Mr Forster's Fortune (11 page)

Cecily had started to settle down at last, seduced by the comfort of the chair and the warmth of the dancing f
lames.

‘It’
s a good deal better now, thank you, Alfred. The peace and quiet has done it a lot of good. But perhaps you could ask for a glass of elderberry wine for me? I should like that very much’ – and then, as Alfred undertook his commission with alacrity - ‘Thank you, Alfred – you are always very kind.’

It was odd,
but just as Cecily was starting to succumb to the warmth and comfort of the drawing room, Captain King was starting to seem increasingly twitchy. He took up a newspaper and dropped it again on the floor. He nibbled at a finger religiously. He requested a glass of wine for himself but then recalled the servant and changed his mind again. He tugged his handkerchief from out of a pocket. Some coins had become caught up in it. They rolled about noisily on the floor. She glanced at him for a moment. He was looking a little self conscious and more than a little – well, perturbed.

‘You know that I would do anything for you, Cess,’ he said
, apparently aware of her gaze. He was sounding bashful, and had reddened a little to a singularly unbecoming shade of pink. ‘I am always pleased when you ask me to help you out.’

Oh
. Oh dear! With a horrified jolt, and with her stomach churning, Cecily suddenly realised that Alfred was plucking up the courage to speak to her. Oh no! How embarrassing. She had half feared that he might. His speedy appearance in Bath should have warned her. He never normally took any leave.

‘And I am always most grateful,’ she
  assured him, hurriedly. Perhaps even at this late stage she might be able to prevent him. ‘After all, you are almost like a brother to me – as close to a brother as ever anyone can be, and I am like your sister. We are fond of each other, Alfred, are we not? We are concerned for each other’s welfare, and happiness. It is a great comfort to me to know it. I should not wish it to be any other way.’

Alfred gave her a quick glance. She pretended not to have noticed his wince when she compared him to a brother.

‘The two years must be nigh on up by now,’ he said, hastily. It was quite obvious to Cecily that now he had plucked up the courage to speak to her he was quite determined to carry on. ‘The two years that you asked for when we sat with our parents in a room very similar to this one – when they told us how happy it would make them to see us as husband and wife. I can see you still – new from school – in all your new things – visiting Bath for the first time. And our parents beside us – all of them agreed - all of them wanting us to make a match of it as soon as you gave your consent.’

Cecily was inwardly cringing.

‘I remember it well. I was so happy and excited to be visiting Bath for the very first time. And your mother and mine, sitting together, looking so very much alike – your father standing with mine by the fireside – all looking so hopefully at us – and how young I felt, how totally unprepared for marriage – for marriage to anyone, not just to you. I was only seventeen. I was really still a child. I wanted to live a little – to look about me, broaden my horizons, before I settled down. And then see what happened. Firstly my mother dies, and then my dear papa. And in some ways not only did my horizons not broaden, they actually narrowed. I still feel that I know nothing of the world, nothing at all of life, despite all the changes of the intervening years.’

‘And yet you have taken every
opportunity to travel – you have removed with us to Surrey, spent some weeks in Hungerford as well as here in Bath. You are nineteen years old – you must think of yourself entirely as a woman by now? What more is it you are looking for, Cess? Is there something I can help you with to satisfy your needs?’

Cecily shook her head sadly.
Hungerford and Bath? Hungerford and Bath. It summed it all up, really. It showed how far apart his ideas were from her own. She wanted to go to London, to visit the lakes and the dales, perhaps go to Brighton for the summer – and all he could think of was Hungerford, and Bath. And at that moment she heartily wished that she had found the courage on that momentous evening two years ago to say out loud what she had known even then. She had known even then that she could never marry Alfred, that she could never be his bride – known absolutely and completely that he was not the man for her. She was wishing above everything that she had found the courage to say so when the opportunity had first been there. But she had not found the courage. She was seventeen years old. Her father was an earl. He was used to being obeyed. Everybody supported – nay, wished for – a marriage between the two of them. It would keep her money within the family. It would be a most unexceptionable match. How could she possibly have voiced her opposition then, in the face of all that hope? It had been as much as she could manage, to gain this short delay.

‘I do n
ot think so, Alfred,’ she said, hesitantly. ‘It is something I have to work through on my own.’

‘But you do not need to be alone, you know. I do not want you to feel alone. I – well, you know of
the esteem in which I hold you, Cecily. It has not changed since our parents first put the idea into our heads two years ago. I was happy to marry you right then, and I still want to marry you today. I was hoping that the delay that you asked for – the two years that you asked for in order to make up your mind – well, I thought they would be long enough. I was hoping that you could grow to love me, Cess. I really would like you to agree to be my bride.’

Alfred was still sitting
stiffly in the chair opposite hers. He had not even thought to rise up, to kneel before her, to grasp her by the hand. His profession of – well, she wasn’t quite sure whether it was love, exactly, though she had long known of his fondness for her – but affection – regard, maybe – well, whatever it was, he had professed it in so deathly dull a manner – so steady a tone, with no hint of passion or desire for her at all, that, had she not been listening as carefully as (luckily) she was, she could easily have assumed that he was ordering himself some tea.

‘You know how fond of you I am
, Alfred,’ she assured him desperately, as he patiently awaited her response. ‘How fond of you, and how much I admire and respect you. You are a fine man, an upstanding man. You will always do what’s right. Oh, how I wish – I really do wish that I could do what you want of me – be what you want me to be - that I could make you and my aunt and uncle so very, very happy by agreeing to be your bride. But I’m sorry. I’m most dreadfully sorry, Alfred, but I really can not do it. I love you as a brother, as I’ve always done. I do not love you as... as a wife should love a husband - and I know I never shall. We would never make each other as happy as we deserve. You would always be wanting something more of me that I just know I couldn’t give you, and I should feel a fraud, a failure, a monster in return. You deserve something better than that, cousin. I know that I can never be your wife.’

The s
ervant brought the wine for her and retreated back to the hall. Cecily was aware of the darkness of the room, lit only by the faint glimmer of a couple of candles on the mantel, and the orange glow of the fire as the coal settled itself into fearsome caverns in the grate. A clock was ticking, steadily nearby – tick-tock, tick-tock – as the seconds and minutes passed by. The clatter of hooves and the rumble of a carriage in the roadway outside only seemed to emphasise the stillness in the dark, quiet room. She could feel the warmth in front of her and the draught from the door behind. She shivered a little and pulled a shawl more tightly around her shoulders. She could see Alfred, sitting across from her, head bowed. He was quivering. He was very, very slightly quivering. She glanced at him again. Then she realised, with a shock, that he was crying. Alfred was crying! She had never seen Alfred – any gentleman – cry before. Even her father had retired, dry-eyed, solemn but dignified, to his room on the death of her mama. The depth of the emotion quite frightened her. She had told him that she was sorry – sorry that she could not be his wife. Yes, she had been sorry - but now she realised, to her shame, that she had been sorry for herself in having to deliver the message as much as for him in receiving it. She looked down again and bit her lip. She had been quite mistaken as to the nature of his regard for her – its nature, and its depth. To inspire such love in another individual – to be responsible, however reluctantly, however blamelessly, for another person’s misery or happiness – to be able, with just one word, to set in train a pattern of events that might affect them both for a lifetime – what a solemn undertaking she realised that to be. And though she knew that she had made the right decision – that she no more loved him as a husband now than she had on that evening two long years before – she could only wish with all her heart that things were different - very different – and that she could tell him that he actually had some hope. Poor Alfred – such a dear, good man, a man that she was genuinely most fond of. She wished above everything that she could only say ‘yes’. But she couldn’t. She knew that she couldn’t, and that, even if she’d felt that she could it would have been a terribly grave mistake for her to have made. She looked at him again, cringing. She desperately wanted to comfort him, to take him in her arms and give him a friendly hug. He looked as very much alone as she was. And yet she knew that she couldn’t comfort him, that it would be wrong to go to him and hug him and rekindle all his hope. He would have to bear his misery on his own. She knew in her heart of hearts that there was nothing that she could do.

Militia volunteer Mr James Forster, having arrived at his parents’ lodgings the previous evening, had already spotted his
cousin, Mr Springfield, as he scanned the assembled masses in a crowded pump room that Tuesday afternoon.

‘Hey, Tom, my old
bluffer – what luck. God, what a crush. Is Bath always as crowded as this or am I just unlucky, as usual?’

Mr Springfield, equally as delighted to see his cousin as his cousin had been to see him, slapped him cordially on the back and admired his regimentals excessively.

‘Well, got to catch the pretty girls’ eyes somehow, you know, cousin – and if a fellow’s got no kelter – like some of us have, you lucky devil – he’s got to don a red coat in order to stand a chance.’

‘Aye, but you’re nowhere
near being alone in Bath with a jacket like yours, old son. For see – here is Captain King – he’s in the same line of business as yourself – some militia regiment or other I think he said – and there must be a thousand other military men in Bath, all trying to do the same as you with their blasted regimentals and flashy ways.’

Captain King, catching his name amongst all the noise
- of chattering voices, coughing, sneezing and ambient music - ponderously side-stepped an elderly dowager who had suddenly determined on heaving her hefty frame on a direct path in front of him, and bowed smartly to the two young gentlemen at his side.

‘Yes,’ he confirmed, ‘the Royal Surreys
, actually. And you, sir – I believe you to be sporting the colours of the – what is it – the Suffolks, I perceive?’

‘Indeed I am, sir – James Forster,
of the Suffolk Volunteers, at your service – though I’m hoping soon to transfer into the regulars. An older brother of mine is out in the Peninsula. I am hoping to join him as soon as I can.’

‘
Forster... Forster – Lord Barnham’s son? So you are taking a commission in the regulars, Mr Forster?’

Mr Forster looked a little downcast.

‘Sadly, no. I shall have to go as a gentleman volunteer, I think. That way, at least, I shall be able to show what I’m made of. I am hoping to win my commission there instead.’

Captain King looked a little puzzled. Mr Springfield thoughtfully helped him out.

‘Stiver cramped you know, Captain. Lord Barnham ain’t got a bean to give him – whole family’s completely out at heels - or I daresay he’d have gone straight in as a – what was it you wanted, old son?’

‘An ensign, Tom
– an ensign - but I daresay I shall earn it soon enough.’

Captain King inclined his head.

‘I’m sure you shall, Mr Forster,’ he confirmed. ‘And tell me – what is the state of your equipment in the Suffolks at the present time...?’

It was destined to be a day of unexpected meetings. For just a
t the time that this interesting conversation was taking place in the pump room, an equally interesting meeting was taking place just a very few yards along the road. For on this occasion Lord Barnham, a little later than normal in taking his bath, was just outside the bath house when he happened upon the rather grizzled old gentleman who had joined him on a previous expedition, rather than within. And, at that self same moment – just as Lord Barnham was acknowledging his highly disreputable acquaintance and accompanying him inside – he spotted – and was spotted by – the startled eyes of his eldest son, who was escorting Mrs Wetherby along the other side of the road.

It is probably fair to say that both father and son
would rather have been elsewhere at that particular moment, or, at the very least, would rather that a cart or wagon had stopped in the road in such a position as to shield them both from view. As it was, it was perfectly apparent to both of them that they had caught each other in some surreptitious activity and, sadly, it was equally apparent that Mrs Wetherby was aware of their relationship, and fully intended to avail herself of the opportunity to be introduced.