Intermezzo (20 page)

“I beg your pardon.”

“I suppose your Mr. Brewer has come up to scratch. Am I to offer you my felicitations?”

“Not as yet, sir,” she answered ingenuously. “I’m just trying to plan. Except for the piano I have never tried to plan before.”

“I see.”

“You must know that I am very fond of Becka and she of me. I should like to continue her lessons and your acquaintance, sir. You have both come to mean a great deal to me. You and Becka and Sophia are my family. You have, together, given me a new life.”

His lordship’s response to this her first open expression of friendship and trust was merciless.

“Having acquired this new lease on life you are now to rush off to some middle-class dream. Shall I give you the details. Item: one quaint cottage, one servant girl, several red-headed little sniveling children, and a round of ladies auxiliaries punctuated with scintillating conversations from your brilliant in-laws. No, I thank you, you will stay away from Becka. Miss Trowle, allow me to inform you that you have begun to reek of bourgeois mediocrity.”

“I, sir, shall never be mediocre so long as I have my music.”

“Remember to take your piano to bed with you, Miss Trowle. Did he kiss you?”

“Yes, he kissed me.”

“And? A pleasant bourgeois sort of kiss?”

“I do not live my life at a physical level. I am not a dog. Richard is good, kind, and dependable. He never puts me down,
he
never frightens me.”

“Do I frighten you?”

“No of course not ... yes, you do. You are always making demands, you are always laughing at me, you are always requiring me to be something more than I am. Richard never laughs at me. Richard is safe and he is comfortable.”

“And you, Cousin Adela, are a fool.”

And then they were back in St. James Square and Soames was holding the door.

Thirteen

His lordship repaired to the library, and despite the late hour, Adela found herself in the music room. For hours she played, almost wildly in an attempt to exorcise the demons that would not be exorcised. And he sat in the library listening, cursing, and drinking.

The following morning Lady Spencer sent word that Rebecka would be staying with her for an extra day or two, and so Adela sequestered herself in the music room and planned a day of uninterrupted music.

The work did not go well, but shrugging, Adela attributed the downturn in her playing merely to the intensity with which she had been working for the concert. Early in the afternoon Richard Brewer came to call and Adela explained that she did not think she could marry him. She did not think she could marry anyone.

After Richard left, the piano was even less cooperative.

Pleading a very real headache, Adela had her dinner sent on a tray to her room and attempted to compose herself for sleep. But self-composition was impossible, and so, almost against her will, she was drawn back to the music room.

The material for the concert was still impossible to play, but she was able to manage some of her own compositions and some of the more violent Beethoven passages. She played out her soul. Adela Elizabeth Trowle was waking up and the experience was not pleasurable. Having come to terms with an eternity of mourning, she found that she had somehow suddenly been betrayed into something quite different. Life had played her false.

Even the piano, which had stood her so well in the past, played her false that night. Always before, the piano could be depended upon not only to reflect the state of her soul but also to effect a modicum of healing. That night the piano did indeed reflect the turmoil, frustration, and bitterness that was Adela Elizabeth Trowle, but it did nothing to
soothe
her troubled mind. Quite the contrary, the longer she played the more bitter she became, the more actively violent and discordant the music.

She was totally immersed in the music and still her fingers made mistake after mistake. Finally she hit one last discordant chord, and while recognizing the disharmony and her own mistake, she pounded out the raucous chord again and again and again. Having exhausted herself, she bent her head to the piano in an effort to regain some slight control over her errant fingers.

“Am I disturbing you?” His lordship’s voice came from the doorway.

“No, sir,” she said, without lifting her eyes from the keyboard.

“Please go on playing.”

She got up from the piano and backed away toward the far wall. “No, I think I have played enough this evening. The music will not come tonight and I am not helping it.”

“Yes, I know. I’ve been listening.”

“I thought the door was closed. Have I been disturbing you?”

“The door was closed and you are always disturbing me.”

“My lord, you speak in riddles and I am tired.”

“Of course I speak in riddles. You do not have the courage for anything but riddles. Do you realize that it is two in the morning and that you have been sitting here for hours fairly wallowing in sanctimonious self-pity?”

“Self-pity! Surely your judgment on the basis of one bad chord is a bit precipitous, is it not?”

“One bad chord! In the library one can hear every sound emanating from this room when one chooses to. You have indulged yourself not in one bad chord but in four hours of discordant aggression.”

“Spying again...”

He ignored this sally and continued, “Poor little Miss Muffet, not having the courage to look at the truth you are instead brutally abusing my piano.” She stood mute as he continued, mercilessly, “You are an imbecile and a coward. You’ve run to the piano too often for comfort and understanding, but the music is not deadening the pain anymore, is it, Miss Muffet? Quite the contrary. The piano is no longer an opiate. Poor little Miss Muffet, will she drug herself now in the arms of the oh so comforting Mr. Brewer?”

Finally she retaliated. “And what, my lord, do you know of pain? Did you stub your toe once or did your nurse once deny you a bonbon? My heart cries out for you. You who have all your life been a pampered bored bully. You who have never even cared enough for anyone to know grief. Do not lecture me on pain. I have sampled your life. It is all a farce. It is a sham—a trill and arpeggio but nothing of substance. There is more of life in a Requiem than in a thousand minuets—and far more of humanity. There is more of life in my dancing fingers than in all of your frivolous waltzes. There is more of love in a kiss to a child than to a dozen boorish young men.”

Waterston threw back his head and began to laugh and Adela, enraged beyond all reason, threw a conveniently placed Ming vase at his head. He swerved; it missed; and, closing the door he advanced toward her no longer laughing.

And then she was in his arms and she was being kissed. The kiss was neither comforting, nor a sham.

A few moments later his lordship found himself looking down on a head of curls burrowing its way into his shoulder.

“Adela, my love, can you look at me?”

“I don’t think so,” answered a muffled voice.

Lifting her chin he looked into a pair of shimmering eyes. “Please don’t cry, my darling. I love you, you know. Do you think you could stomach a pampered bored bully for a husband?” and then with a finger over her lips, “No, don’t answer me now. We have time.”

She was smiling up at him as he had never thought to see her smile. Then he kissed her again.

Much later Waterston released her. “I will have to leave now—go to the club. I don’t think I can trust myself to stay. Are you afraid?”

“I’m not afraid.”

“You should be, one more kiss and good night my love.”

“Good night, my lord.”

Fourteen

The next morning after breakfast, Waterston asked her into the library.

Neither of them could begin. They knew themselves to be violently in love but the experience of the embrace in the music room had been, for both, so traumatic, so unexpected in its intensity that they were unbalanced. While they knew themselves to be in love, they did not dare to hope that the full extent of their feelings was reciprocated. They were, in short, at that time in a courtship where everything is simultaneously certain and uncertain, where one is secure in one’s love but uncertain of its being returned.

It is unfortunate that in such a situation and in such an atmosphere Waterston’s exquisite sense of propriety was allowed to rule.
He
knew he could not on living in the same house with Miss Trowle—his every glance and gesture he felt, radiated a sense of passion not to be denied and certainly not to be concealed. To continue to live in the same house with Adela before their marriage would have been dishonorable. At the same time, he realized that nothing in the world must be allowed to interfere with Adela’s preparation for the concert. No matter what the outcome of his suit, the piano must remain a central and tremendously important facet of Adela’s life. Adela’s art was too important a thing to be stifled by social conventions. She had to be free to devote herself to her debut. And then once she was firmly established in her career she could consider marriage to a dilettante aristocrat almost ten years her senior. These two considerations, one of propriety and one of unselfish adoration, necessitated, he knew, that he temporarily leave the house on St. James Square.

He began slowly, “Adela, there is so much I would like to say but I don’t know how to say it. I have never been at a loss for words before ... I acted very badly last night.”

He hesitated to continue, and misconstruing the meaning of his words, her heart sank.
She
was not seeking an apology.

“You must know that after last night it would not be right for us to continue in this house together.”

“Do you wish me to leave?” she asked.

“God no! You
cannot
leave. You must be prepared for the concert. I will leave. I shall go to Ashleigh for at least a fortnight and I will ask Sophia to come and stay. Perhaps I have been going too fast for you, my dear; you need time to learn to know your own mind. Damn, it is all so new to me and I know I handle it badly. I wish at times that I was your glib Frenchman with his gift for soft flowing words.”

Adela did not understand much of what he was saying but one fact was very clear, “You are leaving, my lord?”

“I must, but I will return for the concert.”

She lifted her eyes to him and they were shimmering in confusion. And, while he was desperately trying to keep from violently embracing her, she was quietly bidding him adieu and wishing him a safe journey.

With the departure of his lordship and the arrival of Lady Spencer, Adela’s life assumed an entirely new dimension. Miss Trowle had never realized what quantities of energy her Aunt Sophia was blessed with. Life in the house on St. James Square seemed, of a sudden, to have become very busy and very complicated.

Accustomed as she was to a day spent in study, and music, Adela was totally unprepared for Sophia’s totally new demands on her time. Lady Spencer suddenly seemed determined that her newfound niece be exposed to the social world of London society and was deaf to all Adela’s pleading. Aunt Sophia was adamant.

“Adela dear, I understand that you must practice. Charles has explained that as the reason I had to come to St. James Square rather than you and Rebecka coming to me—which, I confess, would have been far more natural. I suppose you
must
spend four or five hours a day on that infernal piano. But I still require
some
of your time. You will grant me every afternoon and every second evening. That should be sufficient, don’t you think?”

“Sufficient for what, Sophia?” Adela asked, perplexed and annoyed to have her time requisitioned.

“Sufficient to introduce you around. Charles has been shockingly remiss. You really ought to be entertained a bit. After all, one cannot live by art alone.”

“Gammon,” Rebecka interjected. “Adela enjoys the piano. She would not enjoy the social round, would you, dearest Adela?” Rebecka was nursing a sore tooth and so, in her own way, was jealous of any intrusion on Adela’s time.

“I will speak to you later Miss Rebecka Beaumont,” Sophia said sternly. “In the meanwhile you will both simply have to accept my advice and the benefit of my experience.”

Thus began a round of appointments and visits, of shopping, and teas, and balls the total of which left Adela tired, bitter, irritable, and bored. And were it not for Nancy Owens’s companionship and understanding, Adela would have found it unbearable.

Adela was introduced to literally hundreds of people whose names she was expected to remember together with the names of their near relations, their principal seats, and their yearly incomes. Adela’s response to this plenitude of information was invariably to lower her eyes, murmur a polite sentence or two. and slink away into a corner.

“Really, child, you mustn’t be so very shy,” Sophia remonstrated with her.

“Aunt Sophia, you have thrust me into a world I know nothing about and care nothing about. Everyone is looking at me trying to evaluate me, the governess-companion-penniless relative. Do you expect me to stare them down?”

“Of course, I expect you to stare them down. You are not only the governess-companion you are also the pianist whom Charles obviously feels is the finest in London. If you cannot remember that you are a
lady,
remember at least that you aspire to be a great artist—a woman of abilities which far transcend the abilities of anyone in this room. If you cannot carry yourself with pride, no one will listen to your music.”

Adela looked about the room again and saw the occupants not only as a group of elegant polished representatives of the ton but also as a gaggle of curious women all intent not simply on evaluating

Miss Adela Elizabeth Trowle but also on advancing their own petty pretentions and vanities in a world defined in terms of pretention and vanity. The afternoons while they continued to be dull, were no longer so intimidating.

Nancy Owens was a constant source of comfort. “I wonder, Adela, does Sophia expect
me
to take
you
in hand or
you
to take
me
in hand. I believe we are both of us misfits.”

“Misfits!” Adela smiled. “How so?”

“To be sure, we are misfits. You must know that I am accounted a humble sort of a girl unnecessarily elevated from the middle classes and neither accepted in nor accustomed to the hallowed halls of the ton. And you, my darling Adela, have what none of these women could possibly accept as normal—talent. Perhaps I would not have aspired to these social heights had I not fallen so very much in love with my Thomas, but then again perhaps I am become a hypocrite. It has been years since I have been at home at any other level of society. From the beginning my father sent me to only the ‘best’ schools and so doomed me to a life betwixt and between. I am become a hybrid oddity. The friends of my childhood have as surely rejected me as have the ladies of the ton.”

Adela could sympathize. “Perhaps it is simpler to move downward. I believe I could quite easily become an accepted member of the middle classes. I had friends in that class—good friends and their families accepted me.”

“Think back, Adela, were you ever
really
accepted?”

Adela did think back. “Perhaps you are right, Nancy. Perhaps I have
always
been something of an outsider. In the last few months even my oldest friends the Brewers have treated me as a kind of orchid in a meadow of daffodils. Do you think it is the fact of my kinship with the Beaumonts?”

“That and a great deal more.”

“Hush now, Aunt Sophia has run us to earth.” Adela smiled.

“Indeed I have, young ladies. And what, may I ask, have you been discussing hidden away in a corner.”

Nancy answered for the both of them. “We were discussing the program for the greatest pianist in London. Now don’t blush, Miss Trowle.”

“Surely you exaggerate, Miss Owens?” Adela said, laughing.

“Don’t gammon me, Adela. Waterston would not have selected his own mother to serve tea if he wasn’t assured that she was the
finest
in London. The man is an absolute arbiter of taste and beauty.”

“I hope that I shall be worthy of his confidence.” Adela sighed.

And so under Sophia’s stern tutelage and with Nancy’s help, Adela found herself acquiring a significant if modest veneer of town bronze. And slowly she found her small circle of friends expand to include other young people too intelligent and insufficiently vain to be contented with the monotonous pettiness of polite society.

Still, in so far as Sophia’s social activities interfered with Adela’s work on the concert, the interference was resented. And, of course, no new friends were able to lift from Adela the continuing malaise and confusion engendered by Waterston’s absence from town.

One morning Sophia suggested an outing with Rebecka. “Adela, I had meant to ask you. Do you suppose I might take Rebecka to the park today and later to visit the museum? Her tooth has continued to plague her and she needs distractions. You know the child has shown considerable interest in the Elgin marbles and I see no reason why she should not be indulged in such matters. We will leave you to your work and you will have a day of rest—at least from society.”

“Aunt Sophia, Rebecka is my responsibility, and much as I would like to avoid society, I think perhaps
I
should assume the burden of taking her to museums.”

“Oh, dear, how silly you are. Rebecka is not a
chore
nor is she exclusively your property. You are being quite selfish. I look forward to having the child a good deal with me in the future.”

“You would not mind?”

“Mind! If it had not been for Charles, do you suppose that I would not have enjoyed taking Rebecka to live with me?”

“I suppose that Charles has the prior claim.”

“Prior claim be damned. Charles had no real prior claim but I knew he
needed
Rebecka, I did not.”

“
Needed her
?”

“But of course, Charles was becoming an old stick in the mud. I
had
to rescue him. But now that he seems to be well on the way to recovery we will share Rebecka, don’t you think?”

Adela did not know what to think. Mercifully Lady Spencer changed the subject.

Another few days passed. Days during which Adela worked desperately hard on the material for the concert and then spent what seemed like endless almost meaningless hours placating the relentless Lady Spencer and practicing her still very rudimentary social skills. The cumulative effect of all this practicing and of course the ambiguous continuing absence of his lordship was to leave Adela more and more depressed and even, on occasion, cattish.

Finally one morning she dug her heels in and confronted her aunt.

“Not practicing an hour after breakfast! What ails you, child?” Sophia asked innocently.

“What ails me, my dearest aunt? To begin with, it must have occurred to you that I am not a child and therefore quite capable of deciding my own mind.”

“I see, and what have you been deciding your own mind about?”

“Dear Sophia, I don’t want to brangle. I am heartily sick of all these arguments and you
know
I value your friendship but I
cannot
continue, I simply cannot continue as I have been.”

“No, I can see that for myself. There is a great deal not quite as it should be. Do you think you might bring yourself to confide in your ancient aunt?”

“I have been trying to confide in my ancient aunt for the better part of two weeks, but it seems that no sooner are we together than the conversation begins to revolve about the financial status of Lady X or the gauche behavior of Lord Y and how the conjunction of yellow and green are to be avoided. How comes it that two intelligent women such as ourselves have reverted to such singular silly concerns?”

“Yes, we have been silly, of course, my widgeon. But the silliness has been to a purpose. Once you have mastered these trifling concerns that mark the pastimes of our class, you may revert, like myself, to a blissful state of unconcern. But to successfully reject the values and behavior of the ton it is necessary to first acquire a mastery of them. Rejection
must not
be a result of fear but of a species of pity. Surely you understand that.”

“Of course I understand that—always supposing that I would have any interest in either rejecting or accepting such things. But Sophia, my life is not likely to be one of tea parties and balls
—I
do not have to become comfortable in such situations. Why cannot I continue as I have always been?”

“Now there
you
are being evasive. You must know how wrong you are. I understand your reticence to discuss these matters, but surely we must be a
little
frank with each other. I cannot believe that I misunderstood Charles.”