The Merry Month of May (9 page)

“Mrs. Parker will give you tea. I have to ride over and speak to one of the tenants.”

Miss Harvey did not like to change her mind too swiftly and amused herself by doing a mental inventory of the house’s furnishings till Peter arrived with his boys. She spent a fairly boring morning minding the children while Peter attended to business. Lunch was only passable. Mrs. Parker was no chef, but presented them with a tolerable rabbit stew and cold ham.

As soon as lunch was over, Haldiman said he had to return to the Hall. “Will you come with me, Betsy, or ride alongside the carriage with Peter?”

“Why don’t you sit in the carriage, Betsy, and let the mount follow behind?” Peter suggested.

Until her arrival at Haldiman Hall, Betsy had assumed Peter was hers for the taking. She was not sure she would have him, but that he might not have her was beginning to occur to her. This seemed a good opportunity to firm up that matter, and she decided to return with Peter in the carriage.

She noticed with interest that this displeased Haldiman. “Quite sure I can’t talk you into coming with me?” he asked. “We can return by a different route, for variety.”

Her smile was not one whit short of flirtation. “Another time, Rufus. I’m feeling a little fagged.”

Haldiman left, not entirely displeased, but uneasy. Betsy turned a satisfied eye on Peter. “I declare, that brother of yours! I hope he hasn’t taken the notion I have some hankering to be Lady Haldiman. I was in a red blush when he kept pestering me to ride back with him.” Peter’s laugh was loud and carefree. Betsy skewered him with a shot from her sharp eyes and turned her attention to the boys.

Haldiman’s return trip took him close to Whitehern. He was curious about this painting business Idle was using to flirt with Sara and decided to look in on them.

* * * *

When Sir Swithin arrived that afternoon, fully accoutred in smock and beret, he showed the ladies his work. “You will see I have already transferred my cartoon to canvas and spent the morning painting in the background of the ocean. I have a superb view of it from my gazebo. It was in just the mood I wanted, sullen and menacing. But then it usually is. Sara, slip into your leaf-green gown and let the work begin.”

Mary was left to chaperon artist and model while Mrs. Wood escaped to the sanity of her study to go over menus and accounts with her cook. Soon Sara emerged, decked in the required green gown, with her hair brushed out loose, and took up her pose of gazing at the cow barn from shaded eyes.

“No company from the Hall today?” Idle asked.

“They were going to check the Poplars,” Mary told him. “If they’re back in time, Miss Harvey and I are going into the village this afternoon.” She noticed Sara’s throat tighten at this speech. Let it! Betsy was wonderful company. She liked talking about clothes and men and all the things normal girls were interested in, whereas Sara was a dead bore. Mama hadn’t objected, so the thing was settled. “And if she can’t come today, we are going tomorrow,” she added firmly.

Idle looked up at his model and said, “Your head is drifting seaward, Sara. I’m losing that elegant profile. Did you know your nose is a little retroussé? I never noticed it before. Charming.”

“What does retroussé mean?” Mary asked.

“Turned up on the end.”

“My nose is retroussé-er than Sara’s.”

Idle shuddered at such an ungrammatical utterance and spared her a look. “Your nose is what is commonly called pug, Mary. Best not to draw attention to it. Comparisons are always odious in any case. And
à propos de rien,
you should have said
plus retroussé
.”

Mary drummed her fingers and looked to the horizon. “I wonder if Miss Harvey will come today.”

Sir Swithin suggested Mary read poetry to them to stop her chatter, and for the next half hour, his sensitive ears were bethumped with a singsong reading of selections from Spenser’s
The Faerie Queene.

At the end of that time Idle could take no more. He took the book and closed it. “That is enough, my pet,” he told her. “Pray desist. Your rendition is enough to make us thankful Spenser did not complete his magnum opus. On the whole I believe the tale is best read in Ariosto’s original
Orlando Furioso.
Or perhaps best not read at all. Curious how so many of the world’s masterpieces of literature are actually quite unreadable. I blame the universities for delaying their demise. Like the Bible, they are more discussed than read.”

“If Mama makes me sit tomorrow, I shall read Byron’s
The Corsair,”
Mary said, setting the old volume aside.

“That won’t be totally unreadable for a few decades,” Idle commented, and was roundly jeered by the ladies, who gave him to understand they would hear no slander of their favorite. This goaded him on to further outrages.

“I know whereof I speak, my little ignoramuses. Byron is the age’s greatest character and one of our better writers of prose, but when it comes to poetry, he ought to be writing chapbooks—or in his mellow mood, verses for Valentines.”

“No, that is too bad!” Mary pouted.

Sara turned from her pose and gave Idle a pert smile. “Those who can, do. Those who cannot, criticize.”

Idle smiled and prepared to disassemble their pretentious. “You forget—or more probably do not even realize—Byron began his career as a critic himself, in his ill-natured
English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.
A vindictive attack on those critics who savaged his
Hours of Idleness,
quite justifiably, in my opinion. The title, I need hardly say, has nothing to do with myself.”

Mary, as much from boredom as love of Byron, picked up Spenser’s
The Faerie Queene
and swatted Idle on the arm. In a playful mood he reached out and dabbed her nose with his brush, laden with Pomona-green pigment.

Sensing a reprieve from tedium, Mary promptly stuck her finger in the paint and smeared it on Idle’s chin. “Stop it, you two!” Sara said, and jumped from the bench to join the fray.

“He started it!” Mary said.

“In self-defense!” Idle replied, and touched his brush to her cheek.

Mary made a lunge for the palette. Sara rescued it, smearing her hand in the process. “Now look what you’ve made me do!” she scolded.

On an impulse Idle tried to daub Sara’s chin with his brush, but she pulled back. Not to be outdone, she reached out to wipe her hand on his violet smock. He caught her wrist and easily deflected her hand, meting out the punishment of a green mustache. Imprecations and laughter rang out, smiting the quiet country air with unusual violence.

None of them noticed Haldiman, just ridden up and reined to a halt, staring in dismay at the scene of debauchery in front of him. Sara wrestling with that jackdaw of an Idle, with her hair blowing around her shoulders like a lightskirt and wearing a gown that showed half her bosoms in the afternoon. Sara! That prissy little lady. Not a sign of a chaperon. What was Mrs. Wood thinking of? Before things degenerated further, he .barked out his rebuke.

“What the devil is going on here!” he demanded, and dismounted to hurry forward, wearing a heavy frown.

The group felt all the
gêne
of adults caught behaving like children. Sara felt besides a spurt of anger that Haldiman, of all people, should catch her at such an unsuitable time. His eyes were blazing with wrath and that served to further annoy her. She reached to remove her mustache and added to it with her smeared hand.

“Haldiman!” Idle smiled, recovered already. “Just in time to defend me. I have been violently set upon by these hussies.”

“For good cause, no doubt!” Haldiman sneered.

“The very best of causes: in defense of my literary principles.”

Haldiman gave this the curt dismissal he felt it deserved. “Sara, are you all right?” he asked, in no tender manner.

“Of course I am. We were just funning, to relieve the strain of work.”

“Work?” The word jarred with what Haldiman beheld. “An odd getup to be wearing for work.” His eyes examined her flowing tresses, her low-cut gown, before sliding to accuse Idle.

Sir Swithin, who always assumed his own toilette to be the center of attention, explained his outfit. “I wear it to protect my waistcoat, never dreaming it would prove so useful. An item of my own design,” he said, pirouetting to show off his smock.
“Chapeau
by Idle,
aussi,”
he added, touching his beret. “Lawrence et al. wear fustian, but I see no reason to be unfashionable, even at work.”

Sara used the reprieve to try to wipe away her mustache. Haldiman handed her his handkerchief, suppressing the urge to wipe away the pigment himself. He realized he had landed in at an inopportune moment and felt rather foolish at having made a to-do about it. Added to this, he was annoyed that he was now cast in the role of Philistine, damping their simple pleasure. “This is the painting, is it?” he asked, and went to examine it, with Idle along to encourage praise.

Sara’s profile was painted in broad colors, but not yet shaded. “I have caught the flowing line of throat rather well,” Idle pointed out. “I began filling in the green to see whether the contrast would speak to me. The gown will be leaves in the final work. Not a dull green, as you see here, but dappled with sunlight.”

“Very handsome,” Haldiman said.

“Handsome!” Idle exclaimed, cut to the quick. “I do not strive for
handsome.
Gainsborough’s ‘Mrs. Siddons’ is handsome. Lawrence’s ‘Regent’ is handsome. The effect I seek is more subtle. A delicate, evanescent sort of beauty—or truth, if you will.”

Perfectly aware that he had chosen his praise ill, Haldiman repeated, “I think it is handsome.”

“Take care or he’ll give you a green beard,” Sara warned playfully.

Haldiman saw the spark of mischief in her eyes and suddenly wanted to join the fray. “Is that how this altercation began?” he asked, to ease his curiosity and establish himself as an understanding fellow.

“Indeed no, it was much more serious,” Sara told him. “Swithin dared to traduce Byron. Now you could not expect us to stand still for that.”

“I didn’t know you liked Byron,” he said. It surprised him. He would have thought Sara liked Hannah More or Thomas Gray. Where had he got the idea she was a milk-and-toast sort of girl?

“Not like Byron?” she exclaimed in astonishment.

“Like all the ladies, Sara adores the water he walks on,” Sir Swithin, said, and feared his little joke went right over their heads. “I assure you it was not your comment on Byron that inflamed me to violence, Sara, but your spiteful hint that I was incapable of verse. ‘Those who can, do,’ you said. ‘Those who cannot, criticize.’’

Haldiman looked again at the picture. “Whatever about versifying, we must own Idle paints a han—pretty picture.”

“From bad to worse,” Idle pouted. “Pretty sounds like a chocolate-box cover. But you are judging my talent by a day’s work. The finished oeuvre will be stunning. And now I have earned a glass of ale. I see you are surprised at my simple taste. There are occasions, such as a lovely spring day, when ale is preferable to wine. A peasant drink. It will suit my smock. Mary, would you oblige us?”

Obliging Idle was Mary’s main preoccupation at that time, and she darted off for the ale. Haldiman was surprised again to see she returned with four glasses, and Sara took hers without reluctance. A small trace of green paint still lingered at the corner of her lips.

Idle noticed it, too, and took out his handkerchief to remove it. “You look as if you have been ruminating, Sara,” he smiled, and stroked her face lovingly.

“Have you started the invitations for the ball yet?” Mary asked Idle.

“Nag, nag. I might as well be married. No, creature. I have not begun them, but I am nursing inspiration. I envisage a water ball—a water party held at night, with dancing perhaps on a wooden floor laid near the ocean. If only one could count on cooperation from the weather. I am an optimist, but I am not mad.”

“We could move inside if it rained,” Mary pointed out.

“A picnic ball, perhaps,” Idle mused. “With a waterfall contrived in the center of the ballroom. I must go home and investigate the feasibility of installing a pump in the ballroom. Same time tomorrow, Sara. I shall leave the canvas and paints here.” He rose and left, carrying his ale off with him.

“I wish he’d just have a plain ball,” Mary said. “He has to overdo everything, silly jackanapes.”

“Swithin is very interesting,” Sara said, and was careful not to look at Haldiman, though she sensed from the corner of her eye that his head turned to examine her. “How did the visit to the Poplars go?”

“Fine.”

“Is Miss Harvey back yet?” Mary asked.

“No, she is riding home with Peter and the boys. We rode over, she and I.” Sara heard this with a sting of anger.

“Why didn’t she ride back with you?” Mary asked.

“She was tired.”

“Then she won’t want to go to the village today. It is too late anyway. Can I leave you and Haldiman alone, Sara? I’m going to send a note to the Hall with Haldiman.”

“You can trust me not to paint your sister green while you’re gone,” Haldiman assured her, with an arch glance at Sara.

“One never fears any impropriety from Lord Haldiman,” Sara agreed, with a Mona Lisa smile that vexed him.

Mary left, and Haldiman moved to take up her seat beside Sara. “I daresay I sounded like Jehovah when I arrived. I hardly knew what to think, seeing you wrestling with that popinjay.”

“And naturally you leapt to the most lecherous conclusion,” she teased. “It was an innocent romp, no more.”

“Of course. Is Idle staying long at Heron Hall?”

“For the summer, I believe.”

“He doesn’t usually make such a long stay. Is there a special reason for it?”

“Yes, he is teaching London society a lesson. It failed to amuse him, so he is amusing himself by painting and having a ball, if he ever gets around to deciding on his theme.”

“Meanwhile Mama and I have decided to have a party to welcome Peter home. The theme provides itself, so there is nothing to delay it except the preparations. We have decided on next week. Will that suit you?”