

“No, indeed! Quite unexceptionable!” approved Venetia. “I knew his lordship must have said everything that was kind and civil to have put you so much in charity with him!”

“Well, he didn’t moralize over me!” retorted Aubrey, trying not to laugh. “But as for being in charity with him, when he let that Jack-pudding come up here—”

“Why, you ungrateful brat, who rescued you from him? If I hadn’t come in with a hoaxing tale about your Nurse and a roll of lint he would be here yet! Take care I don’t turn that into a true story! I will, if you don’t stop taking snuff.”

“Yes,” Aubrey said, with a sharp sigh. “I beg pardon! I didn’t mean—oh, lord, I don’t know why the devil I lost my temper with such a gudgeon! I don’t do so in general.”

His angry flush began to subside. By the time Marston brought in a tray of cold chicken, and fruit, and tea he had recovered his equanimity; and although he rejected the chicken he was persuaded without much difficulty to drink some tea, and to eat a slice of bread-and-butter. Damerel went away when the nuncheon was brought in, but he came back just as Nurse was preparing to change the compress round Aubrey’s ankle, and to anoint his several bruises with a sovereign remedy of her own, and invited Venetia to take a turn in the garden with him.

She was very willing, but hardly expected to escape without meeting opposition from Nurse. All Nurse said, however, was that she was not to go out without her hat, which was as surprising as her apparent failure to notice that Aubrey was looking exhausted. This was a circumstance which would ordinarily have drawn from her exclamations, rebukes, searching questions, and a comprehensive scold, but although she had eyed him narrowly she had made no comment.

For this abstention Aubrey had his host to thank. Damerel had waylaid Nurse on her way up to his room, and had told her of the disastrous results of Edward’s visit.

Edward, as a respectable candidate for Venetia’s hand, had hitherto enjoyed Nurse’s favour, but no man who had caused Aubrey to suffer a set-back could hope to maintain his place in her esteem. When she learned that he had been reading Aubrey a lecture her eyes snapped with wrath, for reading lectures to Aubrey was a privilege she reserved exclusively to herself. Had she been present Edward should have had a piece of her mind to digest. She had not been present, but in her absence Damerel (though a sinner) had acted with a promptness and a propriety that won her instant approval. So deserving had he shown himself to be that she listened to his advice, and even agreed that it would be imprudent to mention the episode to Aubrey. Damerel thought that if he were to be left alone Aubrey would fall asleep, to which end he proposed to remove his sister from his side for a while. Perhaps she would like to stroll about the garden: what did Mrs. Priddy think?

Gratified, but suspicious, Nurse said that there was no need for Venetia to remain at the Priory any longer, at which Damerel smiled, and said: “None at all, but we could never persuade her to go home until she sees her brother on the mend again.”

That was true, and since his lordship’s manner was far more that of a civil but slightly bored host than of a ravisher of innocent females Nurse raised no further objection to his scheme.

“How in the world,” demanded Venetia, accompanying Damerel down the stairs, “did you contrive to turn Nurse up so sweet?”

He glanced quizzingly down at her. “Did you think I couldn’t?”

“Well, I know you can cajole young females—at least, you are generally believed to do sol—but I am persuaded it would never answer to try to flirt with Nurse.”

“So flirting is all you give me credit for! You underrate my talents, Miss Lanyon! Having created a breach in her defences by showing solicitude for Aubrey and a proper respect for her judgment in all matters concerning him, I got within her outer walls at least by the exercise of devilish strategy. In fact, I sacrificed your worthy suitor, and stormed the fortifications over his fallen carcase. She was so pleased with me for having rid Aubrey of him that she not only allowed herself to be flummeried into giving her consent to this very perilous expedition, but even agreed not to raise any more dust by commenting on Aubrey’s hagged look.”

“Nurse was pleased with you for getting rid of Edward?” Venetia exclaimed incredulously. “But he is a prime favourite with her!”

“Is he? Well, if he has sufficient address (which I doubt), he may succeed in winning back to that position, but not, if she is to be believed, until she has rung a rare peal over him! And certainly not until Aubrey has left the shelter of my roof: I’ll see to that! A truly estimable young man—and one with whom I find I have nothing in common. I gave him leave to come and go as he chooses—and mean to contrive, by judicious fanning of the flames of your admirable Nurse’s wrath, to ensure that he doesn’t avail himself of my carte blanche. I regret infinitely, Miss Lanyon, but I find that a taste of your worthy suitor constitutes a surfeit!”

“Well, you need not say it as though you supposed I wished him to come!” said Venetia indignantly. “I was never more thankful for anything than the chance that brought you into the room at just that moment!”

“Chance, indeed! I came for no other purpose than to remove him before he had driven Aubrey into a raging fever!”

“You shouldn’t have permitted him to come up at all,” said Venetia severely.

“I know I shouldn’t. Unfortunately I said he might do so before I had his measure. By the time Imber came to conduct him upstairs, however, I had it!”

She laughed, but said in rather a worried voice: “I am afraid Aubrey was more hurt by that fall than I had thought. He doesn’t like Edward, but I never knew him to fly out at him before.”

“Perhaps he has never before encountered him after a bad shakeup and a sleepless night,” suggested Damerel, holding open the door for her to pass into the garden. “To judge by the very improving discourse with which he favoured me, he said precisely what anyone with a grain of tact would have left unsaid.”

“Yes, he did. As though he had been Aubrey’s father!”

“Or his elder brother. He appears to think himself that already, for he thanked me for what he called my kindness to Aubrey.”

“He thanked you—? Now, that,” said Venetia, her eyes kindling, “is coming it very much too strong! In fact, it is a great piece of impertinence, for the only person who ever said I should marry him was my father, and he can’t possibly suppose that I should be guided by Papa’s wishes! Well, it is my own fault for having allowed him to suppose that when my brother Conway returns I shall accept him. I did tell him it was no such thing, but he didn’t believe me, and now see what comes of it!”

“From what I have seen of that young man I should think persuading him to believe anything he did not choose to believe a labour of Hercules,” he remarked.

“Yes, but the truth is that I didn’t try very hard to convince him,” she said frankly.

“Are you telling me that you ever entertained for as long as five minutes the thought of accepting such a clod-pole?” he demanded. “Good God, the fellow’s a dead bore!”

“He is, of course, but there’s no saying he wouldn’t be a good husband, for he is very kind, and honourable, and— and respectable, which I believe are excellent qualities in a husband.”

“No doubt! But not in your husband!”

“No, I believe we should tease one another to death. The thing was, you see, that because he was Papa’s godson Papa permitted him to visit us, and so we grew to know him very well, and when he wished to marry me I did wonder (though it was not at all what I wanted) whether perhaps it might not be better for me to do so than to grow into an old maid, hanging on Conway’s sleeve. However, if Aubrey dislikes him as much as that it won’t do. Oh dear, you have allowed your garden to grow into a wilderness! Only look at those rose-trees! They can’t have been pruned for years!”

“Very likely not. Shall I set a man on to attend to them? I will, if it would please you.”

She laughed. “Not at this season! But later I wish you will: it might be such a delightful garden! Where are you taking me?”

“Down to the stream. There’s a seat in the shade, and we can watch the trout rising.”

“Oh, yes, let us do that! Have you fished the stream this year? Aubrey once caught a three-pounder in it.”

“Oh, he did, did he?”

“Yes, but he wasn’t poaching, I assure you! Croyde gave him leave—he does so every year. You don’t fish it yourself, after all!”

“Now I know why I’ve had such poor sport each time I’ve taken my rod out! What a couple you are! First my blackberries, and now my trout!” he said.

The laughing devil was in his eyes, but she was not looking at him, and replied without a trace of embarrassment: “What a long time ago that seems!”

“And how angry you were!”

“I should rather think I was! Well, of all the abominable things to have done!”

“I didn’t find it so!”

She turned her head at that, looking up at him in a considering way, as though she were trying to read the answer to a problem in his face. “No, I suppose not. How very odd, to be sure!”

“What is?”

She walked on, her brow a little furrowed. “Wishing to kiss someone you never saw before in your life. It seems quite madbrained to me, besides showing a sad want of particularity.” She added charitably: “However, I daresay it is one of those peculiarities of gentlemen even of the first respectability which one cannot hope to understand, so I don’t refine too much upon it.”

He gave one of his sudden shouts of laughter. “Oh, not of the first respectability!”

They had emerged by this time from the rose-garden through an archway cut in the hedge on to the undulating lawns which ran down to the stream. Venetia paused, exclaiming: “Ah, this is a delightful prospect! Looking at the Priory from the other side of the river, one can’t tell that you have that distant view. I have never been here before.”

“I’ve seldom been here myself. But I prefer the nearer prospect.”

“Do you? Just green trees?”

“No, a green girl. That is why I’ve remained here. Had you forgotten?”

“I don’t think I am green. It’s true I only know what I’ve read in books, but I’ve read a great many books—and I think you are flirting with me.”

“Alas, no! only trying to flirt with you!”

“Well, I wish you will not. I conjecture that you came into Yorkshire to ruralize. Isn’t that what they call it, when you find yourself cleaned-out?”

“Not so very green!” he said, laughing. “That’s it, fair fatality!”

“If but one half the stories told about you are true you must be very expensive,” she observed reflectively. “Do you indeed keep your own horses on all the main post-roads?”

“I had need to be a Dives to do that! Only on the Brighton and Newmarket roads, I fear. What other stories do they tell of me? Or are they unrepeatable?”

She allowed him to guide her to a stone bench, under an elm tree, and sat down on it, clasping her hands loosely in her lap. “Oh, no! None that were told me, of course.” She turned her face towards him, her eyes brimming with mischief. “It was always We could an if we would whenever we tried—Conway and I—to discover why you were the Wicked Baron. That was our name for you! But no one would tell us, so we were obliged to resort to imagination You wouldn’t believe the crimes we saddled you with! Nothing short of piracy would do for us until Conway, who was always less romantic than I, decided that that must be impossible. I would then have turned you into a highwayman, but even that wouldn’t do for him. He said you had probably killed someone in a duel, and had been forced to flee the country.”

He had been listening to her in amusement, but at that his expression altered. He was still smiling, but not pleasantly, and although he spoke lightly there was a hard note in his voice. “But how acute of Conway! I did kill someone, though not in a duel. My father.”

She was deeply shocked, and demanded: “Who said that to you?” Then, as he merely shrugged, she said: “It was an infamous thing to have said! Idiotish, too!”

“Far from it. The news of my elopement caused him to suffer a stroke, from which he never recovered. Didn’t you know that?”

“Everyone knows it! And also that he died nearly three years later, of a second stroke. Were you accountable for that? To be sure, it was unfortunate you didn’t know he was likely to suffer a stroke, and so were the unwitting cause of it, but if you think he would not have succumbed to it sooner or later you can know very little about the matter! My father had a stroke too: his was fatal. It was not brought about by any shock, and it couldn’t have been averted.” She laid an impulsive hand on one of his, saying earnestly: “I assure you!”

He looked at her, queerly smiling, but whether he mocked himself or her she could not tell. “It doesn’t keep me awake o’ nights, my dear. Not much love was lost between us at the best of times.”

“I didn’t love mine either. In fact, I disliked him. You can’t think how comfortable it is to be able to say that and not fear to be told that I cannot mean it, or that it was my duty to love him! Such nonsense, when he never pretended to care a button for any one of us!”

“Yours seems to have given you little reason to love him, certainly,” he remarked. “Honesty compels me to say, however, that mine had a poor bargain in his only son.”

“Well, if I had an only son—or a dozen sons, for that matter!—I would find something better to do for him when he was in a scrape than cast him off!” declared Venetia. “Would not you?”

“Oh, lord, yes! Who am I to throw stones? I might even make a push to stop him getting into the scrape—though if he were to be half as infatuated as I was I daresay I should fail,” he said reflectively.

After a short pause, during which he seemed to her to be looking back across the years, and with no great pleasure, she ventured to ask: “Did she die?”

His eyes came back to her face, a little startled. “Who? Sophia? Not that I know of. What put that into your head?”

“Only that no one seems to know—and you didn’t marry her—did you?”

“Oh, no!” He saw the troubled look, and grimaced. “You want to know why, do you? Well, if such ancient history interests you, she was not, at the time of Vobster’s death, living under my protection. Oh, don’t look so dismayed!”

“Not dismayed—not that!” she stammered.

“Ah, you feel compassionate? Wasted, my dear! Our mutual passion was violent while it lasted, but soon wore itself out. Fortunately we were saved from dwindling into a state of mutual boredom by the timely appearance on our scene of an accomplished Venetian.”

“An accomplished Venetian!”

“Oh, of the first stare! Handsome, too, and all in print. Air and address were quite beyond my touch!”

“And fortune?” she interpolated.

“That, too. It enabled him to indulge the nattiest of whims! He drove and rode only gray horses, never wore any but black coats, and always, summer or winter, with a white camellia in his buttonhole.”

“Good God, what a quiz! How could she—Lady Sophia—have liked him?”

“Oh, make no mistake! he was a charming fellow! Besides, poor girl, she had become so devilish bored! Who could blame her for preferring an experienced Tulip to the callow tuft I was in those days? For the life of me I can’t conceive how she contrived to bear with my ardours and jealousies for as long as she did. There were no bounds to my folly: if you can picture Aubrey tail over top in love, I imagine I must have been in much the same style. Chuckfull of scholarship, and with no more commonsense than to bore her to screaming point with classical allusions! I even tried to teach her a little Latin, but the only lesson she learned of me was the art of elopement. She put that into practice before we had reached the stage of murdering one another— for which piece of prudence I’ve lived to thank her. She had her reward, too, for Vobster was so obliging as to break his neck before custom had staled her variety, and her Venetian was induced to marry her. I daresay she threatened to leave him, and he may well have despaired of finding another who would have blended so admirably with his taste for black and white. She had a milky complexion and black hair—raven’s wing black!—and eyes so dark as to appear black at least. A little plump beauty! I’m told she was never afterwards seen abroad except in white gowns and black cloaks, and I’ll swear the effect must have been prodigious!”

The note of derision was marked, but she was not deceived by it. Unable to trust her voice she said nothing, and afraid of showing in her face the indignation that swelled within her she kept her eyes lowered. She made the rather horrifying discovery that the slim fingers of a lady could curl into claws, and quickly straightened them. But perhaps she had not done so quickly enough; or perhaps her silence betrayed her; for after a moment Damerel said, more derisively still: “Did you fancy a tragedy to lie behind me? Nothing so romantic, I fear: it was a farce—not one of the ingredients lacking, down to the inevitable heroic meeting at dawn, with both combatants coming off scatheless—for which I am heartily obliged to my rival! He added superb marksmanship to his other accomplishments, and might have put a bullet through me at double the range, I daresay. In fact, he deloped—fired in the air!”

He had told her now as much as she would ever wish to know. He might jeer at the memory of his younger self, but as keenly as though she had been the sufferer did she feel the wound a light woman and a practised man-of-the-town had dealt his pride. She had brothers, and knew that in his pride a boy was most vulnerable. She thought she could see him quite clearly as he must have been: surely a fine young man, tall, straight, and big-shouldered as he was now, but with a face unlined, and eyes full of eagerness, not boredom. He must have been rash, ardent, and perhaps he had been desperately in earnest. Experience had made him a cynic, but he had not been cynical in his fiery youth. He had not then, she knew, been able even to smile at his own folly.

Everything he had done since he had seen himself as a laughing-stock (and she neither knew nor cared to what depths he might have sunk) she perceived to be part of a pattern made inevitable by a wanton’s betrayal. Had they supposed, his righteous parents, that he would return to enact the role of the prodigal son? They should have known better! He might have returned, wedded to his wanton, outfacing the censorious, not, though he ruined himself past recovery, as a cuckolded lover. Ishmael his family had declared him to be, and Ishmael he had chosen to remain, taking a perverse pleasure, she guessed, in providing the interested with rich evidence of his depravity. And all for a little, plump, black-eyed slut, older than himself, whose marriage-ring and noble degree hid the soul of a courtesan!

“Too bad, wasn’t it?” Damerel said. “Instead of dying heroically for love I was left disconsolate—though not, I must admit, for long!”

She raised her eyes at that, and said warmly: “I am excessively glad to hear that, and I do hope your next mistress was entertaining as well as pretty!”

The sneer vanished from his face; the smile that lit his eyes was one of pure amusement. “A charming little ladybird!” he assured her.

“Good! What a fortunate escape you had, to be sure! I daresay it may not have occurred to you, but I have little doubt that by this time Lady Sophia has grown sadly fat. They do, you know, little plump women! I believe the Italians use a great deal of oil in their cookery, too, which would be fatal! I only wish she may not be quite gross!” She added, as his shoulders began to shake: “You may laugh, but I assure you it’s more than likely. What’s more, if your father had warned you of it, instead of behaving in a very foolish and extravagant way, exactly like a Shakespearian father, it would have been very much more to the purpose! Pray, what good did it do old Capulet to fly into a ridiculous passion? Or Lear, or Hermia’s absurd father! But perhaps Lord Damerel was not addicted to Shakespeare?”

His head was down on his hands; he gasped: “It seems he cannot have been!”

Recollecting herself, she said apologetically: “I shouldn’t have said that. It is quite the worst of my bad habits—Aubrey’s too! We say precisely what we happen to be thinking, without pausing to reflect. I beg your pardon!”

He raised his head, still choking with laughter, and said: “Oh, no no! Sweet Mind, then speak yourself ... !”

She wrinkled her brow, and then directed a look of enquiry at him.

“What, lurched, O well-read Miss Lanyon?” he said provocatively. “It was written by Ben Jonson, of another Venetia. I turned it up last night, after you had left me.”

“No, is it indeed so?” she exclaimed, surprised and pleased. “I never heard it before! In fact, I didn’t know there had been any poems written to a Venetia. What was she like?”

“Like yourself, if John Aubrey is to be believed: a beautiful desirable creature!”

Quite unmoved by this tribute, she replied seriously: “I wish you won’t fall into flowery commonplace! It makes you sound like a would-be beau at the York Assemblies!”

“You little wretch!” he exclaimed.

“That’s much better—between friends!” she approved, laughing at him.

“So you think I’m offering you Spanish coin, do you? I can’t imagine why you should, for you know how beautiful you are! You told me so!”

“I?” she gasped. ‘“I never said such a thing!”

“But you did! You were picking blackberries at the time— my blackberries!”

“Oh! Well, that was only to give you a set-down!” she said, blushing a little.

“Good God, girl, and you said you had a mirror!”

“So I have, and it tells me that I am well-enough. I believe I take after my mother in some degree—at least, Nurse told me once, when I was indulging a fit of vanity, that I should never be equal to her.”

“She was mistaken.”

“Oh, did you know her?” she asked quickly. “She died when I was only ten years old, you know, and I can scarcely remember her. We saw so little of her: she and Papa were always away, and her likeness was never taken. Or, if it was, Papa destroyed it when she died. He could not bear even to hear her name spoken—forbade the least mention of her! And no one ever did mention her at Undershaw, except Nurse, on that one occasion. I think it an odd way of showing one’s devotion, but then he was odd. Do I resemble her at all?”

“I suppose some might think so. Her features—as I recall—were more perfect than yours, but your hair is a richer gold, your eyes a deeper blue, and your smile is by far the sweeter.”

“Oh dear, now you are back in your nonsensical vein! You cannot possibly remember at this distance of time how blue her eyes were, or how gold her hair, so stop hoaxing me!”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said meekly. “I had far rather talk of your eyes, or even of your pretty lips, which you quite wrongly described as indifferent red.”

“I cannot conceive,” she interrupted, with some severity, “why you will persist in recalling an episode which you would do better to forget!”

“Can’t you?” He put out his hand, and took her chin in his long fingers, tilting it up. “Perhaps to remind you, my dear, that although I am obliged at this present to behave with all the propriety of a host it’s only a veneer—and God knows why I should tell you so!”

She removed his hand, but said with a chuckle: “I don’t think your notion of propriety would take in the first circles! And furthermore, my dear friend, it is high time you stopped trying to make everyone believe you are much blacker than you have been painted. That’s a habit you fell into when you were young and foolish, and perfectly understandable in the circumstances. Though also very like Conway, when he used to boast to me of the shocking pranks he played at Eton. Banbury stories, most of them.”

“Thank youl But I have never done that: there has been no need for Banbury stories. With what improbable virtues are you trying to endow me? An exquisite sensibility? Delicacy of principle?”

“Oh, no, nothing of that nature!” she replied, getting up. “I allow you all the vices you choose to claim—indeed, I know you for a gamester, and a shocking rake, and a man of sadly unsteady character!—but I’m not so green that I don’t recognize in you one virtue at least, and one quality.”

“What, is that all? How disappointing! What are they?”

“A well-informed mind, and a great deal of kindness,” she said, laying her hand on his arm, and beginning to stroll with him back to the house.