Agnes Or The Art 0f Friendship

by Catherine Bowness

  She had never received a love letter before; she had certainly never received a letter from a peer of the realm declaring undying love and begging her to end his misery and make him the happiest man in England. As she read, she began, again, to weep not only because she felt a torrent of pity for his lordship but also because she was overcome with self-pity. It seemed to her that life was very hard; there was he, tearing his hair a few miles distant because he would never again be happy for what remained of his wasted life – at least that was what he said – while she wept in her attic because she did not think she would ever be happy again either. Was it right that two people should be so crushed by heartbreak when it need only be one? But then, there was Louisa, who insisted that she could only be happy if she married the Marquess and Sir John who had not indulged in expressing his sentiments to anyone, so far as she knew, but who she was convinced was also labouring under a mortal emotional wound.

  She read the letter and she wished she had not. Why had she not thrown it into the fire without breaking the seal? She had guessed what it would say and yet she had read it, knowing that it would upset her – and it had, quite dreadfully. She could not be responsible for such unhappiness!

  She folded it up, put it away and began to undress but there was something about it which still troubled her, which tore at her mind in a curious way that was nothing to do with what his lordship had said, or, rather, it was a lot to do with what he had said – not the content, nor the sentiments - but how he had phrased it that, along with the familiarity of the hand, triggered an odd sense of recognition. Where had she seen that hand before? And what was it about the language that was so familiar?

  Half-undressed, she wrapped a shawl around her shoulders and picked up the letter again.

  “You will not be surprised to hear from me again;” “I would I was not compelled to write in this manner;” “it gives me no pleasure to approach you in the guise of a mendicant.” None of these was inappropriate to the subject of his missive; he was begging her – and no doubt did not enjoy doing so, wished that he was not thus compelled - but she had read those very phrases, in that identical hand, not so long ago in a different context.

  Where? Now she ran through the letters she had received since she had come to live in the cottage. There were not many; she was close to her dearest friend and had seen a great deal of her so that there had been no need for them to write to each other. The only person from whom she had heard was Mrs Lewis and her hand did not in the least resemble the Marquess’s.

  Suddenly it came to her with a shock which almost caused her to cry out. It was before that, before she had moved into the cottage, that she had seen that writing. Now she recalled it exactly: it had been when she was going through the contents of Sir James Armitage’s desk, when she had found numerous letters from tenants, from suppliers, from builders, one or two from Sir John, begging for help with his debts - but this was not Sir John’s hand – and several anonymous letters from a man, presumably a man, who frequently began his curt correspondence with the, in that context, threatening phrase, “you will not be surprised to hear from me again.”

  She had kept these letters, along with Sir John’s, because she had been disturbed by them but she had not shown them to Lady Armitage, deeming the widow too crushed by grief to be able to survive a further blow. Nevertheless, her knowledge of them had been the main reason why she felt so keenly the injustice of Sir John being held entirely responsible for the debts under which the estate was drowning.

  He had asked for money to pay his IOUs and he had been given a good deal but, unless there had been a great many more letters begging his father for even larger sums which had not been kept, the present Baronet was by no means the cause of the deficiency in funds; neither was it mismanagement of the estate which, from what she had seen, had been maintained adequately if not excellently. No, it was because the previous Baronet had been blackmailed for nearly thirty years and the man who had carried out this systematic emptying of the Armitage purse was none other than the Marquess of Danehill.

  Chapter 32

  For several minutes Agnes sat on her bed, as though frozen to the spot, with two letters in her hands, the one she had received that evening and one of the many she had brought with her from Armitage Hall more than a month ago.

  She compared them again and again, matching the capital letters, the curves, the length of the lower and upper strokes, the position of the horizontals and the dots and she did not think there could be much doubt that they had been written by the same hand.

  The writer of the letters to Sir James had signed himself ‘Nemesis’ but he had taken no trouble to disguise his writing. She wondered why for it seemed to her unlikely that Sir James would not have had some inkling of who knew his secret – or must in any event have guessed. But, having read all the letters from Nemesis – or at least those which Sir James had kept - she knew that the blackmail had begun shortly before Sir James married. She knew too the shameful thing which he had done and which, she suspected, had more likely been the trigger for his cessation of gambling than a promise made to his new wife - although that might have been a useful ploy to conceal the real reason why he never again went to London or visited a gaming hell.

  Sir James had cheated and Lord Danehill, who must have been very young at the time, had either seen it happen or learned of it from another source. For nearly thirty years he had systematically bled the Baronet not only of the profit from his land and the sum he had inherited - as well as his wife’s marriage portion - but every penny he could borrow as well. The house, she knew, had not had a farthing spent upon it in more than thirty years and, if the land was not entirely desolate, it was because Sir James had worked hard to maintain it as best he could on a shoestring.

  The only money which he had not given to the Marquess had been given to his elder son, who seemed to have inherited not only his father’s predilection for gambling but also his ill-luck although fortunately it appeared that he had avoided a similar response to it. There had never, so far as she could see, been any suggestion that the present Baronet had either cheated or attempted to do so.

  Since he had returned, Agnes had said nothing because she had not considered him strong enough to support the shame and anger he was bound to feel. She had not told Lady Armitage either for the same reason and because she feared that the pain of discovering her beloved husband’s weakness would be insupportable, particularly when exacerbated by guilt towards her son for holding him solely responsible for the family’s ruin.

  All the same she had inwardly railed against Lady Armitage’s implicit criticism of her son; indeed, her knowledge of the injustice done to him had perhaps played a role in her otherwise apparently unfounded defence of the young man. He had not led a blameless life, he admitted to having been disgracefully dissolute, but he had neither cheated at cards nor submitted to years of blackmail in order to cover his tracks.

  And now? What was she to do? Well, firstly, no matter how sorry she felt for the Marquess, she could not marry him – and neither, she hoped, would Louisa. Secondly, although she did not know much about the law, she wondered if there might not be some redress in the courts for the widow and her sons. The Marquess should pay back at least some portion of his ill-gotten gains to lift them out of penury. She had no idea how this could be achieved for, if she were to threaten him with exposure, she would be in danger of stepping into his shoes as a blackmailer. It seemed to her that the time had come for her to hand the matter over to the Baronet. It was not her story; she was merely a witness.

  She laid the letters on the bed, stood up and put her gown back on; she did not know how long had passed since Sir John had assured her that he would be available for another hour but she thought that she would rather speak to him sooner than later, not least because she must also speak to Louisa to warn her, even more strongly, not to marry Danehill.

  Wrapping the shawl around her shoulders again, she picked up her letter and one of th
e others and went downstairs again.

  The light was still on in the saloon so she went in.

  Sir John did not look as though he had moved since she left; he was in the same chair, his legs stretched out in front of the fire which, after all this time, was collapsing on itself in a heap of ash. The wine bottle and a half-filled glass were beside his elbow but she did not think he had drunk a great deal for the bottle remained more than half full.

  “Sir John?” she said, pausing in the doorway.

  “Agnes!” he exclaimed, jumping up as fast as his still rather weakened limbs allowed.

  “You said I might consult you if anything troubled me about this letter,” she began, waving it in front of him.

  “Indeed; I am entirely at your disposal. Where lies the difficulty?”

  She came across the room and he moved to set the chair in which his mother had earlier been sitting closer to the fire, after which he stirred the heap of ash and threw another log on to the pile.

  “Would you like some wine?” he asked. “I can fetch another glass.”

  She shook her head but he said, “You look very cold; I think you should have some. Bear with me.”

  He went out, returning a few minutes later with a glass into which he poured a measure of wine and handed it to her.

  She had begun to shiver, more from nervousness than cold for it was much warmer in the saloon than it had been in her bedroom.

  “Would you say,” she asked when he had sat down again, “that these two letters were written by the same hand?”

  He took them. “Is one of them the letter you received tonight?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you mind my looking at it?”

  “Not in the least. It says much what you prophesied it would – he begs me to reconsider my answer and emphasises the strength of his sentiments. It is not a noticeably well-written plea and nothing about it strikes me as particularly original. I daresay you have expressed similar thoughts yourself when writing to a recalcitrant female.”

  “I have never written such a letter,” he said. “Your judgment sounds harsh; has he displeased you by writing?”

  “No; it is not what he says in my letter which has brought me downstairs; it is the similarity of the writing, which I think is identical and on which I would like your opinion before I say another word. You do not have to read either to come to a conclusion, I presume?”

  “No, perhaps not, although it will be difficult not to do so by mistake. I will compare them upside down which is, I believe, a better way not to be swayed by the content when trying to look exclusively at the style of the script.”

  He took the two letters, turned them upside down and spent some time looking from one to the other, bringing them close to the candle to study them more minutely.

  “I do not think there can be the least doubt that they are written by the same person,” he said at length, handing them back.

  “There are,” she said, “certain phrases which occur in both letters and which were, along with the writing, what alerted me to the possibility that it was the same person who had written both. I have several others upstairs but have only brought down one from the past and mine. The others were not addressed to me but to your father, Sir James Armitage.”

  Sir John said nothing but he sat very still, his eyes on her face.

  “I came across the letters to your father when your mother asked me to sort out the contents of your father’s desk when we were vacating the house. She could not face the task. I brought them with me because I thought that they should be kept but I have told your mother neither that they are in my possession nor to what they allude. Now that you are better, and since you are the head of your house, I think it best that you take them. I have left the others upstairs and will fetch them if you would like but I suggest that you read this one first so that you know something of the story which they reveal.”

  She handed him one of the letters. He took it but did not, at first, look at it. His eyes were still fixed upon her face as he said, “Do I take it that the others are on the same subject?”

  “Yes. There are a great many; I have not counted them but I have read most of them and can assure you that they all say much the same thing so that, when you have read that one, you will be in possession of as much knowledge of the matter as I.”

  He nodded and turned to the script. It was not long and took him only a few seconds to read. While he did so, she watched his face and saw it harden, saw the colour drain from it and his jaw clench.

  “My God!” he said at last, laying the paper down on the table beside his wine glass.

  “No wonder he was so ready to pay my debts,” he added bitterly. “I suppose he was afraid I might resort to similar tactics if he did not. Although I accepted his cash with alacrity, I cannot deny that my opinion of him dropped; it was too easy. Now I know why.”

  “He should have stood up to you,” she agreed. “And so should your mother.”

  “She doted upon him,” he said, “and never argued over even the smallest matter although I think she sometimes begged him not to give me any more. Certainly, she judges me harshly for my conduct. Of course, he was like me when he was young and everyone thought he had reformed for love of my mother. It seems that was not the case.”

  “No, although it may have made him more afraid of being discovered for fear she would think badly of him.”

  “Possibly. Is this the first one?”

  “Yes.”

  “The date is prior to my parents’ marriage. I suppose he might have been afraid that she would withdraw if she knew the truth. What will you do? If I am not mistaken, you had begun, this evening before you read the letter, to consider the sense in accepting Danehill.”

  “Yes, I own I had begun to be persuaded. How did you know?”

  “Your expression; there was a sort of resignation on your face as you went up to bed; I did not expect you to come down to speak to me again tonight.”

  “I did not intend to. I recalled my pity for his pain when I rejected him and I felt it again when I first opened his letter; it made me think that it was by no means impossible that I would, eventually, come to love him and that you and your mother were wiser than I.”

  “I thought she was, but now we know that she too made a terrible mistake in her choice of husband.”

  “Is that what you think? But she loved him – and he loved her; you have said so yourself.”

  “Certainly she loved him; he? Yes, I suppose so; he was not a man who was very open with his sentiments; now, of course, we know why.”

  “It must have blighted his whole life,” she said softly.

  “And ours,” he replied bitterly.

  “Yes; but how dreadfully sad it is. If only he had admitted that, in a moment of desperation, he had done something silly, it would not have seemed so bad, would it? We can all make mistakes, including those committed out of greed or cowardice. But to pay this man, month in, month out, in order to preserve a secret which he must have been terrified of anyone uncovering – that must have ruined his life. And then to find out that his son, his elder son and heir, was inclined the same way – that must have been a painful burden to bear, particularly because he did not feel able to share it with the one person on whom he should have been able to rely.”

  “I daresay you have put it badly, but I must take issue with you on one point: I was not inclined the same way; I have never cheated nor even been tempted to do so. Perhaps if I had, I would have been able to save the estate.”

  He did not sound angry, merely cynical.

  “I am sorry; you know I did not mean to imply that you had done or would have considered doing anything so reprehensible.”

  “Yes, I do know that, which is why I am neither shouting at you nor storming out of the room and slamming the door. I asked you what you mean to do now vis-à-vis Danehill; you did not answer.”

  “I didn’t think I needed to; obviously I will not marry him.”
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br />   “I am relieved. I would not like to be guilty of killing your betrothed.”

  “Killing? You will kill him? You cannot mean that!” Agnes exclaimed, turning white in her turn.

  “I did not think you would care, but you must see that I cannot allow my father, weak and wrong-headed though he was, to go unavenged. I will have to call Danehill out and, while it is possible I may kill him, it is far more likely that he will kill me.”

  “Oh, no, no! That would be far worse! You cannot allow him to kill you! You are not well enough to fight a duel! For heaven’s sake, why must you be so idiotic? Is it not enough that the man has ruined your family, probably driven your father to an early grave, devastated your mother, driven you to fight in a far-off country from which you have returned with your health compromised that you must stand up and allow him to kill you outright?”

  “Good God, what fervour! What else can I do? I must make some attempt to avenge my father, as I said.”

  “Can he not be given over to the law? There are all those compromising letters to prove the case.”

  “He is a senior member of the peerage; I doubt the authorities would want to rake up such a matter after all these years.”

  “But you cannot – oh, pray do not fight a duel!” She was almost sobbing.

  “It would not be so bad, you know. My brother would become the Baronet and I am certain Mama would be happy with that when she had got over the reason why I was dead. She finds him much easier than me.”

  “That is only because she thinks he resembles her more than your father so that she is not so afraid of his becoming keen on the cards while you remind her – at the moment at least – too painfully of your lost father. I do not mean that you are weak like him.”