Althea (9 page)

“Well, after Lady Fforyding came in and introduced you to
that red-faced boy and the two of you strolled off together, Francis and I
stood about just talking — just as if we were courting again. Then along came
Johnny Wallingham and asked me to dance, and if
Francis
had asked me not
to dance, of course I would not have, but Wallingham is perfectly
unexceptionable — a little rakish, perhaps, but he is one of my cicisbeos, and
very amusing. In any case, Francis made no fuss over it, so what could I do but
agree, and when we came back after the two-third, he was gone! We found him, of
course, but just when Wallingham had said the most amusing thing, so of course
I was laughing, and that put Francis in a terrible pucker. He only stood and
looked
at me. Such a look! And Wallingham excused himself, as well he might with
Francis looking daggers. Then Francis turned upon me and said he hoped I would
enjoy Wallingham’s company, then walked off, cool as you please. I could not
have chased after him in the middle of that crowd, could I? So what was there
for it but for me to make a show of enjoying myself? And if John Wallingham and
Hartington and Lord Sefton — did you meet him? the dearest man imaginable! — well,
if people are pleased to be pleasant to me, then what can I do but be civil?”

“What a splendid mull, Mary.”

“Well, I suppose that it was partly my fault, for I know
Francis doesn’t much care for Wallingham, and I suppose I could have refused to
dance, but why should I when Francis said nothing to make me stay? In any case,
that is all past, and we have said nothing to each other above two words since
then. What an awful mess.” As Lady Bevan showed signs of readying herself to
plunge back into the pillow and her tears, Althea assumed a bracing manner.

“Yes it is, I don’t doubt, but not so bad that I misdoubt we
shall have you happy shortly. First, there is the bill from Helena. Once that
is paid, you can go to Francis and beg his pardon very prettily —”

“
I
beg
his
pardon? When it was he who
abandoned me all evening? Infamous! I’ll not stand for it.” Lady Bevan folded
her arms and looked obstinate, but her sister could not be put off in that
fashion.

“Mary, I beg you to believe me when I say that there is nothing
to elicit an apology
like
an apology. It always works for Papa: all you
do is to admit that you were wrong first, and a man will dearly love to be
bountiful and forgive, and then turn about and lay his heart open to you in a
veritable orgy of contrition. You would be shocked if I told you the ineligible
things that Papa has confessed to me after I have apologized over something —
some of those things I hadn’t the least idea of.”

“You mean the hatmaker in the village?”

“Oh, that was long ago. There have been a few other
indiscretions since that, I can tell you.”

“And you think that would work with Francis?” Lady Bevan
eyed her sister mistily, but with dawning hope.

“Of course it will. It does with most men, and I imagine
that Francis is not any different from the common run of men in this way. I
will tell you when he has returned to the house, and you may go down and beg
his pardon very prettily. Shall I sit on the stairs and shock Mrs. Chaverly,
who I think has distrusted me since I arrived in that very irregular fashion,
and watch for Francis, while you put on something truly ravishing?”

Maria gave a watery chuckle. Althea rang for Bailey, telling
her sister to hurry with her toilette.

“Lord, Ally, will you manage your husband this way?”

“Lud, I hope I shall not, but then, since I’ve not met the
man, there’s no telling. Who knows but what I shall find him managing me!”
Althea left the room to Maria and Bailey, who considered Miss a godsend in
handling her fractious mistress.

Lord Bevan was harder to find than Althea had anticipated.
When questioned, Debbens announced with a
harumph
that considering the
tearer the master had been in when he left, begging Miss’s pardon, he did not
think his lordship would return shortly, since it was his lordship’s custom when
overset to go riding, or pursue some other, less suitable outlet for his
temper, again begging Miss’s pardon. Althea, trying to conjure up the
unsuitable outlets open to a gentleman of fashion at high noon in London,
decided that either her education was deplorably lacking, or Debbens had
exaggerated somewhat. Upon consideration, she attempted to understand what
might have put Francis into such a fury. The image of Francis as he had
appeared in the breakfast room that morning, with his drawn countenance and
sore head, was utterly irreconcilable with that of Francis in a rage. His
anger, she was sure, must have had its source in some later influence.

Despite the hopes of the household, by four o’clock that
afternoon Lord Bevan had not returned, and as his wife and sister-in-law were
engaged to drive out with Mrs. Drummond-Burrell, the most imposing, unlikable,
and critical of the London dowagers, Althea went up to her room to change,
stopping on the way to admonish Maria as to the lateness of the hour. Maria was
becomingly dressed but rather dispirited in appearance. She glanced up
hopefully when Althea entered, but perceiving only her sister, shrugged
impatiently.

“It’s only I, love. I expect Francis has found some
diversion for the afternoon and will not be home till later. Perhaps he will
come back to change for the evening, and we can see him then. Debbens tells me
that he was in a bad temper when he left, so perhaps it is a good sign that he
has taken himself off, and he will return to you cheerful and ready to be
repentant. You should only have seen him this morning, Mary! He was still a
trifle foxed, and so sore in the head that he looked daggers at me when I only
stirred my tea!” Althea had, during this, managed to bring her sister out into
the hallway and down the stairs, and they stood now in the lower hallway ready
to meet the approaching Mrs. Drummond-Burrell. Althea reminded her sister that
she must contrive to cover any and all
faux pas
her awkward sister might
make, for she counted heavily on Maria’s good influence with their hostess.
Maria could only answer — a little tearfully — that Althea was a diamond of the
first water, and if Mrs. Drummond-Burrell could not see it, she was a ninny
indeed.

After a ride, which was rendered singularly uncomfortable by
their hostess’s well-known manner, Althea and Maria returned to dress and dine
before going out to a rout party. As there was no word from Francis, Maria grew
more and more dispirited,f taking only half an hour with her evening toilette.
They sat down just two to dinner that night, and until halfway through the
meal, spoke only a few desultory words. Some fifteen minutes into the second
course, however, Maria began to talk, swallowing a bit of turbot and then
beginning a tirade against her own selfishness. After a few moments of this
Althea had to break in and demand what it was Maria had done to justify her
self-loathing.

“Why, goose, here I am with a reigning beauty on my hands,
and I sit moping about some stupid quarrel I have had, totally ignoring your
triumph. If you continue as you have begun, and Mr. Brummel shall not dislike
you, then you will be toasted in St. James’s, I make sure of it. Only think
what a wonder we have wrought between us, Madame Helena and I!”

But the mention of the unfortunate dressmaker’s name
recalled Maria to her misery; she became very white, and again quietly tearful.
Only after Althea had spoken at some length of Maria’s part in the
transformation (at no small cost to her own self-esteem, since she had to make
herself sound like a very toad in order to suitably impress Maria) did she
begin again to pick up in spirits. Her sister, recognizing this flower for the
frail one that it was, carefully nursed it along through the evening.

Later that night, when they returned to the house, it was to
find a note from Lord Bevan lying on a salver in the hallway. Lady Bevan tore
the note open, read it quickly, reread it, and cast it to the floor with a sob.
She gasped out something about Francis’s cruelty and the injustice of it, and
begged her sister to read the note while she sat and composed herself. She then
dissolved into tears. Althea, with one arm about her weeping sister, did read
Francis’s note, which began hopefully enough with a plea for Maria’s
forgiveness for his behavior at the Fforydings’. It then changed its tone, and
it became clear that the change was occasioned by the mail delivery, which
brought the bill from Helena. That he should feet ill used in the light of his
wife’s animadversions upon his extravagances was not unreasonable, but Althea
suspected that his head, and the precarious state of his relations with his
wife, had made his reaction to the bill far greater than was necessary. That
Francis, normally the mildest of men, and certainly not one given to literary
extravagance, should couch his letter in terms of shameless duplicity, and in
phrases such as “the extravagances you have attempted to hide from me by dint
of rank untruth,” and that he should end his letter with the sincere wish that
his judgment should never again be so clouded as it had been when he had
convinced himself they should suit! — this was above too much. The note was
signed, coldly, “Bevan.” And if it had surprised Althea to see such a letter,
it had sent Maria into strong hysterics.

“His
judgment
! Why, he cannot chose his coat without
I advise him, and then he must needs go about to his friends demanding do they
like it. Ally, how could he write such an awful letter to me! We can never,
ever be reconciled after this dreadful blow that he has dealt me.” She rambled
on in this manner for a few minutes more, until Althea could steer her up the
stairs and ring for Bailey. When the maid arrived, Althea desired her to put
Lady Bevan to bed, with a few drops of laudanum, if Bailey thought best. Bailey
nodded and led her sodden mistress away, casting Althea a look of sage
commiseration. Althea followed more slowly to her room, looking forward only to
a long, mostly unsatisfactory review of the situation. Her thoughts were not
very coherent — not surprising in one who had been dealing with a deranged
sensibility all day. Althea felt she was responsible in some way, if not for
the cause, then for the cure of the unrest in the Bevan household, but so late
at night she could come up with no very good conclusion.

When morning came, Althea woke with her optimism full blown,
and went down to her breakfast, only to be informed by the ubiquitous Debbens
that his lordship had gone from town, sudden like, to meet some friends at a
mill. Or so, Debbens remarked darkly, he had said. As this information had also
been communicated to Lady Bevan, Althea found her sister in such circumstances
as necessitated a great deal of soothing and consolation. At least to external
view, however, the upset did not last beyond a morning’s repining. In the face
of her husband’s absence, Maria became stubbornly insistent upon having the
most enjoyable social time possible. If this behavior worried Althea, she
should find no occasion to remonstrate with her sister, and as she, too, was
becoming more and more drawn into the toils of social obligation, there never
seemed to be time for more than a quick frown or a preoccupied thought.

Maria, who cherished upon her sister’s behalf the attention
of any unmarried man, regarded it as the most delightful thing that Lord
William Fforyding and his sister Sophia should find it convenient to call often
at Grosvenor Square. Althea was better informed than her sister, and knew that
Lord William was already betrothed to a Miss Westleid; she also suspected that
Miss Fforyding found the Bevan house an easy place to encounter Jonathan Tidd,
who miraculously appeared whenever the Fforydings called. Lord William
Fforyding, with or without Miss Westlied, was a fair conversationalist, albeit
a very conventional one, and Althea was pleased to welcome him and his sister
whenever they came to call. She would divert his attention to herself and spend
half an hour discussing estate management, or the proper way to deal with one’s
gamekeeper, while Sophia and Mr. Tidd sat and blushed at each other. On
occasion, the party enlarged to include both Edward Pendarly and Sir Tracy
Calendar, and while Althea fully appreciated the awkward humor of the
situation, she could have wished that it were more humorous and less awkward.

This day Sir Tracy sat in conversation with Maria, who was,
as always, almost entirely uncomprehending of his remarks. Edward Pendarly sat
in uneasy conversation with Althea, and kept casting glances of dislike at Sir
Tracy, which were matched in intensity only by the looks of trepidation Sir
Tracy was favored with by Sophia and Mr. Tidd. Calendar seemed unaware of these
speaking looks, but Althea could not so underestimate him as to assume that he
was so. Only Lord Fforyding was completely at ease, listening to Mr. Pendarly’s
comments upon points of interest in the city.

“Then you’ve seen the Bazaar? Seen Lord Elgin’s marbles,
have you?” he questioned in his bluff manner. Althea admitted that she had.
“Been to Vauxhall, of course, and seen Piccadilly Circus and the Botanical
Gardens? I cannot think of anywhere else to suggest,” Lord Fforyding conceded.
“Unless you want to go gawk at HRH — Prinny’s a sight to behold, ain’t he,
Pendarly?”

Mr. Pendarly conceded that the Prince’s presence cast a
shadow of awe over the lowliest proceedings.

“If you are tired of the city’s sights, Miss Ervine,” he
continued, “perhaps you would be pleased with a country outing?” Pendarly fixed
his beautiful, soul-filled gaze upon Althea with great fervor. “My cousin, Mrs.
Abbot, is mistress of a very picturesque estate, Danning Hall, not more than
one and a half hours from London. Perhaps I could arrange for a party to visit
the grounds — I am sure it would cheer my cousin no end, since her husband is
in the Navy and has been at sea this last year or more.”