Friendship and Folly: The Merriweather Chronicles Book I

by Meredith Allady

  Lady Frances and Mr. Parry were not proof against this depiction; or it is conceivable that their minds were entirely decided before its presentation. However it may have been, they were soon making plans to take up residence in the Dower House, against the advice of any number of friends, who, familiar with the ways of the Earl, predicted in strong language that to imagine it possible to raise up a family under any roof belonging to him, without being prepared to submit to all manner of interference, was sheerest folly.

  But so it did not prove. Lord Meravon, recovering gradually from the oppression of spirits, if not from the grief that had caused it, showed no disposition to meddle in the rearing of his grandchildren. His tendresse for Julia had been but an aberration: he did not understand children, and took no pains to dissemble it. They made him nervous, and he did not know what to do with them if some authoritative figure was not by to whisk them away when they asked incomprehensible questions, or became troublesome. He liked “Fanny’s darlings” very well, but he wished them to remain tucked up quietly in the nursery until they were old enough to grasp his views on the State of the Nation, and listen with proper appreciation to his exhaustive denunciations of the Hon. Charles Fox.

  And so the Parrys, who had envisioned perhaps a year or two north of the Avon, became inevitably fixed at Merriweather. There the three youngest children--Margaret, Louisa, and Idelette--were born; and there my heroine dwelt in great contentment until her nineteenth year, when her grandfather’s partiality sprang up in a rather unexpected form, and impelled her, willy-nilly, to London.

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  Chapter III

  Let it at once be said in extenuation of Lord Meravon, that Julia seemed expressly fashioned to dazzle and reign in Society. One might have commented that Miss Parry was a very pretty girl, as one might comment that the surface of the sun is very hot--both assertions being notable for their truth, simplicity, and almost stunning inadequacy.

  In all likelihood Mrs. Northcott gave voice to the convictions of the majority when she opined to her daughter that, “If the Parrys persist in their intention not to take Julia up to Court, it will be an illustration of unworldliness indistinguishable from stupidity. She had not thought that even of them.”

  The Northcotts were the inhabitants of Hellwick Hall, a much smaller estate bordering Merriweather. It was accepted at Hellwick that the Parrys were to be indulged for their position, pitied for their contentment, and despised for opportunities left unseized; and if, in his efforts to conform to these correct but not altogether compatible sentiments, Mr. Northcott’s became on occasion so convoluted as to be easily mistaken for a kind of wistful envy, such lapses were not regarded. He was a quiet man, possessed of a comfortable income, and a lineage so riddled with titles of every description, that it was a source of amazement that one of them had not already devolved upon his person. This promising lineage had won for him his lady, who was possessed of an Ancient Name, and particularly elegant, Elizabethan hands, to which she was devoted. Her excesses in gloves, lotions and rings aside, Mrs. Northcott was a woman of sense, and having been denied that standing in society which would have made her arrival in town a matter of consequence and expectation, she had for years bowed to the unaccountable whims of Providence, and divided her year between Hellwick Hall and Bath. I do not say she was resigned to her lot: not for her, the meek renunciation of Thy-will-be-done. Rather, she acknowledged, with regret, her inability to persuade Providence of the superiority of her own designs, and inclined her head, as one stiffly conceding the victory to an opponent boasting an unfair advantage. Had she been the one to create the universe, you may be very sure she would not have abused her powers, by refusing her creatures the honors they deserved by prolonging, to a ridiculous extent, the respiration of various ancient in-laws.

  Nor was this her sole grievance. Heaven had apparently marked the Northcotts out for adversity from the very beginning of their connection, though as Mrs. Northcott was not, as she herself acknowledged, one to make a display of her afflictions, perhaps none but themselves knew how severe and unrelenting these were. For instance, instead of a son whom they might vaunt and spoil, and heap with all the educational privileges designed to turn out the Perfect Well-Bred Young Gentleman (after the model of the fourth Earl of Chesterfield, whom Mrs. Northcott claimed as a relation, though one distant-almost-to-the-point-of-invisibility), the Northcotts had been given, after many years’ wait, a mere daughter, and one, moreover, who was seen at once to have inherited a thoroughly commonplace pair of hands. Furthermore, Ann---named for an obdurate great-aunt who, declining to take the hint, left her fortune elsewhere--was not even prudent enough to come laden with the good looks and amenable disposition which must assure her, if nothing else, the approbation of her parents in the ease and advantage with which she could be puffed off and married. She was, on the contrary, in no way remarkable in either face or form, and further augmented her deficiencies by falling, Humpty-Dumptylike, off a wall at the age of fifteen, and injuring herself so as to be in some measure affected by it for the rest of her life. What was to be done with so thoughtless a girl? What said of one who could commit an act so against the interests and desires of her unsuspecting parents? Mrs. Northcott was not unnaturally disgusted, but years of self-command enabled her to conceal her feelings from everybody except her husband and daughter, the surgeon, the handful of houseguests wishing they had taken their departure the day before, and the half a score of servants who moved quietly about, looking deaf, and anticipating the sudden increase of their popularity below stairs.

  By now, my reader may well be forgiven for thinking that I have wandered rather far from the declared subject of this history. I assure you I have not. As unsatisfactory as Ann was in general, she had managed, entirely by accident, to attach herself to the Parrys at a very young age. Mrs. Northcott had never been able to fathom quite how it had come about, or why they should have permitted, even invited, the encroachment; but that they did so was beyond dispute. Even when most exasperated with her daughter’s heedless ways, she could not wholly forget this circumstance, and Ann soon discovered, that the most trifling allusion to Merriweather, was enough to check the full spate of her mother’s disapproval, and direct her thoughts in happier channels.

  At first the Parrys were concerned that Ann should not give offense by neglecting family for friends, but Mrs. Northcott, when she heard of it, hastened to dispel such a groundless fear. Ann herself was always careful to arouse no suggestion of ill-feeling between the houses; she went frequently to call on her parents; she paid them every respect and attention which they could be thought to deserve; more, in fact, than they desired. Mr. Northcott, if he thought of it at all, doubtless thought only how pleasant it was that Ann should be so easily disposed of; it was left for his wife to appreciate in full the benefits of this unexpected intimacy between her luckless daughter and a family of such note. As the years passed it became a matter of lament that Meravon’s heir (and his son) were no-one-knew-where on the continent, and that the younger sons of the house were equally inaccessible--one at school or University, and the other always away fighting various groups of discontented natives in the name of the King. But still it did Ann no harm to be seen everywhere in the thick of the Parrys. A less sensible parent might have been supposed to grieve over the inevitable contrast between Miss Northcott and Miss Parry, but Mrs. Northcott took comfort in the knowledge, that any girl must have displayed ill beside Julia, as even a wax candle must be overlooked in broad sunlight. Ann, being no more than tallow, made the waste minimal.

  So the friendship was promoted on every side, and Mrs. Northcott had her reward in the year one, when the Earl’s eldest son, William, was so obliging as to expire in France, insuring the return of the heir in a young and marriageable state, in the person of a grandson. Viscount Merivale, arriving at Merriweather to find Ann firmly entrenched in his family, accepted her presence as a matter of course, and affection as her due. This was very gratifying indeed. Mrs.
Northcott began to hope that Heaven had at last come to realize its hideous mistake in apportioning out years of adversity to such a one as herself, and in this hope she promptly descended on Ann with prints, and opinions, and a horde of pin-lipped dressmakers and milliners, which vexed that young lady very much, by keeping her home with fittings, when she longed to be at Merriweather.

  Alas, for Mrs. Northcott! The hordes had scarcely retreated--leaving behind colorful heaps of taffeta and muslin, but somehow having failed to transform her daughter into the heir-snaring belle she had ordered--when Lord Merivale took it into his head to purchase a commission in the army, and removed, with no sign of Annward regret, to a camp in Kent.

  A partial screen must be placed before the extravagances of a mother’s indignation. The unspeakable selfishness of a young man of rank and fortune, electing to take up arms for his country rather than idle around giving her daughter a chance to attach him--! Well, she would not have thought it of him. Her only consolation was, that when he did return, it must be in a scarlet coat; a sartorial privilege which, she trusted, would not be entirely thrown away even on a figure as negligible as that of Lord Merivale.

  Here Ann felt called upon to make a trifling correction. “It is a rifle regiment, Mama. Julia says he is not to be in scarlet, but green.”

  This ill-timed intelligence was, it transpired, all that was necessary to complete Mrs. Northcott’s disillusionment. From the bitterness of her response, Ann inferred that, had he joined for the express purpose of procuring a red coat, her mother would have thought the better of him for it. It was about this time that Torial Merrion also returned to England, after a sojourn of some eight years in India, and he did return clad in scarlet. But what was a younger son to a young apparent, a major to a viscount? Nothing at all. And in any event he soon took himself off to Kent as well, and slipped even from that infinitesimal portion of Mrs. Northcott’s thoughts, which he had briefly occupied.

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  Chapter IV

  Ann liked Lord Merivale very well--as he belonged to Merriweather, she could not do less--but she often, in herself, deplored his coming. Until he had returned, flaunting his eligibility before her, Mrs. Northcott had at times seemed almost to accept the likely perpetuity of her daughter’s single state, only referring to it on those occasions when the inequities of life pressed upon her with unusual vigor. But then came Lord Merivale, with his gentle manners, and his open, affectionate temper, captivating the neighborhood mamas with his readiness to dance with even the plainest of their daughters. Little wonder if hope and ambition stirred in the humblest parental heart; and Mrs. Northcott, her own heart unhampered by any trace of such a vulgar, Methodistical virtue, had moved quickly from hope to near certitude. His youth and good nature, plus an almost feminine amount of compassion, had marked him out in her mind as a prize easily won by any young lady equipped, as was Ann, with both the warm approval of his family, and a limp.

  And perhaps he might have been. Had Ann made the least attempt to engage his pity, there is no saying but he might have stepped straightway into the shackles. Mrs. Northcott certainly had no doubt of it; and as soon as the first shock of his defection had lessened, she retrieved his character from the dust into with she had flung it, brushed it off, and discovered (without undue surprise) that her daughter was wholly to blame for--everything. Ann had often played the pianoforte at Merriweather in the evenings--had she arranged for Lord Merivale to turn the pages for her? No. They had all gone riding together--had she held back because of her injury, that he might feel obliged to keep her company while the others rode on ahead? Not at all! She had kept pace, and been entirely knocked up the next day in consequence. And the picnic--that matter of the stream, in particular, had been disgracefully mismanaged! Had she no conception of the importance of small attentions? She had known it must be impossible for her to jump across it as the others did--why had she not made sure he would be at hand to assist her?

  “What, to lift me across? But Mama, we are nearly of a size. It would have been silly and unkind of me to make such a request of him--what if he had dropped me in? And besides, Major Merrion was right there!”

  It was an interview at once disheartening and enlightening. Mrs. Northcott was forced to the conclusion that her poor daughter had not the first suspicion of how to turn an ailment to good account. She seemed, if anything, to be persuaded that her whole duty, as an invalid, consisted of contriving that those around her be reminded of her disability as little as possible. That this was, in most cases, a very proper belief, Mrs. Northcott could not refute; what alarmed her, was Ann’s failure to mark the difference between, for example, inconveniencing one’s parents by a request for frequent stops on a journey, and appealing to a prospective suitor’s sense of chivalry, by discreet reminders of one’s frailty.

  When Mrs. Northcott’s conscience was young and tender, she had taken it so firmly in hand, that now, in her maturer years, it gave her very little trouble; but on this occasion, it roused itself sufficiently to suggest, that if a child be ignorant and confused as to its duties, such a circumstance may frequently be traced to some negligence on the part of its parents. Mrs. Northcott, even in her vexation, was forced to acknowledge a fragment of truth of this. Her ambitions for Ann may have clouded her judgement--she could not deny it. Pleased by the girl’s acceptance into an earl’s family, and thinking only of the prestige of the connection, she had failed to take sufficient heed of the dangers inherent in a close association with such a singular, notional household. She had allowed Ann, at a susceptible age, to become the constant companion of persons known throughout the county for the quaintness of their ideas--of those who refused to allow their servants to say they were not at home, if they were--who cared nothing for going to town--who paid their bills before there was any necessity to do so!

  And what had been done to countermand the damage? Little enough, she feared. All was not lost, however. Ann was still young, her character was not yet fully formed; something might yet be done to retrieve the mistakes of the past. But it was certain to prove a most tiresome business. One could not, after all, expect the silly girl to contribute to her own reformation, persuaded, as she was, that the Parrys embodied every domestic virtue. Why, when Mrs. Northcott recalled her daughter’s many attempts to cite the advantages of this or that Parry practice to her, she wondered that it had taken her so long to perceive the dangers of their influence! No, she need expect no help from that quarter. All efforts at correction must come solely from herself. She did not flatter herself that it would be easy, but hers was the fault, and hers must be the reparation, no matter the cost.

  In this praiseworthy spirit of self-abnegation, Mrs. Northcott resolved that Ann should accompany her on her next pilgrimage to Bath.

  Little need be said of this venture, as Mrs. Northcott’s hopes for it were not realized. Ann uttered no protest when informed of the rearrangement of her summer, but sadly, the journey took such a toll on her frame, that she was for some days unable to go out at all, and when she did, her limp was so pronounced, that she could not walk into the pump room without assistance. This cannot have been precisely how Mrs. Northcott had pictured Bath Society’s first glimpse of her daughter, but perhaps she was cheered by the observation that Ann had clearly taken her strictures to heart, and far from making any attempt to mask her discomfort, looked so pained as she hobbled about, that elderly ladies rose at her approach and begged her to make use of their chairs: a sacrifice that naturally entitled them to hover about afterward, full of questions and advice. Dear, sympathetic souls! How thoughtful were their attentions! How tireless were their efforts to ensure that Mrs. Northcott felt to the uttermost all the disadvantages of her daughter’s condition!

  Neither time nor the baths brought noticeable improvement, and there was no possibility of Ann being able to dance, or ride, or even walk about the parks. She spent most of her days reclining on a sofa, and either reading novels, or writing long letters to the Parrys. Mrs. No
rthcott bore the disappointment of her scheme as well as she might, resisting the despondency that might otherwise have overtaken her, by immersing herself in those elegant diversions for which Bath is justly famous--gossip and cards, and complaining of the waters. But disappointment and inconvenience were not the only results of Ann’s relapse; there were other evils attendant upon it, of which Mrs. Northcott became aware only gradually. She had previously enjoyed all the deference usually accorded those endowed with wealth, a gallery full of ancestors, and a consciousness of their own superiority. Her daughter’s appearance changed this. Respect became tainted with pity, that leveling emotion that dares to see even monarchs as nothing but mortal men, shuffling inexorably dust-ward through a common veil of tears. At first she refused the suspicion, repelling it with a haughty stare; but having overheard herself described (and that by a woman whom she had never troubled to notice) not as “Mrs. Northcott of Hellwick Hall,” but as “the mother of that poor girl, you know, the crippled one,” there remained no more possibility of denial, only a certain agitated looking for of trunks and bandboxes, a speech of fiery reproach, and a carriage to devour the road between her humiliation and Hellwick Hall.

  I come now to the crux of this extended digression. A subtle and civilized crux, it passed, unrecognized as such, by both occupants of the carriage--the one mistaking it for a brilliant notion, the other, for an unexpected ending to a oft-heard harangue. It is curious to think, that a book might have prevented it. Had Lord Chesterfield’s Letters, Mrs. Northcott’s chosen companion on all her journeys, not been carelessly packed away during the fury of their departure, she might have found diversion in his lordship’s scrupulously unprincipled advice, subdued her indignation, and this noble history of mine might never have been. On such whims and trifles do the destinies of men and authors appear to turn.