Agnes Or The Art 0f Friendship

by Catherine Bowness

  “Oh, in that case …” She leaned forward and, keeping her face averted, picked up the bundle.

  “Are you going to throw it back in my face because I have insulted you? You are not perhaps precisely a servant, but you are an employee who, I assume, took the position in order to be paid. Now, you have come back as a mendicant, begging for board and lodging; does such a situation satisfy your pride more readily than being called a servant?”

  “To be in receipt of charity? Yes, I think it does but, now that you have pointed out the absurdity of my position, I suppose I shall have to swallow my pride.”

  “A sensible conclusion.”

  “But, sir, how did you have enough money in the bank to withdraw such a large sum? I presume you have more with which to pay the other servants?”

  “The other servants? Ah, yes, the cook, the maid and the groom. Yes, indeed. Do you not recall that I – we – are living in this hovel in order to receive rent from our home? The rent is paid into the bank and I have withdrawn some of it – that is all. But I do not think I am obliged to explain my financial arrangements any more than you are expected to explain your rejection of what was no doubt an unexceptionable offer from a gentleman who could have kept you more comfortably than you will ever be able to keep yourself on such wages. Also, I feel I should remind you that, now that you have become a mendicant, I shall not pay you again. I will, however, provide bed and board with the greatest pleasure for as long as you are prepared to remain with us.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Taking his final remark as dismissal, Agnes rose, still holding the bundle of notes.

  “Must you go?”

  “I thought you had said all you wished,” she replied stiffly.

  “Oh, no, I have not said the half of it,” he replied, rising too.

  “What else did you want to say?” she asked, frowning and sitting down again.

  “I will not burden you with it,” he replied, sitting down again too before continuing, “Have you been pursuing your career up at the big house or have you been too busy dancing and flirting to find time to draw?”

  “I have not been flirting.”

  “No? Pity – I daresay you would be good at it. Have you then been drawing? May I see?”

  She pushed the sketchbook, which she had brought in with her, towards him.

  He opened it and turned the pages slowly. The early pictures were of flowers and of the lake; the first portrait was the one of Louisa in profile.

  “She is a handsome woman,” he said. “But we would not have been happy.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked, remembering how Louisa had described him and how she had wondered if her friend was more éprise than she had wanted to admit.

  “Certain. I would not have been able to give her what she wants, which is, I think, occupation other than running a household and bringing up children. As I said before, I think she would be happy in her father’s business but then, when I knew her, she had not fallen in love. I suspect, from what you have said, that perhaps she has now.”

  “Yes, but he is the wrong man.”

  “Clearly, since she has lit upon one who has formed an attachment to you.”

  “I wonder if that is why she thinks she wants him so much,” Agnes admitted. “I do not mean to be unkind to Louisa, I love her dearly, but she is quite spoiled and used to having her own way. I cannot help suspecting that her passion for this man is mostly inspired by his indifference.”

  “A pity she didn’t react in the same way to me.”

  Oh, thought Agnes, but she did. She said mildly, “Perhaps on that occasion she did not perceive that she had a rival.”

  “Do you think,” he asked, looking up at her from under his brows, “that she would always want what you had?”

  “Possibly. She is my dearest friend but I think there is a certain charity in her attitude towards me; you know, I am the poor little plain friend to whom she gives her cast-off dresses and whom she likes to take under her wing; I do not suppose that she would have objected if my follower had been a minor character amongst the guests – indeed I think she would have been delighted - but she felt strongly that someone as humble as me did not altogether merit an important one.”

  “My Lord Danehill?”

  She nodded. “I cannot conceive what he sees in me and am persuaded he will tire of the idea soon.”

  “Oh, no, I don’t think he will. Do you remember, when we first began to talk of these things, I said that if he fell in love I believed it was possible for him to be redeemed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you not feel it not only possible but likely? He has fallen in love with you because you are probably the only woman on earth for whom he would be prepared to change; he perceives you as an ideal to which he can at present only aspire but which he hopes he will one day deserve.”

  Agnes stared at him; he had spoken with such conviction that she was convinced he believed he would one day meet an ideal who would reform him.

  “He will not give up just yet,” he prophesied.

  “Do you think I should flee further?”

  “I think you should consider accepting his offer. You would not want for anything; oh, I know he has come here intending to gather up Miss Newbolt’s thousands and add them to his coffers but I do not think he is precisely impoverished.”

  She turned away, feeling the tears pricking behind her eyes as she had when the Marquess had declared his love for her.

  Sir John leaned forward and covered her hand with his. “If he loves you, which I am convinced he does, he will not hurt you and will become a reformed character. You could be happy.”

  She shook her head and sniffed but she would not look at him. For a moment he was silent, then he lifted her hand to his lips.

  “I am trying to think of you,” he said, his voice very low.

  “I realise that. It is kind of you, sir.”

  “You have been kind to my mother – and to me – and it is only proper that I should try to repay that. Is there another gentleman amongst the guests whom you would prefer?”

  “No.”

  “No one?”

  “No.”

  “If you are equally indifferent to all, why do you not accept Danehill? He would look after you and, if your heart is not engaged by another, you would likely grow to love him in time.”

  “I cannot,” she said, as she had to the Marquess. “That is all.”

  “Have you … do you care for another?”

  “I cannot say … it is of no use for me to do so for it is impossible.”

  “Dear Heaven,” he said, his voice shaking.

  He still held her hand and now picked up the other one and, bending his head over them, kissed them with such fervour that she thought if there had not been a table between them she would have fallen on her knees before him – or perhaps into his lap.

  “It is impossible,” he said at last. “You must be practical; you have a chance to have a comfortable life; I cannot stand in your way.”

  “But you do,” she muttered. “And I cannot get past it.”

  Chapter 30

  Louisa woke late the morning after Agnes had left, probably because she had not gone to sleep until the small hours.

  “Good morning, Miss,” Annie said brightly, pulling back the curtains with her usual gusto.

  Louisa shuddered; she had a headache and was almost relieved to see that, for the first time in several weeks, it was raining and therefore unnaturally dark.

  “It cannot be morning,” she protested.

  “I’m afraid it is, Miss, but not a bright one.”

  “No,” she agreed, thinking that the weather reflected her mood to a nicety.

  She wished she had not encouraged her mother to fill the house with guests and, as she dressed – this time with little interest in choosing a flattering gown - she wondered how she was to endure the remaining time until the house would be empty again. It was yet another reason to be jealo
us of Agnes: not only had she annexed the man Louisa wanted but, when she grew tired of the whole ghastly charade, she had simply escaped to the cottage down the road.

  This morning a visit had been planned to take the waters at Tunbridge Wells. This would involve people travelling some distance crammed into carriages which, in view of the weather, would not include the barouche-landau. She supposed that, unless she asked her mother to change the seating arrangements, she would be expected to share a vehicle with the Marquess; after all, with only a few days left, her parents would be expecting him to make his offer soon - a comparatively long journey à deux in a closed carriage might be just the opportunity he needed. No doubt they were ignorant of the fact that he had already made one - to the wrong woman.

  She wondered if Agnes had accepted; she had not said so in her letter but then she would have known that the news would distress Louisa so had perhaps tactfully – or timidly - taken herself off, leaving her new fiancé to make the announcement. Except that he had not and his expression had been far from the satisfied one she would have expected from a man whose sentiments were returned.

  No, judging by his manner, she must conclude that Agnes had rejected him. Why? Was it because she still considered him sinister? Her manner towards him recently had not given that impression; indeed she must have encouraged him to some degree for him to believe he had a chance of success; he was not, after all, a naïve boy who might be expected to rush headlong into a declaration of love. Or did she believe that she could not accept because Louisa wanted him? Was Agnes really capable of turning down a dazzling offer and forswearing a promising future just for the sake of a friendship? Louisa rather thought she was and was assailed with a new stab of misery, together with a good portion of guilt, as she remembered her own recent mean-spirited attitude towards her friend. She did not think that, over the last few days, she had concealed her longing to be rid of the inconvenient rival that little charity-case Agnes had become.

  The more she thought about it, the more convinced she was that that was why Agnes had left: she had perceived Louisa’s growing resentment and had convinced herself that, if she had not been there, the Marquess would not have inconveniently fallen in love with the wrong woman. She probably believed that, if she removed herself without delay, he might be induced to make the offer he had originally intended: to Louisa.

  She thought how silly Agnes was, how her well-meaning flight would only make things worse. Everyone would soon know the story – the Marquess’s face told it – and she would be the laughing stock of the whole ton in no time, for the detestable guests were bound to return to London and regale every person they met with the amusing story of how one of the most eligible men in England, offered the heiress on a plate, had declined the dish in favour of a mousey little parson’s daughter, who had (raucous laughter) rejected him.

  But, thinking of what she assumed must be Agnes’s sacrifice on the altar of friendship, she realised that, not only had she failed to bag the prize herself, but she had lost the most precious jewel she possessed – Agnes’s friendship.

  There was nothing for it but to make up with her dearest friend or rather, for there had been no direct falling-out, mend the bridges which seemed to have been damaged during this confounded house party.

  She recalled how steadfast Agnes had been during all those years at school, how her loyal friendship had finally convinced all the horrid, snobbish girls that Louisa, granddaughter of a Viscount, was not half so vulgar as she seemed at first glance, that there was in any event nothing intrinsically wrong with being a cit’s daughter. Agnes had not supported her out of pity, there had been no whiff of patronage, and yet, on Louisa’s part, there had been a good deal when she took her friend in as a guest before finding her a tiny labourer’s cottage on the edge of her grand estate.

  She was rich; it was no sacrifice for her to use her father’s money to paint a house and buy curtains, even furniture, in order to accommodate her old friend in a style befitting a deserving pauper. Likening Agnes’s looks to a wild flower – pretty but insignificant and easily crushed – had smacked of patronage too; it had never occurred to her that her ‘mousey’ little friend might prove to be a serious rival; and she was sure it had never occurred to Agnes either. She had asked for nothing, ever, until she had arrived at breakfast requesting a bed ‘for the time being’ because she had been dismissed.

  Now it seemed likely that she gone back there, to the cottage from which she had been ejected, determined to leave the field free for her best friend to bag the Marquess after all. What had been her explanation, she wondered, and how had she persuaded the odious Sir John to allow her back?

  Suddenly, realising that Agnes would be unlikely to stay long in a house from which she had already been cast ignominiously, she felt it to be an urgent matter to be reconciled, to explain that she did not in the least resent her friend becoming a Marchioness, that she would indeed be proud of her elevation, and that, in any event, she loved Agnes far more than the Marquess.

  She sought out her mother, explained that she had the headache, and begged to be allowed to cry off the planned expedition to the spa.

  “You are looking rather fagged,” Mrs Newbolt conceded, scanning her daughter’s careworn face. “But do you not think that a glass of the water might help to restore you?”

  “No; I think it would make me worse; indeed, I cannot come, Mama.”

  “Very well. You had better return to bed for a spell so that you will be well by this evening.”

  “Thank you,” Louisa said with genuine gratitude and retreated to her room without going down for breakfast.

  She waited until the party had set off for Tunbridge Wells before ordering the curricle to be brought to the door. It was still raining but all the closed carriages had gone to the spa so she put on a masculine-looking many-caped greatcoat, which she often wore for driving when the weather was inclement, and an old hat. She took a groom because she intended to make him walk the horses up and down while she made her peace with Agnes.

  It did not take long to reach the cottage. The groom helped her down and she went to the door. It was Jess who opened it and greeted her with a broad smile.

  “Have you come to see Miss Helman?”

  “Yes. Is her ladyship at home as well?”

  “Yes, Miss; they’re all three in the saloon. Shall I announce you?”

  Louisa’s heart quailed within her at this news for the third could only be the odious Sir John since she had seen Mr Armitage climbing into a carriage bound for Tunbridge Wells not half an hour previously.

  “No; I will announce myself,” she said, allowing Jess to take her wet hat and greatcoat.

  As she approached the door, she could hear low voices inside, one of them recognisably masculine. She turned the handle and went in.

  Lady Armitage and her elder son were sitting in the chairs on either side of the fire, she exceedingly still and he lounging at his ease with his long legs stretched out before him. Agnes sat in the window with her sketchbook open. It was clear that she was drawing her ladyship.

  “I hope I am not disturbing you,” Louisa murmured.

  “Not in the least; I heard you knock but did not of course know that it was you!” Agnes exclaimed, putting down her drawing and jumping up at once, although not perhaps with the alacrity that Louisa would have expected a week earlier.

  Sir John drew in his legs and also stood up, but more slowly.

  “Why, Miss Newbolt!” he said. “What an unexpected pleasure!”

  “I heard you had been ill,” she said, blushing fierily.

  She wondered if she would have recognised him if she had met him in the street but knew that she would; it was impossible that there could live another man so disconcertingly handsome. He was certainly thinner than when she had last seen him but in most respects he looked better. The face, whose haunting beauty had degenerated almost to the point of ruin when last she looked upon it, had lost the disagreeable puffiness indu
ced, no doubt, by late nights and an excess of alcohol.

  “Yes,” he acknowledged. “I believe I owe a large part of my recovery to Miss Helman’s nursing skills.”

  “Nonsense!” Agnes interjected. “I have done nothing beyond give you an occasional glass of water.”

  “Oh no; you have done that but you have done much more, as you know. I believe I have you to thank, Miss Newbolt, for provision of this charming cottage, which is exceedingly comfortable even if we are a trifle crowded now that I have taken up residence.”

  “Would you like me to look for a larger one?” Louisa asked, stung.

  He grinned, revealing even white teeth, seemingly undamaged by either the depravity of his former life or the severity of his illness.

  “No; we are all exceedingly grateful. My mother will probably move fairly soon to a property nearer to London so that my brother can keep an eye on her and I will return to my ancestral home and do the best I can to set it to rights.”

  “And Agnes? Will you come back to Newbolt House?”

  “No, thank you, dear Louisa, but I appreciate the offer. I am actively looking for another position now that Lady Armitage no longer requires my company and hope to find something soon.”

  “Must you?” Louisa asked in something approaching a whine.

  “I believe so.”

  “Agnes: I came to visit because I wanted to – to ask why you left so suddenly yesterday. Your letter was not – your explanation did not seem altogether conclusive.”

  “I am sorry if you were left wondering at my sudden departure but the reasons, which I assure you were – and remain – compelling, did not, I thought, lend themselves to being committed to paper.”

  Sir John, who had sat down again when Louisa ceased to speak to him, rose again.

  “Mama, I believe we should leave the friends to speak in private. Shall we repair to the morning room?”

  Lady Armitage nodded and rose too but Agnes said, “There is no need for either of you to vacate your chairs; Louisa and I can go to the morning room.”