Venetia (15 page)

“Of course he is very bookish, isn’t he?” agreed Clara.

“That is how
I
should describe him, I own, but Lord Damerel, I apprehend, considers his intellect to be remarkable.”

“Does he? Yes, I expect it is, for I am sure I don’t understand above half the things he says. But you are very well-informed too, and you express yourself much more clearly, so that I am able to follow your arguments, even if I am not clever enough to take part in them.”

He had too great a regard for the truth to reassure her on this head, but he told her very kindly that he had no great liking for blue-stockings, and amused her with a paradox: that the
wisest
of her sex did not aspire to be
clever.
She laughed heartily at this, exclaiming: “There! That is precisely what I meant when I said that Venetia would find Lord Damerel a bore! I daresay he would never think of saying anything as witty!”

So, while Lady Denny was trying to persuade herself that Venetia had too much commonsense to fall in love with a rake, Edward went home cheered by the vision of her being bored by Damerel’s lack of conversation. And since neither of them set eyes on her for a considerable period this peaceful complacency remained undisturbed by any knowledge of the glow of happiness which was giving an added bloom to the lovely Miss Lanyon’s beauty.

Aubrey remained for ten days at the Priory, and even the weather conspired to make them halcyon days for his sister. There was only one wet and chilly day in all the ten, and then the gold of the mellowing landscape crept into the house, for Damerel had a fire kindled in the library, and its light, flickering over the tooled backs of the volumes that lined the room from wainscot to cornice, made them glow like turning leaves. He carried Aubrey down, and laid him on a sofa, and they played three-handed cribbage, pored over books of engravings, discovered rare treasures on the crowded shelves, and argued hotly on every imaginable subject, from the
esse
of material things to the proposition that a black horse with no spot of white upon him must necessarily be full of mischief and misfortunes. Then Damerel brought out his Grecian sketch-book, setting Aubrey in a blaze; and Nurse, established by the window with her interminable tatting, looked over her spectacles at the group by the fire, and was satisfied. The Lanyons had their heads together over a book of pictures, Venetia on the floor beside the sofa, and Aubrey explaining them to her, and the pair of them looking up every now and then at his lorship and pelting him with questions as he stood leaning over the back of the sofa. Nurse saw them as children, and Damerel as an adult person, like herself, good-naturedly allowing them to tease him with their questions. Perhaps it was wrong to let them form the habit of such easy intercourse with a sinner, but although the Scriptures warned one that the wicked were like a troubled sea, whose waters cast up mire and dirt, they also yielded some pretty pungent warnings against backbiters and unrighteous witnesses.
Every neighbour will walk with slanders,
said the prophet Jeremiah, and one had only to cast an eye over the district to know how true that was. Nurse was much inclined to think that his lordship had been a victim of false report. If anyone were to ask her, all she could say was that she took people as she found them, and she had found him just what any gentleman of his age ought to be, behaving more like an uncle to Miss Venetia and Mr. Aubrey than a seducer, and understanding much better than most gentlemen how hard a task it was to take care of such a headstrong couple. If it was true that he had once run off with a married lady—well, it had happened a great many years ago, and Nurse knew what to think of such ladies: hussies, that’s what they were, and heaven help the young man they got their claws into! And if it were true that there had been nasty goings-on at the Priory only one year ago—well, the Scriptures adjured the wicked to forsake his way, and perhaps that was what his lordship had done. There were no nasty goings-on now, that was all Nurse knew.

It had taken Damerel three days to bring Nurse round his thumb: cutting a wheedle, Aubrey called it, when he had almost brought the trap down on him by going into stifled laughter at hearing Damerel agreeing with her that it was of no use to muffle all the furniture in holland covers, and hope to keep the moth away by such means; that indeed the chairs and the tables and the cabinets in the disused saloons ought to be well polished; that he would be only too glad if the whole house could be set in order. That had been quite enough for Nurse, never permitted at Undershaw to encroach on Mrs. Gurnard’s ground. But Mrs. Imber was a feckless, humble creature, who did as she was bid, and was grateful for advice and instruction. Nurse, who had gone to the Priory with the utmost reluctance, was enjoying herself enormously, and did not mean to leave it until, with the assistance of the Imbers, the gardener’s wife, and a Stout Girl from the village, she had (as Imber resentfully phrased it)turned the house out of doors. For the first time since the days when she had reigned over the nursery at Undershaw she held undisputed sway, and just as soon as she had decided that there was nothing to be feared from Damerel she relaxed her vigilance, and trotted about the great, rambling house, harrying her slaves, so deeply absorbed in housewifery that she neither noticed the glow in Venetia’s eyes nor suspected that when she supposed her to have gone home she was with Damerel, perhaps sitting in the garden, perhaps strolling along the river-bank, or allowing him to escort her back to Undershaw by the longest possible route.

Damerel’s groom and his valet both knew, but Nidd did not tell Nurse how many hours were spent in the Priory stables by Venetia’s mare, or the cob she drove in the gig; and Marston did not tell her, when she asked him if Venetia had gone home, that she had done so in his master’s company.

Nidd thought it was a queer set-out, but when he said as much to Marston he won no other response than a blank stare. But Marston thought it queer too, because it wasn’t like his lordship to throw out lures to innocent young ladies, much less sit in their pockets. He was loose in the haft, but not as loose as that. Or maybe he was too fly to the time of day to meddle with virgins of quality: Marston did not know, but he did know that in all the years he had served his lordship he had never seen him dangling after such a lady as Miss Lanyon. He had never seen him behave to any of his loves as he was behaving to her, either; or known him to stay so quiet and sober. He had not been as much as half-sprung since the day he carried Mr. Aubrey into the house, and that was a sure sign that he wasn’t bored, or in one of his black moods. He wasn’t even restless, yet he hadn’t meant to remain at the Priory above a day or two. They had been on their way to Lord Flavell’s shooting-lodge, but they were not going there after all: he had told Marston that he had written to cry off. Were they going back to London, then, when Mr. Aubrey had left the Priory? His lordship had made no plans, but thought he should remain in Yorkshire for a while.

It might be that he was amusing himself with a new kind of flirtation, but in any other man it would have looked remarkably like courtship. If that was it, Marston wondered whether Miss Lanyon knew what sort of a life his lordship had led, and what that elder brother of hers would have to say to such a match.

He would have been shocked had he guessed how much Venetia knew, and how much she was entertained by some of Damerel’s more repeatable adventures; and he would have been considerably astonished had he known on what terms of easy camaraderie this very odd couple stood.

They were fast friends: a stranger might have supposed them to be related, so frank and unceremonious were their interchanges, and so far removed from mere dalliance. Accepting, as a matter of tactics in the game few knew better than he how to play, the role of
fidus Achates
thrust upon him, Damerel soon found himself advising Venetia on knotty problems arising out of her stewardship of her elder brother’s estates, or discussing with her the peculiar difficulties presented by her younger brother’s apparent determination to allow his powerful mind to wear out his frail constitution. He gave her better advice than he had ever put into practice, but told her bluntly that there was little she could do to divert Aubrey from his devouring passion. “He has been too much alone. If it had been possible to have sent him to Eton he would no doubt have formed friendships there, but as it is he seems to have only two friends: yourself, and his old grinder—this parson he talks about: I forget his name. What he needs is to rub shoulders with sprigs of his own age and tastes—and to overcome his dread of being pitied or despised.”

She gave him a speaking glance. “Do you know, you are the first person ever to have perceived that he hates his lameness in
that
way? Even Dr. Bentworth doesn’t properly understand, and I can only guess, because he doesn’t speak of it. But he has talked to you, hasn’t he? He told me the thing you said to him—that if you were offered the choice between a splendid body or a splendid mind you would choose the mind, because it would long outlast the body. I know he was a good deal struck, for he would not else have told me about it, and I was so grateful I could have embraced you!”

“By all means!” he said promptly. “Do!”

She laughed, but shook her head. “No, I’m not funning. You see, it was exactly the right thing to have said, and that he talked to you at all about it showed me how much he likes you. In general, you know, he is very stiff with strangers, and when people like Lady Denny enquire after his health, or Edward helps him to get up out of his chair, he becomes quite
rigid
with fury.”

“I should imagine he might! Is that what that gudgeon does?”

“Yes, and say what I will to him he persists! It is all kindness, I know, but—”

“Much that graceless scamp cares for kindness!”

“That’s what I told Edward, but he thought it nonsensical. And your sort of kindness he
does
care for: I don’t mean entering into what interests him only, but roasting him, and calling him rude names, and threatening to do the most brutal things to him if he won’t swallow that horrid valerian!”

“Is that your notion of kindness?” he asked, in some amusement.

“Yes, and yours too, or you wouldn’t do it. I expect it makes Aubrey feel that he is just the same as any other boy—or, at any rate, that you don’t care a rush for his lame leg. It has done him a great deal of good to be with you— more good than I could ever do him, because I’m only a female. A sister, too, which makes it even harder.”

“You are a good sister. I hope you may have your reward—but strongly doubt it. Don’t let him hurt you! He’s fond of you, but he’s an egotist, my dear.”

“Oh, I know that!” she said cheerfully. “But he’s not as bad as Papa was, I assure you,
or
Conway! Aubrey would very likely put himself out to oblige me, if he ever thought of it, but Papa would not, and as for Conway, I don’t think he
can
think of anyone but himself!”

It was such remarks as this, delivered perfectly seriously, that kept him in a state of chuckling enjoyment, and made him call her his dear delight. She accepted the title with equanimity, but told him to take care not to say it within tongue-shot of Nurse. “For it would be very mortifying for you to see your cajolery wasted, besides destroying all our comfort.”

“I’ll lay you odds she wouldn’t come the ugly. She believes me to be in a state of grace.”

“No, only
approaching
it—and that was merely because you supported her against Imber! You may not know it, but you suffered a set-back yesterday, when you wouldn’t permit her to have the carpet in the library taken up to be beaten. She began to say things about the ungodly again, and Aubrey swears she told him that one sinner destroys much good.”

“Since then, however, I have expressed my admiration of her tatting, and my credit is now high with her!” he retorted.

“I wish it might be high enough for her to give it to you! There must be
miles
of it, for she has been tatting ever since I can remember, and very rarely gives any of it away. The dreadful thing is that she means it for whichever of us is the first to be married. The most lowering reflection!”

“Perhaps,” he said thoughtfully, “I had better not make my credit
too
high! What do you advise? Shall I hold an orgy, ill-use Aubrey, or—just call you my dear delight within her hearing?”

“That would lower your credit too much. Tell her that when you gave her to understand that you came into Yorkshire to redress your tenants’ grievances—which I am very sure you did, for who else would have put such a preposterous notion into her head?—it was nothing but a fudge! Perhaps you had better not tell her, however, that you came because of that thing at Tattersall’s, for she thinks racing very ungodly!”

“
What
thing at Tattersall’s?” he demanded. “I haven’t yet been floored by the hammer, if that’s what you mean!”

“No, no! At least, I don’t know what it signifies, but it wasn’t
that
!
Conway spoke of it once—oh,
Black Monday
!”

“Settling-day! No, I won’t tell her that. I am always more or less in Dun territory, but this visit of mine isn’t an attempt to shoot the crow! I am escaping from my aunts.”

“Why, what are they doing to you? Are you roasting me?”

“Not at all. They are bent on re-establishing me. There are three of ‘em, and they are all antidotes. Two are unmarried, and live together—one’s fubsy-faced, and t’other’s a squeeze-crab; and the eldest is a widow, and the most intimidating female you ever beheld. She lives in a mausoleum in Grosvenor Square, rarely stirs out of it, but holds receptions, very like the Queen’s Drawing-Rooms. She’s clutch-fisted, dresses like a quiz, has neither wit nor amiability, and yet by means unknown to me—unless it be by force of character, and I’ll allow she has that!—has persuaded the
ton
that she is a second Lady Cork, to whose
salons
it is an honour to be invited.”