Intermezzo (12 page)

Adela glowered, but as she was still moderately embarrassed, she sat back and listened as the others exchanged good-natured banter with no fear of losing
their
warm beds,
their
place in society, or
their
pianos. Security was a wonderful thing.

“Becka, I do not believe that it is proper for you to discuss your prospective aunt in this way,” Adela interjected primly if only to dampen the general good spirits which she found, quite suddenly, oppressive.

“Don’t make a cake of yourself, Adela. Even Uncle Charles is having fun.”

“No, no. Cousin Adela is quite convinced that at the slightest hint of disapproval from the fair Diana, I, being so excessively lily-livered myself, will pack Becka off to some stern boarding school where she will be dressed in horse hair and fed porridge. And, I would have Soames throw the oh-so-charming Miss Adela out into the streets of St. James Square—preferably on a cold winter’s night to freeze and starve—in that order.”

Sophia humphed, “Surely, Adela, you cannot think Charles such a gudgeon as that.”

“No, of course not, Aunt Sophia. I simply do not think that you realize the precariousness of my position and how very disagreeable my life would become if I were forced back into a garret and into giving hourly lessons for my keep.”

Nine

In the following few days, the memory of the contretemps at the tea party seemed to fade. Adela happily discovered that she was not plagued by thoughts of insecurity or by rumors of consumption and the rest of the family seemed to have forgotten the incident entirely.

In fact, the pattern of Adela’s life quickly reasserted itself and seemed to dominate her existence. She found no occasion, in her day-to-day work at the piano, to think about Lady Diana or the future.

Adela was particularly pleased with the continued improvement in her music. It was no longer simply a matter of the extra hours devoted to the relentless pursuit of technical perfection—although technical perfection was very important. It was also that her music seemed somehow to deepen, perhaps because she began to come to some sort of terms with her grief. Jon and her mother were often in her thoughts, but they did not have such a crippling effect on her daily life—she was, after all, no longer secluded in the house of a cruel and dissolute father or in a garret in Hans Town. Adela Trowle was living among friends and had, at least in Rebecka, found another child whom she could in fact care for. So, thoughts of Jon and her mother became at one and the same time less of a threat to her sanity and more of a benefit to her music. They no longer so totally overwhelmed her, and her music, Adela found, was reflecting her feelings at greater depths with an almost inspired condensation of emotion.

Waterston, of course, was the first to notice the new power in her music. He had long ceased to question her abilities; he simply sat in the library, night after night accepting the gift. The pursuit of beauty had always been perhaps the most important aspect of his existence. Now he was slowly learning to accept a beauty which was powerful rather than pleasant—which was profound rather than perfect.

For his part, the music seemed to have had an almost hypnotic effect on his life. Night after night it invaded the closed, contained world of his library and of his being. And still, somehow, the day-to-day conversations, when Miss Trowle and Lord Waterston found themselves together, were almost mundane in their conventionality.

Waterston’s burden at the Foreign Office was not as great as it had been. With Thomas Worthing’s betrothal that young man’s life had settled down to a reasonable pattern and Thomas was handling far more of the work. But there were Lord Waterston’s other affairs to attend to. In particular, Charles Beaumont knew he must leave London for a few weeks to attend to necessary business at Ashleigh, but he was exceedingly reluctant to do so.

One evening at dinner, Miss Trowle seemed particularly distracted.

“A penny for your thoughts, Cousin Adela,” Waterston asked as he looked up from his turtle soup.

“My thoughts, sir? My thoughts are scarcely worth a penny.”

Producing a penny from his pocket, Waterston placed it on the table saying, “Here, Miss Trowle, now allow me to be the judge.”

“You will be disappointed, I’m certain. Actually I was thinking about the piano ... Well, not the piano precisely ... I do not mean to be a
grasping
female, sir, but have you ever considered purchasing a harpsichord?”

Waterston allowed the footman to remove his half-finished bowl of turtle soup “A harpsichord! Miss Trowle, we have been turning up our collective noses at the harpsichord for at least two generations.”

“True, sir, but it has occurred to me, in working over some of the two-and three-part inventions, that we may have been in error. We may have become too much in the habit of considering every change an improvement. The piano is indeed a very wonderful instrument and extraordinarily adaptable, but
I
shall not be
content
until I have attempted Bach on one of the much older instruments.”

“What an interesting theory. You never cease to amaze me, Cousin Adela.”

“Nevertheless, if I were you, my lord, I would be tempted to purchase a harpsichord—one of the finer antique instruments. It can do no harm to experiment by attempting the older works on the original instruments.
Have
you ever considered it, sir?”

Waterston shook his head and Adela noticed that his eyes were smiling. “
Purchase
a harpsichord! Why ever should I? I already own six or seven of them.”

“Six or seven. Where?”

“They are housed with their siblings—the virginals, clavechords, and so on.”

“I am
quite
serious, sir.”

Becka was giggling. “Adela, you wigeon, Uncle Charles is talking about Great Uncle Horace’s collection. We have twenty-seven keyboard instruments at Ashleigh. That
is
the number, isn’t it, Uncle Charles?”

“Twenty-six. The piano here is one of that collection.”

“Horace’s collection. Of course, my mother was used to speak of it.” And Adela’s mind moved back to those first lessons with her mother even before Jon was born. With some effort, she pulled herself back into the present. “I should dearly love to see the collection someday. But perhaps, sir, you
can
have another two instruments moved into the music room upstairs. A piano so that Becka and I can play duets and a harpsichord for the baroque music.”

“No, I don’t think so, Cousin Adela. You see I have been determined, as much as possible, to leave the collection intact. You and Rebecka had better come to Ashleigh, don’t you think?”

“Of course, my lord, I shall just hike up to Hampshire tomorrow, race through a few arpeggios, and make it back in time for dinner.”

“Hampshire, my dear Miss Trowle, is
not
China, so you may spare me your sarcasm. As it happens, I have been intending to go into the country for a visit of two or three weeks. There are a number of matters which my bailiff is not himself equipped to handle. Would you young ladies care to join me?”

“No!” Adela spoke almost without thought.

“And why such a definitive no, Cousin Adela?” Waterston asked.

In her excitement Rebecka had left her place at the table and was approaching Adela. “You
must
come. You will love the country, Adela. Please come.”

“No, Rebecka. I don’t think I
can
, you see. It has I been so many years since I lived in the country...” Adela looked down at her cup to avoid the two pairs of eyes fastened on her. No, she thought, I am not ready. Those years with Jon and Mother in Yorkshire. They were the happy years, the only happy years. It was a world that lived on, would always live on, in Adela’s thoughts, a private sanctuary like the cemetery—a place to be alone with her dead. The Beaumonts had, with the best of intentions, somehow been chipping away at that world. She could not allow such a full-scale assault. She was not ready to return to the country. To the quiet, to the gardens, to the laughing children, to the intense closeness of family. She could not do it—not yet.

Rebecka was still speaking, “You will adore it, Adela. We have parks and horses and flowers and fishing and everyone is so wonderfully sweet. The housekeeper is very comfortable and Nurse is like having another mother. No one is starched up at Ashleigh. It is the finest place in the world—isn’t it, Uncle Charles?”

“I think so, Becka,” he said while silently studying Adela—wondering how hard he could push her. “But of course it is my home and I am prejudiced. You need not come, of course, Cousin Adela, but then Rebecka will stay in London as well.” Almost as much as Adela wished to avoid Ashleigh, Waterston wished her to be there. It had become very important to him that she come. He had been committed to this sojourn in the country for several weeks and had repeatedly delayed setting a firm date for departure. He told himself that somehow, insidiously, he had grown accustomed to having a family. Both Rebecka and Adela Trowle now seemed necessary for his continued comfort. A niece here and a cousin there and,
voila,
the house on St. James Square had become a home. These dinners had become domestic warm events in an otherwise rather stark existence. The music coming into the library at night had become a drug which he did not believe he could survive without. Lord Waterston did not really want to leave that family and go alone into Hampshire.

“Oh no, Uncle Charles. Adela will come. Say you will come, Adela. I have grown so sick of London. I want to get back out into the country where I can run free and play and maybe ride my pony. You will love it, Adela, and think of all the keyboards. You must see Uncle Horace’s collection.”

Am I being so very foolish, she thought to herself. What is there to fear after all? She looked up to encounter Waterston’s eyes and there was some understanding in them.

“Please come, Cousin Adela. You know Hampshire is not at all like Yorkshire. It is really a far more civilized sort of place.”

“Perhaps. I must think about it.” Horace’s collection was of course an almost irresistible temptation and the rest was, after all, only misgivings.

Ashleigh, his lordship’s Hampshire estate, was as imposing as Adela had been led to expect. It was not at all like her childhood home in Yorkshire. On first impression it was truly awesome—an enormous structure, quite alien, cold, and symmetric to a fault. The huge echoing halls and empty ball rooms were impermeable to ordinary human emotion. It was, Adela thought, a tasteful but almost oppressive display of wealth which seemed, to Adela, a perfect setting for Lady Diana Rathbone—like a filigreed ring of gems to frame a perfect diamond. Clearly, this was the Lady Diana’s natural habitat.

Fortunately, on closer inspection, not everything about the house seemed so foreign. The lived-in areas of the structure were quite pleasant. The servants were honest, affectionate country folk. The rooms were incredibly light and airy. After Adela’s years in London, the air in Hampshire seemed to have been freshly laundered daily. The setting sunlight, and the budding flowers were delightful and the whole of Ashleigh was surging with a quiet and refined yet strangely insistent life of its own. At times, this very insistence seemed to confirm Adela in her fears.

The staff, as Rebecka had promised, was a good deal less on their dignity than the London servants, and Adela found that Mrs. Pike, the housekeeper, and Mrs. Thurgood, the ancient nurse, were particularly sweet-tempered and helpful.

And of course there was the music room. The room, arranged to house the whole of Horace’s collection, was immense. Everyday Adela and Becka would retreat into it and spend hours moving from instrument to instrument, trying each of their favorite baroque compositions on different keyboards. It was an exercise in discovery. And in those hours devoted to Horace’s collection, Adela was free of the self-doubts that had plagued her ever since the decision was made to come to Ashleigh.

Waterston, with a great deal of sensitivity, did not intrude himself on Adela and Rebecka. He settled down almost immediately to his work with the bailiff. Only gradually did his increased presence in their lives make itself felt.

In the afternoons, after luncheon, Becka would insist they go into the woods, ostensibly to pick the trillium and crocuses for flower arrangements for the music room. The first few afternoons they were content just to pick the flowers and stroll about, but soon afterward they began to wander farther and farther from the house and lose themselves in the extensive woods that formed the larger part of the park. It was difficult for Adela, and the days were almost unbearably bittersweet.

On the whole, Ashleigh was a good place.

Hours would go by when Adela did not think about the years of privation and misery, when she did not dwell on the memories of her mother and brother. Then, at times when she least expected it, Adela would stop and look at Rebecka and she wouldn’t see Rebecka; she would see instead, her brother Jonathan, and Adela would experience a wrenching remorse—a knife-thrust of grief more painful than months of quiet resigned mourning. What was she, Adela Trowle, doing here in the midst of the lovely spring day being almost happy while everyone she loved lay cold and buried? And, in spite of Rebecka and all the pleasant things of her new life, she would miss Jon again with a raw, blinding intensity. At such times Rebecka would see a dark look come into Adela’s eyes and a whiteness about Adela’s lips.

Seeing her cousin falling away, Rebecka would run up to Adela and almost physically drag her into some new form of sport. And Adela would come. To do otherwise would be cruel. Jon least of all would have understood such cruelty to another child.

They would run flying kites, they would play hide-and-go-seek, they even went fishing with John Coachman. His lordship meanwhile would sequester himself with his bailiff or wander around the property finding it convenient to walk around the park in the afternoon. Occasionally he would come upon them. He would watch them running about, their hair working itself loose, the hems of their walking dresses mud-spattered, their eyes alight, and their cheeks bright red. Waterston would stand quietly at a distance, unnoticed.

One afternoon, while they were playing ball quite close to the house, his lordship, walking off among the trees to the side, saw the suddenly arrested dark look come over Adela. What a frightening transformation from carefree happiness to grief. Her grief, at that moment, was almost palpable. Charles Henry Beaumont felt certain he could reach out and touch the tears, although her eyes were quite dry.

Becka, seeing the familiar look in Adela’s eyes, was momentarily daunted—but only momentarily. With a forced gaiety she called out to her cousin, and then she lowered her head and, with her hands to her head, like horns shouted, “Here I come, Adela, ready or not. I’m a big black fierce bull and I’m going to knock you down.”