An Accomplished Woman (24 page)

Lydia was amused again,
but attentive to an inner voice that told her to stop it. Chaperons or duennas
did not go thrusting in their heretical opinions. If they could not sew
smilingly, or smile sewingly, they should at least refrain from exhibitions of
independent character. In other words, don’t scare off Phoebe’s suitor by
showing Phoebe’s friend and companion to be a tiresome bluestocking
parlour-politician.

As soon as it was put
like this, even by herself and in her own mind, Lydia’s spirit rose in
Bastille-storming mutiny — but fortunately, and to his credit, Mr Allardyce
seemed not put off at all. The visit coming to an end, he was warm in his hopes
that Miss Rae and Miss Templeton would do him, his sister and his mother the
honour of calling at Queen Square, at any time they chose. He was clearly not a
man to go in for a lot of mopping and mowing, but the bow he tendered to Phoebe
on leaving was as full of meaning as a bow could be.

Meaningful, too, must be
the insistence on meeting his mother. Lydia saw plainly that there was more in
it than mere politeness, and so it appeared did Phoebe, who subsequently spoke
of the prospect with a touch of apprehension. The momentous introduction of
future bride to parent stood behind it, shadowy but distinct. Equally distinct,
to Lydia at least, was a certain extra significance attaching to the figure of
Mrs Allardyce. From various hints dropped by her son and daughter, Lydia began
to suspect a matriarch. In Robert, the hints tended to an amused indulgence: in
Juliet, to a dry restraint; but both sides suggested a woman who must be made
allowances for.

At that, her mind leaped
on the swift steed of prejudice and galloped away. She esteemed people who
possessed character, but she greatly disliked those who set themselves up as
Characters: they generally knew very well what they were about, and sought to
secure themselves an exemption from the normal duties of civility by presenting
as helpless idiosyncrasy what was really a cultivated selfishness. She let
herself be carried such a way that she was on the point of hating this poor
woman she had never met before she reined in. Whatever the lady’s qualities,
she reminded herself, Mrs Allardyce was nothing to her, whose sole concern here
was Phoebe; and Phoebe’s sweetness of temper, and readiness to think well of
everyone, must surely armour her against the most aggressive onslaught of
personality.

The
youngerAllardyces,atanyrate,Lydiafoundveryacceptable
company, and they reconciled her a little more to Bath. Her heart did not sink
quite so low at the sight of the Pump Room that day; and there her eye lit with
quickened interest on Lewis Durrant. He was with a mixed group of people
gathered below the statue of Beau Nash: he was actually talking — if not with
animation, then without visible effort: and he had exchanged the shapeless old
riding-coat for a new cut-away with tails. Her longing to satirise what was,
for him, a transformation of peacock extravagance was tempered by her
acknowledgement that, lean and long-backed as he was, he looked rather well in
it; and she was stayed from further aspersions by the good nature of Phoebe,
who remarked that it was very pleasant to see Mr Durrant gaining some
acquaintance.

‘Yes: even for Mr
Durrant, who does not mind being alone, it must be dull indeed to be solitary
at Bath, where everything is designed for society.’ But she could not help
adding: ‘He is certainly capable of being pleasing in company: it is only a
pity that when he does so, he makes such a great favour of it.’

They were seated on a
rout-bench beneath the north windows, and a string sextet was playing in the
gallery: strain as she might, there was no hope of overhearing what the group
by the statue were saying. And was there a marriageable young woman amongst
them? A close bonnet hid, frustratingly, the face of the only likely candidate.
Lydia had the wager made at Culverton to stifle any inner protest that it was
none of her business; but her curiosity soon met with a dull sort of satisfaction.
Whatever the attractions of Mr Durrant’s present company, they were
insufficient to prevent several mouth-filling yawns; and when Lydia and Phoebe
left the Pump Room, he appeared so far from captivation as to have turned his
back on the group, and was watching through the window the passing of
sedan-chairs across the flagstones of the abbey churchyard, with more hope than
expectation of interest.

Again Lydia was not
without sympathy. She was adopting her own remedy against tedium by viewing
everything in her current life as a mere scene with which she had nothing to
do: except mentally to note it, to describe it, as if perhaps composing a
letter about it to her father. Before dinner she liked to take a short walk
alone — Phoebe being sensible enough to understand rather than resent this —
and as she went, she subordinated her mind to her impressions. The seething
flush of setting sun on the roofs of the crescents: the various smells of roast
and boiled meat wafting from basement kitchens and oozing through the area
railings: the sound of the abbey bells seeming, in its expansive echoes, to
dart about the town and issue from a dozen places at once: the glimpsed
stories, like the riffled pages of a book briefly opened and shut, in the faces
of other solitary walkers — retired officers with the deck or the parade-ground
still in their step, paid companions thin-lipped with their wrongs,
dancing-masters poised exactly between the dapper and the shabby. The effect
was somehow refreshing: although today on turning for home — back, rather, to
Sydney Place — she was conscious of carrying still a little oppression, as
slight and as unignorable as a stone in the shoe.

There was no occasion
for delay: the Allardyces’ call was to be repaid the next morning. On their leaving
the house, Phoebe again consulted the cards on the hall table. There were
several: from friends of Lady Eastmond and, most direfully from two prosy
ladies whom Lydia had met on her last stay here, and whom she had hoped to
include in that happiest category of people, those you will never see again.
But there was no card from Mr Beck. Lydia detected in Phoebe’s glance of
disappointment a flash of pique; and wondered briefly if her task was going to
be made easier by the dereliction of one of Phoebe’s suitors — whether, in the
geometry of courtship, a Mr A present was equal to two Mr Bs absent.

However, on their
setting out Phoebe’s look and tone became wistful. ‘Mr Beck must surely not be
in Bath as yet,’ she said, ‘though he did engage so definitely for coming, if I
was to be here: he was so very definite.’

Lydia murmured something
soothing, while feeling anything but soothed herself. Yes, I see how it will
be, she thought: Phoebe must be romancing over the one who is missing. Now if
it were the other way round — if Mr B were here, prompt and attentive, and Mr A
mysteriously absent, she would be sighing for Mr A: no wonder men deplore the
changeable folly of the female mind, when some of us supply them with such a
thorough pretext!

It was her first moment
of real irritation with her young charge. She had forcibly to summon what she
thought of as her duenna-self — that calm watercoloured lady, all bovine
serenity — and in this guise turned the conversation to the Allardyces, and what
the house in Queen Square would be like, and so on: to such good effect that by
the time they reached the High Street, Phoebe’s brow had cleared, and she was
talking rationally.

Then came the cry.

‘Miss Rae! Miss Rae — up
here!’

‘Up here’ was a
first-floor window in the Christopher Hotel, flung open by a gentleman in
shirt-sleeves, who was leaning out at some peril to himself, and to the general
notice of the crowded street.

‘Oh! it is Mr Beck,’
Phoebe breathed, gazing up.

‘I’ll come down,’ he
shouted. ‘Wait — wait there.’

‘Oh, Lydia, it is Mr
Beck,’ Phoebe repeated, turning in pleased agitation. ‘What shall we do?’

‘Do as we are told, I
suppose,’ said Lydia, who did not much care for the stares they were
attracting.

Within a few moments the
gentleman came running down the steps of the hotel. He was no longer in
shirt-sleeves: he had thrown on a coat: indeed it looked so very conspicuously
thrown on that Lydia could not help composing a mental line to her father.
Mr
Beck, having paused only to dishevel his hair a little more, came forth to
greet us . . .

‘Miss Rae — I chanced to
see you go by — I saw you from my window, and could not help but — I am at the
Christopher, you see — just put up there last night. What great good fortune
that I happened to be looking out— But how do you do? I am so glad — let me
show you this.’ Unceremoniously he thrust a bundle of printed sheets into
Phoebe’s hands. ‘The very thing we were talking of in London — just printed,
you see, and not yet sewn . . .’

‘What a piece of luck indeed,’
said Phoebe, pink and smiling, ‘just at the moment we were going by — Lydia, is
it not amazing?’ Lydia’s face must have shown that her amazement was not such
as to overpower her: Phoebe collected herself. ‘Lydia, let me introduce — Mr
Beck, the acquaintance from London, of whom you have heard me speak: Miss
Templeton.’

He gave Lydia a glance,
and a short, impatient bow: then it was back to Phoebe. ‘Please forgive me — I
had intelligence of your coming to Bath, and I meant to be here earlier: but
first the printing of this was a little delayed — and then my father was ill—’

‘Oh, dear, I hope he is
better.’

‘It was nothing really.
You know how old men like to cosset themselves. But look here — my new
periodical — I so wanted you to be the first to see it. Oh, I have closed the
one I began in London — ill-planned, ill-written, ill-printed. I mean to
publish hitherto from Bristol, and then seek a London distribution. And you see
I have abandoned the title The
Intelligencer —
too much like a
news-sheet.’

‘The
Interlocutor,’
Phoebe
read out, innocently mispronouncing. ‘Well, it is very handsome—’

‘LOCutor,’ he corrected
hastily, with a faint frown. ‘That is how it is — but then perhaps I have
chosen rather an obscure word. Unsuitable for a properly memorable title — tell
me, what do you think?’

Phoebe hesitated. ‘Oh, I
. . . Well, Lydia, what do you think? Miss Templeton, you know, is a wide
reader: you cannot do better than ask her.’

Mr Beck did not look as
if he were very solicitous of knowing what she thought; but Lydia answered
levelly: ‘Very good. Interlocutor — one who exchanges talk with another. So you
mean the paper to include a broad range of views, sir?’

‘Oh, to be sure, it will
be no narrow party magazine,’ he said dismissively. ‘This, of course, Miss Rae,
is only a proof copy — I think to make some substantial alterations yet before
it is offered to the public. More verse, perhaps: there is a preponderance of
prose . . .’ He suddenly glared about him, as if rudely accosted. ‘Well. I am
sure I must be detaining you. Unless — where are you going?’

‘We have a call to
make,’ Lydia supplied, pretending he had asked a polite question.

‘Oh, well, in that case
. . .’ He looked searchingly into Phoebe’s face, and said, with deep-toned
emphasis: ‘Never mind. At least I am here: I am here, now.’

Self-evident: but
perhaps he considered the fact called for general celebration. One was hindered
from being fair to Mr Beck by his excessive good looks, which secured him such
an advantage as enabled him, it seemed, to dispense with common courtesies.
Fine shaggy head set on the sort of white columnar neck that was just made to
stand proud of a careless neckcloth: broad shoulders, strong jaw, full lips,
coal eyes — really, it was too much. He belonged on a plinth.
The Irritable
Apollo.

‘Will you be staying at
the Christopher?’ Phoebe asked him. ‘I hear it is very elegantly appointed —
quite as much as the York.’

‘I dare say it is. I
don’t notice such things. Miss Rae, when can I see you? It has been so long
since London — I never knew time to drag so intolerably. May I call? I mean —
no doubt I should leave a card — all that — but I don’t have a card. Was there
ever such nonsense —’ he flung out an arm, eyes wide ‘— as the
leaving
of
cards?’

‘It is rather
nonsensical.’ Phoebe smiled.

Meanwhile Lydia had
reached into her reticule and brought out a card. Mr Beck looked down at it.

‘Nonsensical, I know,’
Lydia said. ‘But at least you will know where to find us.’

He took the card,
gracelessly stuffing it into his pocket. ‘No no no,’ he said, frowning, as
Phoebe was about to hand him back the
Interlocutor,
‘it is yours. I must
know what you think of it. And I want you to be absolutely, unsparingly
truthful and honest with me, Miss Rae: will you promise?’

‘Oh, certainly,’ Phoebe said
solemnly, while Lydia winced: when someone made such an appeal as Mr Beck’s,
they were really announcing their intention to go into a pet at anything but
the grossest flattery.

‘Then — then goodbye.’
He did some impressive backwards walking and gazing, then stopped and cried:
‘But, Miss Rae, you do remember — you must remember — that evening at Mrs
Mansfield’s. The dreary little pedant who cried down Cowper — how we vanquished
him! And then the great fierce tom-cat — I shall never forget it.’