by Fiona Hill
Lord Marchmont lightly tossed his discharged pistol from hand to hand. “Perhaps they will,” he conceded, with a smile that was more than a little weary. He relinquished the weapon to a waiting servant, then received from another attendant a wafer with a single hole through the centre.
“Mr. Manton hopes you will speak to him before you leave, my lord,” said the man. “Captain Gronow has been asking for a contest with you, sir.”
Marchmont exchanged a glance with his friend. “Think twice, eh?” he asked, amused, then turned to the attendant. “Very well, tell Mr. Manton I shall speak to him tomorrow. Just now I am in something of a hurry.”
The man bowed and disappeared. “I hope I am with you tomorrow,” said Weld, as they strolled from the shooting-booths back to a private dressing-room. “I am curious to meet this Manton. They say he is quite the gentleman.”
“He’s a good fellow,” said Marchmont, who had known Joe Manton nearly half his life. The shooting-gallery the latter operated was justly famous: it was the best in London, and so attracted London’s best marksmen. Lord Marchmont had heard of Gronow, for example, and had known it was only a matter of time before he and the Captain proved their skills against one another. The wager he had won today by shooting his wafer through thrice had been hardly a trial at all; as his challenger strolled up to pay off his debt Lord Marchmont hoped Captain Gronow would provide him with more of a test.
The gentlemen reached their chamber. Marchmont dismissed the waiting valet with a nod, observing quietly to Weld after he had gone, “More gossip is retailed out of these rooms than flowers are sold in Covent Garden, take my word for it. The place is an absolute hive.” He knelt softly to peer through the keyhole, then stood and flung open the door. The crouching valet straightened himself, looking sheepish.
“Just coming to fetch your lordship a towel,” he sputtered, going red.
“I have a towel, thank you,” answered the earl repressively, adding after a moment, “which is more than I can say for you.”
Frightened away, the man scurried off with a final bow. Mr. Weld, who had dropped into a leather-covered arm-chair, stretched out his legs luxuriously and observed, “Remarkable, isn’t it, how eager people are to know one another’s secrets? They’re always the same—change the names, I mean, and they would be—but people do go ahead prying, don’t they, just as if they might discover something wonderful! Well…human nature I suppose.”
“Human nature, indeed,” the other agreed drily, casting off his shirt and donning a fresh one. “What astonishes me is how blithely people go on committing indiscretion after indiscretion, year upon year, without acknowledging to themselves that nothing in London ever remains a secret, and so they are sure to be found out. Someday I must make two lists: all men whose names have been connected with a political or gaming scandal, and all women whose names have been connected with a romantic scandal. I shall then publish them and put Boyle’s Court Guide quite out of business. In fact, my listing is likely to be the more complete.”
“Oh come, please do not tell me London is so wicked a place as that,” begged Weld. “Surely there must be men of conscience, as well as honourable women! You’ve left a button undone,” he added, pointing to it.
Marchmont corrected the smaller oversight but insisted on the large one. “If there is an honourable woman,” he asserted, thinking of Charlotte Beaudry, “it is only because she has had no opportunity to disgrace herself. A few are too young, and a few are too ugly. But a very few, I assure you.”
“And the men of conscience?”
“I must agree with John Donne that the quest to discover what wind ‘serves to advance an honest mind’ and the quest for a woman true and fair are both equally doomed to frustration. Temptation is a door. A woman’s pretty blushes and demurs are no more than the keys to its three or four locks. She may stammer at the threshold, but cross it she will—feeling all the more virtuous, no doubt, for having made such a fuss. I have never seen it fail.”
“Never?” persisted Weld.
“Never.” The earl let fall this weighty word, then turned his attention to his cravat. “Damn these things anyhow,” he muttered. “They take half an hour to tie, and then they make one’s neck ache all the day long. Someone should petition Brummel to work some notion of comfort into our idea of fashion—or at least to give a passing nod to common sense. At present they are utter strangers. Do you know of a case to contradict me?” he demanded suddenly.
“What, about fashion and comfort?”
“About women and virtue.”
“Oh! Well, my dear old man, a fellow doesn’t like to mention a fellow’s sister,” Warrington replied slowly, “but I can scarcely believe Lady—”
“Oh, Emilia,” Marchmont broke in. “Yes, you are right there. Emilia is pure as snow, no question about it. And she is very handsome, don’t you think?”
Weld agreed heartily.
“I can’t imagine why she doesn’t marry,” her brother went on. “Certainly not for lack of suitors. Yes, I must concede her the exception. But only the exception that proves the rule, after all! I suppose you and I must pass for men of conscience, in order to prove that rule correspondingly. Though some of the things I saw on the Continent,” he went on, “and some of the things I did…” His voice trailed away as an involuntary shudder actually took hold of his body. The war against Napoleon, necessary though it was, had deftly stripped him of illusions concerning his fellow men. He had seen much evidence of courage (his friend Weld being principal among examples), but he had seen even greater evidence of stupidity, of narrow savagery, of men eager to surrender to their basest desires. Perhaps it was the smell of gunpowder at Manton’s that brought it out, but he always left that place steeped in deepest cynicism. For besides his discoveries of the nature of other men’s souls, he had had to confront in his own young spirit a number of failings he had rather have been permitted to ignore.
Weld saw the shudder and stretched out his hand to grasp Lord Marchmont’s briefly. “Never mind, old boy,” he said, with some clumsiness. His mind cast about for a diversion. “That’s behind us now. You’ve got a new battlefield to worry about, after all—the marriage mart, I mean. What did you think of those Lemon girls at Lady Trevor’s last night, eh? Fairly prime, I’d say!”
Marchmont smiled gratefully at Weld, then shrugged. “Not much above the ordinary, if I know who you mean.”
“The devil a bit they weren’t! Those tall gals, with the copper-coloured hair—don’t you remember?”
“Oh yes, I remember. Miss Susannah’s been hanging out for a husband these past two seasons or more. Augusta, too, I think. Emilia thought I didn’t know ’em; she tried to trap me with one at the supper table. Shall we be off? I’m ready.”
Warrington rose to accompany him out to the street, where the earl’s curricle waited. “Trap you with one,” he exclaimed as they went. “Those girls are perfectly magnificent, every last one of them. Just what are you looking for, my good man?”
Marchmont gave a second shrug. “A little wit, perhaps. A little honesty, a modicum of talent. A dash of modesty, if it’s not too much to ask—and done up as attractively as possible, if I’m lucky. I’ll never find her,” he laughed despairingly. They passed out of Manton’s into the damp afternoon. “I’ll drive,” he told his tiger, springing up to take the reins.
“Who was that you did take in to supper?” asked Lord Weld. “Not one of the Stanbroke girls, was she?”
“No, a friend of theirs. An Amy Lewis, a neighbour from Warwickshire, from what she said. Pretty little snippet, I thought. Big eyes, sweet expression. Not a brain in her head, God bless her.” He started the horses and began to manoeuvre through the muddy, crowded streets.
“Mind that cart!” Weld shouted, as the curricle narrowly avoided the vehicle in question. Country-bred, the hectic London streets unnerved him in a way Napoleon’s troops could not. He hid his long lightly-freckled face in his hands and called with a grimace, “I
can’t look, Marchmont. Tell me when we’re home.”
The earl tapped the red head next to him lightly. “Take heart,” he smiled, “and tell me what you thought of that mob last night. Speak to anyone worth the trouble?”
“Just Henry Luttrell,” he replied, daring to look ahead again. “He is a bit of a wag, ’pon honour! One of the serving-girls nearly dropped a tray on his foot, and though she was very apologetic, and though he was very polite in excusing her, he said to me as soon as she’d gone that he thought Lady Trevor ought to train her servants better, for the incident struck him as très outré! Then Lady Elizabeth heard him, and begged him to restrain himself! I did laugh.”
“Lady Elizabeth?” said Marchmont, catching at the name. “Stanbroke, do you mean?”
“Yes. Elizabeth is the older one. Now those two are beauties, admit it!”
A muscle at the corner of Lord Marchmont’s mouth pulled just visibly. “I thought Lady Isabella a trifle hoydenish, if you must know.”
“Oh, Marchmont, this is ungenerous!” remonstrated Weld. “What about Elizabeth then, the fair Elizabeth? Surely you don’t object to her on those grounds; I never saw anyone so elegant.”
“Perhaps.”
“Perhaps! Devil fly away with your ‘perhaps,’ old man! She had half the men in the room clustered round her.”
“It was her come-out,” observed Marchmont drily.
“Nevertheless! And anyway, it wasn’t only hers, it was her sister’s too…and that Miss What’s-her-name—”
“Lewis.”
“Yes, that Miss Lewis you approve of so highly. I say, Marchmont, you seem almost to take offence if a woman is really beautiful. Now that little Lewis chit can’t hold a candle to the Stanbrokes, but you call her very pretty. It isn’t reasonable!”
“A thousand apologies, my friend,” said the other lightly. “You see, in my opinion a woman is not truly attractive unless she is intelligent as well as good-looking. Moreover, a little vanity can ruin her for me, be she never so smart and lovely. So indeed can a shallow spirit, or a too-susceptible heart. Now your Lady Elizabeth, for instance—”
“Not mine,” disclaimed Weld.
“This Lady Elizabeth, then, I observed to be rather flirtatious. Extremely flirtatious, indeed, and the observation ended my liking for her.”
“Your— Oh, I say, this is doing it a bit brown. You don’t mean to say you disliked her? But she was charming!”
“Charming? I don’t call it charming to threaten to run someone through with a poker.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Your Lady Elizabeth. She—”
“This Lady Elizabeth, she stood for half an hour encouraging that inhumanly tedious Middleford Lemon, and then, as soon as he’d drifted off, she turned to me and declared her intention of running him through with a poker. I presume that when our conversation was at an end, she dropped a word in someone else’s ear on the subject of garrotting me…or perhaps smashing my head with a hammer…or it may have been—”
“Marchmont, she was certainly jesting!”
“Not the point,” he insisted, swerving in the nick of time to avoid a pedestrian. “The point is, she is two-faced. I never saw a woman smile so sweetly as she did at Lemon—but, when she knew him to be out of earshot, she all of the sudden despised him.”
“Faugh!” spat out the other. “How do you know she wasn’t just doing the pretty to him all that while? You say yourself he’s a famous bore. Perhaps she could not get away from him! In that case it was no more than civil to smile at him—and seem to encourage him. Note that word seem, Marchmont.”
“If she could not get away from him for full half an hour,” his lordship replied unmoved, “I think it speaks very badly for her wit.”
“You are a study!” exclaimed Lord Weld. “All of this puts me very much in mind of Lady Emilia’s complaints of you, that day when we drew invitations by lot. I begin to see her—”
“I’m glad you brought that up, Weld,” the earl broke in quickly. “I’ve been meaning to speak to you on that head for days now. I never saw such a treacherous—”
“Never mind all that,” Warrington persevered. “I’m beginning to get a pretty good idea of your methods, old boy, and very devious some of them are! First of all you find fault with everybody around you. Next, when you can’t find fault, you fend them off with interruptions—”
“Tell me how close I am to that carriage, please,” the earl interrupted. Traffic had become very dense, and they appeared to come within an inch of the opposing vehicles.
“You’re in no danger,” Weld assured him. “I was saying, if you can’t undo your acquaintances with fault-finding, you inter—”
“I like you pretty well,” said Marchmont with a smile.
“This is impossible! When you’re presented with an unexceptionable gal, you turn the conversation by—”
“What I don’t understand is how all this comes to concern you, my good man. Why should you care whether I marry or no? It’s nothing to you, I presume.”
“Naturally it’s nothing to me. I’m thinking of Lady Emilia. So should you be. Listen to me, dear fellow: you’ve an obligation to your sister, and I like your sister, and I’m not going to sit idly by while you wriggle out of your duties one more time. Now you tell me one real objection to—er, well, to this Lady Elizabeth, for instance. One honest objection!”
“Very well,” Marchmont replied, refusing to be cornered. “I happened to see her glance in the pier-glass not once but three times in the space of an hour. And each time she did it—very surreptitiously, I might add—she gave herself an odious little smile of approval. Now, how do you like that?”
Weld was bewildered. “What on earth sort of objection can you make to that?” he asked.
“But she is vain, of course!” said Marchmont. “Fancy looking at oneself again and again, every chance one has. And then smirking at one’s reflection—and in a room full of people too! Of course she thought no one was looking—”
“But you were!” Weld interjected triumphantly.
The earl paused. “Well, yes, I was,” he confessed. “After all, it is nothing to be ashamed of! You are quite right, she is a very elegant woman. I noticed it, and I did look at her. Very well, I admit it. I have just finished telling you, however, that to me a woman’s looks are nothing if they are not complemented by intelligence, and modesty, and—”
“Just because a young girl is anxious to appear to advantage at her come-out,” Weld broke in firmly, “does not mean she is vain. Now it just so happens that this Lady Elizabeth—”
“Your Lady Elizabeth—”
“Not mine! This Lady Elizabeth is also a woman of intelligence. I have just told you how easily she capped Luttrell’s remarks about the serving-girl’s tray. As for modesty, I maintain your pier-glass incident proves absolutely nothing, for any girl might do the same and probably would—”
“She is scarcely a girl, Weld. I should have to call her a woman.”
“All the better, then, do call her a woman,” invited the other. “Any woman would do the same, I dare swear, and—no, don’t say it, I know what is coming! As for honesty, I submit that your Middleford Lemon story proves no more than did the pier-glass, for it is certainly more incumbent upon a hostess to be courteous than it is to be honest, and it would have been shocking of her ladyship to do anything else than what she did.”
“You mean by listening to Lemon drone on?”
“Precisely.”
“And what about telling me she contemplated running him through with a—”
“Perfectly charming! Very amusing!” insisted Lord Weld. “I hope you have no objection to a little humour in a woman!”
“Every objection. They begin by laughing with you, and they end by laughing at you, depend upon it.”
“This is outside of enough! You just informed me you insist on wit in a woman—”
“The difference between wit and humour, my dear Weld, is consi
derable,” observed the earl.
“Nonsense, nonsense, nonsense!” came the exasperated response. “I tell you, Marchmont, I have a feeling about that Stanbroke girl. She’s the genuine article. You’re a fool not to see it.”
“So you have a feeling, do you? Then you marry her,” suggested Lord Marchmont. He repeated softly, with a faint air of disgust, “Feeling, indeed!”
“Call it what you will, then,” Weld continued, ignoring the last suggestion. “Call it intuition. I liked her. She could do you a world of good. And you would deal well together. Even Lady Emilia said—”
“Lady Emilia likes everybody.”
“Not half she does,” said Weld, who was a close observer. “Quite the contrary, I should say: she’s almost as niffy-naffy as you.”
“She likes you well enough,” said her brother.
“Am I to be dragged into the conversation every time one of you is charged with misanthropy?” demanded Weld, but he could not suppress a smile.
“We are home,” remarked the earl, handing the tiger his whip. “Why don’t you go in and despair over me with Emilia? I’m sure you’ll both enjoy it enormously. I would gladly join you myself, but I have some household accounts to review.”
Lord Weld shot him a look of mock disapprobation as the two disappeared indoors. “Mind what I say,” he murmured obstinately. “I shall not sit idly by while you contrive to stay single.”
But the earl only laughed.
4
“Dear heavens!” burst from Lady Isabella’s lips, as she entered the vast domain of Lackington, Allen, and Company. “Dear heavens,” she repeated, trying to recover herself, “who could have thought there would be so many books in one place?”
Her mother smiled indulgently, but begged her to compose her countenance. “It is quite extraordinary,” she agreed. “Don’t you think?” she asked, turning to Amy Lewis, who was silent with wonder.
